Question

Last week, my granddaughter started kindergarten(幼兒園), and certainly I wished her success. I was saying something that is not true. What I actually wish for her is failure. I believe in the importance of failure.

Success is boring. Success is proving that you can do something that you already know you can do, or do something correctly the first time, which can often be a problem for the future. First-time success is usually a fluke(僥幸). First-time failure, in fact, is the natural order of things.

Failure means how we learn. I have been told of an African phrase(短語) describing a good cook as “she who has broken many bowls”. If you’ve spent enough time in the kitchen and have broken a lot of bowls, probably you know a lot about cooking. I once had a dinner with a group of cooks, and they spent time comparing knife wounds and burn scars. They knew how much their failures gave them.

My younger daughter is a dancer. She spent three years getting ready for an act. She did it successfully for years. There was no reason for her to change the act—but she did anyway. She said she was no longer learning anything new and she was bored; and if she was bored, she couldn’t play well. So she changed the act. She risked failure in order to feed her heart.

My granddaughter is a perfectionist. But I will also, I hope, remind her of what she learned, and how she can do whatever it is better next time. I probably won’t tell her that failure is a good thing, because that’s not a lesson you can learn when you’re five. I hope I can tell her, though, that it’s not the end of the world. Indeed, with luck, it is the beginning.

1.What did the writer really wish for her granddaughter in the kindergarten?

A. Success. B. Failure. C. Kindness. D. Care.

2.The third paragraph mainly tells us .

A. what “a good cook” means B. a cook should often cook

C. a cook must break many bowls D. failure means how we learn

3. Why did the younger daughter change the act?

A. Because she didn’t do well in it.

B. Because she was asked to change it.

C. Because she wanted to feed her heart.

D. Because she wanted to try a failure.

4.What does the writer hope to tell the granddaughter?

A. Failure is a good thing.

B. She can’t fail any more.

C. Failure is not the end of the world.

D. Success is the end of the world.

Answer 1