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Which of the following is NOT recommended by the speaker as a step to successful goal-setting? A) Be financially independent.
B) Write down the details of your goals. C) Decide what you want. D) Take action. ▇Key:
1 C 2 D 3 B 4 D 5 A
Section C Task Two: Zooming In on the Details
▇ Listen to the recording again and fill in each of the blanks according to what you have heard.
Successful people always have clear goals. Great musicians, great 1) ________, successful salespeople and 2) ________leaders know what they want in life, and they go after it. No one becomes successful by 3) ________!
Too often, people choose goals that are inconsistent with their 4) ________and daily behavior. Do you value health, or comfort? Is financial 5) ________a priority, or merely a wish?
Have the courage to put your 6) ________on paper and in your own words. Be 7) ________and describe your goals in detail.
A loving 8) ________or happy kids require your time, your attention and your love every day. Your daily actions need not be profound or 9) ________, but they must be consistent and 10) ________.
Just as an artist will make preliminary 11) ________and work out the details in his mind, so your success requires written goals, careful choices, clear 12) ________, and daily persistence.
▇ Answers: 1) athletes 2) inspiring 3) accident 4) priorities 5) independence 6) intentions 7) specific 8) marriage 9) extraordinary 10) persistent 11) sketches 12) commitments
▇ Script:
Four Steps to Successful Goal-setting
Successful people always have clear goals. Great musicians, great athletes, successful salespeople and inspiring leaders know what they want in life, and they go after it. No one becomes successful by accident!
And yet, a lot of young people that I know just live their lives with no goals at all, or with only vague dreams, hopes and wishes. No wonder they have achieved so much less than they could!
For those who have not yet experienced the joy of setting and achieving magnificent goals, here is a powerful set of principles that have worked for thousands of my clients. They will work for you, too. I call them “Four Steps to Successful Goal-Setting”:
1. Decide what you want. Choose the life you prefer! You can?t have everything in life. But you can
have anything you choose if you will focus, pay the price, and pursue it with all your heart.
2. Make clear your values. Too often, people choose goals that are inconsistent with their priorities and
daily behavior. Do you value health, or comfort? Is financial independence a priority, or merely a wish? Make sure that your goals are consistent with your most important values.
3. Write them down. Have the courage to put your intentions on paper and in your own words. Be
specific and describe your goals in detail. When will you achieve them? What will success look like? Write down the details and read your goals every day.
4. Take action. To run a marathon, you must jog every day. A loving marriage or happy kids require
your time, your attention and your love, every day. Your daily actions need not be profound or extraordinary, but they must be consistent and persistent.
Success does not “just happen”. Just as an artist will make preliminary sketches and work out the details in his mind, so your success requires written goals, careful choices, clear commitments and daily persistence. You can do this. Make something great of your life!
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Part III Read and Explore
Text A
Section A Discovering the Main Ideas
Exercise 1 Answer the following questions with the information contained in Text A. 1 2 3 4 5 6
What is the main idea of the essay? What is the author?s attitude towards fame?
What does an artist have to do to stay famous according to the author? What excuses do people give to defend failures? Why do people chase fame according to the author?
Can a person be famous and remain true to himself at the same time according to the author?
▇ Answers for reference:
1 In this essay, the author talks about the issue of fame. The main idea is that most people want fame
because fame can bring them celebrity, high regard, admiration, etc. However, the author emphasizes that there are few people who can really capture fame and that fame is usually short-lived. Fame can affect and sometimes even destroy one?s life.
2 The author takes an objective attitude towards fame with an emphasis on its negative side. He believes
that fame rewards one with money, power and popularity, but it may also enslave him and destroy his life. 3 According to the author, to stay famous, an artist has to perform in the style that the public wants and
enjoys, no matter how bored he is of performing in the same style year after year. Any attempt to change the style may result in the loss of his popularity among his fans.
4 To find excuses for the failures, people tend to claim that they are too sensitive, that they are not
interested in money, that they are not interested in the power that fame brings and that they are not interested in the loss of privacy it demands, etc.
5 According to the author, people chase fame because they want to demonstrate excellence in some field; to
gain the admiration and love of many others; to be the one everyone talks about; to show family and friends that they are more than their family and friends thought they were.
6 Probably not. According to the author, fame takes “the you out of you”, which means that once a person
becomes famous, he must be what the public thinks he is, not what he really is or could be. Fame enslaves him with what the public wants, instead of helping him maintain and develop his own identity or his true self.
Exercise 2 Text A can be divided into four parts with the paragraph number(s) of each part provided as follows. Write down the main idea of each part.
Part Paragraph(s) Main Idea One 1-2 Two 3-4 Three 5 Four 6 6
▇ Answers for reference: Part Paragraph(s) One 1-2 Two Three Four
3-4 5 6 Main Ideas Fame enslaves the person who pursues it because when he becomes famous, he will not only attract the public?s attention, but also has to work and live in line with the public?s expectations. He then becomes the slave of his own success. For those who look for fame, failure is not necessarily a bad thing, especially for those who fail to perform well enough, because people tend to be more tolerant towards and sympathetic with them. Though fame brings disadvantages to those who achieve it, people still seek fame for various reasons. It is better to take a critical attitude towards fame. Section B In-depth Study
We may all desire to be famous and yearn for the publicity, wealth and power that accompany fame. Few of us, however, realize that fame also has its negative side and, sometimes, it may even destroy one’s life. Read the following text and you will get to know more about the adverse impact fame can have on one’s life.
Fame
Melvin Howards
1 Fame is very much like an animal chasing his own tail who, when he captures it, does not know what else to do but to continue chasing it. Fame and the publicity that accompanies it, force the famous person to participate in his or her own destruction. Ironic, isn?t it?
2 Those who gain fame most often gain it as a result of possessing a single talent or skill: singing, dancing, painting, or writing, etc. The successful performer develops a style that gains some popularity, and it is this popularity that usually convinces the performer to continue performing in the same style, since that is what the public seems to want and to enjoy. But in time, the performer becomes bored singing the same songs in the same way year after year, or the painter becomes bored painting similar scenes or portraits, or the actor is tired of playing the same character repeatedly. The artist becomes the slave of his or her own success because of the public demands. If the artist attempts to change his or her style of writing or dancing or singing, etc., the audience may turn away and look to give the momentary fame to another and then, in time, to another, and so on and so on.
3 Fame brings celebrity and high regard from loyal fans in each field. A performer can easily come to believe that he or she is as good as his or her press. But most people, most artists do not gain fame and fortune. What about those performers who fail, or anyone who fails? Curiously enough, failure often serves as its own reward for many people. It brings sympathy from others who are delighted not to be you, and it allows family and friends to lower their expectations of you so that you need not compete with those who have more talent and who succeed. And they find excuses and explanations for your inability to succeed and become famous: you are too sensitive, you are not interested in money, you are not interested in the power that fame brings and you are not interested in the loss of privacy it demands, etc. — all excuses, but comforting to those who fail and those who pretend not to notice the failure.
4 History has sufficiently proven that some failure for some people at certain times in their lives does indeed motivate them to strive even harder to succeed and to continue believing in themselves. Thomas Wolfe, the American novelist, had his first novel Look Homeward, Angel rejected 39 times before it was finally published and launched his career and created his fame. Beethoven overcame his cruel and harsh father and grudging acceptance as a musician to become the greatest, most famous musician in the world, and Thomas Edison was thrown out of school in fourth grade, at about age 10, because he seemed to the teacher to be quite dull and ill-behaved. Many other cases may be found of people who failed and used the failure to motivate them to achieve, to succeed, and to become famous. But, unfortunately, for most people failure is the end of their
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struggle, not the beginning. There are few, if any, famous failures.
5 Well then, why does anyone want fame? Do you? Do you want to be known to many people and admired by them? Do you want the money that usually comes with fame? Do you want the media to notice everything you do or say both in public and in private? In some areas it is very obvious that to be famous is to be the target of everyone who disagrees with you as well as of the media. Fame turns all the lights on and while it gives power and reputation, it takes the you out of you: you must be what the public thinks you are, not what you really are or could be. But why does anyone want fame? Several reasons come to mind: to demonstrate excellence in some field; to gain the admiration and love of many others; to be the one everyone talks about; to show family and friends you are more than they thought you were. Probably you can list some other reasons, but I think these are reasonably common.
6 I say to those who desperately seek fame and fortune, celebrity: good luck. But what will you do when you have caught your tail, your success, your fame? Keep chasing it? If you do catch it, hang on for dear life. See you soon famous and almost famous!
旧课文不需新配图
▇ 课文参考译文
声誉
梅尔文〃霍华兹
1 声誉极像一个追逐自己尾巴的动物，抓住了以后除继续穷追不舍外，再也不知道还能做什么。声誉以及随之而来的名气迫使名人陷入穷途末路。真有点讽刺意味，不是吗？
2 名人有名多因有一技之长，如唱歌、跳舞、绘画、写作等等。成功的表演者展示出一种风格，获得声誉。而且这种声誉常常使这位表演者确信，必须把这种风格发扬光大，因为这就是大众所需要和喜爱的。可是随着时间的推移，如果歌手年复一年地用老调唱老歌，画师画千篇一律的风景或画像，演员反复饰演同一角色，他们势必都会感到厌烦。由于公众的要求，艺人竟变成了自己功名的奴隶。倘若他或她想改变笔调、舞步、唱腔的话，大众就会弃他而去，转而把那飘忽不定的声誉赐予他人，一段时间后再转给他人，这样不停地转下去。
3 一个人有了名誉，就有了名气，就能赢得忠实的追捧者的高度关注，在任何领域都是这样。一个表演者很容易相信，自己的成就当真和新闻报道的一样大。可是大多数人、大多数艺人并没有得到美誉和财富。那些失败的表演者又如何呢？其他任何一个失败者会又如何呢？奇怪的是，对许多人而言，失败往往就是对失败的回报！有些人对你表示怜悯，他们庆幸自己不是你。你的亲朋好友也会降低对你的期望，使你不必去和那些比你有天赋并获得成功的人较量。他们会找出种种借口来解释你不能功成名就的原因：你太敏感了呀；你对金钱没有兴趣呀；你对声誉所能带来的权利不感兴趣呀；因为声望要使你丧失隐私，所以你不感兴趣呀；等等。所有这些都是借口，但对失败者或假装不在意自己失败的人来说，却是安慰。
4 历史充分证明，有些人在一生的某个时刻遭遇失败，的确能激发他们更加努力地追求成功，继续对自己充满信心。美国小说家托马斯〃沃尔夫的第一部小说《安琪儿，往家里看吧！》被退稿39次才得以出版，才使他开始了他的写作生涯并赢得了声誉。贝多芬不屈服于他残暴、专横的父亲，还忍气吞声当过乐师，但终于克服一切，成为世界上最伟大、最著名的音乐家。托马斯〃爱迪生10岁左右，还在上四年级的时候就被赶出教室，因为在老师的眼里，他脑子笨，又不乖。以失败为动力，奋发有为，成名成家的例子还有很多。但遗憾的是，对大多数人来说，失败就是奋斗的结束，而不是开始。成名的失败事例即使有，也不多见。 5 那么，人们为什么要追求声誉呢？你追求声誉吗？你希望许多人都知道你、赞赏你吗？你想得到那些往往伴随声誉而来的金钱吗？你想要媒体注意你台上台下的一言一行吗？显而易见，在某些领域，出了名就意味着要成为那些不赞同你的人和诸多媒体的抨击目标。声誉把你置于所有的灯光下，一边给你权利和威望，一边把你变得不像你：你必须成为大众心目中的你，而不能是那个真实的你或你可能成为的那个人。但是，为什么人人都追求声誉呢？我想到了以下几个理由：为了在某些方面展示才华；为了赢得他人的敬仰和爱慕；为了成为人人谈论的人物；为了让亲朋好友看到你比他们想象得还要优秀。也
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