新世纪研究生综合英语unit7复习课程.docx

新世纪研究生综合英语unit7精品文档Unit7Competition Is DestructiveI learn my first game at a birthday party. You remember it: x players scramble for x-minus-one chairs each time the music stops. In every round a child is eliminated until at the end only one is left triumphantly seated white everyone else is standing on the sidelines旁观者立场, excluded from play, unhappylosers.This is how we learn to have a good time in America.Several years ago I wrote a book called NO CONTEST, which, based on the findings of several hundred studies, argued that competition undermines self-esteem, poisons relationships and holds us back from doing our best. I was mostly interested in the win/lose arrangement that defines our workplaces and classrooms, but I found myself nagged 困扰by the following question: if competition is so destructive and counterproductive反效果的 during the week, why do we take for granted that it suddenly becomes benign and even desirable on the weekend?This is particularly unsettling使人不安的 line of inquiry for athletes or parents. Most of us, after all, assume that competitive sports teach all sorts of useful lessons and indeed, that games by definition must produce a winner and a loser. But Ive come to believe that recreation at its best does not require people to try to triumph over others. Quite the contrary.Terry Orlick,a sports psychologist at the university of Ottawa, took a look at musical chairs and proposed that we keep the basic format of removing chairs but change the goal; the point become to fit everyone on a diminishing number of seats. At the end, a group of giggling吃吃地笑 children tries to figure out how to squish挤 onto a single chair. Everybody plays to the end; everybody has a good time.Orlick and others have devised or collected hundreds of such games for children and adults alike. The underlying theory is simple: all games involve achieving a goal despite the presence of an obstacle, but nowhere it is written that the obstacle has to be someone else. The idea can be for each person on the field to make a specified contribution to the goal, or for all the players to reach a certain score, or for everyone to work with their partners against a time limit. Note the significance of an “opponent” becoming a “partner.” The entire dynamic of the game shifts, and ones attitude toward the other players changes with it. Even the friendliest game of tennis cant help but be affected by the games inherent structure, which demands that each person try to hit the ball where means that you try to make the other person fail.Ive become convinced that not a single one of the advantages attributed to sports actually requires competition. Running, climbing, biking, swimming, aerobics有氧运动-all offer a fine workout without any need to try to outdo someone else. Some people point to the camaraderie同志情 that results from teamwork, but thats precisely the benefit of cooperative activity, whose very essence is that everyone on the field id working together for a common goal. By contrast, the distinguishing feature of team competition is that a given player works with and is encouraged to feel warmly toward only half of those present. Whose, a we-vernus-they dynamic is set up, which George orwell once called” war minus the shooting.”The dependence on sports to provide a sense of accomplishment or to test ones wits is similarly misplaced. One can aim instead at an objective standard( how far did I throw?how many miles did we cover?)or attempt to do better than last week. Such individual and group striving- like cooperative games- provides satisfaction and challenge without competition.If a large number of people insist that we cant do without win/lose activities, the first question to ask is whether theyve ever tasted the alternative. When Orlick taught a group of children noncompetitive games, two-thirds of the boys and all of the girls preferred them to the kind that require opponents. It our cultures idea of fun requires beating someone else, it may just be because we dont know any other way.It may also be because we overlook the psychological costs of competition. Most people lose in most competitive encounters, and its obvious why that cause self-doubt. But even winning doesnt build character: it just let us gloat沾沾自喜 temporarily. Studies have shown that feelings of self-worth become dependent on external sources of evaluation as a result of competition; your value id defined by what youve done and who youve beaten. The whole affair soon becomes a vicious circle: the more you compete, the more you need to compete to feel good about yourself. Its like drinking salt water when youre thirsty. This process is bad enough for us; its a disaster for our children.While this is doing on, competition is having an equally toxic effect on our relationships. By definition, not everyone can win a contest. That means that each child inevitably comes to regard other as obstacles to his or her own success. Competition leads children to envy winners, to dismiss losers(there is no nastier epithet in our language than “loser!”),and to be suspicious of just about everyone. Competition makes it difficult to regard others as potential friends or collaborators; even if youre not my rival today, you could be tomorrow.This is not to say that competitors will always detest one another. But trying to outdo someone is not conducive有益的 to trust- indeed it would be irrational to trust a person who gains from your failure. At best, competition leads one to look at others through narrowed eyes; at worst, it invites outright绝对的 aggression.But no matter how many bad feelings erupt during competition, we have a marvelous talent for blaming the individuals rather than focusing on the structure of the game itself, a structure that makes my success depend on your failure. Cheating may just represent the logical conclusion of this arrangement rather than an aberration心理失常. And sportsmanship is nothing more than an artificial way to try to limit the damage of competition. If we werent set against each other on the court or the track, we wouldnt need to keep urging people to be good sports; they might well be working with each other in the first place.As radical or surprising as it may sound, the problem isnt just that we compete the wrong way or that we push winning on our children too early. The problem is competition itself. What we need to be teaching our daughters and sons is that its possible to have a good time- a better time- without turning the playing field into battlefield.1、She has been eliminated from the swimming race because she did not win any of the practice races.Got out taking away get rid of driving away2、 One of the major flaes of the existing system is that the prosecutors has immunity from law suits claiming malicious prosecution.Useful spiteful harmless cheerful收集于网络，如有侵权请联系管理员删除