Many people believe that you lose the ability to learn new languages as you get older. Language experts, however, will tell you that you're never too old to learn a new language. As you get older, it can be more difficult to learn a new language, though.

    Children and adults learn new languages in different ways. For children, language is their life. They study for thousands of hours every year, because they need to learn languages to become part of their communities. Adults, on the other hand, are already part of a language community. Learning a new language means becoming part of another language community, and adults rarely get the chance to practice as much as young children do.

    Moreover, children learning a new language are expected to make mistakes. This gives them freedom when learning to be daring and confident. Adults, however, often feel stressed to be perfect when learning a new language. This can discourage many people and make it even harder to learn a new language.

    When young children learn a new language, they come to see various languages as a “normal” part of society. This mindset helps them to learn a new language without feeling like they're doing something unusual or “too hard”.

    So if you want to learn a new language, go for it! It's never too late to learn a new language. If you're older, it may take more work, but it can be done. If you're a young child, though, now is the time to step out and learn a new language!

    Most foodies (吃货) agree that eating healthy food is important. But sometimes making good food choices can be tough. Now, there are apps that can help people learn about the food they eat to improve their diets and their dining out experiences.

Cheese & Wine Pairing app

    Wine and cheese can be a great combination. But which wines go best with which cheeses? Max McCalman's Cheese & Wine Pairing app can help. It provides information about hundreds of different cheeses and advises wines to pair with each. Max McCalman's Cheese & Wine Pairing app is free for iPhones and iPads.

Calorific app

    What does 200 calories look like? It can be hard to picture. Calorific provides images of 200 calories worth of food. The pictures can help people on a diet and those who just want to eat healthier food. The app is free for iPads and iPhones. There is also a version that provides more information for a price.

    HappyCow app

    Vegetarians do not eat animal meat. Vegans do not eat any animal products. The HappyCow app is made for both groups. Users can search for vegetarian-vegan restaurants and stores around the world. A free version of HappyCow is available for Android that has ads and requires an Internet connection.

    LocalEats app

    Restaurant chains, like McDonald's, can be found almost anywhere a person might travel. But sometimes travelers want to eat like locals. LocalEats is designed for that. It lists locally owned restaurants so users can try foods from that area. The app costs about a dollar.

    A study showed that the experiences children have in their first few years are important. These experiences affect the development of the brain. When children receive more attention, they often have higher IQs. Babies receive information when they see, hear and feel things, which makes connections between different parts of the brain. There are a hundred trillion(万亿)connections in the brain of a three-year-old child.

    Researcher Judit Gervain tested how good newborns are at distinguishing different sound patterns. Her researchers produced images of the brains of babies as they heard different sound patterns. For example, one order was mu-ba-ba. This is the pattern"A-B-B". Another order was mu-ba-ge. This is the pattern “A-B-C”. The images showed that the part of the brain responsible for speech was more active during the" A-B-B" pattern. This shows that babies can tell the difference between different patterns. They also were sensitive to where it occurred in the order.

    Gervain is excited by these findings because the order of sounds is the building block of words and grammar." Position is key to language," she says. "If something is at the beginning or at the end, it makes a big difference: John caught the bear.' is very different from 'The bear caught John.'”

    Researchers led by scientist Patricia Kuhl have found that language delivered by televisions, audio books, the Internet, or smartphones－no matter how educational－doesn't appear to be enough for children's brain development. They carried out a study of nine-month-old American babies. They expected the first group who'd watched videos in Chinese to show the same kind of learning as the second group who were brought face-to-face with the same sounds. Instead they found a huge difference. The babies in the second group were able to distinguish between similar Chinese sounds as well as native listeners. But the other babies－regardless of whether they had watched the video or listened to the audio－learned nothing.

    I began cycling in 2004 when I was a poor student. It was dangerous, sure, but cycling is the fastest, cheapest point-to-point form of transport in Melbourne. I own a car now, but that's just for transporting the baby or groceries.

    I hate driving. So it's been quite encouraging watching the growth in cyclist numbers over the past decade. It is said that over 10,000 cyclists enter the CBD (Central Business District) each day, taking pressure off public transport. But as more people take to cycling as a way of transport, the number of cyclists seriously injured or killed keeps increasing. And that is a sign that our infrastructure (基础设施) is still not good enough.

    Melbourne was once a dream for cyclists—flat, long, wide roads, with plenty of paths along rivers. Now, cycling can be deadly, with roads taken up by cars. I have a friend who broke her back and was lucky to escape death and others with broken bones. In my time riding, I've been forced off the road by a truck, cut off by four-wheel drives, and told to get off the road. Drivers are a particularly rude to cyclists. And that's a sign of exactly one thing: inadequate infrastructure.

    We shouldn't need to be taught how to coexist in the same narrow space. Drivers and cyclists should be kept apart. Designing bike paths so riders are channelled between moving cars and parked cars is deadly. All it takes is one daydreaming driver to fling open the door and you are gone. That's what happened to the young university student James.

    This year, there are to be new cycling lanes (车道) built on Glen Road, where James died in 2010. But these lanes are not safe. Cyclists must still pass between two rows of cars.

    China is showing the world its great resolve in the global climate campaign with concrete and self-motivated efforts as well as serious commitment.

    At the opening ceremony of the Paris climate summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping restated China's plan made in June to cut its carbon emissions(排放)per unit of GDP by 60-65 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, and increase non-fossil fuel sources in primary energy consumption to about 20 percent.

    With a large population, China is facing increasing resource limits, severe environmental pollution and a worsening ecosystem, and its citizens are also becoming increasingly aware of environmental problems. Suffering environmental problems and seeing the efforts as important to transforming its economic growth pattern, the country has much at risk if climate change is left unattended.

    Actually, climate change efforts are already included in China's medium-and long-term program of economic and social development, and ecological efforts are the clear characteristics in China's 13th Five-Year Plan(2016-2020).

    Although it is and will be a developing country for a long time to come, China has been actively involved in the global campaign against climate change, now topping the world in terms of energy conservation and use of new and renewable energies.

However, China's development rights need to be respected. It is unfair to overstress China's status as one of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters and regard it as the major part of responsibilities in the global fight against climate change.

    It is worthy of notice that China's emissions of greenhouse gases per person are far lower than those of developed countries, especially the United States, although rapid economic expansion and its population base have made it one of the biggest producers of the gases.

    To show its great resolve, Beijing in September also announced the establishment of an independent South-South cooperation fund of 20 billion RMB to help developing countries affected by global warming.

    While China is eagerly accomplishing its policy commitments, developed countries should stop questioning China's commitment to fighting climate change and pointing fingers, and start shouldering their due responsibilities instead.

The first time you make a speech is truly a special moment, and I will surely never forget the one I gave.

As a kid, I was extremely1 and seldom said anything2 to stay quiet most of the time. When I was about to graduate from3 school I remember that my teacher pulled me aside and offered to make a4 with me. She told me how I was getting As in all of my subjects5 handwriting, in which I had only managed to receive a C. She said if I were to 6 the welcome speech at graduation, I would get an A in handwriting.

My first thought was that giving a speech doesn't sound like much7 .But who was I to complain if I could get an A so8 ? The speech I wrote was9 boring. It started with something as lifeless and10 as "Good afternoon parents, teachers, and students. Welcome to the graduation ceremony."

As you can see, my speech was nothing fancy and I am sure nobody 11 it either. But the important lesson is that I12 it and I realized the earlier you can standup and speak, the better it is. The next year in junior high school, I found it had given me more13 when I started14 the student council(学生会). Giving a speech 15 its quality was an important first step that I took and hopefully you can too.