The concept of culture has been defined many times, and although no definition has achieved universal acceptance, most of the definitions include three central ideas: that culture is passed on from generation to generation, that a culture represents a ready-made principle for living and for making day-to-day decisions, and, finally, that the components of a culture are accepted by those in the culture as good, and true, and not to be questioned. The eminent anthropologist George Murdock has listed seventy-three items that characterize every known culture, past and present.

    The list begins with Age-grading and Athletic sports, runs to Weaning and Weather Control, and includes on the way such items as Calendar, Fire making, Property Rights, and Tool making. I would submit that even the most extreme advocate of a culture of poverty viewpoint would readily acknowledge that, with respect to almost all of these items, every American, beyond the first generation immigrant, regardless of race or class, is a member of a common culture. We all share pretty much the same sports. Maybe poor kids don't know how to play polo, and rich kids don't spend time with stickball, but we all know baseball, football, and basketball. Despite some misguided efforts to raise minor dialects to the status of separate  tongues, we all, in fact, share the same language.

    There may be differences in diction and usage, but it would be ridiculous to say that all Americans don't speak English. We have the calendar, the law, and large numbers of other cultural items in common. It may well be true that on a few of the seventy-three items there are minor variations between classes, but these kinds of things are really slight variations on a common theme.

    There are other items that show variability, not in relation to class, but in relation to religion and ethnic background — funeral customs and cooking, for example. But if there is one place in America where the melting pot is a reality, it is on the kitchen stove; in the course of one month, half the readers of this sentence have probably eaten pizza, hot pastrami, and chow mein. Specific differences that might be identified as signs of separate cultural identity are relatively insignificant within the general unity of American life; they are cultural commas and semicolons in the paragraphs and pages of American life.

    Learning any language is hard, but learning English can be especially challenging. Why? Because native speakers use the language in ways that textbooks could never describe. In particular, words that British people use cause many language students to scratch their heads.

    Here's an example: You overhear a Briton calling someone a “wazzock”. But what exactly is a wazzock? This word, in fact, means a foolish person, although there's nothing about it that would help you guess that. There are many strange terms like this in British English – the Oxford English Dictionary would be much smaller without these peculiar (古怪的) usages filling its pages.

    How can these odd words be explained? Part of the answer is the British sense of humor. Britons don't like to take things too seriously, and this is evident through many British words and phrases. For example, to “spend a penny” means to use the bathroom. It refers to the days when people had to pay a penny to use a public toilet.

    In an interview for the BBC's website, British linguist David Crystal suggested there may be historical reasons for the sheer number of odd words and phrases in British English. He thinks that they began in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries. This was a great age for the theater, when Shakespeare and other writers worked hard to keep up with the demand for new plays. The theater's popularity also created an incentive (刺激) to invent new words.

    With this in mind, perhaps Shakespeare and his peers are to blame for unusual British words such as “codswallop” and “balderdash” – which both, ironically, mean “nonsense”.

    While these strange words may be confusing to non-native speakers, they certainly make studying English a lot more interesting.

    Eighteen years ago, Terry Grahl, was pregnant with her fourth child. “Money was very tight,” Terry recalls. So when her mom called to ask if she'd like to go shopping at the local fabric(布料) store for the coming Christmas, she couldn't say no because she knew she badly needed some fabrics to make new clothes for her children. “I remember walking around, gazing at all this beautiful fabric, wondering whether there is anything cheap that I could afford. And I could still get some money left to buy Christmas gifts for my family.

    Well, Terry's mom must have known what Terry was thinking. Smiling kindly, she whispered to Terry, “You pick any fabrics you like. It's your Christmas gift from me.” Terry's eyes were filed with tears as the cart began to overflow with many fabrics, but not because Terry was planning on making herself a pretty dress or a pair of curtains for the kitchen. Rather, Terry's mom's kindness had inspired some holiday gift ideas in Terry, and it didn't take long for Terry to figure out what she was going to do with all that fabric.

    “I was going to make my first quilt,” she explains. “Every night I would work on this queen-size quilt. With every stitch(一针), I thought about all that my mom had done for me over the course of my childhood, during which we were always battling homelessness, but Mom somehow managed to fill our lives with love and make everything okay.”

    On Christmas Day, five days after her baby girl was born, Terry handed her mom a gift box. Inside was the quilt she had sewn, from the fabric her mother had given her as a gift.

    Mexico sites on an island plateau (高原) surrounded by volcanic peaks, which makes air quality a constant concern for people who live there.

    In April, the country took a decisive step toward improving air quality by enacting a temporary ban on private and Federal vehicles in the city. The rule forbids people from driving in the city one day each week and one Saturday each month. Electric vehicles, government service vehicles, public transport options and school buses are not included in the ban.

    Mexico City isn't the first urban center to be involved in car-free living. But the ban is more than an awareness-raiser. It was enacted with the direct aim of solving air pollution. In March, the city sank into a deep brown haze of smog when the pollution levels passed the 200 mark. The city ordered some 1.1m of the area's 4.7m cars off the streets and also offered free bus and subway rides.

    Mexico City's temporary vehicle ban raises questions about the best ways to improve urban air quality. India, whose citizens breathe some of the world's dirtiest air, has tried a variety of solutions. Earlier this year, the Indian government started a 4% sales tax on new-car purchases.

    Beijing also has experience with cleaning the air. The city introduced alternate-day rules in advance of the 2008 Olympic Games, which produced good results. And then there is the London congestion (拥挤) charge, introduced in 2003. The charge has had a measurable effect on air quality.

For now, Mexico City — named by the United Nations as the most polluted city on the planet in 1992 — can look forward to the start of the region's rainy season, when daily showers will help lo clean the air.

    Everything has a name. All people, places and things have names. For example, Jenny is the name of a student from England. England is the name of her country. Cities and towns have names, too. Schools and office building also have names. All things have names. Names are important.

    Names are different all over the world. In Jenny's class, Jenny must learn the names of students from all over the world. This is very difficult because the names are different.

    In the USA, most people have a first name, a middle name, and a last name. Parents choose the first and middle names for their baby. There are names for boys and names for girls. For example, John, Peter, Tom and Mike are all names for boys. Elizabeth, Betty, Susan, and Mary are all names for girls. The last name is the family name. Usually it is the father's family name. In a family, the mother, the father, and the children usually have the same last name.

    Names are different all over the world. They can be long or short, but they are always very important.

    When she first started learning about the climate change from one of her elders, Fawn Sharp was invited on a helicopter flight over the Olympic Mountains to survey the Mount Anderson glacier(冰川). But the glacier was gone, melted by the warming climate. Sharp had a deep sense of loss when she discovered the glacier wasn't there anymore.

    Loss is a growing issue for people working and living on the front lines of climate change. And that gave Jennifer Wren Atkinson, a full-time lecturer at the University of Washington Bothell, US, an idea for a class.

    This term, she taught students on the Bothell campus about the emotional burdens of environmental study. She used the experiences of Nalive American tribes (部落) , scientists and activists, and asked her 24 students to face the reality that there is no easy fix -- that "this is such an intractable problem that they're going to be dealing with it for the rest of their lives.”

    Student Cody Dillon used to be a climate science skeptic (怀疑论者) . Then he did his own reading and research, and changed his mind.

    Dillon wasn't going into environmental work--he was a computer-science major. Yet, the potential for a worldwide environmental catastrophe seemed so real to him five years ago that he quit his job and became a full-time volunteer for an environmental group that worked on restoration (恢复) projects.

Six months into the work, he decided that Alkinson's class was just what he was looking for 一 a place where he could discuss his concerns about a changing climate.

Atkinson said she hopes the class helped her students prepare themselves for the amount of environmental loss that will happen over their lifetimes.

    “We are already changing the planet - . so many species are going to be lost, displaced or massively impacted (巨大影响的) ,”she said. “The future isn't going to be what they imagined.”