If you want to get the most out of the study of a language, you must also read for pleasure: novels, plays, travel books, and so on. And in reading books of this kind the important thing is to get on with reading; to try to grasp what the writer is going to tell you in the book as a whole. This is impossible if you stop and think over the meaning of every single word which happens to be unfamiliar. You can not enjoy a story if you stop half a dozen times on every page in order to look up words in the dictionary. You may even prevent yourself from understanding the story as a whole by doing this.

    When you are reading books of this kind, therefore, you will usually have to rely mainly on the context to help you. If you meet an unfamiliar word, do not let it take too much of your attention from the main thread(主线) of the story. In all probability you will meet the same word again a few pages later on in a slightly different context, and each time you see it that your understanding of it will become more exact.

    February 14th is Valentine's Day! In China, it is only a day for boyfriends and girlfriends. But my teacher and my friends in America told me that Valentine's Day is a public day.

    This was my first Valentine's Day in America. I didn't understand the customs clearly. Maybe I didn't need to send any gifts. I watched others to see what they did, so next time I can understand.

    On that day, when we began the reading class, Mr. Peters gave every student some chocolates and said, “Happy Valentine's Day!” I was very happy. The teacher gave his students gifts and blessings! I never saw that in China. Maybe American teachers are very different. I didn't buy a gift for the teacher, so I owed a gift to the teacher. Anyway, I want to say, “Thank you teacher, and I'm sorry.”

When we had a break, one of my classmates gave me a Pokemon card. It was very funny. I felt we were children. I thought I owed a gift again, but I felt thankful. It was another gift, but it was from my new classmate.

    When we were moving to our grammar class, suddenly I heard someone calling me, “Shelly!” I stopped. Another classmate who had only been in our class one day gave me some chocolates. She said, “These for you and your friends. Have a good day!” I was looking at her leaving and thinking she spoke Arabic. We were in the same class only one day, but now we are friends. That's very good, but I owed a gift again.

    When I came home, my Chinese friend sent some roses and chocolates. I was surprised and happy because I had never received roses in my past life, but I hoped it was the last gift. I didn't want to owe more gifts.

    As I was thinking about language learning the other day, the image of baking bread came into my mind. I compared some of the exercises and drills that we put ourselves through in order to learn a language to the various ingredients that go into baking a loaf of fresh bread.

    Real language learning takes place in human relationships. No one sits down and eats a cup of flour, even if he is hungry and in a hurry. You don't become bilingual（双语的）by learning lists of vocabulary. You don't become a speaker of a language by memorizing verb conjugations（动词的词形变化）and agreement rules. You become bilingual by entering a community that uses that other language as its primary means of communication.

    I am not suggesting that we can make bread without ingredients. Flour is necessary, as are yeast, salt, water and other ingredients. Vocabulary is part of any language and will have to be learned. Grammatical rules exist in every language and cannot be ignored. But merely combining the appropriate ingredients in the recommended proportions does not result in bread. At best, you only end up with a ball of dough（面团）.

    In order to get bread, you have to apply heat to the dough. And in language learning, that heat comes from the community. Anyone who has learned a second language has experienced that heat. It creeps up your neck when you ask the babysitter, “Have you already been eaten?” when you meant to say, “Have you already eaten?” When you try to say something quite innocent and the whole room bursts into laughter, you are experiencing the heat that turns raw dough into good bread.

    Remember the old saying, “If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”? This is where language learning often breaks down because we find the heat uncomfortable and we stop the baking process. In other words, we can't stand the heat, so we get out of the kitchen.

    However, the language learner who stays in the kitchen—in the heat—until the combined ingredients are thoroughly transformed will enjoy the richness of a quality loaf of bread. He said that he did not “get out of the kitchen” at the critical moment when the oven seemed too hot. The dedicated language learner knows that becoming bilingual cannot be achieved without the heat!

    It is a psychological strategy that all parents will be familiar with: instead of scolding an misbehaving child, focus instead in rewarding them for good behaviour.

    Now the idea is well received outside the nursery, with implications for everything from recycling clothes to policing.

    Consumers end up with piles of unwanted clothes. Every year in the UK, 300,000 tonnes ends up in landfill — 235 million individual items.

    Now however, apps such as ReGain, Regive and Stuffstr are making it simpler — and more worthwhile — for people to return their unwanted clobber.

    The ReGain app can be used to find one of 20,000 drop-off points. In return, the diligent consumer earns rewards such as discount coupons for high street retailers. Stuffstr works in partnership with John Lewis to help people get cash in return for unwanted items from the chain.

    “Possibly the one prediction that we economists get right is that if you incentivise (激励) a behaviour, you will get more of it,” says Dr Matthew Levy, a lecturer in economics at the London School of Economics.

    He cites research, including his own, showing that financial incentives encouraging regular exercise, stopping smoking and losing weight effectively promote healthy behaviours and that there is no backlash when the incentives are removed.“If anything, the incentives can be used to jump-start a healthy habit that keeps going,”he says.

    In the four months after its launch, the ReGain scheme received almost 17,000 parcels containing 47 tonnes of used clothes and shoes, of which 95% could potentially be reused, according to its founder Jack Ostrowski.

    “We need to find a way to influence behaviour, and discount coupons help,” he says. The platform is also working with brands and retailers to find ways to divert used clothes from landfills and into the production of new clothes, he adds.

    Other reward schemes have had success in encouraging behavioural change.

    When police in Canada issued “positive tickets”— coupons for free food or movie tickets — to reward good behaviour among young people, they reported an almost 50% drop in youth-related service calls.

    “My officers would say' In the old days we'd drive up in the police car and the kids would run away from us, now they run to us'.”

    In a similar venture, Hull city council have announced plans to launch a digital reward token — the HullCoin — that can be earned by volunteering and spent at local retailers.

    Elsewhere, a study on the recruitment of health workers in Zambia found that highlighting economic incentives during the recruitment process caused future employees to be more motivated and task-focused.

    “Obviously different groups are motivated by different factors,” says Ostrowski. “For some, the feel good factor is enough, and for others, that reward stimulus is required.”

    The world is a truly strange place waiting to be explored. In addition to offering a lot of extraordinary locations and people, it also offers interesting festivals celebrated by people in various parts of the world. Here is a list of the oddest festivals that can be found around the world.

    Cheese Rolling Festival: A festival that is surely going to leave you with a sore neck if not a broken one! Celebrated in England, the Cheese Rolling Festival is something that you would rather watch than take part in.

    Okay! Here's how it goes. Officials set a big cheese wheel to roll down a steep hill and participants run after it. The first one to catch it wins the competition and the cheese. Simple? Well, try it out and you will know!

    The Monkey Buffet: Now here's a country that actually feeds monkeys to their hearts' content instead of chasing them away. Celebrated in Thailand, the Monkey Buffet is an annual event that brings together a lot of locals who offer fruit and vegetables to over 600 monkeys. It's a great feast as the monkeys dig into almost 3, 000 kilograms of fruit and vegetables. The people of Thailand believe this is a way to honor the Monkey King called Hanuman.

    La Tomatina: Here's your golden chance to get even with your friends who sprayed(喷洒)paint on you on your birthday. Celebrated in Spain, the month of August has nearly 250 pounds of tomatoes go down the drain(被浪费掉)in what is perhaps the largest tomato fight in the world. The event is conducted in the town of Bunyol and attracts nearly 30, 000 tourists around the world in addition to locals. Truckloads of tomatoes arrive and you are ready to go. The entire area is covered with slush and tomatoes within minutes. It's a good time to have fun with friends and family.

    A robot created by Washington State University (WSU) scientists could help elderly people with dementia (痴呆) and other limitations live independently in their own homes.

    The Robot Activity Support System or RAS, uses sensors installed in a WSU smart home to determine where its residents are, what they are doing and when they need assistance with daily activities. It navigates (定位) through rooms and around obstacles to find people on its own, provides video instructions on how to do simple tasks and can even lead its owner to objects like their medication or a snack in the kitchen.

"RAS combines the convenience of a mobile robot with the activity detection technology of a WSU smart home to provide assistance in the moment, as the need for help is detected," said Bryan Minor, a postdoctoral researcher in the WSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

    Currently, an estimated 50 percent of adults over the age of 85 need assistance with every day activities such as preparing meals and taking medication and the annual cost for this assistance in the US is nearly $2 trillion. With the number of adults over 85 expected to triple by 2050, researchers hope that technologies like RAS and the WSU smart home will relieve some of the financial strain on the healthcare system by making it easier for older adults to live alone.

    RAS is the first robot researchers have tried to incorporate into their smart home environment. They recently published a study in the journal Cognitive Systems Research that demonstrates how RAS could make life easier for older adults struggling to live independently.

    "While we are still in an early stage of development, our initial results with RAS have been promising," Minor said. "The next step in the research will be to test RAS' performance with a group of older adults to get a better idea of what prompts, video reminders and other preferences they have regarding the robot."