2020 年 12 月大学英语四级考试真题（第 2 套）

When my son completes a task, I can't help but praise him. It's only natural to give praise where praise is due, right? But is there such a thing as too much praise?

According to psychologist Katherine Phillip, children don't benefit from __26__ praise as much as we'd like to think. "Parents' often praise, believing they are building their child's self-confidence. However, over-praising can have a __27__ effect," says Phillip. "When we use the same praise __28__, it may become empty and no longer valued by the child. It can also become an expectation that anything they do must be __29__ with praise. This may lead to the child avoiding taking risks due to fear of __30__ their parents. "

Does this mean we should do away with all the praise? Phillip says no. "The key to healthy praise is to focus on the process rather than the __31__. It is the recognition of a child's attempt, or the process in which they achieved something, that is essential," she says. "Parents should encourage their child to take the risks needed to learn and grow. "

So how do we break the __32__ of praise we're all so accustomed to? Phillip says it's important to __33__ between "person praise" and "process praise". "Person praise is __34__ saying how great someone is. It's a form of personal approval. Process praise is acknowledgement of the efforts the person has just __35__ Children who receive person praise are more likely to feel shame after losing," says Phillip.

Boredom has, paradoxically, become quite interesting to academics lately. In early May, London's Boring Conference celebrated seven years of delighting in dullness. At this event, people flocked to talk about weather, traffic jams, and vending-machine sounds, among other sleep-inducing topics.

What, exactly, is everybody studying? One widely accepted psychological definition of boredom is "the distasteful experience of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity." But how can you quantify a person's boredom level and compare it with someone else's? In 1986, psychologists introduced the Boredom Proneness Scale, designed to measure an individual's overall tendency to feel bored. By contrast, the Multidimensional State Boredom Scale, developed in 2008, measures a person's feelings of boredom in a given situation.

Boredom has been linked to behavior issues including inattentive driving, mindless snacking, excessive drinking, and addictive gambling. In fact, many of us would choose pain over boredom. One team of psychologists discovered that two-thirds of men and a quarter of women would rather self-administer electric shocks than sit alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes. Researching this phenomenon, another team asked volunteers to watch boring, sad, or neutral films, during which they could self-administer electric shocks. The bored volunteers shocked themselves more and harder than the sad or neutral ones did.

But boredom isn't all bad. By encouraging self-reflection and daydreaming, it can spur creativity. An early study gave participants abundant time to complete problem-solving and word-association exercises. Once all the obvious answers were exhausted, participants gave more and more inventive answers to combat boredom. A British study took these findings one step further* asking subjects to complete a creative challenge (coming up with a list of alternative uses for a household item). One group of subjects did a boring activity first, while the others went straight to the creative task. Those whose boredom pumps had been primed were more productive.

In our always-connected world, boredom may be a hard-to-define state, but it is a fertile one. Watch paint dry or water boil, or at least put away your smartphone for a while, and you might unlock your next big idea.

Forests in countries like Brazil and the Congo get a lot of attention from environmentalists, and it is easy to see why. South America and sub-Saharan Africa are experiencing deforestation on an enormous scale: every year almost 5 million hectares are lost. But forests are also changing in rich Western countries. They are growing larger, both in the sense that they occupy more land and that the trees in them are bigger. What is going on?

Forests are spreading in almost all Western countries, with the fastest growth in places that historically had rather few trees. In 1990 28% of Spain was forested; now the proportion is 37%. In both Greece and Italy, the growth was from 26% to 32% over the same period. Forests are gradually taking more land in America and Australia. Perhaps most astonishing is the trend in Ireland. Roughly 1% of that country was forested when it became independent in 1922. Now forests cover 11% of the land, and the government wants to push the proportion to 18% by the 2040s.

Two things are fertilising this growth. The first is the abandonment of farmland, especially in high, dry places where nothing grows terribly well. When farmers give up trying to earn a living from farming or herding, trees simply move in. The second is government policy and subsidy. Throughout history, governments have protected and promoted forests for diverse reasons, ranging from the need for wooden warships to a desire to promote suburban house-building. Nowadays forests are increasingly welcome because they suck in carbon pollution from the air. The justifications change; the desire for more trees remains constant.

The greening of the West does not delight everyone. Farmers complain that land is being taken out of use by generously subsidised tree plantations. Parts of Spain and Portugal suffer from terrible forest fires. Others simply dislike the appearance of forests planted in neat rows. They will have to get used to the trees, however. The growth of Western forests seems almost as unstoppable as deforestation elsewhere.