Question: I have been learning English for about 7 years. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} And I still can't make myself understood in English. However, I love learning English. How can I learn English well? Please help me.

    Answer: Many people have asked me this question. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Here I will give you several tips for learning English.

    ●{#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    First of all, you must want to learn. If you are not interested in learning English, no class will help you and no book will help you. So you have to be honest with yourself. Ask yourself, “Do I really want to learn English?” If you can't answer “yes” to this question, it is better for you to set English aside until you're ready and willing to learn.

    ● Set goals (目标).

    To learn English well, you must set some goals. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} It will also help you to see your progress. Ask yourself, “What are my goals? What areas would I like to improve?” Think about what your goals are, and review once in a while to see that you are making progress toward your goals.

    ● Practice, practice, and practice.

After you have set your goals, you have a better idea of what you need to practice. Just like the athlete whose goal is the Olympics must train daily, you as a language learner must practice language every day to make progress toward your goal. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

    Speedy eaters are three times more likely to be too fat, a problem which is made even worse by the popularity of fast food and the decrease of regular dining habits, some Japanese researchers said on Wednesday.

    The findings, published in the British Medical Journal, pay special attention to how eating styles, and not just what or how much is eaten, can affect an obesity epidemic(肥胖流行病) that is becoming more and more severe because of the speed of the Western-style diet in many parts of the world.

    The World Health Organization considers around 400 million people in the world as too fat, 20 million of whom are under the age of five. The researchers are concerned that the condition raises the risk of diseases like type 2 diabetes (糖尿病) and heart problems.

    For their study, Hiroyasu Iso and the team at Osaka University asked more than 3000 Japanese volunteers (志愿者) who are 30 to 69 years old about their eating. About half of the men and a little more than half of the women said they ate until full. About 45 percent of the men and 36 percent of the women said they ate quickly.

    Those who said they ate until full and ate quickly were three times more likely to be fat than people in the “not eating until full and not eating quickly” group, the researchers found.

    They believe that the main causes are both the popularity of eating cheap fast food and bad habits such as watching television while eating.

    To fight against the bad effect of eating quickly and being too full that can lead to obesity, parents should encourage children to eat slowly and in calm environments, the study suggested.

    A fear of public speaking is common.Unfortunately, many fail to find a way that helps themselves out of trouble.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}I'm sure the following ways can help you overcome（克服）the fear of public speaking.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#}The first step in overcoming the fear is to find out why you're fearful.Probably the main reason is the fear of being embarrassed.This includes being laughed at,messing up,or doing anything foolish{#blank#}3{#/blank#}Either way,for most people,it comes down to the fear of what others might think of them.

    Change your mindset（心态）.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}Think about what the audience might think of you or how you can best get your message understood, and you will be able to drive away the fear.

    Practice.

    Although you may still get nervous even if you have done dozens of speeches,the more you do it,the easier it will get{#blank#}5{#/blank#}This will not only make public speaking easier but also help you develop confidence.You can do things like joining your local Toastmasters（宴会主持人）Club where you will get the chance to practice speaking in front of people who are all there to help you become a confident speaker.

A.Understand the cause of the fear.

B.From my experiences.

C.To overcome the fear, you need to change your mindset.

D.It could also be that you had a bad experience in the past that causes fear.

E.When you practice,it's best to do it in front of a supportive group of people.

F.Nobody will never feel nervous.

G.Don't be afraid.

    Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer.

    Not all print dictionaries are the same, as you will notice when you select one. To make a wise selection, you should know how to distinguish among three kinds of print dictionaries: pocket, desk, and unabridged. You should also know the copyright date of your dictionary, and check is special features.

    A pocket dictionary is small. Generally, it contains no more than 75000 entries, making it hardly to carry to class and efficient to use. However, a pocket dictionary doesn't contain enough entries to be adequate for college reference homework. In addition, the information about each word in a pocket dictionary is generally limited. A desk dictionary is medium sized, generally containing over 100,000 entries as well as extra features. For college work, you should own a current desk dictionary. An unabridged dictionary is a complete dictionary. Abridged dictionaries, such as pocket and desk dictionaries, are shortened. Because unabridged dictionaries contain nearly all English words, they are large and heavy. They are often used by schools and libraries.

    If the copyright date of your current dictionary shows that it was published five or more years ago, consider investing in a more recent edition. English is a dynamic language that admits new words and recognizes changes in meaning, spelling, and usage of familiar words. This is reflected in an up-to-date dictionary.

    In selecting a dictionary, check the features it offers besides vocabulary definitions. Many editions contain signs, symbols and foreign words. Some also contain CD-ROMs and access to special online features.

⒈{#blank#}1{#/blank#} ⒉{#blank#}2{#/blank#}  ⒊{#blank#}3{#/blank#}  ⒋{#blank#}4{#/blank#}  ⒌{#blank#}5{#/blank#}  ⒍{#blank#}6{#/blank#}  ⒎{#blank#}7{#/blank#}  ⒏{#blank#}8{#/blank#}  ⒐{#blank#}9{#/blank#}  ⒑{#blank#}10{#/blank#}  

    Tests can be worrying even for the most prepared students. When some students take tests, their minds don't work as well as usual. They may experience something called test anxiety (焦虑), which can have a negative influence on their performance. Well, the following tips can help you pass your next test more easily and achieve more success!

    Get Enough Sleep

    6 hours of sleep or less can slow your mind and thus has negative effects on your performance on tests, even if you spend those missed hours of sleep studying. So, it's very important for you to get a good night of sleep before your big day.

    Study Smarter

    How do you study 'smarter'? Make a list of the things you need to learn in order of importance. That way, if you don't have enough time, you can still hit the items at the top of the list. Make a list of all the work you have to do, judge how much time each item will take, and compare that with the number of hours you have available; this will tell you whether you can read carefully or just skim, how much time you can spend checking papers, and tell you other ways to pace yourself so you can get everything done. If your time is still limited, it's important to learn to let go of being perfect.

    Visualize (想象) Success

    Before you fall asleep each night, it is a great way to visualize yourself taking the tests and doing wonderfully. Detailed visualizations can help you feel like you're really experiencing something，and visualizing yourself doing well is a way to 'practice' success in a way that can help you perform better and feel confident. Visualizations can also help you to remember the facts.

    Stay Calm

    Anxiety can harm your memory, so it's important to stay calm before and during tests. While that's easier said than done, there are several techniques that can help you calm down quickly whenever you feel nervous. For example, breathing exercise has been shown by research to reduce test anxiety, and can be very effective in helping you relax: just take deep breaths and let the anxiety come out.

    How to deal with your test anxiety

    Pretending you're someone else can make you creative

    One great irony(讽刺) about our collective fascination with creativity is that we tend to frame it in uncreative ways. That is to say, most of us marry creativity to our concept of self: We are either "creative" people or we aren't, without much of a middle ground.

    Pillay, a tech businessman and Harvard professor has spent a good part of his career destroying these ideas. Pillay believes that the key to unlocking your creative potential is to dismiss the conventional advice that urges you to "believe in yourself". In fact, you should do the exact opposite: believe you are someone else.

    In a recent column for Harvard Business Review, Pillay pointed to a 2016 study showing the impact of stereotypes(刻板印象)on one's behavior. The authors, education psychologists Denis Dumas and Kevin Dunbar, divided their college student subjects into three categories, instructing the members of one group to think of themselves as "eccentric(古怪的) poets" and the members of another to imagine they were "rigid librarians" (people in the third category, the control group, were left alone for this part). The researchers then presented participants with 10 ordinary objects, including a fork, a carrot, and a pair of pants, and asked them to come up with as many different uses as possible for each one. Those who were asked to imagine themselves as "eccentric poets" came up with the widest range of ideas for the objects, while those in the "rigid librarian" group had the fewest. Meanwhile, the researchers found only small differences in students' creativity levels across academic majors—in fact, the physics majors inhabiting(寄生) the personas(伪装的外表) of "eccentric poets" came up with more ideas than the art majors did.

    These results, write Dumas and Dunbar, suggest that creativity is not an individual quality, but a "malleable(可塑的) product of context and perspective." Everyone can be creative, as long as they feel like creative people.

    Pillay's work takes this a step further: He argues that identifying yourself with creativity is less powerful than the creative act of imagining you're somebody else. This exercise, which he calls "psychological halloweenism", refers to the conscious action of inhabiting another persona—an inner costuming of the self. It works because it is an act of "conscious unfocus", a way of positively stimulating the default mode(默认模式) network, a collection of brain regions that spring into action when you're not focused on a specific task or thought.

    Most of us spend too much time worrying about two things: How successful/unsuccessful we are, and how little we're focusing on the task at hand. The former feeds the latter—an unfocused person is an unsuccessful one, we believe. Thus, we force ourselves into quiet areas, buy noise canceling headphones, and hate ourselves for taking breaks.

    What makes Pillay's argument stand out is its healthy, forgiving realism: According to him, most people spend nearly half of their days in a state of "unfocus". This doesn't make us lazy people—it makes us human. The idea behind psychological halloweenism is: What if we stopped judging ourselves for our mental down time, and instead started using it? Putting this new idea on daydreaming means addressing two problems at once: You're making yourself more creative, and you're giving yourself permission to do something you'd otherwise feel guilty about. Imagining yourself in a new situation, or an entirely new identity, never felt so productive.

Title: Pretending you're someone else can make you creative