江苏专版2018年高考英语二轮复习增分篇专题巧突破专题五书面表达任务型阅读与书面表达组合练四.docVIP

任务型阅读与书面表达组合练(四) (限时40分钟) .任务型阅读 (2017·盐城市高三三模)We all know what makes for good character in soldiers. Weve seen the movies about heroes who display courage, loyalty and coolness under fire. But what about somebody who sits in front of a keyboard all day? Is it possible to display and cultivate character if you are just an information age office clerk, alone with a memo or your computer? Of course it is. Even if you are alone in your office, you are thinking. Thinking well under an era of information may be a different sort of moral challenge than fighting well under a hail of bullets, but its a character challenge nonetheless. In their book, Intellectual Virtues, Robert C. Roberts of Baylor University and W. Jay Wood of Wheaton College list some of the Intellectual virtues. We can all grade ourselves on how good we are at each of them. First, there is courage. The obvious form of intellectual courage is the willingness to hold unpopular views. But the slighter form is knowing how much risk to take in jumping to conclusions. The impulsive thinker takes a few pieces of information and leaps to some faraway theory. The perfectionist, on the other hand, is unwilling to put anything out there except under ideal conditions for fear that he could be wrong. Intellectual courage is self-regulation, Roberts and Wood argue, knowing when to be daring and when to be cautious. The philosopher Thomas Kuhn pointed out that scientists often simply ignore facts that dont fit with their existing paradigms (范式), but an intellectually courageous person is willing to look at things that are surprisingly hard to look at. Second, there is firmness. You dont want to be a person who abandons his beliefs at the slightest sign of opposition. On the other hand, you dont want to hold rigidly to a belief against all evidence. The median point between flaccidity (软弱) and rigidity is the virtue of firmness. The firm believer can build a steady worldview on solid materials but still delight in new i