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四、阅读实践(笔试试题英译汉部分将选取以下标记段落中的两段进行考试)Passage 1In times of economic crisis, Americans turn to their families for support. If the Great Depression is any guide, we may see a drop in our skyhigh divorce rate. But this wont necessarily represent an increase in happy marriages. In the long run, the Depression weakened American families, and the current crisis will probably do the same.We tend to think of the Depression as a time when families pulled together to survive huge job losses. By 1932, when nearly one-quarter of the workforce was unemployed, the divorce rate had declined by around 25% from 1929, but this doesnt mean people were suddenly happier with their marriages. Rather, with incomes decreasing and insecure jobs, unhappy couples often couldnt afford to divorce. They feared neither spouse could manage alone.Today, given the job losses of the past year, fewer unhappy couples will risk starting separate households. Furthermore, the housing market meltdown will make it more difficult for them to finance their separations by selling their homes.After financial disasters family members also tend to do whatever they can to help each other and their communities. A 1940 book, The Unemployed Man and His Family, described a family in which the husband initially reacted to losing his job “with tireless search for work.” He was always active, looking for odd jobs to do.The problem is that such an impulse is hard to sustain. Across the country, many similar families were unable to maintain the initial boost in morale(士气). For some, the hardships of life without steady work eventually overwhelmed their attempts to keep their families together. The divorce rate rose again during the rest of the decade as the recovery took hold.Millions of American families may now be in the initial stage of their responses to the current crisis, working together and supporting one another through the early months of unemployment.Todays economic crisis could well generate a similar number of couples whose relationships have been irreparably(无法弥补地) ruined. So its only when the economy is healthy again that well begin to see just how many broken families have been created.Passage 2The $11 billion self-help industry is built on the idea that you should turn negative thoughts like I never do anything right into positive ones like I can succeed. But was positive thinking advocate Norman Vincent Peale right? Is there power in positive thinking?Researchers in Canada just published a study in the journal Psychological Science that says trying to get people to think more positively can actually have the opposite effect: it can simply highlight how unhappy they are.The studys authors, Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick, begin by citing older research showing that when people get feedback which they believe is overly positive, they actually feel worse, not better. If you tell your dim friend that he has the potential of an Einstein, youre just underlining his faults. In one 1990s experiment, a team including psychologist Joel Cooper of Princeton asked participants to write essays opposing funding for the disabled. When the essayists were later praised for their sympathy, they felt even worse about what they had written.In this experiment, Wood, Lee and Perunovic measured 68 students self-esteem. The participants were then asked to write down their thoughts and feelings for four minutes. Every 15 seconds, one group of students heard a bell. When it rang, they were supposed to tell themselves, I am lovable.Those with low self-esteem didnt feel better after the forced self-affirmation. In fact, their moods turned significantly darker than those of members of the control group, who werent urged to think positive thoughts.The paper provides support for newer forms of psychotherapy (心理治疗) that urge people to accept their negative thoughts and feelings rather than fight them. In the fighting, we not only often fail but can make things worse. Meditation (静思) techniques, in contrast, can teach people to put their shortcomings into a larger, more realistic perspective. Call it the power of negative thinking.Passage 3Junk food is everywhere. Were eating way too much of it. Most of us know what were doing and yet we do it anyway. So heres a suggestion offered by two researchers at the Rand Corporation: Why not take a lesson from alcohol control policies and apply them to where food is sold and how its displayed? “Many policy measures to control obesity(肥胖症)assume that people consciously and rationally choose what and how much they eat and therefore focus on providing information and more access to healthier foods,” note the two researchers. “In contrast,” the researchers continue, “many regulations that dont assume people make rational choices have been successfully applied to control alcohol,
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