Our modern working lives are ruled by the concept of competence．The idea that lies behind competence is quite simple：that one can state what people should do in behavioral terms，and then measure whether a person has succeeded in meeting that task or not．We rarely have a second thought about whether the idea of measuring and achieving competence is a good one or not．In fact，it is a controversial one．

    Humans do not learn or work in ways that can be measured by the concept of competence．Take the example of a barista(咖啡师)who is being trained to make coffee．The job title of“barista”suggests a degree of skill in making coffee．However，baristas in large coffee chains are usually trained through competence-based qualifications．One part of these qualifications is to produce a cup of coffee to meet a minimum standard．It might have to achieve a certain taste and appearance．This might seem perfectly reasonable，but there are two reasons why such an approach to training baristas does not work．

    First，the production of a cup of coffee to a certain standard is a binary(二次元的)outcome．The baristas can either produce a coffee of a certain standard or they cannot．If they happen to produce the best cup of coffee in the world，it does not matter，as competence-based training does not reward outstanding performance．Likewise，producing the worst cup of coffee would be a fail in the same way as producing a cup just below the standard．In fact，competence is not interested in the process of producing a coffee at all—only the final binary outcome．

    Second，if the barista does produce a coffee to a certain standard，competence is not interested in why the barista can do that．But humans are not machines that simply produce binary outcomes．We have bodies and minds which change through learning．

    Yet we are increasingly forced to achieve competence in our schools and workplaces．We are not empty machines that simply produce binary outcomes．If we want to be true human in our learning and our workplaces，we need to be creative and special．Learning and innovation(创新)involve failure in aiming for something that is unusually good．Such things simply cannot be judged by the standard of competence where the mediocre is the gold standard．

When I asked my mother-in-law to choose which meals she'd like me to order from the home-delivery menu, she only chose the ones her husband would like. This goes way beyond politeness. She is actually feeling uncomfortable voicing what she wants. She developed the main symptom(症状) of Asker's Syndrome that one's unable to ask for what one wants.

It's not just older women who have this problem. Asker's Syndrome can strike the young. I have single friends who won't ask a man out on a date because they fear being considered “too forward”. My five-year-old daughter Violet is showing the early stages of Asker's Syndrome. She's learned that women don't ask, but rather drop hints. She'll say, “Remember last Sunday afternoon we went to the park？” rather than “Can we go to the park？”

Apart from women and girls' problematic relationship with appetite, food and dating, it's widely reported that women are less likely than men to ask for pay rises and promotions.

Instead, they withdraw, hoping that somebody else will decide they are worthy and make them promoted.

No doubt, many women develop Asker's Syndrome as a defensive measure because they've been labeled as pushy or rude for simply asking for what they want. But in the long term, choosing not to express our desires doesn't serve us well.

It's time to cure ourselves and our girls of Asker's Syndrome. I don't want to raise a future “mother” who denies her wish for food, power and success and anything else. So I now insist that my daughter ask for what she wants directly.

For women in our culture, asking is a skill that we need to learn and practice. And if we all do it, then women asking will become the norm rather than the exception.

 We know a lot about the advantages and disadvantages of reading a hard-copy book vs reading electronically. The problem is, many of us refuse to listen.

   Don't get me wrong: Digital reading has some real. advantages. Ask people what they like most about reading on digital screens, and you hear over and again about convenience. More points for digital reading: e-books tend to be cheaper. There's also the environmental argument. Think of the trees!

   Yet the soundness of this case is arguable. The earth metals to build e-readers are not just rare but highly poisonous. And think about all that energy needed to run servers and cooling fans. And remember, trees are a renewable resource.

   Then, there's the appeal of a hard copy. Many people prefer print when reading both for pleasure and for school or work. Drawing examples from my own research, some of the reasons are aesthetic(美学的). Others involve a sense of accomplishment, ease of annotation ("I can write on the pages"), and navigation ("easy to locate where I was"). Meanwhile, I hear abundant complaints about eye strain(干涩) and headaches when using screens.

   Much of what students liked about reading print involved their minds. They say "it's easier to focus." Some also acknowledged they took more time with printed text and read more carefully.

   But what makes the failure of electronic reading is concentration. More than 92 percent of those I surveyed said they concentrate best when reading a hard copy. When a digital device has an Internet connection, it's hard to resist the temptation(诱惑).

   So if digital interruptions don't threaten your enjoyment or understanding of a text, then medium may not matter. Casual reading like David Baldacci? If you break to check sports scores, little harm done. But just don't expect to understand Joyce's novels this way.

某英语报社拟成立“微笑俱乐部”，现向全球征募会员，要求申请者提交一篇题为“I want to smile”的英语短文。请你以申请者的身份，根据以下提示用英语写一篇短文。 词数：120左右。

内容要点：

1.微笑的优点；

2.想对其微笑的人物（如：父母或朋友等）并给出理由；

3.对自己微笑的理由；

4.总结。

注意：文章写在方框内，超出边框的内容无效。

每到暑假,很多家长不惜重金,把上高中的子女送到国外参加国际游学项目。最近,某英语报社通过网上论坛举办了一场讨论,话题为“Should high school students be encouraged to have international study tours?”。你作为读者参与了此次讨论,请你根据此次讨论的结果用英语写一篇短文。

    内容包括:

    1．参加国际游学的好处;

    2．可能遇到的问题;

    3．你的看法。

    注意:

    1．词数100左右;

    2．可适当增加细节,以使行文连贯;

    3．短文开头已给出,不计入总次数;

It is increasingly popular for parents to send their kids to have international study tours recently.

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Mother's Day is coming up. Maybe your gift is wrapped and your dinner plans booked for mom, step-mom, grandmother---whoever the person is who fed, cared for, taught and loved you.

But there are other people who said their most special Mother's Day memories rarely dealt with beautifully wrapped objects, but rather, the ways people showed they cared.

 Mother's Day 2012 was the last one Jannet Walsh was able to celebrate with her mother, Margaret, who had a stroke (中风) in 2009.  In her last few years, Walsh always shot photos and videos of their visits together, and with Walsh's West Highland White Terrier, Andrew.

"My mother had a dog just like him, so I would tell her it was her dog, and she would hold onto his leash, even in bed up to the last few weeks before she passed away," Walsh said.

As Mother's Day approached, Walsh wanted a way to remember her mother and "best friend". She decided to build the memories she captured during those last few years into a video memorial-images of her mother with Andrew or quiet moments at her gravesite.

"I thought it good to tell the story with few words, just show my mother as she was happy, and loved till the end," Walsh said.

  Mother's Day was not a light-hearted subject for Wendy Bowers in the past. Her mom had walked out when she was 18, and Bowers had tried for years to become pregnant without success. She had almost convinced herself she wasn't meant to be a parent.

  But three years after she gave up on having a baby, Bowers discovered that she was pregnant. Six weeks earlier than expected, little Nathan arrived.

  That first year, Nathan, only 10 months old, was sick with a stomach bug. Bowers said she spent the day holding him between loads of laundry.  "I would not have been anywhere else in the world that day," she said. "I wouldn't trade that first Mother's Day for anything, and I'm pretty sure Mother's Day will always be a reminder to me of just how lucky I am to even be a mom. "

How often one hears children wishing they were grown﹣ups and old people wishing they were young again．Each age has its pleasures and its pains，and the happiest person is the one who enjoys what each age gives him without wasting his time in useless regrets．

Childhood is a time when there are few responsibilities to make life difficult．If a child has good parents，he is fed，looked after and loved，whatever he may do．It is impossible that he will ever again in his life be given so much without having to do anything in return．In addition，life is always presenting new things to the child﹣things that have lost their interest for older people because they are too well﹣known．But a child has his parents．He is not so free to do what he wishes to do； he is continually being told not to do things or being punished for what he has done wrong．

When the young man starts to earn his own living，he can no longer expect others to pay for his food，his clothes，and his room，but has to work if he wants to live comfortably．If he spends most of his time playing about in the way that he used to as a child，he will go hungry．And if he breaks the laws of society as he used to break the laws of his parents，he may go to prison．If，however，he works hard，keeps out of trouble and has good health，he can have the great happiness of building up for himself his own position in society．

That people often experience trouble sleeping in a different bed in unfamiliar surroundings is a phenomenon known as the First-night, effect. If a person stays in the same room the following night they tend to sleep more soundly. Yuka Sasaki and her colleagues at Brown University set out to investigate the origins of this effect.

Dr. Sasaki knew the first-night effect probably has something to do with how humans evolved.

The puzzle was what benefit would be gained from it when performance might be affected the following day. She also knew from previous work conducted on birds and dolphins that these animals put half of their brains to sleep at a time so that they can rest while remaining alert enough to avoid predators (捕食者). This led her to wonder if people might be doing the same thing. To take a closer look, her team studied 35 healthy people as they slept in the unfamiliar environment of the university’s Department of Psychological Sciences. The participants each slept in the department for two nights and were carefully monitored with techniques that looked at the activity of their brains. Dr. Sasaki found, as expected, the participants slept less well on their first night than they did on their second, taking more than twice as long to fall asleep and sleeping less overall. During deep sleep, the participants’ brains behaved in a similar manner seen in birds and dolphins. On the first night only, the left hemispheres (半球) of their brains did not sleep nearly as deeply as their right hemispheres did.

Curious if the left hemispheres were indeed remaining awake to process information detected in the surrounding environment, Dr. Sasaki re-ran the experiment while presenting the sleeping participants with a mix of regularly timed beeps (蜂鸣声) of the same tone and irregular beeps of a different tone during the night. She worked out that, if the left hemisphere was staying alert to keep guard in a strange environment, then it would react to the irregular beeps by stirring people from sleep and would ignore the regularly timed ones. This is precisely what she found.

America is a mobile society. Friendships between Americans can be close and real, yet disappear soon if situations change. Neither side feels hurt by this. Both may exchange Christmas greetings for a year or two, perhaps a few letters for a while — then no more. If the same two people meet again by chance, even years later, they pick up the friendship. This can be quite difficult for us Chinese to understand, because friendships between us flower more slowly but then may become lifelong feelings, extending (延伸) sometimes deeply into both families.

   Americans are ready to receive us foreigners at their homes, share their holidays, and their home life. They will enjoy welcoming us and be pleased if we accept their hospitality (好客) easily.

  Another difficult point for us Chinese to understand Americans is that although they include us warmly in their personal everyday lives, they don’t show their politeness to us if it requires a great deal of time. This is usually the opposite of the practice in our country where we may be generous with our time. Sometimes, we, as hosts, will appear at airports even in the middle of the night to meet a friend. We may take days off to act as guides to our foreign friends. The Americans, however, express their welcome usually at homes, but truly can not manage the time to do a great deal with a visitor outside their daily routine. They will probably expect us to get ourselves from the airport to our own hotel by bus. And they expect that we will phone them from there. Once we arrive at their homes, the welcome will be full, warm and real. We will find ourselves treated hospitably.

  For the Americans, it is often considered more friendly to invite a friend to their homes than to go to restaurants, except for purely business matters. So accept their hospitality at home!