单选题 Fourteen-year-old Richie Hawley had spent five years studying violin at the Community School of Performing Arts in Los Angeles when he took part in a violin contest. Ninety-two young people were invited to the contest and Hawley came out first.
The contest could have been the perfect setup for fear, worrying about mistakes, and trying to impress the judges. But Hawley says "I did pretty well at staying calm. I couldn't be thinking about how many mistakes I'd make--it would distract me from playing. "he says. "I don't even remember trying to impress people while I played. It's almost as if they weren't there. I just wanted to make music."
Hawley is a winner. But he didn't become a winner by concentrating on winning. He did it by concentrating on playing well.
"The important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part," said the founder of the modem Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin. "The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."
New research shows that Coubertin's philosophy is exactly the path achievers take to win at life's challenging games.
A characteristic of high performers is their intense, pleasurable concentration on work, rather than on their competitors or future glory or money, says Dr. Charles Garfield, who has studied 1,500 achievers in business, science, sports, the arts, and professions. "They are interested in winning, but they're more interested in self-development, testing their limits."
One of the most surprising things about top performers is how many losses they've had--and how much they've learned from each. "Not one of the 1, 500 I studied defined losing as failing," Garfield says. "They kept calling their losses ' setbacks'."
A healthy attitude toward setbacks is essential to winning, experts agree.
"The worst thing you can do if you've had a setback is to let yourself get stuck in a prolonged depression. You should analyze carefully what went wrong, identify specific things you did right and give yourself credit for them." Garfield believes that most people don't give themselves enough praise. He even suggests keeping a diary of all the positive things you've done on the way to a goal.

单选题 Hawley won the contest because ______.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[精解] 这是一道细节题。从文章的第二段霍利自己所说的话以及第三段我们知道,霍利很专注于自己的演奏,并没有将注意力放在努力减少错误或者是打动周围的人上面。故答案为 C。
单选题 What is common among high performers is that they tend to give priority to ______.
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[精解] 这是一道细节题。此题考查的是对文章内容的理解。文章第六段第一句话“A characteristic of high performers is their intense,pleasurable concentration on work…”意思是那些表现好的人都专注于工作本身。A和B都是文章后面所否定的内容,所以错误。C项在文章中是用来形容D项的,所以不是重点,也不能选。故D为正确选项。
单选题 According to the passage, successful people concentrate on ______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[精解] 细节题。根据文章第六段“They are interested in winning,but they're more interested in self-development,testing their limits.”与B项“challenging their own limits”意思相符,故选B。
单选题 It can be learned from the passage that top performers are not ______.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[精解] 推理题。此题考查的是对文章第六、七段的理解。第七段开头说“对于有极佳表现的人来说,他们失败过多少次和从每次的失败中吸取了多少教训是非常令人吃惊的”,说明表现再好的人也有失败;所以A项“即使是有极佳表现的人也不免于失败”是正确的。
单选题 The passage tells us that "praise" in times of trouble ______.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】[精解] 推理题。B的意思是“表扬帮助人们克服失望。”从意思上来讲只有B符合文意。A、C两项文中都没有提到。而D项显然错误,因为文章说成功的人都是从挫折中吸取教训,所以不可能是忘记挫折。