Do you think you could learn a language in an hour?

    We know, we know! We would expect you to be skeptical. It's ridiculous to think you can learn a language in 60 minutes. You wouldn't even get through the As in a bilingual dictionary in that amount of time! Best-case situation: in an hour, most of us could probably stuff a few words and ready-made phrases into our short-term memory (with a high likelihood of forgetting it all by the following day). Accomplishing anything more than that in one hour? Impossible. Unless…

    We posed the one-hour language challenge to four polyglots(通晓数种语言的人) who are experts on how to study languages. To keep the challenge from becoming completely impossible, we gave them a bit of a break: to learn Romanian in one hour. Why Romanian? Because it's a Romance language and shares many similarities with the languages that the polyglots already know: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese. And to make sure their hour of learning was as effective as possible, all of them were assigned a personal Romanian tutor to help coach them on their way to success.

    Although each polyglot has a different technique for picking up and remembering a new language, all four methods offer valuable insights to anyone, from casual learners to hard-core language enthusiasts.

Alex Rawlings — UK

    "I'm a bit nervous. This is probably the craziest language-learning thing I've ever done, but learning languages has always been about fun. I expect that, after this, I'll be prepared to have a simple chat over a coffee in Romanian. Is that reasonable?"

    Method: Learn the verbs first

    With only an hour until he had to start demonstrating his grasp of Romanian, Alex knew he had to start talking quickly. He chose to focus first on commonly used verbs and how to conjugate（动词变形） them. Once he had some verbs down, he could start collecting nouns from his tutor and plugging them in to make more interesting and relevant sentences.

Luca Lampariello — Italy

    "Every time I have a conversation with native speakers, it really motivates me. Human contact is really important when learning a language."

Method: Start speaking right away

    Speaking doesn't mean speaking perfectly. Speaking even a little bit is a huge confidence boost. When you can say something in a new language and people actually understand you, it's very motivating. Yes, you'll make mistakes, but you'll also learn faster than if you try to get it all perfect in your head first.

Michael Youlden — UK

    "We all speak a variety of Romance languages which I think will help us get into Romanian quickly."

Method: Write everything down

    Language learning is about recall; there's no use learning something if you don't remember it. Speaking new words aloud is very important, but so is writing them down — after all, words exist as sounds and in written form. Taking notes is a proven way to put new vocabulary and grammar into your memory. Writing supports memorizing which supports speaking... it's a cycle. Plus, you have an easy reference when you want to review what you've learned.

Matthew Youlden — UK

    "I'm going to look for the patterns and similarities with languages I already know. We won't be able to speak fluently after an hour of study, but we should be able to get by with some basic vocabulary and phrases."

Method: Look for cognates

    Cognates are words in different languages that look and sound similar and have the same meaning, due to a common origin. Almost every language combination contains cognates (even if two languages aren't seemingly related), but languages from the same language family have many more. Whichever language you are learning, identify the familiar words and then use them to anchor the new words that aren't so familiar. To use English as an example, because it's a sort of Germanic-Romance hybrid, English already has many words that cognate with German, Dutch and Swedish on one hand, and on the other hand it also has lots of words that cognate with French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and, of course, Romanian!

    Learn a language with courses designed by the experts. Start here, today!

    Pick a language to learn. German, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, and Swedish.

    Maybe it has been the influence of the current scene: the type among urban biking. Apparently, urban biking requires entirely different bikes than suburban hiking does and therefore a Bike Design Project started where five design studios across five cities had to come up with a perfect urban bike. The winning bike will be manufactured for a limited run of 100 hikes and will be in stores next year. Industry, a Portland-based studio, came up with a very interesting bike: one that uses bluetooth and handlebars (车把手) that tell you when to stop or turn.

    Industry worked together with Ti Cycles to create a bike with a 3D printed titanium frame (钛框架). The hike is called Solid and can be connected to a smartphone APP: My Bike. This APP alarms a user when a light needs replacement and if something gets wrong with one's brakes. There is also software called Discover My City, which has a series of routes through Portland's most trendy neighborhoods, with suggestions about where to eat and shop.

    Nevertheless, the idea with cycling is that you need to focus on the road and not on your smartphone. This bike therefore uses integrated feedback on handlebars. Those handlebars tell a user when to turn, as they will buzz when a turn appears. As you are getting closer, they will buzz more frequently. And then there is the possibility to control your light via built-in sensors and change gears by pressing an electronic button.

    Although the bicycle looks highly interesting and can be seen as a piece of art for the designing world, we don't know if we would like our bike to have an automatic buzz when we are approaching a turn. On the other side, it could add some extra safety to traffic in general. Whether you like the bike or not, you have to admit the Portland-based studio brings the concept of urban biking to a whole new level.

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。

    A city without cars would be very strange, right? But Venice is such a city.

    Venice is in the northeast of Italy. It wasn't built on land, like Beijing or Shanghai, but on more than 110 islands. Seawater is everywhere around the city.

    Even so, travel isn't difficult. The waterways have always been the best way to get around. There are 117 waterways and more than 400 bridges that can guide you where you want to go.  People in Venice move from place to place by boat.

    Water makes the city special, but it is also a big problem. Sometimes tourists will have such strange experiences. One moment they walk across the Rialto Bridge, and there's nothing special. But when they come back to the bridge an hour later, it's underwater and everyone is wearing rain shoes.

    Once, people used too much underground water. This made the city get lower little by little. Now the city has gone down by 23 centimeters. Another problem is the rising seawater. The temperature has risen over the years. This has made the ice of the Arctic Ocean (北冰洋) melt (融化). Every year, high waters hit the city in autumn and winter. When a lot of water comes, more than half of the city is underwater.

    Scientists are trying different ways to stop the city from getting even lower. The Italian government has asked some of Italy's biggest companies to build the MOST project, which was planned to be build under the seawater to stop the rising water. Anyway, this project is helping solve the problem.

    The World Health Organization says that the disease polio is no longer widespread in India. In 2009，half of the world's cases of polio were there. But In 2011, there was only one new case of polio in the country.

    Polio is caused by a virus. It spreads very quickly from one person to another. Victims often lose the use of their arms and legs. In the most serious cases, polio can kill a person.

    Twenty-five years ago, polio affected about 200, 000 children in India each year. The United Nations children's organization, UNICEF, sent teams of health workers into local villages. Team members told families in their neighborhood about the importance of giving liquid medicine to children to protect them against polio.

    But it was not easy at first. A member said, “They used to think that our children will not be able to have children when they grow up if they get the drop. They used to think like this. But now they don't. Now they allow their kids to get the drops.” Now things have changed. Asma Khatun is a mother in the town of Ghaziabad in the northern state of Utter Pradesh. She said, “Whenever anyone comes, we get the children vaccinated(接种疫苗). Even if nobody came to our house, we would send our children to a clinic to get vaccinated.

    A local Muslim leader says the vaccination campaign has been successful because it is supported by religious leaders. He said, “The polio vaccination campaign has been successful here because our Muslim scholars are with us.

    With their support, we are able to make people understand that giving children the vaccine is beneficial and crucial.”

    The Indian government has now launched a new campaign to vaccinate 170 million children under the age of five. The campaign will target newborn babies, migrants and people living in poor, crowded areas where the disease spreads more quickly.

    These are instructions for making invisible ink using baking soda.

    I was reading these interesting stories behind a group of great logos in the world. Personally Nike is my favorite one—it's so simple. And I like the stories behind them, which made me forget all other things. McDonald's, Apple, Mercedes Benz and Adidas own great logos as well, and they are among my favorites.

    Nike

    In the Greek myth, Nike is the goddess of victory and the source of inspiration for soldiers. This logo represents the wing in the famous statue of the Greek goddess. Nike's logo was designed by Carolyn Davidson in 1971 for $35, and was registered as a trademark in 1995.

    McDonald's

    The logo was designed in 1962 by Jim Schindler to resemble the arch-shaped(拱形的) signs on the side of the company's then walk-up hamburger stand. Later on, the two golden arches were combined together to form the M. The McDonald's name was added to the logo in 1968.

    Apple

    There are different stories behind Apple's logo. The first logo was a reference to the religious story of Adam and Eve, in which the apple represented the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. One year later, the second logo was designed in 1977 by Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne, and it described Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. This logo didn't stay long. One year later it was replaced almost immediately by graphic designer Rob Janoff's "rainbow apple", a rainbow-colored silhouette(轮廓) of an apple with a bite taken out of it. And then the rainbow-colored apple was replaced by the one-colored logo in 1998. It has not been changed so far.

    Mercedes Benz

    The Mercedes Benz logo, which was originally created by Gottlieb Daimler in 1909, consists of a simple description of a three-pointed star that represents its rule of the land, the sea and the air. The company was founded by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach. Mercedes is the name of Maybach's elder daughter, while Benz came as a result of a combination with Benz, Cie and DMG in 1926.

    Adidas

    The Adidas logo, which was created by the founder of the company Adi Dassler, represents mountains, pointing towards the challenges that are seen ahead and goals that can be achieved. The logo was used for the first time in 1967.