Unit 1
Section A
1-2
Pre-reading activities-1
BAABB ACC
Pre-reading activities-2
1. Reasoning skills deal with the process of getting from a problem to a solution or a conclusion. By improving your reasoning skills, you can improve your success in doing things. Specifically, strong reasoning skills can help you to:
• improve the quality and validity of your own arguments;
• improve your ability to assess the quality and validity of others' arguments;
• make more logical decisions;
• solve problems more efficiently and effectively.
To give a specific example, every day you have to make various decisions, and yet even some simple decisions like deciding what to wear when you're getting dressed in the morning require some reasoning skills. When you decide what to wear, you take many factors into consideration – the weather forecast, the current temperature, your plans for the day (where you are going, what you will do, and whom you will meet), your comfort level, and so on. In real life, you need to face decisions that are much more difficult than choosing what to wear. So, it is really important to have strong reasoning skills.
2. The factors below are usually important for a logical conclusion:
• critical thinking skills;
• facts;
• evidence;
• sound reasoning process, etc.
Reading comprehension-1
1. The deal between them is that the narrator gives Rob his leather jacket, and Rob, in exchange, gives the narrator his girlfriend. They make the deal because they want to get something from each other: Rob is crazy about fashion, and he wants to own the narrator's fashionable leather jacket; the narrator longs to have a beautiful girlfriend, and Rob's girlfriend is beautiful.
2. He thinks a beautiful and well-spoken girlfriend will assist him to land a job and achieve success in an elite law company.
3. The narrator feels this way because he can't stop thinking that his purpose of dating Polly is not for romance but for improving her intelligence, and he can't let Polly know his plan.
4. The narrator decides to teach Polly logic because he believes logic is essential to clear thinking. By teaching Polly logic, he can make her intelligent.
5. When the narrator teaches her logic, Polly responds either shortly with "Cool", "Great", "I like that idea", or simply with nodding or blinking without saying anything. These responses give us an impression that Polly is a nice but rather simple-minded girl.
6. Yes. He is only too successful in teaching Polly logic because in the end when he asks Polly to be his girlfriend, Polly refuses his request by applying all the logical fallacies he has taught her.
7. Because he wants to make one more attempt to win Polly as his girlfriend by asking her to forget what he has taught her.
8. The end of the story is ironic because Polly turns out to be smarter than the narrator. First, she is able to refute all his arguments as logical fallacies. Then, she discloses that she and Rob have played a trick on him. The narrator has been too smart for his own good.
Reading comprehension-2
1. In my opinion, all the three characters are complex. The following are my descriptions about them.
The narrator:
• Smart: He is an excellent law student and knows a lot about logic.
• Sophisticated: He believes a beautiful and intelligent girlfriend will benefit him in his future career.
• Arrogant and self-conceited: He thinks highly of himself but badly of his roommate.
• Over-confident: He thinks the girl will surely choose him rather than Rob.
• Stupid and simple-minded: He knows nothing about what can happen in real life.
Rob:
• Fashionable and cool: He loves fashion and cares a lot about his appearance.
• Dishonest: He plays a trick on the narrator to get his leather jacket.
• Clever: He is able to get what he wants without losing anything.
Polly:
• Beautiful and nice: She is pretty and easy to be with.
• Shallow: She chooses Rob simply because he is fashionable.
• Smart: She learns quickly and is full of wit when refusing to be the narrator's girlfriend.
2. The story itself includes the fallacy "Dicto Simpliciter". The narrator assumes that all girls would be happy to date a boy whose future is somewhat guaranteed. Therefore, Polly, a beautiful and wealthy young girl, would certainly fall in love with him – "an ingenious student" and "a man with an assured future", rather than Rob – "a muscular idiot". However, to the narrator's surprise and disappointment, Polly chooses Rob in the end because Rob is fashionable and cool.
3. • Love is blind. It is ridiculous to use logic to deal with love.
• Smart people sometimes can make wrong judgments.
• Smart people are sometimes too arrogant and confident.
• Smart people may fall victims to their own smartness.
4. • Yes. Because not only would teaching logic in school help minimize the overwhelming number of fallacious assertions, but also would serve as an excellent precursor to higher mathematics and help make other courses such as geometry and calculus less of a mystery to most students.
• No. Because logic can be learned through other subjects such as math, philosophy, reading, etc. It's not necessary to offer a special course about it.
5. Yes, certainly. Actually, logical fallacies are very common in our everyday life. I myself commit logical fallacies very often, too. For example, when I first met my roommate in college, I felt very surprised when he told me he didn't like noodles. I asked, "People in the north of China like eating noodles. You are from the north, why don't you like noodles?" Here I committed the logical fallacy "Dicto Simpliciter". I falsely asserted that all people in the north should like noodles, and there should be no exception to this premise.
1-3
Words in use
1.crumbled
2.discern
3.surpass
4.shrewd
5.conversion
6.distort
7.radiant
8.ingenious
9.stumped
10.proposition
Word building: Practice-1
1.delicacy
2.bankruptcy
3.accountancy
4.secrecy
5.vacancy
6.urgency
7.atmospheric
8.magnet
9.metallic
10.gloom
11.guilt
12.mastery
Word building: Practice-2
1.bankruptcies
2.atmospheric
3.delicacies
4.urgency
5.Accountancy
6.gloom
7.magnet
8.Metallic
9.mastery
10.vacancy
11.guilt
12.secrecy
Banked cloze
1.mentioned
2.determine
3.gained
4.responsible
5.heavily
6.artistic
7.opposite
8.analytical
9.distorted
10.stumped
Expressions in use
1.were dripping with
2.in exchange for
3.flared up
4.make an analogy between
5.set a date for
6.make
7. out of
8.made a pact
9.had appealed to
1-5
Translation-1
亚里士多德是古希腊哲学家和科学家。他的著作涉及物理学、生物学、动物学、逻辑学、伦理学、诗歌、戏剧、音乐、语言学、政治学和政府学等多个学科，构成了西方哲学的第一个综合体系。亚里士多德是第一个将人类知识领域划分为不同学科的人，如数学、生物学和伦理学。他相信所有人的概念和知识最终都是建立在感知的基础上的。他对自然科学的看法为他的许多著作奠定了基础。在他那个时代，他几乎对人类知识的每一个领域都做出了贡献。他的著作包含了已知最早的逻辑学形式研究，甚至在今天，亚里士多德哲学的各个方面仍然是学术研究的重要课题。他的哲学思想对西方哲学理论的发展产生了深远的影响。亚里士多德去世2300多年后，仍然是最有影响力的哲学家和科学家之一。
Translation-2
Doctrine of the mean is the core of Confucianism. The so-called "middle" of Confucius does not mean "compromise", but a "moderate" and "appropriate" method in understanding and dealing with objective things. Confucius advocated that we should not only treat this thought as a way of understanding and dealing with things, but also integrate it into our daily behaviors through self-cultivation and exercise, so as to make it a virtue. The doctrine of the mean is the core of Confucianism and an important part of Chinese traditional culture. From its formation to now, it has been playing an immeasurable role in the construction of national spirit, the dissemination of national wisdom and the development of national culture.
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