Envy seems to be bad-but it doesn't have to b...

Envy seems to be bad-but it doesn't have to be. Researchers are finding that, if approached the right way, there can actually be an advantage.

Psychologists classify envy in two ways: negative and positive. With positive envy, you are motivated by another person's success and struggle to follow it. With negative envy, you want to cut the advantaged person down so you look better by comparison. Let's say you feel sufferings of envy after your rival(对手) at another firm gets promoted. Negative envy might drive you to destroy his success, but positive envy would inspire you to work harder and get promoted, too.

Studies show positive envy can be a great motivator(动力). In a 2011 study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers in the Netherlands conducted a series of experiments with more than 200 university students. Researchers found that when they caused feelings of positive envy----as opposed to admiration or negative envy----in the students, it drove them to want to study more and perform better on a test measuring creativity and intelligence. While admiration may feel better, the researchers found, it doesn't motivate performance like the pain and frustration of envy.

“Those painful sufferings of envy are there for an evolutionary(进化的) reason,” says Texas Christian University researcher Sarah E. Hill, “warning us that someone has something of importance to us.” Building on this theory, Dr. Hill and others conducted a series of experiments, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, to test whether envy improves attention and memory----the tools needed to copy a rival's steps to success. In one experiment, half of the participants were asked to recall past feelings of envy; the other half weren't. The two groups were then shown mock(模拟的) interviews of imaginary peers. The group filled with envy paid closer attention and better recalled details about the interview subjects. In other words, envy made them more astute（机敏的）. Not only can envy motivate us to reach for higher goals, it may even give us the cognitive push to get there.

1.What’s the bad effect of negative envy?

A. It makes you lose heart and gets discouraged.

B. It has you feel motivated.

C. It makes you harm or hurt others on purpose.

D. It reminds you to struggle to follow your dreams.

2.What’s the benefit of positive envy?

A. It inspires you to find a possible rival to try to defeat them.

B. It encourages you to work harder with a positive attitude.

C. It won’t hurt your opponents in the same firm.

D. It won’t destroy your success at another firm.

3.Compared to admiration, positive envy can__________.

A. make you feel worse in all sides

B. be more likely to get you to admire others

C. make you feel the pain in your performance

D. be more likely to get you inspired to get success

4. What is the main idea of the passage?

A. Envy seems to be bad.

B. Keep your envy in secret.

C. Make full use of positive envy.

D. Forget about your envy now.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

It may not be news to parents of teenage girls, but researchers have confirmed that no one can stop their 16-year-old daughter from deciding how the family spends its money.

The willpower and determination of teenage girls give them a big say in how a family’s money is spent on everything from food and meals to mobile phones, and, of course, clothes. Teenage boys did not show up at all in the analysis, which was designed to find out the influence of young people on household spending.

The findings on the spending power of teenage girls were calculated from Office for National Statistics records of family spending during the 1980s and 1990s. Researchers examined how much money went on services and leisure goods in different kinds of homes. They checked spending on food, restaurant meals, alcohol, tobacco, services, heating, transport, clothes and sports in 2,745 British families.

They found that teenage girls in the UK typically played an active role in family decisions about the allocation（分配）of household resources. But older children— those over the age of 21 who are still living with their parents—appear to have no say in household decisions.

They also tried to calculate to what extent the bargaining power of a teenager affected family budgets. “Every parent knows that children, even at a very early age, have their own preferences with regard to consumption, researchers said. “But children are only interested in a limited range of goods—mainly sweets and toys—and parents are able to use punishment to reduce their children’s bargaining power or remove it.”  When they become teenagers, however, girls are much more independent and they are capable of earning their own money, which improves their bargaining power in family decisions.

The researchers could not explain why girls have more influence over spending while the evidence for boys is much less conclusive. However, this study could be of great significance to market research and how marketers target children.

1. From the passage we can learn that ________.

2.What does the underlined part “give them a big say” in the second paragraph mean?

3.It appears that household decisions are NOT affected by ________.

4.How can parents reduce children’s bargaining power?

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

_______ to be much chance of our catching him up in the near future.

A．You don’t seem                       B．It doesn’t seem

C．That doesn’t seem                     D．There doesn’t seem

高二英语单项填空简单题查看答案及解析

--- Why doesn’t she make notes?

--- She has no pen to use. She seems        one.

高二英语单项填空简单题查看答案及解析

—What does this sentence mean ?

--- It seems to me that it ________.

A. doesn’t make sense B. doesn’t have sense  C. doesn’t make meaning D. doesn’t be meaningful

高二英语单项填空简单题查看答案及解析

--- Why doesn’t she make notes?

--- She has no pen to use. She seems ________one.

A．to have forgotten to bring                     B．to forget to bring

C．to have forgotten bringing                     D．to forget bringing

高二英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

--- Why doesn’t she make notes?

--- She has no pen to use．She seems ________one．

A．to have forgotten to bring                     B．to forget to bring

C．to have forgotten bringing                     D．to forget bringing

高二英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

--- Why doesn’t she make notes?

--- She has no pen to use．She seems ________one．

A．to have forgotten to bring       B．to forget to bring

C．to have forgotten bringing      D．to forget bringing

高二英语单项填空简单题查看答案及解析

Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be enough rain. Other times there is too much. Maybe thereisn’t a lot we can do to control the rain, but there is a lot we can do to reduce problems caused bydifferent rainfall patterns.

A new development at the London Wetland Centre in Barnes solves the problems of managingwater with a “Rain Garden”. We are likely to be hearing about it a lot more often over the next fewyears. The idea is that the garden owner can store rainwater and use it in dry periods. They canreduce the problems caused by extra rain this way.

One of the key problems that the rain garden tries to deal with is the problem caused by toomuch water in the street. In a natural environment, a lot of rainwater is sent back into the air byplants. Much is also absorbed deep into the ground, and flows into streams and rivers. What happensin city environments can be completely different —— a large amount of rainwater flows straight offthe hard surfaces of roofs and roads. The harder the rain, the less likely it will be absorbed into theground —— floods are the result. Rainwater running off roads is often polluted.

The rain garden deals with living plants rather than hard surfaces. Plants are designed to holdwater and release it slowly, either into the ground, to be absorbed by plant roots (and so eventuallyback up into the atmosphere) or to go down into the water table. Not only does the rain gardenreduce the amount of water that flows onto the street, but it helps to clean it because plants are very goodat breaking down pollutants(污染物).

1.What’s the main idea of the first paragraph?

A．Explaining why there is a lack of rain at times.

B．Introducing several different patterns of rainfall.

C．Telling us how to avoid problems caused by rain.

D．Giving the idea that there are ways to manage rain water.

2.According to the second paragraph, “Rain Gardens" are likely to _____.

A．harm the environment in the short run

B．become popular over the next few years

C．be turned down by most new developments

D．be too expensive for common people to accept

3.We can learn from the third paragraph that _____.

A．floods are often the results of small rains

B．a heavy rain is less difficult for plants to absorb

C．the rain garden helps send rainwater back into the air

D．larger amounts of rainwater flow straight off in city environments

4.According to the last paragraph, what does the rain garden help to clean?

A．The plants         B．The ground.        C．The water.         D．The street.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be enough rain. Other times there is too much. Maybe thereisn’t a lot we can do to control the rain, but there is a lot we can do to reduce problems caused bydifferent rainfall patterns.

A new development at the London Wetland Centre in Barnes solves the problems of managingwater with a “Rain Garden”. We are likely to be hearing about it a lot more often over the next fewyears. The idea is that the garden owner can store rainwater and use it in dry periods. They canreduce the problems caused by extra rain this way.

One of the key problems that the rain garden tries to deal with is the problem caused by toomuch water in the street. In a natural environment, a lot of rainwater is sent back into the air byplants. Much is also absorbed deep into the ground, and flows into streams and rivers. What happensin city environments can be completely different —— a large amount of rainwater flows straight offthe hard surfaces of roofs and roads. The harder the rain, the less likely it will be absorbed into theground —— floods are the result. Rainwater running off roads is often polluted.

The rain garden deals with living plants rather than hard surfaces. Plants are designed to holdwater and release it slowly, either into the ground, to be absorbed by plant roots (and so eventuallyback up into the atmosphere) or to go down into the water table. Not only does the rain gardenreduce the amount of water that flows onto the street, but it helps to clean it because plants are very goodat breaking down pollutants(污染物).

1.What’s the main idea of the first paragraph?

A．Explaining why there is a lack of rain at times.

B．Introducing several different patterns of rainfall.

C．Telling us how to avoid problems caused by rain.

D．Giving the idea that there are ways to manage rain water.

2.According to the second paragraph, “Rain Gardens" are likely to _____.

A．harm the environment in the short run

B．become popular over the next few years

C．be turned down by most new developments

D．be too expensive for common people to accept

3.We can learn from the third paragraph that _____.

A．floods are often the results of small rains

B．a heavy rain is less difficult for plants to absorb

C．the rain garden helps send rainwater back into the air

D．larger amounts of rainwater flow straight off in city environments

4.According to the last paragraph, what does the rain garden help to clean?

A．The plants         B．The ground.        C．The water.         D．The street.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析