关于通过努力而成功的英语小短文
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发布时间：2022-04-23 00:24
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时间：2022-05-02 22:59
Deng Yaping
Deng Yaping, 28, from Henan Province, is a talented woman player of table tennis. She was the table tennis champion of the ll th Asian Games and the 41st World Tabte Tennis Championship. And in the 25th Olympic Games she won two gold medals. Why can she make such brilliant achievements with the disadvantage of her short figure? Her hard work and determination to succeed helped her to overcome many disadvantages. At the age of 4, she began to play table tennis underthe guidance of her tather. When she was 8, she won the championship in the national competition of the amateur sports school. In 1988 she became a member of the National Training Team. On her way to success, she proved that height was nothing and hard work was everything.
邓亚萍
邓亚萍，女，28岁，河南人，一位杰出的乒乓球运动员。她分别在11后亚运会和41届世界乒乓球锦标赛上获得冠军，并在25后奥运全中获得两枚金牌。为什么她能在个子不高的状况下取得如此辉煌的成就呢?是她的勤奋和决心弥补了她的缺陷，指引她走向成功。4岁时，她在父亲的指导下开始打乒乓球；8岁时就夺得业余体校全国冠军；1998年，成为国家集训队员。在成功的路上，她向我们证明了：个子矮小并不重要，勤奋才是成功的关键。
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Now, the VOA Special English program, Words and Their Stories.
Green is an important color in nature. It is the color of grass and the leaves on trees. It is also the color of most growing plants.
Sometimes, the word green means young, fresh and growing. Sometimes, it describes something that is not yet ripe or finished.
For example, a greenhorn is someone who has no experience, who is new to a situation. In the fifteenth century, a greenhorn was a young cow or ox whose horns had not yet developed. A century or so later, a greenhorn was a soldier who had not yet had any experience in battle. By the eighteenth century, a greenhorn had the meaning it has today - a person who is new in a job.
About one hundred years ago, greenhorn was a popular expression in the American west. Old-timers used it to describe a man who had just arrived from one of the big cities back east. The greenhorn lacked the skills he would need to live in the hard, rough country.
Someone who has the ability to grow plants well is said to have a green thumb. The expression comes from the early nineteen hundreds.
A person with a green thumb seems to have a magic touch that makes plants grow quickly and well. You might say that the woman next door has a green thumb if her garden continues to grow long after your plants have died.
The Green Revolution is the name given some years ago to the development of new kinds of rice and other grains. The new plants proced much larger crops. The Green Revolution was the result of hard work by agricultural scientists who had green thumbs.
Green is also the color used to describe the powerful emotion, jealousy. The green-eyed monster is not a frightening creature from outer space. It is an expression used about four hundred years ago by British writer William Shakespeare in his play "Othello."
It describes the unpleasant feeling a person has when someone has something he wants. A young man may suffer from the green-eyed monster if his girlfriend begins going out with someone else. Or, that green-eyed monster may affect your friend if you get a pay raise and she does not.
In most places in the world, a green light is a sign to move ahead. A green light on a traffic signal means your car can continue on. In everyday speech, a green light means approval to continue with a project. We want you to know we have a green light to continue this series next week.
This VOA Special English program, Words and Their Stories, was written by Marilyn Christiano. I'm Warren Scheer.
Why They Excel
Fox Butterfield
Kim-Chi Trinh was just nine when her father used his savings to buy a passage for her on a fishing boat that would carry her from Vietnam. It was a heartbreaking and costly sacrifice for the family, placing Kim-Chi on the small boat, among strangers, in hopes that she would eventually reach the United States, where she would get a good ecation and enjoy a better life.
It was a hard journey for the little girl, and full of risks. Long before the boat reached safety, the supplies of food and water ran out. When Kim-Chi finally made it to the US, she had to cope with a succession of three foster families. But when she graated from San Diego's Patrick Henry High School in 1988, she had straight A's and scholarship offers from some of the most prestigious universities in the country.
"I have to do well," says the 19-year-old, now a second-year student at Cornell University. "I owe it to my parents in Vietnam."
Kim-Chi is part of a wave of bright, highly - motivated Asian - Americans who are suddenly surging into our best colleges. Although Asian - Americans make up only 2.4 percent of the nation's population, they constitute 17.1 percent of the undergraates at Harvard, 18 percent at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 27.3 percent at the University of California at Berkeley.
Why are Asian - Americans doing so well? Are they grinds, as some stereotypes suggest? Do they have higher IQs? Or can we learn a lesson from them about values we have long treasured but may have misplaced — like hard work, the family and ecation?
Not all Asians are doing equally well; poorly - ecated Cambodian refugee children, for instance, often need special help. And many Asian - Americans resent being labeled a "model minority," feeling that this is reverse discrimination by white Americans — a contrast to the laws that excluded most Asian immigrants from the US until 1965, but prejudice nevertheless.
The young Asians' achievements have led to a series of fascinating studies. Perhaps the most disturbing results come from the research carried out by a University of Michigan psychologist, Harold W. Stevenson, who has compared more than 7,000 students in kindergarten, first grade, third grade and fifth grade in Chicago and Minneapolis with counterparts in Beijing, Taipei and Sendai. On a battery of math tests, the Americans did worst at all grade levels.
Stevenson found no differences in IQ. But if the differences in performance are showing up in kindergarten, it suggests something is happening in the family, even before the children get to school.
It is here that various researchers' different studies converge: Asian parents are motivating their children better. "The bottom line is, Asian kids work hard," Stevenson says.
The real question, then, is how Asian parents imbue their offspring with this kind of motivation. Stevenson's study suggests a critical answer. When asked why they think their children do well, most Asian parents said "hard work." By contrast, American parents said "talent."
"From what I can see," criticizes Stevenson, "we've lost our faith in the idea that we can all get ahead in life through hard work. Instead, Americans now believe that some kids have what it takes and some don't. So we start dividing up classes into‘fast learners’and‘slow learners’, whereas the Chinese and Japanese feel all children can succeed in the same curriculum."
This belief in hard work is the first of three main factors contributing to Asian students' outstanding performance. It springs from Asians' common heritage of Confucianism, the philosophy of the 5th-century-BC Chinese sage whose teachings have had a profound influence on Chinese society. One of Confucius's primary teachings is that through effort, people can perfect themselves.
Confucianism provides another important ingredient in the Asians' success as well. In Confucian philosophy, the family plays a central role — an orientation that leads people to work for the honor of the family, not just for themselves. One can never repay one's parents, and there's a sense of obligation or even guilt that is as strong a force among Asians as Protestant philosophy is in the West.
There's yet another major factor in this bond between Asian parents and their children. During the 15 years I lived in China, Japan, and Vietnam, I noticed that Asian parents establish a closer physical tie to their infants than most parents in the United States. When I let my baby daughter crawl on the floor, for example, my Chinese friends were horrified and rushed to pick her up. We think this constant attention is old-fashioned or even unhealthy, but for Asians, it's highly effective.
Can we learn anything from the Asians? "I'm not naive enough to think everything in Asia can be transplanted," says Stevenson. But he offered three recommendations.
"To start with," he says, "we need to set higher standards for our kids. We wouldn't expect them to become professional athletes without practicing hard."
Second, American parents need to become more committed to their children's ecation, he declares. "Being understanding when a child doesn't do well isn't enough." Stevenson found that Asian parents spend more time helping their children with homework or writing to their teachers than American parents do.
And, third, our schools could be reorganized in simple but effective ways, says Stevenson. Nearly 90 percent of Chinese youngsters say they actually enjoy school, and 60 percent can't wait for school vacations to end. This is a vastly more positive attitude than youngsters in The US express. One reason may be that students in China and Japan typically have a break after each class, helping them to relax and to increase their attention spans.
"I don't think Asians are any smarter," says Don Lee, an Asian-American student at Berkeley. "There are brilliant Americans in my chemistry class. But the Asian students work harder. I see a lot of wasted potential among the Americans."
(975 words)
New Words
excel
v. (at) be the beat or better others (at sth.) 胜过他人
savings
n. money saved, esp. in a bank 积蓄；存款
heartbreaking
a. which causes great sorrow 令人悲痛的，令人心碎的
costly
a. expensive, costing a lot of money 代价高昂的；昂贵的
sacrifice
n. loss or giving up of sth. of value, esp. for what is believed to be a good purpose 牺牲
vt. 牺牲
risk
n. (of) a danger；sth. that might have undesirable results 危险；风险
vt. place in a dangerous situation 使遭受危险；冒…的风险
cope
vi. (with) deal successfully (with a difficult situation) （妥善地）应付或处理
succession
n. a series or the act of following one after the other （前后相接的）一系列，一连串；连续
successive
a. following each other closely 接连的，连续的，相继的
*foster
a. 收养孩子的；寄养的
vt. 收养；照料
scholarship
n. 1. 奖学金
2. 学识；学术成就
owe
vt. (to) 1. have sth. (usually sth. good) because of 把…归功于
2. have to pay, for sth. already done or given 欠
owing
a. (to) still to be paid 未付的，欠着的
motivate
vt. (often pass.) 1. provide (sb.) with a (strong) need, purpose or reason for doing sth. [常被动] 激发…的积极性
2. 使有动机
*surge
vi. move, esp. forward, in or like powerful waves （如浪潮般） 汹涌；奔腾
n. （感情等的）洋溢或奔放
constitute
vt. 1. form or make up 形成；构成
2. formally establish or appoint 组建；选派
constitution
n. 1. the act of establishing, making, or setting up；constituting 制定；设立；组成
2. (often cap.) [常大写] *；法规；章程
*constitutional
a. allowed or limited by a political constitution *规定的；合乎*的
grind
n. (AmE, often derog.) a student who is always working （美）〔常贬义〕用功的学生，书呆子
vt. 磨；磨碎
*stereotype
n. a fixed pattern which is believed to represent a type of person or event 固定形式，老套
misplace
vt. 1. lose (sth.),usu. for only a limited time （暂时）丢弃
2. put in an unsuitable or wrong place 把…放错地方
refugee
n. sb. who has been forced to leave their country for political reason or ring a war 难民；*者
*resent
vt. feel anger and dislike about sth. 对…表示愤恨
label
vt. 1. describe as belonging to a particular kind or class 把…称为；把…列为
2. 加标签于；用标签标明
n. 标签
minority
n. 1. a small part of a population which is different from others in race, religion, etc. 少数民族；少数派
2. the small number or part；less than half 少数
minor
a. 较少的，较小的
*discrimination
n. 1. the practice of unfairly treating sb. or sth. 区别对待；歧视
2. the ability to recognize the difference between two things 识别力；辨别力
reverse discrimination
the making of distinctions in favour of groups considered disadvantaged or underprivileged 逆向歧视，反其道而行之的歧视
*discriminate
v. 1. (against, in favor of) unfairly treat one person or group worse or better than others 有差别地对待
2. see or make a difference between things or people 区别，辨别，区分
contrast
n. (to, with) a strong difference between two people, objects or situations 对比；对照
v. examine
