These people are studying English. However, they are now facing some problems.

Learning to speak English well may be the best thing you can do to improve your life. That's right. If you can communicate in English, you can：

Contact people from all over the world. Talk about your ideas and opinions on the Internet discussion groups. Send e­mail to interesting people. Learn about their life and culture. Travel more easily. Communicate with people wherever you go—English is spoken in more than 100 countries. Ask directions, have a conversation, or… ask for help. Who knows, maybe English will save your life someday!

Push your career forward. If you want to find a good job in business, technology, or science, get out of that armchair and start learning English now! (If you already have a good job, start learning before you lose it!)

Knowing English will let you：

Put " excellent knowledge of English" on your CV (履历). Get your dream job, and earn more money.

Gain technical knowledge. English is the language of technology, especially high technology like computer science, genetics, and medicine. If you're going to read about technology, you'll probably have to do it in English.

Learn computer science. Read technical articles without difficulty or write your own articles!

Be a world­class businessperson. It's simple. International business is done in English. And all business today is international. So if you want to play, you have to know English—to contact other business people, go to conferences, read international business newspapers and magazines, etc.

Become a better scientist. Contact scientists from other countries, go to international conferences, and visit academic centers abroad. Learn about new scientific discoveries by reading papers, books, and magazines.

Use your computer more effectively. Most computer applications are in English, so you will understand them better and become a better employee.

Do you love bacon(熏猪肉)? Who doesn't, right? From time to time, you may have heard the phrase" bring home the bacon". Did you ever wonder what that means?

Actually," bring home the bacon" is a common phrase used to mean" to earn money". If you're" bringing home the bacon", you're making money to bring home to your family. So how is the meat connected with making money?

One popular story holds that the phrase appeared in the 1100s in a small town of Great Dunmow in England. The church(教堂) in Great Dunmow would give a rasher of bacon as a reward to any man who could honestly say that he had not argued(争吵) with his wife for a year. Others believe the phrase got started in the 1500s at country fairs. One of the most popular competitions included catching a pig. The prize for it was that you got to keep it.

Since the 1600s, the word" bacon" has been used to mean one's body. Because people often connect the body with one's ability to work and earn money, it's believed that bacon finally took on that meaning, too. One way of earning money with one's body back then was the sport of boxing.

On September 3, 1906, boxer Joe Gans fought against Oliver Nelson for the world lightweight championship in Goldfield, Nevada. According to the Reno Evening Gazette, Joe received a telegram(电报) from his mother before the fight. It read:" Joe, the eyes of the world are on you. Everybody says you ought to win. Peter Jackson will tell me the news and you bring home the bacon." Joe Gans did win the fight and the prize money that went along with the victory. He sent a telegram back to his mother, saying that he was" bringing home the bacon". Mrs. Gans was probably repeating a phrase she had heard before, but hers was the first us age that experts can find. Before long, the phrase was being used commonly in boxing, and it also quickly moved to other sports.

There is a common belief among parents that schools are no longer interested in spelling. No school I have taught in has ever considered spelling unimportant as a basic skill. There are, however, quite different ideas about how to teach it, or how much priority(优先) it must be given over general language development and writing ability. The problem is, how to encourage a child to express himself freely in writing without holding him back with spelling.

If spelling becomes the only point of his teacher's interest, clearly a bright child will be likely to" play safe". He will write only words within his spelling range(范围). That's why teachers often encourage the early use of dictionaries and pay attention to content(内容) rather than technical(技术的) ability.

I was once shocked to read on the bottom of a sensitive piece of writing about a personal experience:" This work is terrible！There are far too many spelling mistakes. " It may have been a sharp criticism(批评) of the pupils' technical abilities in writing, but it was also a sad thing for the teacher who had failed to read the composition(作文), which contained some beautiful expressions of the child's deep feelings. The teacher was not wrong to draw attention to the mistakes, but if his priority had centered on the child's ideas, an expression of his disappointment with the presentation would have given the pupil more hope to seek improvement.

The guy who tried to edit English

The English vocabulary is not only huge, but also full of words that mean practically the same thing. Get, obtain, acquire. Shine, gleam, glow, sparkle.

That was the thinking of a British writer named C. K. Ogden, who in the 1930s proposed (提议) a new form of English with a vocabulary of just 850 words. He called the project Basic English.

Ogden arrived at his 850­word list through experimentation, rephrasing texts over and over until he was satisfied. The words he finally included were not necessarily the shortest or most concrete.  Because any verbal idea could be expressed with a small number of" operators" —words like come, go, get, take, have, make, be, and do. Ogden argued that most verbs were unnecessary. In Basic English, eat is" have a meal", and forget is" go from memory".

Winston Churchill was a fan of the concept as a way to get foreigners to speak English, and he encouraged the BBC to use it.  Roosevelt, who expressed mild interest, joked that Churchill's famous speech about offering his" blood, toil, tears, and sweat" to his country wouldn't have been so exciting if he" had been able to offer the British people only blood, work, eye water, and face water, which I understand is the best that Basic English can do with five famous words. "

 Churchill didn't use it either. When seeking to express ourselves, we don't necessarily need fewer words; we need the right words. So it's to our benefit to have a large supply on hand.

A. Do we really need them all?

B. How many words are there in English?

C. Ogden himself didn't actually use Basic English.

D. Plenty of seemingly basic words did not make the list at all.

E. He also tried to persuade President Franklin Roosevelt to promote it.

F. He believed it would make the language more efficient and easier to learn.

G. Despite attention from world leaders, Basic English never got very far off the drawing board.

Do you know how many languages there are in the world？There are about 5,500, but many of them are not considered very 1. English is considered one of the most important languages because many people 2 it, not only in the UK and the US, but in other countries of the world. About 375 million speak it 3 their own language, and another 750 million use it as a 4 language. It is 5 to say how many people are learning it. Millions of boys and girls in schools are trying to do so.

Many English children 6 French. French is also a very important language. Some children learn German,  7, Japanese and Russian, of which Chinese is getting more and more popular.

Which is the best way to learn a language？We know that we all learnt the 8 language well when we were 9. If we learn a second language in the same way, it may not seem so difficult. What does a small child do？He 10 what people say, and he tries to guess what he hears. When he wants something, he has to 11 it. He is using the language, 12 and talking in it at all times. If people use a second language all the time, they will learn it 13.

In school, you learn to read, to write, to hear and to 14. It is best to learn all new words through the 15. You can read them, spell them and speak them later.

Traditional Chinese culture is beginning to attract the attention of the world. Kung fu, (especial), has had a great effect  millions of people who first learnt about China through it. Sometimes, they may come to China and learn about some other aspects(方面) of this culture. Some Asian (nation) have long known about the (great) of ancient Chinese culture. Their own cultures are  mix of native ones and those Chinese characteristics. South Korea and Japan long ago adopted Confucianism, something that continues today even if it (challenge) by pop culture. This strength comes from the ideas (give) in the Four Books of Confucianism, which were built upon the idea of an even (ancient) period included in the Five Classics. From them, the West learns  is uniquely Chinese, for example, feng shui.

So far China has taken steps (increase) this spread of its culture by establishing(建立) Chinese Cultural Centres in such places as the United States and Europe.

1）学习书法的意义；

2）学习书法的技巧；

3）给他鼓励和信心。

注意：1）词数80左右；

2）可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；

3）信的开头和结尾已给出，但不计入总词数。

参考词汇：书法calligraphy；毛笔writing brush

Dear Mike,

I'm sorry to know that you have difficulty in learning Chinese calligraphy.

……

Best wishes.

Yours,

Li Hua

Does writing come hard to you？Are you discouraged to find yourself poor in writing？Nobody is born knowing how to write. Good writing habits, which help make you write on a regular basis, are necessary for you to improve your writing.

Firstly, you are supposed to read a wide range of books. It's obvious when a writer is not well read lack of reading will be obvious in every sentence one writes. Reading prepares you with necessary knowledge to be a good writer. What's more, it provides you with basic skills for writing. The importance of reading cannot be stressed too much: read as much and as often as you can.

Secondly, it's important to make a writing schedule and write daily if it is possible. Whether you write for two hours a day or fifteen minutes a day, daily writing is the key to developing good writing habits. It's better to write for fifteen or twenty minutes every day than to sit for five or six hours to write over the weekend. However, if you can make a daily writing schedule with longer hours on your writing on weekends, then it's much better.

One of the worst habits is never to get help from others to improve your writing. It is advised that you share your work with others. For example, you can send your writing to a few friends, round up some readers and let them comment on your writing. That way, you'll find your writing gradually improved.