托福閱讀能力的提高重在日常積累，這種積累主要體現在兩個方面：按部就班的托福閱讀真題練習和拓展英文文章資訊的閱讀。前者的重要性自不必說，我們都知道任何考試想要更好備考必須充分利用好真題資料，而真題訓練之外的拓展材料閱讀則可以有效提升我們對英文文本資料的熟練度和敏感度，同時積累好的表達應用到寫作中去。下面我們來看一篇雙語閱讀素材：性別多樣與言論自由。

性別多樣性與言論自由

并非惡行，只是不對

比起迅速把一名直言不諱的工程師炒掉，谷歌原本還有更好的處理方法

Gender diversity and free speech

Not evil, just wrong

Google had better ways of dealing with an outspoken engineer than immediately sacking him

THE talk in Silicon Valley just now is as likely to be about sex as software. Women in tech firms feel badly treated. And they are right: they rarely get the top jobs, they are sometimes paid less than men and many suffer unwanted sexual advances. Most of their male colleagues sympathise; at the same time some feel they cannot express unorthodox opinions on gender. And they are right, too: they can easily fall foul of written and unwritten rules, and face drastic consequences.在硅谷，性別問題眼下差不多成了和軟件一樣常見的話題(寫作句型)。科技公司的女員工覺得自己的待遇很差。她們是對的：高層中女性很少見，女員工的薪酬有時會比男員工低，很多女員工還會遭到性騷擾(詞匯翻譯)。大多數男同事都表示同情，但同時也有一些人覺得自己不能就性別問題發表非正統的意見。這些人也沒錯：他們很容易就會違反各種成文或不成文的規定，并因此面對嚴重的后果。

The charged atmospherehelps explain why “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber”, a memo by a young software engineer, James Damore, has caused such a stir. It says that the firm’s efforts to hire more women are biased. After circulating internally, it went viral. On August 7th Mr Damore was fired. To quote Sundar Pichai, Google’s boss, he advanced“harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace”.氣氛如此緊張，也就不難理解(寫作句型)為什么年輕的軟件工程師詹姆士·達莫爾的備忘錄《谷歌的意識形態回音室》會攪起如此大的波瀾。備忘錄中寫道，谷歌積極雇用更多女員工，實為偏見之舉。這篇備忘錄先是在內部流傳，后來迅速向外傳播開來。8月7日，達莫爾被解雇。谷歌CEO桑德爾·皮查伊的說法是，達莫爾“在工作場合中宣揚有害的性別成見”。

Mr Pichai had good reasons to sack Mr Damore. One is the content of the memo. It says many reasonable-sounding things: that “we all have biases” and that “honest discussion with those who disagree can highlight our blind spots”. But these are just camouflage before a stonking rhetorical “but”: the argument that innate differences, rather than sexism and discrimination, explain why women fare worse in the technology industry than men. “Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)”, Mr Damore writes, “may contribute…to the lower number of women in high-stress jobs.”皮查伊有充分的理由炒掉達莫爾。其中之一是備忘錄本身的內容。里面說了很多聽起來很合理的事情，如“我們誰都會有偏見”，“與意見相左者進行坦誠的討論，會讓我們注意到自己的盲區”。然而，這些只是掩飾(寫作句型)，接下來話鋒便猛地一轉(寫作句型)，來了一個“但是”：女性在科技行業的發展較男性差，原因并不是性別偏見和歧視，而是男女之間與生俱來的差異。他寫道，“神經質(焦慮程度更高，抗壓能力較低)也許是造成高壓力崗位上女性較少的原因。”

Research has indeed shown some smallish group-level differences in personality and interests between the sexes. But drawing a line from this to women’s suitability for tech jobs is puerile. An unbiased eye would light on social factors rather than innate differences as the reason why only a fifth of computer engineers are women. Mr Damore claims women are “more interested in people than things” but, if this were true, they would in fact be better than men at the senior software-engineering jobs that involve managing teams. As for blind spots, although he repeatedly uses the words “discriminate” and “discrimination”, Mr Damore does so only to describe the unfairness to men of trying to hire more women.確實有研究表明，男女在個性和興趣方面存在群體層面的差別，但差別并不大。然而，把這一點同女性是否適合從事技術工作聯系起來就太幼稚(別老naive)了。未被偏見所蒙蔽的眼睛會發現，是社會因素造成了只有五分之一的計算機工程師是女性，而非先天性的差別。達莫爾聲稱，女性“對人的興趣比對東西的興趣更大”，但如果這種說法是對的，那么女性其實要比男性更能勝任軟件工程方面的高級職務，因為這涉及團隊管理。至于盲點，雖然達莫爾一再使用“歧視”這個詞，但只不過為了表明嘗試雇用更多女性對男性造成了不公。

Mr Pichai also has legal arguments on his side. The American constitution protects free speech in public, but within a company’s walls that right is limited by what bosses deem acceptable. After Mr Damore had suggested they are less qualified because of their sex, women at Google could have refused to work with him and taken legal action. Moreover, he may have known that his memo would be seized on in Alt-Right circles (it got top billing on Breitbart and far-right websites).皮查伊這邊還有法律依據作為支撐。美國憲法保護公民在公開場合的言論自由，不過在一家公司內，這項權利是有限度的，言論是否得宜要視老板們的意見而定(寫作句型)。達莫爾道出女性的性別決定了她們資質不足的想法后，谷歌的女員工本可拒絕與他共事并采取法律行動。再者，他可能已料到自己的備忘錄會被另類右翼圈子抓住大做文章(該備忘錄在布賴特巴特新聞網以及極右翼網站上占據最顯眼的位置。)

Still, there was a better response to Mr Damore than immediately giving him the sack. Other firms may limit their workers’ speech, but the largest search engine, with a mission to “organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible”, should hold itself to a higher standard. It should not be suspected of limiting the debate of thorny subjects.不過，還是有比立馬炒掉他更好的應對方式。其他公司也許會限制員工的言論，不過，谷歌既身為世界最大的搜索引擎，且肩負著“整合全球信息，供大眾使用，使人人受益”的使命，就應以更高的標準來要求自己。它不應該有限制員工探討敏感問題的嫌疑。(觀點)

Speak up

It would have been better for Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and the boss of Alphabet, its holding company, to write a ringing, detailed rebuttal of Mr Damore’s argument. Google could have stood up for its female employees while demonstrating the value of free speech. That might have led to the “honest discussion” Mr Damore claimed to want—and avoided the ersatz(代用品) one about his firing. It would have shown that his arguments are not taboo, but mostly foolish and ill-informed. And it would have countered his more defensible claim: that Google, and the Valley, so welcoming of gender diversity, are narrower-minded about unorthodox opinions.

大聲說出來

如果谷歌創始人兼谷歌母公司Alphabet的老板拉里·佩奇當時能寫一篇雄文(寫作句型)，詳盡駁斥達莫爾的觀點，會更好些。谷歌本可以在維護女員工權益的同時證明言論自由的價值。這樣也許就可促成達莫爾宣稱要進行的“坦誠的討論”，后來成為討論主題的也就不會是他被辭退這件事(小詞活用)了。如果這樣的討論得以實現，那么就可表明達莫爾的觀點并非觸犯了禁忌，而是很大程度上既愚蠢又一知半解;這樣還可以反駁他那個看似有理的說法：谷歌和硅谷那么歡迎性別多樣性，卻沒有直面非正統意見的胸襟。

以上就是關于性別多樣與言論自由的雙語閱讀素材分享，大家可以結合自己的托福閱讀備考需求，進行精讀或泛讀的練習，有的放矢的提高自身閱讀水平，進而實現分數提升。