Talks and Conversations 2

Hi, welcome, today I am going to talk about how children learn social behaviors. Especially how they learn lessons from the family, which is the most basic unit of our social structure. There is a lot of discussion these days about how families are changing and whether non-traditional families have a good or bad effect on children. But it is important to remember that the type of family a child comes from is not nearly as important as the kind of love and support that exist in a home. There are three ways by which children acquire their behavior through rewards, punishments and finally modeling. In today’s lecture, let‘s first discuss rewards. A reward can be defined as a positive reinforcement for good behavior. An example of a reward is when a parent says, “If you eat your vegetables, you can have ice cream for dessert”. Or a parent might say, “Finish your homework first, then you can watch TV.” Most parents use rewards unconsciously because they want their children to behave well. For example, a parent might give a gift to a child, because the child behaved well. Or parents may give a child money for doing what the parents asked.

Questions:

15. What is discussed in the lecture?

16. According to the talk , what is more important for children to learn good social behaviors?

17. There are three ways by which children acquire their behavior. Which one is discussed in detail in the talk?

18. Which of the following is not a positive reinforcement for good behavior?

【评析】

本篇文章内容难度适中。虽然其中穿插长句子。但是问题答案都是文章中可以直接听出来的。举例说明能帮助大家很好的理解内容。因此在听的时候，要有上下文的概念，前面如有长句没听懂，注意后面的例子说明。全文的意思就一目了然了。

本篇话题是“孩子如何学习社会行为”。主要集中的讲的是家庭这个社会单元对孩子行为的影响。并且提到孩子学习社会行为的三种方式：奖励、惩罚、模范。本课中主要讲的是“奖励”这种方式。

关键词：

Social behavior  社会行为，社交行为

Social structure 社会结构