2020 수능특강 영어 4강 본문

 4강

1

 People everywhere have their special cultural rites. It is just as true in the workplace as it is in the surrounding culture. All professions observe their distinctive ways. What appears to be a superficial set of actions to outsiders knits insiders together and puts them in an appropriate frame of mind to do their work successfully. Physicians scrub for seven minutes before doing a surgical procedure. While the necessity of the prolonged scrub is open to question with the advent of modern germicides, its traditional role in preparing the surgical team for a delicate procedure is undeniable. In the airline business, the first officer deplanes the aircraft and conducts a walk-around inspection before takeoff. Very seldom do they discover something wrong. But symbolically it prepares the cockpit crew for their awesome responsibility of getting all the souls aboard safely to their destinations. 

 

2

 From what I have seen in counseling, the besetting sin of the father as performance-focused parent is his misguided belief that dogged disapproval will cause his teenagers to try harder and do better. “I’ll keep criticizing you until your attitude and motivation improve!” In fact, excessive criticism only hurts the teenager’s feelings and discourages him or her from wanting to hear what the father has to say and from doing what the father wants him or her to do. The paternal criticism is offensive, not appreciated. The teen wants less to do with him and for him, not more. And the father contaminates his connection with his teenager by provoking his or her increased resentment and dislike. “Dad is never satisfied, no matter how I do, which is all he really cares about!” As a performance coach, a father would be far better served by praising the good than by only faulting mistakes in the misguided belief that his expressions of dissatisfaction will cause improvement. 

 

3

 When a young police officer puts on a uniform for the first time, it almost certainly feels strange and foreign. Yet other people react to that uniform in a range of more or less predictable ways ― just as they do to a priest or to a white-coated doctor. These reactions help to make the police officer feel a part of the uniform and more comfortable with the role that goes with it. This is the point of uniforms: they help people think themselves into a particular way of behaving, and communicate clearly to other people what function that person is expected to perform. Our dress and appearance are a sort of uniform as well, whether we like it or not. They are very powerful statements to other people about what to expect from us. Equally, they are powerful statements to ourselves about what to expect of ourselves. This, together with the way other people react to our appearance, powerfully shapes how we feel, think and behave. 

 

 4

 While individualism gives strength, it also can create a weakness if not moderated by involvement with others ― family, friends, and society. Pure individualism may lead to a philosophy of convenience and a lack of participation in or appreciation of the civic and social process. This limits personal growth, mutes gaining leadership skills and traits, and deprives one of the true contexts of life that is the reality model of one’s mind. The biggest problem the world now has is that we do not interact personally much anymore. Our technology removes some of reality and replaces it with perception, relativity, and inherent self-interest often pushing us to convenience. We look at the world as centered upon us and give ourselves undue influence on the reality of events. We need to move into a position of not thinking the world rotates around us but how we fit into the world. This is the concept of context. 

 

 5

 By taking a conscious interest in your brain and how it works, and by consciously trying some of the techniques that follow, you can acquire a variety of useful mental skills. It isn’t really very difficult, but it won’t happen by accident. The prevalence of negative thinking, fuzzy and illogical thinking, and rigid thinking in our society proves the fact that these higher-level thinking skills do not come naturally. A cross section of our society represents the “average” level of thinking skill ― the level one might expect of a large number of people who have never thought very much about thinking. To move beyond the level of average thinking, you must think about thinking. You must pay attention to how your brain works, and you must experiment with new techniques. Once you do that, you will clearly see the value of it. 

 

6

 The term statistical significance is an unfortunate choice of words. But it’s part of our research vocabulary, and it will continue to appear in reports. It refers to the fact that the results discovered, or differences between two sets of data, could reliably be expected to occur again if another study was conducted in a similar manner. But too many people hear the phrase “statistically significant” and assume it also suggests that the results are significantly important. That may or may not be true. Instead, think of the term as suggesting that you would expect to find the same results 95 out of 100 times if a study is replicated in a similar manner or 90 out of 100 times, depending on what measure of reliability is used. True significance lies in interpreting the data correctly to ensure that it has meaning or importance for the organization you represent. 

 

7

 The survival of wilderness ― of places that we do not change, where we allow the existence even of creatures we perceive as dangerous ― is necessary. Our sanity probably requires it. Whether we go to those places or not, we need to know that they exist. And I would argue that we do not need just the great public wildernesses, but millions of small private or semiprivate ones. Every farm should have one; wildernesses can occupy corners of factory grounds and city lots ― places where nature is given a free hand, where no human work is done, where people go only as guests. These places function, I think, whether we intend them to or not, as sacred groves ― places we respect and leave alone, not because we understand well what goes on there, but because we do not. 

 

8

 Facing your difficulty head-on is the first positive step in the process of fixing it. Your promotion went to someone else ― now what? Face it directly. There must be a reason why your boss selected the other person. Get your hurt and anger under control and go find out why you didn’t get the promotion. Ask your boss what you need to do to improve yourself so you’ll be considered more seriously next time. If you have just learned that you have a health problem, face it squarely and intelligently. What is the best treatment? Ask the top specialists for their advice. Follow the remedies they prescribe. If some project you are working hard to finish on time encounters severe problems, examine the difficulty as a scientist would. What caused the problem? What are the options? Try to discover the best ways of dealing with the realities you face, focus on what will be most beneficial, then act accordingly.