서문여고 2026 고1 1학기 기말 · 공통영어1

If you gesture while describing an event, do you think you'll be able to recall that event better than if you don't gesture? We had adults watch videos of toy objects, animals, and people performing various, sometimes odd, actions: a chicken sliding to a policeman, a jogger bending down to touch his toes, a fence swinging shut on its own. We then tested the adults' memories of these events immediately after the descriptions and three weeks later. Adults who were told to gesture while describing the events remembered more than adults who were told not to gesture, particularly several weeks later. To see if we'd get the same effects if people gestured on their own, we did the study again, but this time we gave the adults no instructions about gesture. We found the same patterns: people remembered items on which they had gestured spontaneously better than items on which they had not gestured. Producing gesture along with speech makes the information encoded in that speech memorable.

A classical ideal of truth and knowledge is the concept of a market for ideas: as thinking individuals, we encounter competing ideas, we evaluate them for their best fit to reality, and then let the best and brightest facts form the basis of our beliefs. That would be the scientist's way, in theory at least. But in practice, most of the time we are in a market for justifications ① We shop for words not because they contain ideas, but because they contain stories about ideas. ② Often we are not seeking statements as facts to help us figure out what we should believe. ③ Usually we already know what we believe: what we seek are statements to justify those beliefs—the lawyer's way. ⑤ Language might be good for this function but we can use it to do better. By treating language with greater respect, we can achieve more than simple self-defense.

We crave high-fat foods because they're satisfying on many different levels. “When we eat a fatty food, we get a drowsy, sensuous feeling,” says Howard Moskowitz, Ph.D., a psychologist and president of Moskowitz Jacobs, Inc., a consumer research company. ① Fat-free foods might make us feel virtuous, and they may temporarily dull a craving, but they don't make us feel deeply content in the same way fatty foods do. ② In fact, people often enjoy meals more when they are shared with close friends or family members in a relaxed atmosphere. ③ Not to mention the fact that high-fat foods are pleasurable. ④ When you bite into a piece of dense cake or take a spoonful of rich ice cream, the creamy, rich texture that comes from fat is what feels good in your mouth. ⑤ Fat also makes food tender—the flaky crust and the moist muffin both owe their appeal to fat.