In the famous musical My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle, the poor daughter of a dustman who speaks with a thick Cockney accent, becomes the unwitting (不知晓的) target for a bet between two phonetics scholars. By the end of the musical, Doolittle is able to pronounce all of her words like a member of the British elite, fooling everyone at an embassy ball about her true origins.
It’s hard to imagine a version of My Fair Lady set in the U.S. because, unlike the British, Americans seem either unwilling or unable to honestly acknowledge their own social class. But a new set of scientific studies conducted by Michael Krauss and his colleagues at Yale University show that Americans find it easy to make distinctions about other people’s social class just by listening to them speak.
In one study, the researchers asked 229 people to listen to 27 different speakers who varied in terms of their age, race, gender and social class. The participants heard each speaker say a total of seven different words. Based on just this short audio, participants were able to correctly identify which speakers were college-educated 55 percent of the time-more than what would be expected by chance. A major limitation of this study, however, was that it used college education as a criterion for social class.
Then in another experiment, 302 participants were asked to either listen to or read transcripts (文本) from 90 seconds of recorded speech in which the speakers talked about themselves without explicitly mentioning anything about their social class. Participants were asked to judge what they thought the social classes of the speakers were by using a 10-rung ascending (上升的) ladder of increasing income, education and occupation. They found that participants who heard the audio recordings were more accurate in judging where the speakers fell in terms of their social status.
To show whether these inferences have real-world consequences, Kraus and his colleagues ran another experiment. They recruited 274 participants, all of whom had past hiring experience, to either listen to the audio or read a transcript of the content. The findings showed that participants were able to accurately judge the social class of the candidates and that this effect was stronger for participants who had heard the audio recordings. In addition, participants judged the higher-class candidates as more competent, a better fit for the job and more likely to be hired.
Taken together, this research suggests that despite our discomfort about the topic, Americans are able to easily detect one another’s social class from small snippets of speech. Moreover, we use this information to discriminate against people who seem to be of a lower social class. This research identifies social class as another potential way that employers may discriminate against candidates, perhaps without even realizing it.
1.The author introduces his topic by______.
A.making a comparison
B.justifying an assumption
C.explaining a phenomenon
D.relating the plot of a musical
2.What do the experiments suggest?
A.Participants tend to make objective judgments.
B.The content rather than the speaking style is reliable.
C.One’s social class can be inferred from how they speak.
D.Education and income are the main criteria for social status.
3.According to the passage, judgments about the way people talk_____.
A.disagree with the facts
B.affect hiring decisions
C.favour competent people
D.hardly provide reference
4.What can be learned from the last paragraph?
A.Americans are slow to judge social classes.
B.People in a low social class lose jobs easily.
C.Social-class discrimination is hard to address.
D.Speech can create social-class discrimination.
Pleasingly, a new study supports one of my favourite insights about writing, or getting any creative work done-though I’m pretty sure that wasn’t intentional, since the researchers were actually studying traffic jams. Jonathan Boreyko, an American engineering professor, was crawling along in his car one day, observing how drivers naturally bunch up at red lights, leaving mere inches between vehicles. Their motivation isn’t a mystery: the closer you are to the car ahead, you’d assume, the better your chances of squeezing through before the light goes back to red, and the sooner you’ll reach your destination, even if you also increase the risk of collisions.
But you’d assume wrong. When Boreyko and a colleague recreated the traffic-light scenario (场景) on a special test track, they found that drivers who bunched up made no swifter progress. True, they stopped slightly closer to the light. But it also took them longer to resume (继续) moving safely, and these two factors canceled each other out. “There’s no point in getting closer to the car in front of you when traffic comes to a stop.” Boreyko concluded.
This is true of writing or similar work. People never rest in urgent pursuit of their goals. Yes, it all looks impressively productive. But as the psychologist Robert Boice argues, racing to get a task completed generally brings a cost that outweighs the benefit. You tire yourself out, so you can’t shine the next day. Or you neglect so many other duties that you’re forced to take an extra day to catch up. Or you start damaging work you already produced — which is why the novelist Cabriel Carcfa Marqucz said he gave up writing in the afternoon: he wrote more, but he had to redo it the next morning, so the overall effect was to slow him down. That’s also why Boice insists that when you’re writing on a schedule, it’s as important to be disciplined about stopping as starting, even if you’re on a roll.
Clearly, this is all a convenient way to feel superior to people who put in more hours. But that doesn’t mean it’s untrue. Indeed, it’s scary to ask what role impatience play in your life in general: how much of each day we spend leaning into the future, trying to get tasks “out of the way”, always focused on the destination, metaphorically (隐喻地) inching closer and closer to the bumper of the car ahead. None of it gets us anywhere faster. It’s also no way to live.
1.Which of the following best summarizes the finding of Boreyko’s study?
A.The sooner, the better. B.More haste, no extra speed.
C.The early bird catches the worm. D.Chances favour the prepared mind.
2.The author wants to tell us that in creative work____.
A.tight planning avoids chaos B.overwork polishes our images
C.impatience almost never pays D.afternoon time is less productive
3.The author writes the passage to______.
A.advise people to stop racing B.instruct people to write skillfully
C.persuade people to treasure time D.warn people to obey traffic rules
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1.What do the four items have in common?
A.They are waterproof.
B.They are of the same price.
C.They are made of fiberglass.
D.They are on sale on Amazon
2.From the passage, we know_______.
A.the handbag raincoat is of low quality
B.the short boots are suitable for urban living
C.the waterproof phone case has different sizes
D.the travel umbrella can be folded using a button
I joined the army as an infantryman (步兵) instead of as a helicopter pilot because I only had the literacy (读写) level of an 11-year-old. I had no idea that I had a reading level that_______; I had just _______words when I didn’t know them, and usually ended up getting them wrong.
It was just before I turned 19 that I _______ my very first book. I can vividly remember the sense of _______and achievement I felt. It was meant for primary school children but I didn’t _______. I had read a whole book, and I was _______. From then on I read anything and everything I could get. I just wanted to get as much_______ as I could.
I learned in those days at the _______education centre. There are always people looking forward to helping you and _______you stuff. But you are never going to progress __________you keep learning. The unbelievable educational__________that the army offers make it one of the few places that can help you climb up the ladder of social classes in the UK.
For me, improving my literacy level had another more surprising__________. When I left the army, I was asked to write a(n)__________of the Bravo Two Zero Mission and that led to the unexpected career change of becoming a(n)__________.
I have spent quite a bit of time over the past few years__________schools, and workplaces, as well as army bases and businesses, to talk about my past and__________others to start reading and writing like me. The__________I give to all the people that I chat to is that if I can do it, anyone can. If that is a message that even one of them accepts and__________, then it has been__________. My experience shows that the best soldier out there is the one with a __________card.
1.A.high B.new C.low D.senior
2.A.gone over B.made up C.put down D.taken back
3.A.wrote B.received C.bought D.read
4.A.pride B.beauty C.duty D.security
5.A.panic B.care C.doubt D.agree
6.A.depressed B.puzzled C.trapped D.hooked
7.A.wealth B.knowledge. C.support D.freedom
8.A.community B.nursery C.army D.health
9.A.showing B.selling C.lending D.teaching
10.A.unless B.until C.though D.since
11.A.expenses B.backgrounds C.opportunities D.requirements
12.A.trouble B.burden C.outcome D.challenge
13.A.email B.diary C.scheme D.account
14.A.athlete B.typist C.author D.reporter
15.A.visiting B.attending C.constructing D.inspecting
16.A.permitting B.encouraging C.commanding D.preferring
17.A.message B.story C.impression D.influence
18.A.changes B.uses C.questions D.ignores
19.A.controversial B.arbitrary C.ridiculous D.worthwhile
20.A.library B.credit C.business D.fitness
—Could Martha afford the money to go on a trip abroad with us?
—I’m afraid not. She is ___________ at the moment.
A.physically challenged B.between jobs C.not all there D.all ears
Our village is making efforts to _________its development pattern to promote green growth.
A.squeeze B.compromise C.transform D.differentiate
