Question

Quiet Virtue: The Conscientious

The everyday signs of conscientiousness (認真盡責)—being punctual, careful in doing work, self-disciplined, and scrupulous (一絲不茍的) in attending to responsibilities—are typical characteristics of the model organizational citizen, the people who keep things running as they should. They follow the rules, help out, and are concerned about the people they work with. It’s the conscientious worker who helps newcomers or updates people who return after an absence, who gets to work on time and never abuses sick leaves, who always gets things done on deadline.

Conscientiousness is a key to success in any field. In studies of job performance, outstanding effectiveness for almost all jobs, from semi-skilled labor to sales and management, depends on conscientiousness. It is particularly important for outstanding performance in jobs at the lower levels of an organization: the secretary whose message taking is perfect, the delivery truck driver who is always on time.

Among sales representatives for a large American car manufacturer, those who were most conscientious had the largest volume of sales. Conscientiousness also offers a buffer (緩沖) against the threat of job loss in today’s constantly changing market, because employees with this quality are among the most valued. For the sales representatives, their level of conscientiousness mattered almost as much as their sales in determining who stayed on.

There is an air around highly conscientious people that makes them seem even better than they actually are. Their reputation for dependability influences managers’ evaluations of their work, giving them higher evaluations than objective measures of their performance would predict.

But conscientiousness in the absence of social skills can lead to problems. Since conscientious people demand so much of themselves, they can hold other people to their own standards, and so be overly judgmental when others don’t show the same high levels of model behavior. Factory workers in Great Britain and the United States who were extremely conscientious, for example, tended to criticize co-workers even about failures that seemed unimportant to those they criticized, which damaged their relationships.

When conscientiousness takes the form of living up to expectations, it can discourage creativity. In creative professions like art or advertising, openness to wild ideas and spontaneity (自發(fā)性) are scarce and in demand. Success in such occupations calls for a balance, however; without enough conscientiousness to follow through, people become mere dreamers, with nothing to show for their imaginativeness.

 

Answer 1

【答案】

 

 Strict

 helpful/ good

 Functions/ Roles/ Importance/ Significance

 running/ working/ going/ operating/ functioning

 performance(s)

 fired/dismissed/ jobless

 problems/ troubles

 higher/ subjective/ unfair/ unjust/ prejudiced

 tense/ damaged/ poor/ bad

 discourage/ affect/ damage

【解析】

【文章大意】本文是議論文，描述的是“認真盡責”這種美德的特征、在人們的生活和工作等方面發(fā)揮的重大作用和可能由這種美德所引起的問題。文章難度適中，但是所需要的詞匯有5道題在原文中不能找到，需要學生歸納總結信息，所以有一定的難度。

 從第一段第一句可知認真盡責的人準時、工作認真、自律性強、處理問題一絲不茍，所以說他們對自己要求嚴格。

 從第一段第二句可知認真盡責的人樂于助人。

 從第二段第一句“Conscientiousness is a key to success in any field.”可知認真盡責有很大的作用和意義。

 第二段表明工作的各個環(huán)節(jié)的順利進行都離不開認真盡責的態(tài)度。

 原文可以找到“outstanding performance”。

 原文用“against the threat of job loss”

 第三段第一句中給出答案“---lead to problems”。

 第四段，原文用“giving them higher evaluations than objective measures---”.

 第五段最后一句用“which damaged their relationships”

 最后一段第一句用“it can discourage creativity”.