视听说教程 3 Unit 2

Unit 2Lesson 1Audio studioWhen it comes to intelligence, there has always been one fundamental question: Is intelligence a function of nature? Is it simply encoded in a child’s genes? Or is it a function of nurture? Is it more about the environment that a child grows up in?On the one hand, if we take two people at random from the crowd, it is very likely that their degrees of intelligence will be completely different. However, if we take two identical twins, chances are that they will be as intelligent as each other. Therefore, a conclusion can be drawn that intelligence is to some extent something we are born with. On the other hand, though, if we put identical twins in different environments, we would find differences in their intelligence several years later, which indicates that environment does play a crucial role in people’s intelligence.Recently, data has clearly indicated that nurture is indeed more than 50% of the equation. That is good news for educators, but even better news for society as a whole.Fortunately, President Obama has come out in strong support of early childhood education, particularly for those children most at risk of school failure. Investing in quality pre-school opportunities clearly helps give children from poverty-stricken areas the chance at a stronger start in school and in life.If we are serious about helping our children succeed in school, if we are truly interested in “Leaving No Child Behind,” we will take a hard look at this compelling data and beg in investing greater sums at the early childhood level.Video studioEinstein’s destiny as a great physicist was not obvious. As a child, his passion was music, not physics.“I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. If I were not a physi cist, I would probably be a musician.”But Einstein’s life changed when he was given a book on geometry. The universe could be tamed through numbers. His life’s work would be to control the music of the universe.During his life, Einstein changed our concept of space and time forever. He harnessed energy, mass and the speed of light in the most famous equation all time — E equals MC squared. What made Einstein’s brain so exceptional? Dr. Jim Al-Khalili, like Einstein, is a physicist and is obsessed by the work of his hero. Brain specialist Mark Lythgoe hunts for secrets of creativity inside the human mind.“My name is Dr. Jim Al-Khalili I believe Einstein’s genius came from his imagination, and no man or no machine can measure that. Am I right?”“My name is Dr. Mark Lythgoe and I believe that Einstein’s genius comes from nerve cells, which can be analyzed. We can find out what made Einstein a genius. Am I right?”So which view is correct? To solve the riddle of Einstein’s genius, Mark and Jim wo uld have to journey to America to hunt down and examine Einstein’s disembodied brain. Nature or nurture? Biology or training? Are geniuses born or are they made? Neurophysiologist Dr. Mark Lythgoe is a keen climber and finds parallels between his hobby and his profession. “Now, there are two scenarios for how the brain works. The first scenario is the brain is like a muscle. Now I’ve trained to develop the stamina in my muscle, hopefully then I can hold on to this hole for aperiod of time. The second is th at the brain is like a skeleton and it doesn’t matter how much I’ve trained, I’m never, ever going to be able to reach that hole right up there.“Now, in Einstein’s day they believed that the brain was like a skeleton that had natural limits, but that view is changing today. Instead, it is now understood that more and more parts of the brain behave like a muscle. They can expand with use. Then, if all of our brains are like muscles, could it be that we all have the ability to become Einstein?”Lesson 2Audio studioAlbert Einstein was a German-born physicist, although most people probably know him as the most intelligent person who ever lived. His name has become part of many languages when we want to say someone is a genius, as in the phrase, “She’s a real Einstein”. He must have been pretty brainy to discover the Theory of Relativity and the equation E=MC2.In 1999, Time Magazine named Einstein as the Person of the Century. No one could have guessed this would happen when he was in school. He was extremely interested in science but hated the system of learning things by rote memory. He said it destroyed learning and creativity. He had already done many experiments but failed the entrance exams to a technical college. He didn’t let this setback stop hi m. When he was 16, he performed his famous experiment of imagining traveling alongside a beam of light. He eventually graduated from university, in 1900, with a degree in physics.Twelve years later he was a university professor and in 1921, he won the Nobel Prize for Physics. He went on to publish over 300 scientific papers. Einstein is the only scientist to become a cult figure, a household name and part of everyday culture. He once joked that when people stopped him in the street, he always replied, “Par don me, sorry! Always I am mistaken for Professor Einstein.” Today, he is seen as the typical mad, absentminded professor, who just happened to change our world.Video studioSo Einstein’s brain has given up some of its secrets to Mark and Jim. In the ba ttle of biology versus ideas, Jim and Mark have each scored points. Seemingly, Einstein was born with overlaps in his brain. These overlaps may have meant maths and spatial thinking were more intuitive to him. Thinking like a child let him see the world in a unique way. And his unique, perhaps autistic, level of concentration, forced his brain to expand like a muscle. Extra glial cells were needed to cope with the extra demand, possibly helping make the maths area in the brain more than 15% wider than normal. All these effects united to give Einstein a mind unlike any other, perhaps the greatest mind in history. In the future, could we preserve a genius like Einstein in something better than the jar? Imagine a brave new world, where a genius’ brain could be copied onto silicon using microscopic robots called nanobots. This is the vision of the futurologist Ray Kurzweil.“I think by the 2020s or the late 2020s, we will have completely reverse engineered the brain and understand how all the different region s work. It’ll take us longer to be able to scan the entire brain and get capture of every detail of someone’s personality. The blood vessels of the brain go everywhere, and so if we send billions of nanobots through the capillaries of the brain, they can scan everything in the brain of a specific person at very high resolution. Then you could create a machine, a non-biological entity, that would simulate a specific person’s brain and that simulationwill act just like that person, and if you then talk to th at simulation, you’d be convinced that it was that person.”Home listening1.genius2.scattered3.conducted4.permission5.convinced6.decades7.accomplished8.He would much rather build houses of cards, which he was really good at, or do just aboutanything else.9.With a new passion for playing, Einstein continued to play the violin until the last few yearsof his life.10.Whether it was while out sailing or at a formal dinner at the white House, Einstein wentwithout socks everywhere.。