在TED演講中學(xué)英語：內(nèi)向者的力量

　　摘要：英語學(xué)習(xí)是一個(gè)循序漸進(jìn)的過程，考研英語的復(fù)習(xí)也是如此。背單詞、做真題是考研英語的基礎(chǔ)復(fù)習(xí)任務(wù)，不過偶爾累了看看電影，聽聽演講也能一邊放松一邊學(xué)習(xí)英語，今天給大家分享一則TED演講：內(nèi)向者的力量，一起欣賞吧！

　　I got the message that somehow my quiet and introverted style of being was not necessarily the right way to go, that I should be trying to pass as more of an extrovert. And I always sensed deep down that this was wrong and that introverts were pretty excellent just as they were. But for years I denied this intuition, and so I became a Wall Street lawyer, of all things, instead of the writer that I had always longed to be -- partly because I needed to prove to myself that I could be bold and assertive too. And I was always going off to crowded bars when I really would have preferred to just have a nice dinner with friends. And I made these self-negating choices so reflexively, that I wasn't even aware that I was making them.

　　不知怎么我總覺得我安靜和內(nèi)向的風(fēng)格并不正確。我應(yīng)該更多地嘗試一個(gè)外向者的角色。而在我內(nèi)心深處總覺得這是不對的，因?yàn)閮?nèi)向的人都是非常優(yōu)秀的。但是多年來我都否認(rèn)了這種直覺，于是我成為了華爾街的一名律師， 而不是我長久以來想要成為的一名作家。部分是因?yàn)槲蚁胍C明自己也可以變得勇敢而堅(jiān)定。當(dāng)我只是想要和朋友們吃一頓愉快的晚餐時(shí)，我卻總是去那些擁擠的酒吧。我做出了這些自我否認(rèn)的選擇，如條件反射一般，甚至我都不清楚我做出了這些決定。

　　Now this is what many introverts do, and it's our loss for sure, but it is also our colleagues' loss and our communities' loss. And at the risk of sounding grandiose, it is the world's loss. Because when it comes to creativity and to leadership, we need introverts doing what they do best. A third to a half of the population are introverts -- a third to a half. So that's one out of every two or three people you know. So even if you're an extrovert yourself, I'm talking about your coworkers and your spouses and your children and the person sitting next to you right now -- all of them subject to this bias that is pretty deep and real in our society. We all internalize it from a very early age without even having a language for what we're doing.

　　這就是很多內(nèi)向的人正在做的事情。這當(dāng)然是我們的損失，但這同樣也是同事們的損失，我們所在團(tuán)隊(duì)集體的損失。當(dāng)然，冒著被指為夸大其詞的風(fēng)險(xiǎn)我想說，更是世界的損失。因?yàn)楫?dāng)涉及創(chuàng)造和領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的時(shí)候，我們需要內(nèi)向的人做到最好，三分之一到二分之一的人都是內(nèi)向的，三分之一到二分之一。你要知道這可意味著每兩到三個(gè)人中就有一個(gè)內(nèi)向的，所以即使你自己是一個(gè)外向的人。我正在說你的同事和你的配偶和你的孩子，還有現(xiàn)在正坐在你旁邊的那個(gè)家伙-- 他們都要屈從于這樣的偏見，一種在我們的社會中已經(jīng)扎根的真實(shí)的偏見。我們從很小的時(shí)候就把它藏在內(nèi)心最深處，甚至對于我們正在做的事情都不說什么。

　　To see the bias clearly, you need to understand what introversion is. It's different from being shy. Shyness is about fear of social judgment. Introversion is more about, how do you respond to stimulation, including social stimulation. So extroverts really crave large amounts of stimulation, whereas introverts feel at their most alive and their most switched-on and their most capable when they're in quieter, more low-key environments. Not all the time -- these things aren't absolute -- but a lot of the time. So the key then to maximizing our talents is for us all to put ourselves in the zone of stimulation that is right for us.

　　為了清晰地看到這種偏見，我們需要了解“內(nèi)向”是什么。它和害羞是不同的。害羞是對于社會判斷的恐懼，內(nèi)向更多的是你怎樣對于刺激作出回應(yīng)，包括來自社會的刺激。外向的人渴望大量的刺激和激勵(lì)，而內(nèi)向的人在更安靜、更低調(diào)的環(huán)境中會感到最活躍和最有能力。并不是所有時(shí)候--這些事情都不是絕對的-- 但是大多如此。所以把我們的天賦發(fā)揮到最大化的關(guān)鍵在于，把我們自己放到適合我們的激勵(lì)區(qū)域中去。

　　But here's where the bias comes in. Our most important institutions, our schools and our workplaces, they are designed mostly for extroverts and for extroverts' need for lots of stimulation. And also we have this belief system right now that I call the new groupthink, which holds that all creativity and all productivity come from a very oddly gregarious place.

　　但是這正是偏見的來源。我們最重要的那些機(jī)構(gòu)，我們的學(xué)校和工作單位，它們都是為性格外向者設(shè)計(jì)的，并且有適合他們需要的刺激和鼓勵(lì)。當(dāng)然我們現(xiàn)在也有這樣一種信念體系，我稱之為新型的“團(tuán)隊(duì)思考”，就是所有創(chuàng)造力和生產(chǎn)力都來自于一個(gè)古怪的群居場所。

　　When I was going to school, we sat in rows. We sat in rows of desks like this, and we did most of our work pretty autonomously. But nowadays, your typical classroom has pods of desks -- four or five or six or seven kids all facing each other. And kids are working in countless group assignments. Even in subjects like math and creative writing, which you think would depend on solo flights of thought, kids are now expected to act as committee members. And for the kids who prefer to go off by themselves or just to work alone, those kids are seen as outliers often or, worse, as problem cases. And the vast majority of teachers reports believing that the ideal student is an extrovert as opposed to an introvert, even though introverts actually get better grades and are more knowledgeable, according to research.

　　我上學(xué)時(shí)，大家都是坐成一排。我們靠著桌子一排排坐著就像這樣，并且我們大多數(shù)工作都是自主完成的。但是在現(xiàn)代社會，所謂典型的教室是排成一圈的桌子-- 四個(gè)或是五個(gè)或是六、七個(gè)孩子坐在一起，面對面坐著。孩子們要完成無數(shù)個(gè)小組任務(wù)， 甚至像數(shù)學(xué)和創(chuàng)意寫作這些課程。這些你們認(rèn)為需要依靠個(gè)人閃光想法的課程，孩子們現(xiàn)在卻被期待成為小組會的成員。對于那些喜歡獨(dú)處，或者自己一個(gè)人做事的孩子來說，這些孩子常常被視為局外人，或者更糟，被視為問題孩子。并且很大一部分老師的報(bào)告中都認(rèn)為，理想的學(xué)生應(yīng)該是外向的。雖然據(jù)研究報(bào)道，內(nèi)向的學(xué)生可能成績更好， 更博學(xué)多識。