新世纪大学英语1--Unit 7课文详解

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Unit 7 Relationships and Communication
How Well Can We Listen? Kathleen T. McWhorter
1. It is not uncommon to hear people complaining that no one listens to them and no one understands them. Such complaints come not only from kids but also from adults. How often is this a vital cause in the failure of personal relationships? How often does it contribute to broken homes? How often do we hear of a married couple who fail to have communication, or of children who feel deserted? It seems something must have gone wrong. 我们时常听到人们抱怨说没有人聆听他们，没有人能理解他们 。这样的抱怨不仅出自孩童之口，也出自成人之口。人际关系不 和谐，这不往往是个重要原因吗？家庭破裂，不也往往拜其所赐 吗？我们不也还常常听说夫妻之间无法交流，孩子感觉被遗弃吗 ？看来这其中一定出了什么问题。
Unit 7 Relationships and Communication
Unit 7 Relationships and Communication
3.Misunderstanding often arises from a lack of communication. Curiously enough, in a modern society where not a few advanced technological means of communication such as the mobile phone and pager have been developed, people are still confronted with this problem. Investigations show that technological inventions do help facilitate human communication. They also show that while there are more opportunities for personal contact, especially through verbal communication, many people still find their listeners do not listen to them. Clearly, something is wrong with their listening ability. 误解常常源于缺乏交流。令人纳闷的是，在现代社会，虽然发明了 不少先进的通讯工具，如移动电话和传呼机，但是人们仍然面临这 样的问题。研究表明，科技发明确实有助于人与人之间的交流。研 究也同样发现，虽然人与人之间接触的机会增加了，特别是言语交 流的机会增加了，许多人仍然发现没有人真正聆听他们说话。很显 然，人们的聆听能力出了问题。
Unit 7 Relationships and Communication
Do you think that interpersonal skills are very important at school and at work? Please share us your opinions.
Kang Min
Unit 7 Relationships and Communication
Parts
Main Ideas
The rise of the issue: people’s complaints about others’ not listening; the possible consequences of the problem. The analysis of the reasons for the failure in communication: misunderstanding resulting from poor listening. How we can be good listeners. Conclusion: restatement of the importance of listening.
Interpersonal skills should be considered very important both at school and at work. Good interpersonal skills enhance relationships with fellow students or colleagues and help build a pleasant environment for all to work in. Conversely, poor interpersonal skills can often lead to coldness and even hostility between one another and may lead to inefficiency in study or at work.
Unit 7 Relationships and Communication
4. People may wonder why their listening ability is undesirable when their hearing ability is physically sound. This is a basic mistake we often make. Very often hearing is confused with listening, as they are so closely related. Believing that hearing is a physiological function, which comes to us naturally, we take it for granted that listening does not require much effort. Experts in the field of communications are quick to attack this belief. In their view, listening requires hard work and energy. When people are listening, they have quicker heartbeats and faster blood circulation. Good listening, they think, is not as simple as it might seem. 人们也许会问，为什么听觉没有问题而他们的聆听能力却不如人意 呢？这就是我们常犯的错误：因为听觉能力和聆听能力的关系如此 紧密，我们经常把两者混淆。我们会认为听觉能力是一种生理功能， 是与生俱来的，所以我们想当然地以为聆听不需要付出特别的努力。 对于这种观点，交流领域的专家会毫不犹豫地加于指正。在他们看 来，聆听既费神又费力。人们聆听时心跳加速，血液循环也会加快。 专家认为，认真的聆听并不是我们想象的那么简单。
2. Experts tend to resort to the term “generation gap” to explain the conflicts between parents and children. Can this term be applied to the cases mentioned above? Though there might be room for hesitation in the adoption of it when “generation” is taken into account, it is far from wrong to borrow the rest in making an analysis. There are bound to be differences, or gaps, in the opinions of two people that give rise to conflicts, and ways to reduce them are by no means easy to be sought, but it is equally true to say that there is bound to be a solution to every problem. Part of the solution to human conflicts is to avoid misunderstanding. 每当父母和孩子之间发生冲突的时候，专家们往 往会用“代沟”这一术语来解释。那么这个术语能否用于上面提到 的情况呢？当然，如果细究“代”的本义，那么这算不上特别贴切， 但是大可借用该术语的其他涵义来分析问题。两个人的观点之所以 会引起纷争，肯定因为存在分歧，而要设法减少分歧又谈何容易！ 但是我们也同样可以说，每个问题肯定都会有办法解决。人际冲突 的部分解决办法是避免误解。
Biblioteka Baidu
Unit 7 Relationships and Communication
Unit 7
Relationships and Communication
Text A How Well Can We Listen?
Text B What We Can Do to Improve Human Relationships
Unit 7 Relationships and Communication
We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
-------- Epictetus
A Greek Stoic（禁欲主义）philosopher Question for U: Do you agree with Epictetus? State your reasons.
Unit 7 Relationships and Communication
5. To become a good listener begins with concentration. That looks easy on the surface. In too many cases, we have to listen to other people with physical and mental distractions around us. The ring of the telephone, the slam of a door or other human voices are some of the common physical distractions. The mental distractions in one’s own mind, on the other hand, are much more difficult to overcome, for many reasons. A speaker may not be able to keep pace with the working of the listener’s mind. The average person’s rate of thinking is faster than the average rate of speech. With much free time left at their disposal, the listeners are likely to be carried away by their own thoughts and they soon lose their way. That is where the problem lies: listening too quickly.