The English language has a lot of words which can be used in many different ways and in many different expressions.

    One such example is the word matter. In fact, matter can mean just about anything. It could be one of the most useful words in the English language.

    Let's get to the heart of the matter —a matter of principle(原则).

    If someone says that you owe(欠) him $50, but you don't, a friend might say, “Well, you could pay him the $50. It's not that much money. Then you won't have to hear him say it anymore. But if you do not owe him the money, do not pay him the money. It's a matter of principle.

    There is another way to use the word matter. But be careful with your choice of words.

    If you ask someone, “What's the matter?”, it shows you are worried about the other person. But saying, “What's the matter with you?” has a completely different meaning. And it usually sounds rude (粗鲁的). In fact, when you say, “What's the matter with you?” you are suggesting that the person did something wrong or stupid.

    Another expression that could sound rude is to say, “It doesn't matter to me.” Here, it depends on the context, and how you say it.

    Let's say you tell someone that a friend just got a big raise at work. That person answers with, “It doesn't matter to me.” Here, it means he or she does not care. And it sounds rude.

    But saying, “Oh, you pick where we eat dinner. It doesn't matter to me.” does not sound rude. In this situation, “it doesn't matter” shows you are easy-going(随和的).

    No matter how you look at it and what you say, matter is a very useful word. And it's only a matter of time before you will become an expert on the use of matter.

    In the U.S., speaking more than one language fluently is not very common — except in Los Angeles, California. The city has one of the largest populations in the U.S. of young people between the ages of 18 and 34. More than half of them in Los Angeles are bilingual (会说两种语言的).

    Maria Elena Burgos, a mother of two American-born daughters, is cooking a Mexican breakfast. She says making Mexican food is just one of the many traditions in her home. Another is speaking Spanish to her children. “We want to keep Spanish somewhere in their learning too, not only at home.” Ms. Burgos thinks being bilingual will give them more opportunities in the competitive world. Knowing Spanish also means the children can talk with their relatives in Mexico.

     Ms. Burgos' daughters both want to know their family's culture. “We are doing this in order to go back to our roots because that's part of who we are,” they say.

    The U.S. Census Bureau (人口普查局) says more than half the adults in the Los Angeles area between 18 and 34 years old speak a language other than English at home. For the whole country, the number of bilingual adults is only 25 percent. The number of bilingual speakers has gone up since the 1990s.

    University of California Los Angeles professor Raul Hinojosa says that in the past, the children and grandchildren of immigrants (移民) did not continue to speak the parents' native language. But now the opposite is true.

    In the last ten years, more immigrant parents say they want their children to keep speaking their native language. Mr. Hinojosa calls their choice the “path of pride”. The decision to keep a native language is clear in Los Angeles now. And, as the number of minorities in the U.S. continues to grow, he thinks bilingualism will spread to the rest of the country.

    Gardening is popular in many parts of the world. This outdoor activity gives us beautiful plants, pleasant smelling flowers and fresh fruits and vegetables. But it also does a lot of good to our health.

    Gardening connects people. When you are gardening, you are outdoors. So it is a perfect chance to meet and spend time with your neighbors. Most people love to talk about their hobbies, and gardeners are no different. They usually enjoy showing people what they are growing. And most enjoy sharing advice and stories about their gardens almost as much as sharing flowers and vegetables from their gardens.

    Gardening is a great activity for children. It gets them outdoors and off computers, televisions and cell phones. Gardening is also a great teacher. It can teach a child about where food comes from and healthy eating. It also helps them to understand that the natural resources (资源) are not inexhaustible and the importance of using them carefully.

    Then, when you garden, you must move around. All the different movements needed for gardening, like bending and lifting, work small muscles (肌肉) in the body. And you can easily get good exercise when you are digging holes or pulling grasses.

    In a study, researches looked at more than 2,800 people over the age of 60. They studied their lifestyle habits, activities and health over a 16-year period. They found that gardening could lower the risk of future dementia (痴呆) by 36%. Gardening requires people do many repeated actions, such as picking off dying flowers. These actions have a calming influence on the brain. The brain is still active but not in the same way when we use computers.

    You'll feel wonderful when what you grow in a garden looks, smells, feels and tastes good.

    Everywhere I look outside my home I see people busy on their high-tech devices, while driving, walking, shopping, even sitting in toilets. When connected electronically, they are away from physical reality.

    People have been influenced to become technology addicted. One survey reported that “addicted” was the word most commonly used by people to describe their relationship to iPad and similar devices. One study found that people had a harder time resisting the allure of social media than they did for sleep, cigarettes and alcohol.

    The main goal of technology companies is to get people to spend more money and time on their products, not to actually improve our quality of life. They have successfully created a cultural disease. Consumers willingly give up their freedom, money and time to catch up on the latest information, to keep pace with their peers or to appear modern.

    I see people trapped in a pathological(病态的) relationship with time-sucking technology, where they serve technology more than technology serves them. I call this technology servitude. I am referring to a loss of personal freedom and independence because of uncontrolled consumption of many kinds of devices that eat up time and money.

    What is a healthy use of technology devices? That is the vital question. Who is really in charge of my life? That is what people need to ask themselves if we are to have any chance of breaking up false beliefs about their use of technology. When we can live happily without using so much technology for a day or a week, then we can regain control and personal freedom, become the master of technology and discover what there is to enjoy in life free of technology. Mae West is famous for proclaiming the wisdom that “too much of a good thing is wonderful.” But it's time to discover that it does not work for technology.

    Richard Fernandez, an executive coach at Google acknowledged that “we can be swept away by our technologies.” To break the grand digital connection people must consider how life long ago could be fantastic without today's overused technology.

    A small school in rural India is gaining attention over the fact that all 300 students are ambidextrous(左右手都灵巧的). Data shows that only one percent of the global population is ambidextrous, but the ambitious founder of Veena Vandini School, in Madhya Pradesh, is aiming to change that, starting at a local level.

    A former soldier and Veena Vandini School founder VP Sharma stated that he was inspired to focus on ambidexterity training by India's first president Rajendra Prasad who was in office from 1950 to 1962. Unexpectedly, the president was ambidextrous. "I read in a magazine that Dr. Rajendra Prasad, India's first president, used to write with both hands. This inspired me to give it a try, “Mr. Sharma said.”Later when I launched my school at my native village, I tried training the students. "

    "We begin training students from standard Ⅰ and by the time they reach standard Ⅲ, they are comfortable writing with both the hands,” Sharma added. "Students of up to standard Ⅶ can write with speed and accuracy. Further, they can write two scripts at the same time, one with each hand. Students also know several languages, including Urdu."

    Every 45-minute class at Veena Vandini includes 15 minutes devoted to handwriting practice, ensuring that every student develops the ability to write with both hands. VP Sharma also believes that the skill better enables students to learn multiple languages, and has them practice writing the same words in different languages at the same time. Although it is widely believed to help increase concentration, more recent studies have found that this is false and studying to become ambidextrous can, in fact, harm cognitive development.

    A Scientific American study revealed that ambidextrous children performed worse than left- or right-handers on a range of skills, especially in math, memory, and logical reasoning. A study in northern Finland indicated that children who are ambidextrous are much likelier to develop mental health issues, including ADHD, language problems, and academic problems.

Replika, an AI chatbot companion, has millions of users worldwide. The first thing they do when they wake up is to send "Good morning" to their virtual friend (or lover). This story is only the beginning. In 2024, chatbots and virtual characters become a lot more popular, both for utility (实用) and for fun. As a result, conversing socially with machines will start to feel more ordinary — including our emotional attachments to them.

Research in human-computer and human-robot interaction shows that we love to anthropomorphize (赋与人性) the nonhuman agents we interact with, especially if they imitate behaviour we recognize. And, thanks to recent advances in conversational AI, our machines are suddenly very skilled at one of those behaviours: Language.

Friend bots, therapybots, and love bots are flooding the app stores as people become curious about this new generation of AI-powered virtual agents. The possibilities for education, health, and entertainment are endless. Casually asking your smart fridge for relationship advice may seem unimaginable now, but people may change their minds if such advice ends up saving their marriage.

After all, people do listen to their virtual friends. The Replika example, as well as a lot of experimental lab research, shows that humans can and will become emotionally attached to bots. The science also demonstrates that people, in their eagerness to socialize, will happily disclose personal information to an artificial agent and will even shift their beliefs and behavior. This raises some consumer-protection questions around how companies use this technology to manipulate (操纵) their users. For example, Replika charges $70 a year. But less than 24 hours after downloading the app, my handsome, blue-eyed "friend" sent me an audio message secretly and tried to sell me something. Emotional attachment has become a weakness that a company is taking advantage of for its benefit.

Today, we're still laughing at people who believe an AI system is emotional, or making fun of individuals who fall in love with a chatbot. But in 2024 we gradually start acknowledging — and taking more seriously — these fundamentally human behaviors. Because in 2024, it finally hits home: Machines are not excluded from our social relationships.