第二部分 中英對照

　　Greg，我終于看完了你提到過的那篇文章，

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

　　就是那篇關于研究物理學系的性別差異的文章。

　　the one about the study on gender in physics.

　　那篇Akira Miyake的團隊研究大學生的文章?

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

　　這些研究人員中實際上既有心理學家又有物理學家，這一點讓我很感興趣。

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

　　這種組合可不常見。

　　That's an unusual combination.

　　對，我一開始還有點弄不清楚，這項研究是針對哪些學生進行的。

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

　　他們并不真的都是物理學專業(yè)的學生，他們的專業(yè)被稱為STEM學科。

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

　　里面包含了科學、技術、工程和.....數(shù)學。

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

　　對，但是他們的一部分專業(yè)課都包括了物理學的課程。

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

　　沒錯。從我理解的來看，

　　That's correct. So as I understood it,

　　Miyake團隊是以女學生在物理入門課程中出席率不足這一事實作為切入點的，

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

　　而且那些選擇了物理課程的女學生平均成績也要比男學生差一些。

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

　　沒人知道為什么會出現(xiàn)這種情況。

　　No one really knows why this is the case.

　　對，但是這些研究人員基本上只是想要弄清楚他們能做些什么，來改善這種女生成績相對較低的情況。

　　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.

　　但是為了找到解決方法，他們需要更深入地探究這一問題的本質。

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

　　沒錯，看我記的對不對......在物理專業(yè)的班級中，

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

　　女學生認為班上的男學生一致覺得她們根本不懂物理，對不對?

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

　　而且她們還覺得男生指望她們在考試中取得不好的成績。

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

　　這只是她們自己以為而已，不過這種想法使她們緊張不安，最終成績不理想。

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

　　但她們是錯的，根本沒人在對女學生做任何猜想。

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

　　不管怎樣，Miyake團隊做的事情非常簡單，他們讓學生們在進入物理課教室之前，先寫了一些東西。

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

　　他們管這個叫什么來著?

　　What did they call it?

　　價值觀認定。學生們要以對他們來說很重要的事情為題寫一篇文章，

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

　　不用特地選擇和他們所學科目相關的話題，

　　not particularly to do with the subject they were studying,

　　更多的是像音樂或者對他們很重要的人這類更平常的話題。

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

　　對的，寫這篇文章的想法是讓學生以一種積極的方式思考。

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

　　而且把這些想法轉換成文字，會讓他們放松并幫助他們克服導致成績不佳的心理障礙。

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

　　但是讓研究人員大感意外的是，這樣一個簡單的舉動竟然使女生的物理成績從C提高到了B。

　　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.

　　成績提高幅度很大啊。雖然很遺憾沒有提高到A，但是也不錯了!

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

　　不過這確實證明女學生與男學生相比，在考試之前就嚴重表現(xiàn)不佳。

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

　　對，提醒你一下，Miyake的文章中還省略了很多細節(jié)。

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

　　比如，這些學生只寫了一次文章，還是好幾次呢?

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

　　還有，他們有沒有告訴過這些學生為什么要寫這篇文章?這可能會影響考試成績的。

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

　　你的意思是說，如果學生知道研究人員認為這個方法也許能幫助他們提高成績的話，他們就會努力達到這個期望?

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

　　沒錯。

　　Exactly.