预习！英创教育9月24日早读分享

英创教育「早鸟早读」计划第【3284】天明早8:30不见不散??

Part 1 – Saying Thank You

Q: Have you ever sent a thank you card to others?Well, I have, but not for a long time. And, in fact, physical cards in general are much less common nowadays than they were, let"s say, 15 or 20 years ago.I remember when I was growing up, you would send physical cards for Christmas and for birthdays and for a celebration or if someone had some bad news or to say thank you to people. So it was very common those days. If someone has helped me with something, I"ll more often give them a call or send them a text or email them.But sending a physical card is not something I generally tend to do very often.

说到英国人的礼貌，第二个问题紧接着就来了——

Q: Do people in your country often say thank you?Yes. In the UK, we"re known for being quite polite, sometimes too polite, really.We"re not very direct with our language. And some Americans feel like we talk too long and beat around the bush—like we don"t get to the point because we"re being so polite. So, yes, we do say thank you a lot.And I think it"s overall probably better to be a little bit more polite rather than being less polite than we should be.

那英国人一般啥时候说谢谢？

Q: On what occasions do you say thank you?Well, I think it"s mostly just if someone has helped you in some way—like giving you information, their time, even just a few words, or inconveniencing themselves to help you or give you something. If it benefits me, I"ll say thank you.

那为啥得说谢谢啊？其实是文化里带的。

Q: Why do people need to say thank you?Well, I think it"s a cultural thing really. We want to fit in with the crowd and don"t want to alienate people. That goes back to our hunter-gatherer days tens of thousands of years ago—if you were by yourself, it was very hard to survive. So it was imperative to follow the social norms of your group. And that, in terms of evolution, has stayed with us. Today, we still want to fit in and don"t want to be too different (at least 99% of people don"t). So saying thank you and following other social norms is just a learned behaviour, part of our culture.

接下来进入Part 2，聊聊卖二手物品的网站。

Part 2 – A Second-Hand Website

Well, I think the most famous website (at least in the UK and the US) that sells second-hand items is eBay. It first became popular in the late 1990s or early 2000s, although I"m not totally sure about the dates.

和现在的电商平台不一样，eBay*核心的是竞拍模式。

It was famous as a place where you could bid on different items. Unlike Amazon or other similar marketplaces (where you see the price, check stock, click to buy, and wait for delivery), eBay had an auction process. For example, if the recommended price was five pounds, you might bid three or four pounds, then someone else might bid ￡4.50, and you might raise it to ￡5. It was like a real auction.

这种模式其实有个好处——

And in some ways, that was quite advantageous: if it was an unusual, special, or rare item, you had a chance to get it at a really low cost and snag a good bargain.

可eBay为啥没像亚马逊那么火呢？

I think the reason eBay didn"t become as successful as Amazon is because most people don"t have time for bidding and auctions. It"s exciting for individual items, but when you need something normal or standard and want to buy it online, it"s easier to just see the price and buy.

那时候eBay特别火，差不多人人都知道。

How did I find out about it? It was everywhere—they put lots of adverts on TV, in newspapers, magazines, and on the Internet at the time. In the early 2000s, almost everyone in the UK had heard of eBay; it was extremely famous.

我现在不用eBay了，当年倒是喜欢，但只用来买些特别的东西——正常日常用品我可不爱竞拍。

Do I like it? I don"t use it nowadays because it"s much less popular than it used to be. I liked it back then, but only for buying unusual items. I wasn"t keen on bidding for normal, everyday items.