在TED演讲中学英语：内向者的力量

　　摘要：英语学习是一个循序渐进的过程，考研英语的复习也是如此。背单词、做真题是考研英语的基础复习任务，不过偶尔累了看看电影，听听演讲也能一边放松一边学习英语，今天给大家分享一则TED演讲：内向者的力量，一起欣赏吧！

　　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.

　　不知怎么我总觉得我安静和内向的风格并不正确。我应该更多地尝试一个外向者的角色。而在我内心深处总觉得这是不对的，因为内向的人都是非常优秀的。但是多年来我都否认了这种直觉，于是我成为了华尔街的一名律师， 而不是我长久以来想要成为的一名作家。部分是因为我想要证明自己也可以变得勇敢而坚定。当我只是想要和朋友们吃一顿愉快的晚餐时，我却总是去那些拥挤的酒吧。我做出了这些自我否认的选择，如条件反射一般，甚至我都不清楚我做出了这些决定。

　　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.

　　这就是很多内向的人正在做的事情。这当然是我们的损失，但这同样也是同事们的损失，我们所在团队集体的损失。当然，冒着被指为夸大其词的风险我想说，更是世界的损失。因为当涉及创造和领导的时候，我们需要内向的人做到最好，三分之一到二分之一的人都是内向的，三分之一到二分之一。你要知道这可意味着每两到三个人中就有一个内向的，所以即使你自己是一个外向的人。我正在说你的同事和你的配偶和你的孩子，还有现在正坐在你旁边的那个家伙-- 他们都要屈从于这样的偏见，一种在我们的社会中已经扎根的真实的偏见。我们从很小的时候就把它藏在内心最深处，甚至对于我们正在做的事情都不说什么。

　　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.

　　为了清晰地看到这种偏见，我们需要了解“内向”是什么。它和害羞是不同的。害羞是对于社会判断的恐惧，内向更多的是你怎样对于刺激作出回应，包括来自社会的刺激。外向的人渴望大量的刺激和激励，而内向的人在更安静、更低调的环境中会感到最活跃和最有能力。并不是所有时候--这些事情都不是绝对的-- 但是大多如此。所以把我们的天赋发挥到最大化的关键在于，把我们自己放到适合我们的激励区域中去。

　　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.

　　但是这正是偏见的来源。我们最重要的那些机构，我们的学校和工作单位，它们都是为性格外向者设计的，并且有适合他们需要的刺激和鼓励。当然我们现在也有这样一种信念体系，我称之为新型的“团队思考”，就是所有创造力和生产力都来自于一个古怪的群居场所。

　　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.

　　我上学时，大家都是坐成一排。我们靠着桌子一排排坐着就像这样，并且我们大多数工作都是自主完成的。但是在现代社会，所谓典型的教室是排成一圈的桌子-- 四个或是五个或是六、七个孩子坐在一起，面对面坐着。孩子们要完成无数个小组任务， 甚至像数学和创意写作这些课程。这些你们认为需要依靠个人闪光想法的课程，孩子们现在却被期待成为小组会的成员。对于那些喜欢独处，或者自己一个人做事的孩子来说，这些孩子常常被视为局外人，或者更糟，被视为问题孩子。并且很大一部分老师的报告中都认为，理想的学生应该是外向的。虽然据研究报道，内向的学生可能成绩更好， 更博学多识。