A
Asking for help is a sign of strength rather than weakness. In American culture, the independent individual is seen as their ideal. As the University of Missouri at St. Louis states on its website under the heading Key American Values, “Americans have been trained since very early in their lives to consider themselves as separate individuals who are responsible for their own situations in life and their own destinies.” The value also makes them think they can do everything themselves, and makes them feel badly about asking for help when they need it.
And when it comes to work situations, when they think about asking for help there, sometimes they fear that a request for help would make them look inept. While this has always been true for men, many women in the workplace have felt the need to try twice as hard as their male colleagues and do twice as much to get just as far and to prove their worth. Sometimes when we think about asking for help, our inner voices tell us, “See, if you admit you can’t do this on your own, they’ll see you for the imposter(骗子) you really are.”
But the fact is, even though individualism is on the rise, we can’t do everything by ourselves and we shouldn’t try.
Apple founder Steve Jobs once told the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association about the power of asking for help, and how he “never found anybody who didn’t want to help me when I asked them for help”. He said, at the age of 12, he called Bill Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, on the phone after getting his number from the phone book and asking him for spare parts so he could build a frequency counter(计频器). And Hewlett agreed and offered young Jobs a summer job assembling frequency counters.
“If you’re afraid of failing, you won’t get very far,” Jobs said.
1. What is the first paragraph mainly about?
A. What key American values are.
B. Why Americans refuse to ask for help.
C. Asking for help is a sign of strength.
D. Americans are responsible for their life.
2. Which of the following can replace the underlined word “inept” in Paragraph 2?
A. impolite B. identical C. incompetent D. inappropriate
3. What can be learned from this US cultural phenomenon?
A. Americans suffer a lot from mutual distrust.
B. Americans see weakness as a sign of strength.
C. Americans should learn to build up confidence.
D. Americans lay emphasis on individual values.
4. What can we learn from Jobs’ words in the last paragraph?
A. Don’t hesitate to ask for assistance.
B. Be brave to try whatever you want.
C. Failure is the mother of success.
D. Learn to cooperate with others.
