Nearly all American students in colleges and universities pay for their education. There are many expenses. First of all, there is tuition (学费). At some schools, the tuition is very high, ten thousand dollars a year or more. At other schools, it may only be a few hundred dollars a year. At some community (社区) colleges, tuition is free. There are other expenses as well. Many students leave their homes to go to schools in other cities. They may live in dormitories or apartments (flats), and they must pay for it. Finally, students must buy textbooks for their courses. Some families start saving money for their children's education when the children are small. Many students work to save money for tuition. They can also get loans (贷款) from the government. They pay the money back to the government when they finish their education.

    When you are learning English, listening, speaking and writing are important, but reading can also be very helpful. When you read, you can not only learn some new words, but also you can learn how to use these English words. When you read, it gives you a good example for writing.

    Good reading tips:

    Try to read at the right level(水平). Read something that you can (more or less) understand. If you need to stop every three words to use a dictionary, it is not interesting.

    Try to increase the number of your new words. If there are four or five new words on a page, write them in your notebook. But you don't have to write them while you read. Instead, try to guess their meaning as you read: mark them with a pen. Then come back when you have finished reading to look them up in a dictionary and write them in your own vocabulary book. Then try to remember them.

    Try to read regularly. For example, read for a short time once a day. Fifteen minutes every day is better than two hours every Sunday. Fix(固定) a time to read and keep to it. You could read for fifteen minutes when you go to bed, or when you get up or at lunchtime.

    Read what interests you. Choose a book or a magazine about a subject that you like, because you are going to spend time and money reading it. So, choose an interesting book. You can also read newspapers. There are many English newspapers in China. For example, 21st Century Teens. It is easy enough for you to understand it. There is something interesting in it.

    This is a song， and millions of Americans will hear it on New Year's Eve. It is called "Auld Lang Syne" (《友谊地久天长》). It is the traditional music played during New Year's celebration. "Auld Lang Syne" is an old Scottish(苏格兰)poem. It tells about the need to remember old friends.

    The words "auld lang syne" mean "old long since". No one knows who wrote the poem first.

    However， a version(版本)by Scottish poet Robert Burns was published(出版)in 1796. The words and music we know today first appeared(出现)in a song book three years later.

    The song is played in the United States mainly on New Year's Eve. The version you are hearing today is by the Washington Saxophone Quartet. One of the 4 musicians in the group is VOA's Rich Kainfaite. As we end our programme with "Auld Lang Syne"，I would like to wish all of our radio friends a very happy New Year! This is Buddy Thomas.

“Chicken” idioms（习语）

    The word “chicken” is used in so many English idioms. Do you know the following?

    Don't count your chickens before they hatch.

    The expression“Don't count your chickens before they hatch”means “Don't expect that all your eggs, which have been laid, will hatch. “Hatch” is a verb, meaning the baby chicken breaks open the shell of the egg and comes out successfully. So the expression mainly means “Don't depend on things working out just as you want them to.” this saying appears in the story The Milkmaid and Her Pail in Aesop's Fables.

    A chicken-and-egg situation

    In history, philosophers（哲学家）and scientists have met this dilemma（困境）: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Aristotle thought that both the bird and the egg must have always been there. However, more recently, scientists such as Stephen Hawking have argued that the egg came before the chicken. In common speech, the term “a chicken-and-egg situation” means a situation where it is impossible to say which of two things appeared first and which caused the other one.

    Don't be such a chicken

    There seems to be an idea in English, somehow, that a chicken is a scared bird. Maybe that's not fair as most birds will probably fly away from you if you go towards them. But “Don't be such a chicken” means “Don't be so scared and get a bit more courage.” So if your friend fear to do something, you can say to him or her, “Don't be such a chicken. Just have a try!”

    The first Starbucks (星巴克) coffee shop opened in 1971 in downtown Seattle, Washington, in the United States. It was a small coffee shop that roasted its own coffee beans. The coffee shops business did well, and by 1981 there were three more Starbucks shops in Seattle.

    Things really began to change for the company in 1981. That year, Howard Schultz met the three men who ran Starbucks. Schultz worked in New York for a company that made kitchen equipment (设备). He noticed that Starbucks ordered a large number of special coffee makers and he was curious about the company. Schultz went to Seattle to see what Starbucks did, and he liked what he saw. He wanted to become part of the company. In 1982, the original (原先的) Starbucks owners hired (聘用) Schultz as the company's head of marketing.

    In 1983, Schultz travelled to Italy. The special atmosphere of the coffee bars there caught his eyes. To Schultz it seemed that Italians spent their daily lives in three places: home, work, and coffee bars. His experience in Italy gave Schultz a new idea for Starbucks back in Seattle.

Schultz created an atmosphere for Starbucks coffee shops that was comfortable, and customers (顾客) everywhere seemed to like it. Between 1987 and 1992, Starbucks opened 150 new shops—and that was only the beginning. In fact, by the year 2000, three new Starbucks shops opened somewhere around the world every day!

    Today, Starbucks has thousands of shops, including shops in twenty-six countries. One thing that helps make Starbucks succeed in cities outside the United States is the way Starbucks works with local shops and restaurants. By working together with a store already in the city, Starbucks gets an understanding of customers in the city. This understanding helps Starbucks open shops in the right locations for their customers.

    Our new foreign students are going to arrive very soon, and here are some ways to communicate with them politely.

    How close do you stand when you talk to a friend? You can stand close to people in the Middle East but don't stand too close to North Americans! Give them more personal space.

    Do you know how to touch people correctly? Chinese girls often walk arm in arm with their friends. South Americans sometimes hold your arm when they talk to you, so you can't move away! But in Britain many people don't like other people to touch them at all.

    Do you look at people when you talk? In some places，it isn't polite to look at people when you talk，but in other countries it isn't polite to look somewhere else. In Britain and the U. S., people usually look at each other when they talk.

    And how do you say goodbye? That's easy, wave to say goodbye. But be careful! In Greece, it's not at all polite. In fact, it's very rude.