21世纪大学英语读写教程第四册UNIT3

2024年2月5日发(作者：)

21世纪大学英语读写教程第四册UNIT3

Unit 3

Text A

Pre-reading Activities

First Listening Before Listening to the tape, have a

quick look at the following words.

smallpox 天花

stuck 被难住了

cowpox 牛痘

lateral thinking 横向思维

vertical 纵向的；垂直的

Second Listening Listen to the tape again and then

choose tne best answer to each of the following

questions.

1. How did Dr. Jenner solve the problem of smallpox? A)

By studying many, many sick people. B) By studying

people who didn't get sick. C) By studying lateral

thinking. D) With help from Dr. de Bono. 2. The key to

lateral thinking is _________. A) never giving up B)

getting help from others C) moving sideways D)

changing you point of view 3. The saying, "When the

going gets tough, the tough get going" expresses

________. A) the aggressive attitude of vertical

thinking B) traditionally western lateral thinking C)

a way to change your point of view D) how Edward de

Bono likes to solve problems 4. The main purpose of

this passage is ________. A) to discuss a major

medical breakthrough B) to introduce a new concept of

problem solving C) to talk about the life of Edward de

Bono D) to contrast Eastern and Western ways of

thinking

How to Change Your Point of View

Caroline Seebohm

Dr. Edward Jenner was busy trying to solve the problem

of smallpox. After studying case after case, he still

found no possible cure. He had reached an impasse in

his thinking. At this point, he changed his tactics.

Instead of focusing on people who had smallpox, he

switched his attention to people who did not have

smallpox. It turned out that dairymaids apparently

never got the disease. From the discovery that

harmless cowpox gave protection against deadly

smallpox came vaccination and the end of smallpox as a

scourge in the western world. We often reach an

impasse in our thinking. We are looking at a problem

and trying to solve it and it seems there is a dead

end. It is on these occasions that we bee tense, we

feel pressured, overwhelmed, in a state of stress. We

struggle vainly, fighting to solve the problem. Dr.

Jenner, however, did something about this situation.

He stopped fighting the problem and simply changed his

point of view—from his patients to dairy maids.

Picture the process going something like this: Suppose

the brain is a puter. This puter has absorbed into its

memory bank all your history, your experiences, your

training, your information received through life; and

it is programmed according to all this data. To change

your point of view, you must reprogramme your puter,

thus freeing yourself to take in new ideas and develop

new ways of looking at things. Dr. Jenner, in effect,

by reprogramming his puter, erased the old way of

looking at his smallpox problem and was free to

receive new alternatives. That's all very well, you

may say, but how do we actually do that? Doctor and

philosopher Edward de Bono has e up with a technique

for changing our point of view, and he calls it

Lateral Thinking. The normal Western approach to a

problem is to fight it. The saying, "When the going

gets tough, the tough get going," is typical of this

aggressive attitude toward problem-solving. No matter

what the problem is, or the techniques available for

solving it, the framework produced by our Western way

of thinking is fight. Dr. de Bono calls this vertical

thinking; the traditional, sequential, Aristotelian

thinking of logic, moving firmly from one step to the

next, like toy blocks being built one on top of the

other. The flaw is, of course, that if at any point

one of the steps is not reached, or one of the toy

blocks is incorrectly placed, then the whole structure

collapses. Impasse is reached, and frustration,

tension, feelings of fight take over. Lateral thinking,

Dr. de Bono says, is a new technique of thinking about

things—a technique that avoids this fight altogether,

and solves the problem in an entirely unexpected

fashion. In one of Sherlock Holmes's cases, his

assistant, Dr. Watson, pointed out that a certain dog

was of no importance to the case because it did not

appear to have done anything. Sherlock Holmes took the

opposite point of view and maintained that the fact

the dog had done nothing was of the utmost

significance, for it should have been expected to do

something, and on this basic he solved the case.

Lateral thinking sounds simple. And it is. Once you

have solved a problem laterally, you wonder how you

could ever have been hung up on it. The key is making

that vital shift in emphasis, that sidestepping of the

problem, instead of attacking it head-on. Dr. A. A.

Bridger, psychiatrist at Columbia University and in

private practice in New York, explains how lateral

thinking works with his patients. "Many people e to me

wanting to stop smoking, for instance," he says. "Most

people fail when they are trying to stop smoking

because they wind up telling themselves, 'No, I will

not smoke; no, 1 shall not smoke; no, I will not; no,

' It's a fight and what happens is you end

up smoking more." "So instead of looking at the

problem from the old ways of no, and fighting it, I

show them a whole new point of view—that you are your

body's keeper, and your body is something through

which you experience life. If you stop to think about

it, there's really something helpless about your body.

It can do nothing for itself. It has no choice, it is

like a baby's body. You begin then a whole new way of

looking at it—‘I am now going to take care of myself,

and give myself some respect and protection, by not

smoking.' “There is a Japanese parable about a donkey

tied to a pole by a rope. The rope rubs tight against

his neck. The more the donkey fights and pulls on the

rope, the tighter and tighter it gets around his

throat—until he winds up dead. On the other hand, as

soon as he stops fighting, he finds that the rope gets

slack, he can walk around, maybe find some grass to

That's the same principle: The more you fight

something the more anxious you bee—the more you're

involved in a bad pattern, the more difficult it is to

escape pain. "Lateral thinking," Dr. Bridger goes on,

"is simply approaching a problem with what I would

call an Eastern flanking maneuver. You know, when a

zen archer wants to hit the target with a bow and

arrow, he doesn't concentrate on the target, he

concentrates rather on what he has in his hands, so

when he lets the arrow go, his focus is on the arrow,

rather than the target. This is what an Eastern

flanking maneuver implies—instead of approaching the

target directly, you approach it from a sideways point

of view—or laterally instead of vertically." "I think

the answer lies in that direction," affirms Dr.

Bridger. "Take the situation where someone is in a

crisis. The Chinese word for crisis is divided into

two characters, one meaning danger and the other

meaning opportunity. We in the Western world focus

only upon the ‘danger' aspect of crisis. Crisis in

Western civilization has e to mean danger, period. And

yet the word can also mean opportunity. Let us now

suggest to the person in crisis that he cease

concentrating so upon the dangers involved and the

difficulties, and concentrate instead upon the

opportunity—for there is always opportunity in crisis.

Looking at a crisis from an opportunity point of view

is a lateral thought." (1 100 words)

New Words

smallpox n. a highly contagious disease causing spots

which leave marks on the skin 天花

impasse n. a position from which progress is

impossible; deadlock 僵局；死胡同

tactics n. a method or process of carrying out a

scheme or achieving some end 战术；策略

dairymaid n. a girl or woman who works in a dairy 牛奶场女工

dairy n. 1. place where milk is kept and milk products

are made 牛奶场；奶品场 2. shop where milk, butter,

etc. are sold 乳品店

cowpox n. a disease of cows, of which the virus was

formerly used in vaccination against smallpox 牛痘

vaccination n. 接种疫苗

scourge n. thing or person that causes great trouble

or misfortune 苦难的根源；灾难；祸害

dead end n. a point beyond which progress or

achievement is impossible; a street or passage closed

at one end 僵局；死巷，死胡同

vainly ad. uselessly; in vain 枉然地；徒劳地

vain a. 1. having too high an opinion of one's looks,

abilities, etc.; conceited 自视甚高的；自负的 2.

useless or futile 无用的，无益的，无效的；徒劳的

erase vt. rub out; remove all traces of 擦掉；抹去

lateral a. of, at, towards, or from the side or sides

横向的；侧面的；向侧面的

laterally ad. in a lateral direction, sideways 横向地；侧面地；旁边地

lateral thinking 横向思维，水平思考

going n. 1. the condition of the ground for walking,

driving or riding 地面状况 2. condition of progress 进行情况；进展

framework n. 1. set of principles or ideas used as a

basis for one's judgement, decisions, etc. 参照标准；准则；观点 2. structure giving shape and support 框架，结构

vertical a. straight up and down; at right angles to a

horizontal plane 纵向的；垂直的

vertically ad. in a vertical direction 垂直地

sequential a. of, forming, or following in (a)

sequence 相继的；连续的

flaw n. a defect; fault; error 瑕疵；缺点

structure n. sth. built; anything posed of parts

arranged together; way in which sth. is put together,

organized, built, etc. 结构；建筑物；构造物

utmost a. greatest; highest 极度的；极高的

significance n. importance; meaning 重要性；意义，含义

sidestep v. step aside; avoid by stepping aside 横跨一步避开；回避

head-on ad. in a direct manner; with the head or front

first 正面地；迎头向前地

parable n. a brief story used to teach some moral

lesson or truth 寓言

donkey n. 驴

slack a