English is an excellent language to learn, whether it's for business, travel or personal reasons. Here are some important ways to improve your spoken English.

    When you have time to speak, just try your best to practice. Don't wait until you “feel more comfortable” speaking in English, so start speaking English today. You'll be surprised at how quickly your language skills improve. Find a native English speaker who is willing to spend some time speaking English with you—you may be able to offer them a language exchange, where they spend 30 minutes speaking English with you and you spend 30 minutes speaking your native language with them.

    Even if you have a good knowledge of the grammar and vocabulary, native English speakers may find it's very difficult to understand if you don't work on your pronunciation. Correct , clear pronunciation is necessary if you really want to improve your English. Listen closely to how native English speakers pronounce certain words and sounds and do your best to copy them.

    The wider your vocabulary and the more English phrases you learn, the easier speaking English will become. Once you have learned a new word or phrase, you should make an effort to use it in a sentence—this is the best way to keep it in mind. You should also start a notebook of phrases that English speakers use all the time.

    Another great way to add some more English conversation into your weekly practice is to sign up for a class of discussion group. Attending an English class is a great way to pay attention to some of the more formal aspects of speaking English. A class will teach you the correct way of speaking. Attending a discussion group is a more informal and relaxed way of learning English, where the emphasis(重点) is more on communication and relationship building than on speaking “correct” English.

    If you want to travel from Xi'an to Chengdu by train, it will take about 16 hours. But starting this month, the new Xi'an-Chengdu high-speed railway will shorten this travel time to three hours.

    The 643-kilometer line is China's first high-speed railway to run through the Qinling Mountains, which form a natural boundary (分界线) between China's north and south. With a speed of 250 km per hour, it's also the first mountain-heavy train line to provide a 4G network. Along the way, the train passes through two areas for rare (稀有) wild animals — one for pandas and the other for crested ibises (朱鹮).

    To reduce the railway's influence on the animals, workers and experts have designed and built the railway to be environmentally friendly. There were 345 wild pandas living in the Qinling Mountains. China currently has 1,864 wild pandas in total, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

    To avoid disturbing the pandas, the railway was designed to run through tunnels (隧道) within the area. Protective shields (防护屏) are placed near the entrance of each tunnel to stop animals from going in.

    To protect the thousands of crested ibises that fly near one part of the railway, protective nets have been set up to make sure the birds will not fly into a train.

    The nets are about 32 km long and 4 meters high. Experts tested different shapes and materials for building the nets before making their final choice.

    Do you know of anyone who uses the truth to deceive(欺骗)?When someone tells you something that is true, but leaves out important information that should be included, he can give you a false picture.

    For example, someone might say,“I just won a hundred dollars on the lottery(彩票).It was great. I took that dollar ticket back to the store and turned it in for one hundred dollars!”

    This guy's a winner, right? Maybe, maybe not. We then discover that he bought $200 worth of tickets, and only one was a winner. He's really a big loser!

    He didn't say anything that was false, but he left out important information on purpose. That's called a half-truth. Half-truths are not technically lies, but they are just as dishonest.

    Some politicians often use this trick. Let's say that during Governor Smith's last term, her state lost one million jobs and gained three million jobs. Then she seeks another term. One of her opponents(对手) says,“During Governor Smith's term, the state lost one million jobs!”That's true. However, an honest statement would have been,“During Governor Smith's term ,the state had a net gain of two million jobs.”

    Advertisers will sometimes use half-truths. It's against the law to make false statements so they try to mislead you with the truth. An advertisement might say,“Nine out of ten doctors advised their patients to take Yucky Pills to cure toothache.”It fails to mention that they only asked ten doctors and nine of them work for the Yucky Company.

    This kind of deception happens too often. It's a sad fact of life: Lies are lies, and sometimes the truth can lie as well.

    A family in Florida had a happy Christmas this year thanks to two local police officers, who answered a 911 call only to discover there was no emergency at all.

    When they arrived at the house of a single mother with two children, the officers discovered the younger child, about two years old, was playing with the phone. There were no signs of Christmas or holiday cheer in the house. "They weren't smiling. It seemed like they weren't happy at all. They were missing something," Officer Paramore said. "The mother mentioned that they weren't going to have a Christmas that year. It was pretty obvious that the family was struggling," he said. "So we told each other that something had to be done."

    Paramore and his partner, Barry Ward, left the house with a plan. The next day, they went to a supermarket and bought a tree, lights and some ornaments (装饰物) with their own money. Then they returned to the apartment to deliver some holiday cheer. "They hugged the tree," Paramore said. "I was glad to see that this family was going to have something to sit around and use." The police department posted the video on YouTube, hoping to share the happy news and inspire others.

    The department has received tons of donations and phone calls from people around the country asking how they can help the family. "We are covered," said Stephanie Slater, public information officer for the Boynton Beach Police Department. "We're asking people to do good in their communities on behalf of our officers. We appreciate it very much that people are talking about this after watching the news on TV because they need to see and need to be reminded that police officers are good guys," she said. "They are human beings who have a kind heart and they do things that go unnoticed like this every day."

    Spending money on time-saving services reduces stress and boosts(增进）happiness, according to a new research, but shockingly, few of us do it.

    Whillans, a professor at HBS said, "Buying time helps to protect us from the stress in our lives caused by time pressure, and the feeling that we don't have enough minutes in the day to complete our tasks."

    The effect was clearest in the Canadian experiment, in which 60 working adults were given $40 to spend in two different ways. One weekend, they were told to spend the money on a material purchase—a gift for themselves. The next weekend, they were instructed to spend the $40 on anything that saved them time, from paying the neighbor ' s kid to run errands (跑腿）to taking an Uber instead of a bus.

    〇n the day they made the time-saving purchase, they felt happier, in a better mood, and lower feelings of time stress than on the day they bought a material purchase," said Whillans.

    The biggest surprise to the researchers was how few people would spend money on time-saving services. When they asked 98 working adults how they would spend a "windfall" of $40, only two percent named a purchase that would save them time.

    "One reason," said Whillans, is that we're very bad at remembering how much we hate doing certain tasks once the suffering has passed. That makes us less likely to take active steps to avoid that overburdened feeling in the future. "But another possible cause is good old-fashioned guilt." If you feel guilty about getting someone to clean your house for you, then you might get less happiness from outsourcing (夕卜包）that task," said Whillans, "or you might just be less likely to spend your money in that way."

The Art Institute of Chicago

    Visiting time

    The museum is open daily 10:30 am-5:00 pm. The museum and its shops are closed on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and New Year's Day.

    Highlights of the Art Institute

    American Art

    Discover how artists have expressed the many aspects of the American experience through the rich variety of this collection. This tour might include the works of artists like Paul Revere, Winslow Homer, and Georgia O'Keeffe.

    Impressionism: Monet, Degas, Renoir and More

    Learn about the color and excitement of late 19th-century life as you view one of the most admired collections of French Impressionism in the world.

    Hidden Histories

    Hear stories about artists and their artworks that may be overlooked or under-appreciated for one reason or another  These could be very small or out-of-the-way works.

    For families with children

    With free admission for kids under 14 and Chicago teens under 18, the Art Institute is the perfect place for a creative outing with the whole family.

    Visit the Family Room in the Ryan Education Center, and introduce your children to the museum's collections with a variety of activities. Assemble (组装)puzzles based on masterpieces in the museum, build architectural wonders with colorful blocks, and learn about art through stories and games. Food is available at an on-site cafe. (Outside food is not allowed to be brought in.)