广东韶关市高考英语阅读理解选编7及答案二轮.docVIP

广东韶关市2016高考英语阅读理解选编（7）及答案（二轮） 阅读理解 Pacing and Pausing Sara tried to befriend her old friend Steves new wife, but Betty never seemed to have anything to say. While Sara felt Betty didnt hold up her end of the conversation, Betty complained to Steve that Sara never gave her a chance to talk. The problem had to do with expectations about pacing and pausing. /gaokao/beijing Conversation is a turn-taking game. When our habits are similar, theres no problem. But if our habits are different, you may start to talk before Im finished or fail to take your turn when Im finished. Thats what was happening with Betty and Sara. It may not be coincidental that Betty, who expected relatively longer pauses between turns, is British, and Sara, who expected relatively shorter pauses, is American. Betty often felt interrupted by Sara. But Betty herself became an interrupter and found herself doing most of the talking when she met a visitor from Finland. And Sara had a hard time cutting in on some speakers from Latin America or Israel. /gaokao/beijing The general phenomenon, then, is that the small conversation techniques, like pacing and pausing, lead people to draw conclusions not about conversational style but about personality and abilities. These habitual differences are often the basis for dangerous stereotyping (思维定式). And these social phenomena can have very personal consequences. For example, a woman from the southwestern part of the US went to live in an eastern city to take up a job in personnel. When the Personnel Department got together for meetings, she kept searching for the right time to break in--and never found it. Although back home she was considered outgoing and confident, in Washington she was viewed as shy and retiring. When she was evaluated at the end of the year, she was told to take a training course because of her inability to speak up. Thats why slight differences in conversational style--tiny little things like microsec