单选题
Hope may be the lovely, lyrical, inspiring thing many people believe it is—"the thing with feathers," as Emily Dickinson called it. But to scientists, it's also a more dull thing as well: a skill, a tool, a simple choice that is a lot less accidental or lucky. As psychologist Shane Lopez, a senior scientist at the Gallup organization argues in his new book, Making Hope Happen, it's also much more attainable than it seems. In both children and adults, there can be a hard-to-deny link between a robust sense of hope and either work productivity or academic achievement. In studies of this idea, hope is measured by a widely accepted psychological survey and productivity is measured by grades earned, sales made, equipment manufactured etc. When Lopez and his colleagues recently gathered up a large body of this research and subjected it all to a meta-analysis, they came up with what they believe are very solid numbers. "Our finding was that hope accounts for about 14% of work productivity and 12% of academic achievement," he said. Hoping, Lopez stresses, is a lot different from wishing, though the two are often mixed. The super-bestseller The Secret is based on the vaguely defined and not-exactly peer-reviewed "law of attraction," which in this case means that just having positive thoughts about wealth, love, success and more can draw all of those things to you. "This wonderful future will happen for you if you just sit back and wish hard enough," Lopez says. But wishing, he explains is only an element of hope—it is, in a sense, hope without a plan. And that often leads nowhere. Effective hoping, Lopez says, is a very deliberate, three-step process. First there is selecting a goal, whether short-term or long term. Then you have to consider the gap between where you are now and where you will be when you achieve the goal, and lay out a series of sequential, short-term goals that will allow you to close that gap. Finally, there is the execution, establishing a plan for when you will begin to implement those steps and where and how you will execute them. It's far too much to say that effective hoping is the only—or even the biggest—part of what it takes to succeed. If 14% of business productivity can be attributed to hope, that means 86% is dependent on raw talent, unpredictable business cycles, the quality of the product you're selling, and often pure luck. But even if hope is just one ingredient in all of that, it's a stimulating, energizing one—the gas in the tank, the fuel rod in the reactor, the Mentos in the Pepsi. Hope may be the thing with feathers—but it's also the thing with power.
单选题
Hope is believed to be "the thing with feathers" because _____.
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】解析:根据题干中的关键词the thing with feathers可定位到第一段。该段①句表明希望是振奋人心的(inspiring),随后说许多人认为希望就像是埃米莉-狄金森描述的那样——长着羽毛的鸟儿。A项中的inspire一词与原文中的inspiring为同根词,语义相同,表积极意味,故A项为正确答案。
单选题
It can be learned from the first two paragraphs that _____.
单选题
The super-bestseller "The Secret" is mentioned in Paragraph 3 to _____.
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】解析:根据题干定位到第三段。该题问举例的目的。第三段①句表示希望与愿望之间存在差异,随后提及《秘密》一书。该书基于“吸引定律”,该定律意味着只要你积极地想什么就能有什么,②句中的having positive thoughts about与③句中的wish hard enough均表示“愿望”,D项与之对应,故为正确答案。
单选题
Which of the following is true of effective hoping?
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】解析:根据题干中关键词effective hoping可定位到第四、第五段,但是对这个词进行详细论述的是第四段。该段③句点出有效的希望分为三步,随后用连接词First,Then以及Finally分别引出各步骤。C项是对这三个步骤内容的同义表达,其中goal-setting与原文④句中的selecting a goal对应,planning指的是原文⑤句中的lay out a series of...goals,而executing则对应原文⑥句中的execution,故本题选C项。
单选题
Which of the following could be the most appropriate title for the text?