In France, franglais（英式法语）was seen as a national threat. Just as we took in thousands of French words in the Middle Ages, French speakers and writers today are taking in thousands of English and American expressions. By 1994, so many English words had made their way to French that the French government passed a law forbidding the use of English words where good French words existed.

    But the latest edition of the Academy francaise dictionary did admit about 6,000 new words to the French language, including, for the first time, a number of franglais words and expressions.

    However, this sort of thing is not just limited to traditional English – French Competition. Norway and Brazil have recently taken similar measures to keep English out.

    As English spreads around the globe, it has developed rich varieties. English has been spoken in Singapore since the early 19^th century, but after independence from Britain, Singapore went a step further and English was made the official language of business and government. But the day −to–day English that the people of Singapore actually speak is a far cry from the official English that the government wants them to learn. It has become an expressive dialect called “Singlish”, full of vocabulary and grammar borrowed from the Singapores' native languages.

    And this may be the irony（讽刺）of the global spread of English. The more widely it's spoken, the more it may change into local dialects, which are not easily intelligible. People will make English their own and, in doing so, will make it something else. This has happened before to Latin which broke into French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. But English has always welcomed variety and change, and it still does.

    I was desperately nervous about becoming car-free. But eight months ago our car was hit by a passing vehicle and it was destroyed. No problem, I thought: we'll buy another. But the insurance payout didn't even begin to cover the costs of buying a new car－I worked out that, with the loan, we'd need plus petrol, insurance, parking permits and tax, we would make a payment as much as £600 a month.

    And that's when I had my fancy idea. Why not just give up having a car at all? I live in London. We have a railway station behind our house, a tube station 10 minutes' walk away, and a bus stop at the end of the street. A new car club had just opened in our area, and one of its shiny little red Peugeots was parked nearby. If any family in Britain could live without a car, I reasoned, then surely we were that family.

    But my new car-free idea, sadly, wasn't shared by my family. My teenage daughters were horrified. What would their friends think about our family being "too poor to afford a car"? (I wasn't that bothered what they thought, and I suggested the girls should take the same approach.)

    My friends, too, were astonished at our plan. What would happen if someone got seriously ill overnight and needed to go to hospital? (an ambulance) How would the children get to and from their many events? (buses and trains) People smiled as though this was another of my mad ideas, before saying they were sure I'd soon realize that a car was a necessity.

    Eight months on, I wonder whether we'll ever own a car again. The idea that you "have to" own a car, especially if you live in a city, is all in the mind. I live—and many other citizens do too—in a place that has never been better served by public transport, and yet car ownership has never been higher. We worry about rising car costs, but we'd be better off asking something much more basic: do I really need a car? Certainly the answer is no, and I'm a lot richer because I dared to ask the question.

    A day in the life of 18-year-old David Lanster is full of teenage activities: school, baseball practice, homework. And then he starts cooking. "Some nights I'm up until 1 a.m. making pies, or even later if we're cooking beef," said the student at Ransom Everglades High School in Florida, US.

    For the past year, Lanster and Kelly Moran, his classmate, have been hosting fancy dinner parties at Lanster's parents' home. Their meals have 17 courses and are all made by them. Their guests used to give them gifts to thank them, until the pair decided to do something nice for charity. "We got some really great Miami Heat tickets, a nice watch, and many kitchen machines," Lanster said. "But we wanted to make this something positive for people rather than us."

    Lanster and Moran focused on Common Threads, a charity(慈善机构) that helps to teach kids in poor neighborhood to cook and make healthy eating choices. The young cooks ask their guests to give however much they want as payment for their meals. It all goes to Common Threads because Lanster's parents cover their food costs. After their last 12-person event, Lanster and Moran gave $1,600 to the charity. Now, they're taking their show out of the kitchen and on the road. Lanster and Moran have started to organize private dinner parties in a similar way: the host pays for the ingredients(食材), and the guests make a donation (捐赠) to a charity.

    Outside the kitchen, the two are busy preparing their college applications. Neither is sure what they will do in the future, but they've promised their parents that they'll leave cooking alone until they finish high school.

Teaching Poetry

    No poem should ever be discussed or "analyzed", until it has been read aloud by someone, teacher or student. Better still, perhaps, is the practice of reading it twice, once at the beginning of the discussion and once at the end, so the sound of the poem is the last thing one hears of it.

    All discussions of poetry are, in fact, preparations for reading it aloud, and the reading of the poem is, finally, the most telling "interpretation" of it, suggesting tone, rhythm, and meaning all at once. Hearing a poet read the work in his or her own voice, on records or on film, is obviously a special reward. But even those aids to teaching can not replace the student and teacher reading it or, best of all, reciting it.

    I have come to think, in fact, that time spent reading a poem aloud is much more important than "analysing" it, if there isn't time for both. I think one of our goals as teachers of English is to have students love poetry. Poetry is "a criticism of life", and "a heightening of lief". It is "an approach to the truth of feeling", and it "can save your life". It also deserves a place in the teaching of language and literature more central than it presently occupies.

    I am not saying that every English teacher must teach poetry. Those who don't like it should not be forced to communicate this to anyone else. But those who do teach poetry must keep in mind a few things about its essential nature, about its sound as well as its sense, and they must make room in the classroom for hearing poetry as well as thinking about it.

    Teachers are conditioned to tolerate a lot of bad treatment—it's a professional suffering—but what teachers at Sir G.E. Cartier Elementary School in London went through last spring seems beyond the call of duty: a few of them agreed to be tied to a rail in the gym while students hit them in the face with cream pies. Why on earth would they do that? To raise $3,000 – enough cash for an interactive whiteboard, the most desirable piece of educational technology on the market right now. These Internet-age boards are essentially giant computer touchscreens, and they are all the fashion in schools. But with little room for them in school budgets, many educators are doing whatever it takes to raise the money themselves. "We are a desperate breed, aren't we?" says Sharon Zinn, one of three teachers who volunteered for Cartier Elementary's whipped- cream-flavored activity.

    At schools fortunate enough to have them, interactive-white boards are a blessing for educators struggling to attract a generation of students who got accustomed to using the Web from the early age. In the UK—where 70 percent of all primary and secondary classrooms have interactive whiteboards, compared with just 16 percent in the United States – students in those classrooms made the equivalent of five mouths' additional progress in math. So far, the data on the efficacy (有效性)of touchscreens in US classrooms is inconclusive, but promising. Multiple recent studies suggest that the devices advance attendance rates and classroom participation. Ever since Dorchester School District 2 in Summerville installed 1,200 interactive boards in its classrooms, disciplinary incidents are cut down. "Students were bored" before the touchscreens arrived, says Superintendent Joe Pye." Trips to the principal's office are almost nonexistent now."

    But for some teachers, learning to use the device is not easy, and a generation gap has opened with teachers who are still used to writing lesson plans with a pen and paper. Many older educators are terrified by the boards, says Peter Kornicker, a media specialist in Harlem, where despite a student poverty rate of 98 percent, all 35 classrooms are equipped with touchscreens. "As always, it comes back to the ability of teachers to master this technology," says Andy Rotherham of Education Sector in Washington, D.C. "We have to train them to use it. Otherwise, it's just another underused, expensive thing."

Welcome to the Public Transport Guide for Parents where you will find all the information and decisions you need to make to prepare your child for travelling on Trans Link's public transport network in South East Queensland.

We have three planning tools to help you find the most suitable public transport mode and school route for your child: School service finder. Journey planner, and Qconnect journey planner.

My TransLink is the official Queensland Government app for public transport in South East Queensland, Mackay, Cairns. Toowoomba and Townsville.

When using journey planner, make sure you select a date that falls on a school day and choose between 'Depart' or 'Arrive before' to tailor your search.

You can contact your local school bus operator for more information about the school service and student assistance options.

If you live outside South East Queensland, please contact your local Passenger and School Transport Office.

To find the best travel product for your child, visit student ticketing options. The most common concession (特许) is the child and student go cards:

·All primary and secondary school students are qualified for a concession go card.

· Concession fares are 50 percent of an adult fare.

· A further 50 percent is deducted(扣除）after the 8th paid journey within a week (Monday to Sunday).

School students 15 years and older must hold a valid student ID (issued by school) to buy a green go card.