第一部分 英中对照

　　OK, Greg, so I finally managed to read the article you mentioned

　　Greg，我终于看完了你提到过的那篇文章，

　　the one about the study on gender in physics.

　　就是那篇关于研究物理学系的性别差异的文章。

　　About the study of college students done by Akira Miyake and his team?

　　那篇Akira Miyake的团队研究大学生的文章?

　　Yeah. I was interested that the researchers were actually a mix of psychologists and physicists.

　　这些研究人员中实际上既有心理学家又有物理学家，这一点让我很感兴趣。

　　That's an unusual combination.

　　这种组合可不常见。

　　Yeah. I got a little confused at first about which students the study was based on.

　　对，我一开始还有点弄不清楚，这项研究是针对哪些学生进行的。

　　They weren't actually majoring in physics —they were majoring in what's known as the STEM disciplines.

　　他们并不真的都是物理学专业的学生，他们的专业被称为STEM学科。

　　That's science, technology, engineering and...-...and math.

　　里面包含了科学、技术、工程和.....数学。

　　Yes, but they were all doing physics courses as part of their studies.

　　对，但是他们的一部分专业课都包括了物理学的课程。

　　That's correct. So as I understood it,

　　没错。从我理解的来看，

　　Miyake and co started from the fact that women are underrepresented in introductory physics courses at college,

　　Miyake团队是以女学生在物理入门课程中出席率不足这一事实作为切入点的，

　　and also that on average, the women who do enrol on these courses perform more poorly than the men.

　　而且那些选择了物理课程的女学生平均成绩也要比男学生差一些。

　　No one really knows why this is the case.

　　没人知道为什么会出现这种情况。

　　Yeah. But what the researchers wanted to find out was basically what they could do about the relatively low level of the women's results.

　　对，但是这些研究人员基本上只是想要弄清楚他们能做些什么，来改善这种女生成绩相对较低的情况。

　　But in order to find a solution they needed to find out more about the nature of the problem.

　　但是为了找到解决方法，他们需要更深入地探究这一问题的本质。

　　Right. Now let's see if I can remember...it was that in the physics class,

　　没错，看我记的对不对......在物理专业的班级中，

　　the female students thought the male students all assumed that women weren't any good at physics...was that it?

　　女学生认为班上的男学生一致觉得她们根本不懂物理，对不对?

　　And they thought that the men expected them to get poor results in their tests.

　　而且她们还觉得男生指望她们在考试中取得不好的成绩。

　　That's what the women thought, and that made them nervous, so they did get poor results.

　　这只是她们自己以为而已，不过这种想法使她们紧张不安，最终成绩不理想。

　　But actually they were wrong...No one was making an assumptions about the female students at all.

　　但她们是错的，根本没人在对女学生做任何猜想。

　　Anyway, what Miyake's team did was quite simple — getting the students to do some writing before they went into the physics class.

　　不管怎样，Miyake团队做的事情非常简单，他们让学生们在进入物理课教室之前，先写了一些东西。

　　What did they call it?

　　他们管这个叫什么来着?

　　Values-affirmation —they had to write an essay focusing on things that were significant to them,

　　价值观认定。学生们要以对他们来说很重要的事情为题写一篇文章，

　　not particularly to do with the subject they were studying,

　　不用特地选择和他们所学科目相关的话题，

　　but more general things like music or people who mattered to them.

　　更多的是像音乐或者对他们很重要的人这类更平常的话题。

　　Right. So the idea of doing the writing is that this gets the students thinking in a positive way.

　　对的，写这篇文章的想法是让学生以一种积极的方式思考。

　　And putting these thoughts into words can relax them and help them overcome the psychological factors that lead to poor performance. Yeah.

　　而且把这些想法转换成文字，会让他们放松并帮助他们克服导致成绩不佳的心理障碍。

　　But what the researchers in the study hadn't expected was that this one activity raised the women's physics grades from the C to the B range.

　　但是让研究人员大感意外的是，这样一个简单的举动竟然使女生的物理成绩从C提高到了B。

　　A huge change. Pity it wasn't to an A, but still!

　　成绩提高幅度很大啊。虽然很遗憾没有提高到A，但是也不错了!

　　No, but it does suggest that the women were seriously underperforming beforehand, in comparison with the men.

　　不过这确实证明女学生与男学生相比，在考试之前就严重表现不佳。

　　Yes. Mind you, Miyake's article left out a lot of details.

　　对，提醒你一下，Miyake的文章中还省略了很多细节。

　　Like, did the students do the writing just once, or several times?

　　比如，这些学生只写了一次文章，还是好几次呢?

　　And had they been told why they were doing the writing? That might have affected the results.

　　还有，他们有没有告诉过这些学生为什么要写这篇文章?这可能会影响考试成绩的。

　　You mean, if they know the researchers thought it might help them to improve, then they'd just try to fulfil that expectation?

　　你的意思是说，如果学生知道研究人员认为这个方法也许能帮助他们提高成绩的话，他们就会努力达到这个期望?

　　Exactly.

　　没错。