全新版大学英语快速阅读2原文Word文档格式.docx

1、ll learn still more （point 3）. However, if he tries to do twenty-three and a half hours work in one day, hell be so tired that hell hardly remember anything: what he learns will be very little （point 4）. If he did less work he d learn more （point 5）. Now whatever the exact shape of the graph s curve

2、, made by joining these points, it must have a high point. Point X is the very maximum anyone can learn in the day. And this represents the optimum, the best,amount of work to do. It is the best possible compromise between adequate time at the books and fatigue. Fatigue is an absolutely real thing;

3、one cant escape it or ignore it. If you try to ignore it and press yourself to work past the optimum, you will only get on this downward slope and achieve less than the bestand then become very tired and lose your power of concentration. The skill in being a student consists of getting one s daily s

4、tudy as near the optimum point as possible. I cannot tell you what the optimum is. It differs with the type of work, it differs from person to person, and even in the same person it varies from week to week. You must try to find your own. Every day you study, bear this principle of the optimum in mi

5、nd. When you feel yourself getting fatigued, if you find yourself reading the same paragraph over and over again and not taking it in, thats a pretty good sign you ve reached your highest point for the day and should stop. Most ordinary students find their optimum at about five hours a day. Yours ma

6、y be a little more or a little lessbut if you get in five hours good work a day, you will be doing well. Now, what are you doing with yourself when you arent working? Before examinations some students do nothing at all except sit in a chair and worry. Here is another misunderstanding. People often t

7、hink that the mind works like the body; it does not. If one wanted to save one s physical energy in order to cut the maximum amount of firewood, one would lie flat on a bed and rest when one wasnt chopping. But the mind cannot rest. Even in sleep you dream, even if you forget your dreams. The mind i

8、s always turning. It gets its relaxation only by variety. That is what makes the mind rest. When you ve finished your optimum number of hours you must stop. You must not then sit around in the chair thinking about the workthat only tires without any learning. You must get out and do something. It do

9、esnt matter whatanything so long as you are actively doing something else but work. Learning to Keep You Cool During Tests Have you ever felt so anxious during an examination that you couldnt even put down the answers you knew? If so, you were suffering from what is known as test anxiety. According

10、to psychologist Ralph Trimble, test anxiety is a very real problem for many people. When you re worried over your performance on an exam, your heart beats faster and your pulse speeds up. These reactions start others: You may sweat more than normal or suffer from a stomachache or headache. Your fiel

11、d of vision narrows and becomes tunnel-like. Before you know it, you re having difficulty focusing. What I hear students say over and over again, says Dr. Trimble, who is working at the Psychological and Counseling Center at the University of Illinois, is, My mind went blank. For a number of years,

12、Dr. Trimble helped many students learn how to perform better during exams and to bring up their grades. Some of these students were interested in sharing what they learned and, with Trimble s help, began holding workshops on overcoming test anxiety. For many students, just being in a workshop with o

13、ther sufferers made them feel better. They realized that they were not the only ones who had done poorly on tests because of tension. The workshops were so successful that they are still given. In the workshops, students are taught that anxiety is normal. You just have to prevent it from getting the

14、 best of you. The first step is to learn to relax. If before or during an examination you start to panic, stretch as hard as you can, tensing the muscles in your arms and legs; then suddenly relax all of them. This will help relieve tension. But keep in mind that you dont want to be too relaxed. Bei

15、ng completely relaxed is no better than being too tense. If you are so calm you dont care how you do on an examination, you wont do well, Trimble says. There is an optimum level of concern when you perform at your best. Some stress helps. There are people who cant take even slight stress. They have

16、to learn that in a challenging situation, being anxiously excited is good and will help them to do better. But if they call it anxiety and say, Its going to hit me again, that will make them nervous and worried.As a student you must also realize that if you leave too much studying until a day or two

17、 before the examination, you cant do the impossible and learn it all. Instead, concentrate on what you can do and try to think what questions are likely to be asked and what you can do in the time left for studying. When you sit down to study, set a moderate pace and vary it by reading, writing note

18、s, and going over any papers you have already written for the course, as well as the textbooks and notes you took in class. Review what you know. Take breaks and go to sleep early enough to get a good night s rest before the exam. You should also eat a moderate breakfast or lunch, avoiding drinks li

19、ke coffee and stay away from fellow students who get tense. Panic spreads easily. Get to the exam room a few minutes early so that you will have a chance to familiarize yourself with the surroundings and get out your supplies. When the examination is handed out, read the directions twice and underli

20、ne the significant instructions, making sure you understand them. Ask the teacher to explain if you dont. First answer the easiest questions, then go back to the more difficult. On essay questions, instead of starting right away, take a few minutes to organize your thoughts, make a brief outline, an

21、d then start off with a summary sentence. Keep working steadily, and even when time starts to run out, dont speed up. Paying Your Way There were red faces at one of Britain s biggest banks recently. They had accepted a telephone order to buy? 100,000 worth of shares from a fifteen-year-old schoolboy

22、 （they thought he was twenty-one）. The shares fell in value and the schoolboy was unable to pay up. The bank lost 20,000 on the deal which it cannot get back because, for one thing, this young speculator does not have the money and, for another, being under eighteen, he is not legally liable for his

23、 debts. If the shares had risen in value by the same amount that they fell, he would have pocketed 20,000 profit. Not bad for a fifteen-year-old. It certainly is better than delivering the morning newspaper. In another recent case, a boy of fourteen found, in his grandmother s house, a suitcase full

24、 of foreign banknotes. The clean, crisp, banknotes looked very convincing but they were now not used in their country of origin or anywhere else. This young boy headed straight to the nearest bank with his pockets filled with notes. The cashiers did not realise that the country in question had reduc

25、ed the value of its currency by 90 %. They exchanged the notes at their face value at the current exchange rate. In three days, before he was found out, he took 200,000 from nine different banks. Amazingly, he had already spent more than half of this on taxi-rides, restaurant meals, concert tickets

26、and presents for his many new girlfriends （at least he was generous!） before the police caught up with him. Because he is also under eighteen the banks have kissed goodbye to a lot of money, and several cashiers have lost their jobs. Should we admire these youngsters for being enterprising and showi

27、ng initiative or condemn them for their dishonesty? Maybe they had managed for years with tiny amounts of pocket money that they got from tight-fisted parents. Maybe they had done Saturday jobs for peanuts. It is hardly surprising, given the expensive things that young people want to buy, such as fa

28、shionable running shoes and computer games, if they sometimes think up more imaginative ways of making money than delivering newspapers and baby-sitting. These lads saw the chance to make a lot of money and took it. Another recent story which should give us food for thought is the case of the man wh

29、o paid his six-year-old daughter 300 a week pocket money. He then charged her for the food she ate and for her share of the rent and household bills. After paying for all this, she was left with a few coins for her piggy bank. She will soon learn the value of money, he said. Theres no such thing as

30、a free lunch. Everything has to be paid for and the sooner she learns that the better. At the other extreme there are fond parents who provide free bed and board for their grown-up children. While even the most hard-hearted parents might hesitate to throw their children out on the streets, we all kn

31、ow of people in their late twenties who still shamelessly live off their parents. Surely there comes a time when everyone has to leave the parental nest, look after themselves and pay their own way in life. But when is it?The Day I Went to Open a Bank Account I dont know why my father never liked banks. Every time we passed one he would frown and walk just a little faster to get p