Benjamin once said, "I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures. I divide the world into the learners and non-learners."
What would make someone a non-learner? Everyone is born with an intense drive to learn. Babies practise their skills daily, even the most difficult tasks at the start of their lives, like learning to walk and talk. They never think it's too hard. Babies don't worry about making mistakes. They walk, they fall and they get up. They just move forward.
What could put an end to this kind of learning? A fixed mindset. As soon as children become able to evaluate themselves, some of them become afraid of hard tasks. They become afraid of not being smart. I have studied thousands of students, and you can't believe how many people refuse a chance to learn.
We offered four-year-olds a choice: They could redo an easy task or try a harder one. Even at this age, children with the fixed mindset stuck with the safe one. Children with a growth mindset—the ones who believed they could get smarter by learning—thought it was a strange choice: Why are you asking me this? Why would anyone want to keep doing the same task over and over? They chose one hard task after another. "I'm dying to solve them!" one little girl said.
So children with the fixed mindset want to make sure they are successful. Smart people should always be successful. But for children with the growth mindset, ▲. It's about learning to become smarter.
One seventh-grade girl made a conclusion. "I think being smart is something you have to work for. It isn't just given to you. Most kids, if they're not sure of an answer, will not raise their hand to answer the question. But what I usually do is to raise my hand, because if I'm wrong, then my mistake will be corrected. Just by doing that I'm improving my ability."
任务一 阅读理解
1. What does the writer want to tell by using the example of babies in Paragraph 2?
A. Walking and talking are very difficult.
B. It's easy for babies to learn different skills.
C. People are born with the ability to learn.
D. Babies need to face many tasks every day.
2.（创新考法·句意理解）What does the girl mean by saying "I'm dying to solve them!"?
A. She can't wait to give herself a task to practise.
B. She thinks a healthy body can help learn better.
C. She believes it's painful to solve the problems.
D. She doesn't find it difficult to finish these tasks.
3.（创新考法·信息回填）Which of the following can be put in "▲" in Paragraph 5?
A. success is more important than learning
B. success is about practising themselves
C. they only focus on being smart
D. they don't care about learning or success
任务二 回答问题(答案不超过8个词)
What can you learn from the passage?