全新版大学英语快速阅读第二册课文.doc

Unit 1 How to Study There is a lot of misunderstanding about studying. Most students have not been taught the principles behind really effective working. Imagine a graph showing the amount a person learns against the number of hours he works in a day. If he doesnt do any work, he learns nothing (point 0). If he does an hour s work he learns a certain amount (point 1). If he does two hours work he learns about twice as much (point 2). If he does more work hell learn still more (point 3). However, if he tries to do twenty-three and a half hours work in one day, hell be so tired that hell hardly remember anything: what he learns will be very little (point 4). If he did less work he d learn more (point 5). Now whatever the exact shape of the graph s curve, made by joining these points, it must have a high point. Point X is the very maximum anyone can learn in the day. And this represents the optimum, the best, amount of work to do. It is the best possible compromise between adequate time at the books and fatigue. Fatigue is an absolutely real thing; one cant escape it or ignore it. If you try to ignore it and press yourself to work past the optimum, you will only get on this downward slope and achieve less than the best—and then become very tired and lose your power of concentration. The skill in being a student consists of getting one s daily study as near the optimum point as possible. I cannot tell you what the optimum is. It differs with the type of work, it differs from person to person, and even in the same person it varies from week to week. You must try to find your own. Every day you study, bear this principle of the optimum in mind. When you feel yourself getting fatigued, if you find yourself reading the same paragraph over and over again and not taking it in, thats a pretty good sign you ve reached your highest point for the day and should stop. Most ordinary students find their optimum at about five hours a day. Yours may be a little more or a little les