【推荐2】How do young people learn best? This is something I think about a lot when teaching foreign ________ to young people. I often find that ________ teaching methods are neither always effective nor stimulating for young brains to ________ a foreign language.

After ________ to southern Italy I was fortunate to have had the ________ to run a private course teaching English to under - sevens. I was aware that children ________ like to sing and enjoy games, so I wanted to use these ________ to help my students develop English ________ skills. I found some fun and easy songs online, as well as the English ________ of some nursery rhymes for my students to sing along with. All of them were very ________ and helpful but students could ________ not have a basic conversation in English.

I knew I wanted these guys to be ________ immersed (沉浸在) in the language I was teaching but I also wanted them to speak it. I was keen to ________ 90% of my lessons in English but I knew it’d be difficult to get them to speak in a foreign language they had little or zero ________ to outside our lessons. I had to ________ a simple yet effective plan.

One day I decided to prepare an elementary dialogue in English and ________ simply getting students to repeat the phrases, I got them to sing and chant them. It was then that I ________ that coming up with our very own catchy chants was the way to get students to go from studying English to starting to speak English — it ________!

So when I teach English to young people now, I still ________ this method. I will encourage them to ________ their own songs and chants to help them remember idiomatic expressions or complex sentences.

【推荐3】Learning a second language fuels children’s intelligence and makes their job prospects brighter. _________the fact is, in U.S.A, as in many other English speaking countries, speakers of two or more languages are in the _______ . Eighty-four percent of US people are monolingual (speakers of only one language). This leaves a small number who _________ to speak two or more languages.

No matter how proud people are of their cultural roots, to speak anything _________ English is a marker of difference here. That’s why fourteen-year-old Umar is_________ when people comment on the fact that he is able to speak Arabic. Umar’s mother points out: ―In U.S.A, it’s not_________ for kids to be bilingual. But, if you speak another language to your children in U.S.A, it is thought that you are not helping them to _________ society.

But in fact, the general _________ among experts is that learning a second language is good for children. Experts believe that bilinguals – people who speak _________ languages – have a clear learning advantage __________ their monolingual schoolmates. This __________on how much of each language they can speak, not on which language is used, __________ they are learning Arabic, French, Chinese or any other language.

Vinss Millon, a professor of Foreign Language Training, says: ―A lot of studies have __________ that children who speak more than one language sometimes learn one language more________, but in the end they do as well as their monolingual schoolmates, and often better, in other subjects. The view is that there is a(n) __________ from the effort of learning another language. A few other __________ agree that “Bilinguals tend to use language better as a whole. They also __________ greater creativity and problem-solving ability, and they learn further languages more easily”.

With all of the benefits, why do we not show more __________ for learning other languages? Parents and teachers __________in bilingual education say it is pressure from friends at school, general __________ to other languages in English-speaking countries, and problems in the school system that are to blame.

【推荐3】I am a single father with two young daughters. It had been a ________ year: Being out of work ________ me of a reliable income and thus I was always ________ on cash. But as Christmas approached, with little choice, I was still ________ to tell the girls, “It looks like our gift from Santa will be the gift of our love for each other.” I hated to see the ________ in the eyes of my girls. I just couldn’t stop feeling ________.

Then, ________, a miracle(奇迹) occurred to me. I won $1 000 in a contest. To give them a(n) ________, I kept it a secret and went on a shopping spree(一通购物) ________, all the time thinking, “How surprised they will be!”

The next morning, to lay out the gifts, I went to the living room but I ________ at the sight of the Christmas tree. There were already dozens of ________ under it—well packaged, all with my name on them. My girls had felt ________ that Dad wouldn’t be getting any gifts, so they’d carefully ________ their favorite old toys so that I would have   a merry Christmas.

So moved was I that I stared at the gifts through ________ eyes, promising myself to never again ________ Santa Claus as Santa did appear in many different guises(伪装).