学进去

On the first day in their new grade, Maria and Amna were sitting at the desk right in front of the teacher’s. It was early and no students had arrived.

Just then a fat girl, Ayesha, wearing brown glasses entered the room. She seemed very nervous. Before she could realize, she tripped over the threshold(门槛) and fell. The loud sound caught Maria’s attention.

Maria looked at her and said, “Hey, Amna, look at this elephant. Looks like she has not showered for months.” Maria started laughing loudly. Amna found it a little too rude, but she knew that if she stopped Maria from saying bad words about that girl, Maria would laugh at her as well for being too kind. So she said she would be right back and went out of the classroom. Meanwhile, Ayesha felt so embarrassed that her eyes were filled with tears.

After school, Maria went home and went straight to sleep. Lying on her bed, she fell asleep immediately. Suddenly, someone shook her. Maria opened her eyes and saw her teacher. She got up and, to her surprise, she found she was in a dark room with little light. She saw her teacher holding a piece of paper and a pencil. Her teacher said, “Maria, look at this paper, and say something mean to it.”

“You are dirty!” Maria shouted. Her teacher drew a line on the paper and said, “Say something bad again!”

“You are ugly,” Maria said. Her teacher drew another line and the same act was repeated several times until the paper was filled with lines. Then her teacher gave Maria the paper and an eraser and directed her to erase the lines. After the lines were erased, Maria gave the paper back to her teacher.

“Does it look new?” her teacher asked. “No, it’s not clean and there are still some marks left,” Maria replied.

“Exactly, this is what happens when you bully(欺负) someone. An apology cannot easily erase the marks you leave on their self-esteem(自尊),” her teacher explained.

Maria became quiet. Her teacher then disappeared.

Suddenly, her stomach and face started bloating(膨胀) and she became a very fat girl.

On realizing it was all a dream, Maria told everything to her mother.

Monkeys seem to have a way with numbers.

A team of researchers trained three Rhesus monkeys to associate 26 clearly different symbols consisting of numbers and selective letters with 0-25 drops of water or juice as a reward. The researchers then tested how the monkeys combined—or added—the symbols to get the reward.

Here’s how Harvard Medical School scientist Margaret Livingstone, who led the team, described the experiment: In their cages the monkeys were provided with touch screens. On one part of the screen, a symbol would appear, and on the other side two symbols inside a circle were shown. For example, the number 7 would flash on one side of the screen and the other end would have 9 and 8. If the monkeys touched the left side of the screen they would be rewarded with seven drops of water or juice; if they went for the circle, they would be rewarded with the sum of the numbers—17 in this example.

After running hundreds of tests, the researchers noted that the monkeys would go for the higher values more than half the time, indicating that they were performing a calculation, not just memorizing the value of each combination.

When the team examined the results of the experiment more closely, they noticed that the monkeys tended to underestimate(低估) a sum compared with a single symbol when the two were close in value—sometimes choosing, for example, a 13 over the sum of 8 and 6. The underestimation was systematic: When adding two numbers, the monkeys always paid attention to the larger of the two, and then added only a fraction(小部分) of the smaller number to it.

“This indicates that there is a certain way quantity is represented in their brains, ”Dr. Livingstone says. “But in this experiment what they’re doing is paying more attention to the big number than the little one.”

Over millions of years humans have responded to certain situations without thinking too hard. If our ancestors spotted movement in the nearby forest, they would run first and question later. At the same time, the ability to analyze and to plan is part of what separates us from other animals. The question of when to trust your instinct (直觉)and when to think slow matters in the office as much as in the savannah(草原).

Slow thinking is the feature of a well-managed workplace. Yet instinct also has its place. Some decisions are more connected to emotional responses and less to analysis. In demanding customer-service or public-facing situations, instinct is often a better guide to how to behave.

Instinct can also be improved. Plenty of research has shown that instinct becomes more unerring with experience. In one well-known experiment, volunteers were asked to assess whether a selection of designer handbags were real or not. Some were instructed to operate on instinct and others to deliberate(深思熟虑)over their decision. Instinct worked better for those who owned at least three designer handbags; indeed, it outperformed analysis. The more expert you become, the better your instinct tends to be.

However, the real reason to embrace fast thinking is that it is, well, fast. It is often the only way to get through the day. To take one example, when your inbox floods with new emails at the start of a new day, there is absolutely no way to read them all carefully. Instinct is what helps you decide which ones to answer and which to delete or leave unopened. Fast thinking can also help the entire organization. The value of many managerial decisions lies in the simple fact that they have been made at all. Yet as data explodes, the temptation(诱惑)to ask for one more bit of analysis has become much harder to resist. Managers often suffer from overthinking, turning a simple problem into a complex one.

When to use instinct in the workplace rests on its own form of pattern recognition. Does the decision maker have real expertise in this area? Is this a field in which emotion matters more than reasoning? Above all, is it worth delaying the decision? Slow thinking is needed to get the big calls right. But fast thinking is the way to stop deliberation turning to a waste of time.

“Okay,” said our teacher, Mrs. Woodland：“It’s time for the gift exchange.” I was actually a little excited. I knew what a lot of the girls had brought, and any of those gifts would be great, especially my best friend Sara’s. She had made some candy and put it in this super cute bear mug（马克杯）.

Mrs. Woodland had us put our gifts on our classroom table. Then we opened the gifts like a game. We each drew numbers and we got to the table and chose a wrapped（包装好的） gift when our number was called. But we didn’t necessarily have to. We could take a gift from somebody else that had already had their number called—if we thought we’d like that gift better than the wrapped ones.

When it was my turn, I didn’t take a wrapped gift from the table. And I didn’t take Sara’s either though I really wanted to. I took the perfume（香水） Megan had brought instead. I didn’t have enough money to get Mom something special, but the perfume was really nice. She might really like it.

I was busy thinking about the perfume and whether Mom would like it or not when there was a big commotion（嘈杂）. It had been Hannah’ s turn to choose. She was the last one. And unsurprisingly, she didn’t go for the last wrapped gift on the table. Instead, she’d taken Sara’s gift from Lauren. Well, that meant Lauren had to take the wrapped gift. She looked a little upset when she got to the table. Everyone knew the last gift was from Kali. That was why no one had chosen it. Kali was really poor. And she always brought gifts that no one ever wanted. This time, she brought a pair of old—fashioned crocheted potholders（编织的防烫套垫）！

“I don’t want these,” Lauren whined（哀怨）.“I want my candy back.”

“No way,” Hannah protested, keeping the mug of chocolate out of Lauren’s reach.

“Then I want Megan’s perfume.” Lauren came over to take my perfume. “Come on, Melanie, trade with me.”

Mrs. Woodland advised me to trade with Lauren since I had always been kind.

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“Here,” I said to my mom after I got home, handing her the potholders. “They are an early New Year gift.”

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I had never been more anxious in my life. I had just arrived at the airport to travel home. As I watched the bus driver set my luggage on the airport sidewalk, I realized my _________ had just begun.

This was my first visit alone to the international terminal (航站楼) of the airport, and nothing was _________. I couldn’t make sense of any of the _________. Where was the check-in counter? I felt as if I were deaf and blind and stupid. I began to _________. I had to find help!

I tried to ask a passing businessman for help, but my _________ came out wrong. He frowned and walked away. I had been in this country for a semester, but could not even remember how to ask for directions. Awful! Another _________ arrived at the terminal, and the passengers came out carrying lots of luggage. Right! I could _________ them to the right place.

I dragged my enormous suitcase, went after them and reached the elevators. Oh, no! They all fit in it, but not enough room for me. I watched _________ as the elevator doors closed. I was abandoned again! I got on the elevator when it returned and _________ all the buttons. Which one could it be? I pressed button 3 because I thought I saw those passengers pressed 3, though only a quick glance. The elevator climbed up to the third floor and stopped. A high, unpleasant noise __________ the opening of the doors, and I looked around __________.

Tears formed as I saw the empty hall and realized I would __________ my plane. Just then an elderly airport employee walked towards me. He guessed I was __________ and offered to help. He patted my shoulder to ease my anxiety. We walked up some stairs, turned a corner, and reached the check-in counter!

When I turned to thank him, he was gone. I never got an opportunity to know that man’s name, but I would always remember his unexpected __________. Without his timely help, I would have missed my plane. I hope I will be able to do the same for another traveler experiencing a(n) __________ journey.

Perhaps you’ve heard the old saying “curiosity killed the cat.” It’s a phrase that’s often used to _________

People — especially children — not to ask too many questions. Yet it’s widely agreed that _________ actually makes learning more enjoyable and effective. _________, research has shown that curiosity is just as important as intelligence in _________ how well students do in school.

Curiosity also _________ us to embrace unfamiliar circumstances, brings excitement into our lives, and opens up new possibilities. Being curious requires us to be both humble enough to know we don't have all the answers, and confident enough to _________ it. Asking the questions that help us _________ the gap between what we already know and what we'd like to know can lead us to make unexpected discoveries.

In science, basic curiosity-driven research — conducted without pressure to produce immediate practical results — can have _________ and incredibly important benefits. _________, one day in 1831, Michael Faraday was playing around with a coil (线圈) and a magnet (磁铁)__________ he suddenly saw how he could generate an electrical current. At first, it wasn't clear what use this would have, but it actually made __________ available for use in technology, and so changed the world.

Unsurprisingly, there are chemical and evolutionary theories to __________ why humans are such curious creatures. When we become curious, our brains __________ a chemical called dopamine (多巴胺), which makes the process of learning more pleasurable and improves memory. It is still not known why learning gives us such __________, but one theory is that we may have developed a basic need to fight uncertainty — the more we understand about the world around us, the more likely we are to __________ its many dangers!

My cousin sister’s children were all married and settled abroad. She and my brother-in-law were very fond of going on short holidays to new places.

Once, they decided to take a three-day trip to a nearby small town which was famous for its historical_sites. They decided to take a road trip in their own car. They started on their journey early in the morning and by late evening, they had entered the town and checked in at a hotel.

Next morning, after breakfast, they took a road map of the town and its suburbs and started on their new_discovery. Since there were many places to see, it took them the whole day to finish their sightseeing.

By now, they had reached a suburb which had shops selling handmade items. My_sister was most interested in shopping. Her husband warned her to finish before it started getting dark. They were so lost in their shopping that they forgot about the time and started back only as the shops began to close.

They took the same route   back to their hotel but somehow got lost on the way and realized that they were going around in a circle. They stopped the car to consult their map and then started again. After sometime, they realized it was no use to try and find their way back. They decided to ask someone for help but no one was out at that late hour.

They waited at a street corner for some time, and then decided to try again. My brother－in－law started the car but it couldn’t move. He got down and checked but could not find any fault. He sat back hopelessly, feeling worried about their predicament (困境).   My sister was calm saying she was sure that they would get help.

They sat quietly, my sister praying calmly and her husband getting anxious.

When my sister offered some monetary reward, the man refused.