Are kids getting too much praise? Too much pr...

试题详情

Are kids getting too much praise? Too much praise may be doing kids more harm than good.

A cover story in Scholastic Instructor magazine asks whether kids today are over-praised. The worry is that while trying to build up kids’ confidence (自信), parents are paying little attention to kids’ real goals and achievements. In a recent study, eighth graders in Korea and the United States were asked whether they were good at math. Among the American students, 39 percent said they were excellent at math, compared to just 6 percent of the Korean eighth graders. But the reality was kind of different. The Korean kids scored far better than the over-confident American students.

The disadvantage of too much praise is that kids may start to focus on the reward (奖励) rather than what they are learning. Worse, when a student fails, whose confidence comes from a blind sense of achievement rather than his or her real abilities, the result can be devastating (毁灭性). This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t praise our kids or that teachers shouldn’t try to build up their students’ self-confidence. But self-confidence should be the result of good grades and real achievements instead of empty praise from others.

Last month, Cognitive Daily reported that parents and teachers should be specific rather than general when they offer praise. An example of general praise is telling a child, “You’re smart.” Specific praise would be to say, “You did a good job on reading...”, or “You did great on your math test.” Kids who receive general praise about their abilities probably show “helpless” behavior when they meet with problems with learning, compared with kids who receive specific praise about their achievement on a task. The reason: a child who knows she’s a smart girl feel defeated (挫败的) if she has trouble reading a sentence. But a child who has been told she is a good reader will probably have confidence in that specific ability and work a little harder to deal with a more difficult book.

1.The study of the eighth graders in Paragraph 2 shows that ________.

A.Korean students are over-praised so they got higher scores

B.American students are over-confident but they achieve less

C.American students are really good at math

2.According to Paragraph 3. kids’ self-confidence should come from ________.

A.teachers’ love and support

B.what they are able to do well

C.a blind sense of achievement

3.Which of the following is the best example about specific praise?

A.Mr. Miller told her daughter “You are a fantastic girl”.

B.The headmaster wrote to one of his students, saying “I am so proud of you”.

C.Your English teacher said to you, “Your writing has improved a lot because of practice.”

4.Kids getting general praise will ________ in the face of problems with learning.

A.probably give up easily

B.encourage themselves to try again

C.work harder than before

5.The writer of the passage means to prove that ________.

A.too much praise may be doing kids more harm than good

B.Korean students are less confident than American students

C.Achievement lies in self-confidence

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