【推荐1】Many people believe that there is one form of their language that is more correct than others. They may believe for example that British English is more correct than other varieties; or that written English is more correct than spoken English. Often this belief is supported by reference books to grammars, usage guides or dictionaries: If something goes against a rule in a grammar, or if the word isn’t in the dictionary, it “must be wrong”. Since the reference books are most often based on observation of the standard written language, the argument is really circular: These books will naturally describe standard usage, because that is what they are for; but this does not mean that there is anything wrong with other kinds of usage that are less often described.

A better way of looking at things is to say that usage is “correct in its place”. Standard American English is correct in America, and formal written grammar is employed in formal writing. So this means there is no answer to the question: “What kind of English should learners study?” It depends on their purposes. For many learners, the best model is one or other of the two main standard varieties: British or American English. Neither of these is “better” than the other, and they are both used and understood worldwide.

People are also worried by language change. If younger people “break” the rules that older people have learnt, older people often feel disturbed: they are concerned that younger people no longer know their grammar, and that the language is going downhill. This is a needless worry: change is natural and inevitable, it cannot be stopped, and it does not generally affect a languages efficiency as a communicative tool. A great deal of modern English grammar would have been wrong three hundred years ago, and will perhaps be wrong again three hundred years from now.

【推荐3】Intellectual humility means recognizing that we don’t know everything. Actually, it means we should acknowledge that we're probably biased in our belief about just how much we understand and seek out the sources of wisdom that we lack.

The Internet and digital media have created the impression of limitless knowledge at our fingertips. The psychologist Tania Lombrozo of the University of California explained how technology enhances our illusions (错觉) of wisdom. She argues that the way we access information is critical to our understanding — and the more easily we can recall an image, word or statement, the more likely we’ll think we’ve successfully learned it, and so withdraw from effortful cognitive processing. In fact, your capacity to learn from the information online depends on your attitudes. Intellectually humble people don’t hide or ignore their weaknesses. In fact, they see them as sources of personal development, and use arguments as an opportunity to refine their views. People who are humble by nature tend to be more open-minded and quicker to resolve disputes, since they recognise that their own opinions might not be valid.

At the other end of the scale lies intellectual arrogance. Such arrogance almost always originates from the egocentric bias – the tendency to overestimate their own virtue or importance, ignoring the role of chance or the influence of other people’s actions on their lives. This is what makes these people credit success to themselves and failure to circumstance. From an evolutionary perspective, intellectual arrogance can also be seen as a way of achieving dominance through forcing one’s view on others. Intellectually arrogant people hardly invest mental resources in discussion or working towards group consensus, thus making it hard for groups to work successfully.

The Thrive Center for Human Development in California, which seeks to help young people turn into successful adults, is funding a series of major studies about intellectual humility. Their hypothesis is that humility, curiosity and openness are key to a fulfilling life. “Without humility, you are unable to learn,” Laszlo Bock, Google’s Head of People Operations, notes.

【推荐1】E is a teen with special needs. Often, she feels that she is targeted by her schoolmates. She complains of dirty looks, eye rolling and whispering when she walks through the halls. This time, she saw A whispering and thought it was about her.

And E had power to hit back-on Facebook. As soon as she got home, she logged on and demanded that her friends unfriend A, and choose between the two of them. She teased them for talking to A at school, and called A “ugly” and “fat”, “She is smelly.” E wrote, “and she uses her Mum to fight her battles.” You can only imagine the comments.

However, E didn’t know that her Facebook privacy setting was set to the public which meant that anyone-including A-could read her posts. In a matter of hours, E was the cyberbully.

And here’s the thing about cyberbullying: It can become real-life trouble. This can often be heard. “You bother me online. I will bother you up on the bus.” It can start with a misunderstood comment or an inappropriate post meant as a joke, And for a teen with special needs, words can take on literal meanings, crcating an cnvironment that’s frightening. Combine that with a lack of control of online privacy and virtual social skills and you may have an ill outcome.

Social media can open doors to new friendships and social circles that are inaccessible in real life. But we, as adults, often give our children access to this virtual world without guidance and boundaries, while counting on them to use it with ease and wisdom. We expect too much with little direction. The advice that I give parents is to set clear rules and stay consistent, even repeated.

【推荐2】There’s a new AI bot: ChatGPT, and you’d better pay attention, even if you aren’t into artificial intelligence. The tool is an AI chat bot system that OpenAI released in November 2022 to show off and test what a very large, powerful AI system can achieve.

ChatGPT remembers the thread of your dialogue, using previous questions and answers to inform its next responses. It derives its answers from huge volumes of information on the Internet. ChatGPT is built on top of the OpenAI GPT-3 family of large language models and is fine-tuned (a method of transfer learning) using both supervised and reinforcement learning (监督和强化学习).

You can ask ChatGPT anything, like explaining physics, asking for birthday party ideas and getting programming help. Perhaps it’s not smart enough to replace all humans yet, but it can be creative, and its answers can sound downright authoritative. A few days after its launch, more than I million people were trying out ChatGPT. UBS analyst Lloyd Walmsley estimated in February 2023 that ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly users in January, accomplishing in 2 months what took TikTok about 9 months and Instagram two and a half years.

ChatGPT is free to use at the moment because it is still in its research phase. But when too many people hop onto the server, it overloads and can’t process your request. It just means you should try visiting the site at a later time when fewer people are trying to access it. If you want to skip the wait and have reliable access, there is an option for you. As of Feb. 1, 2023, OpenAI has aChatGPT pro plan, ChatGPT Plus, which allows users to have general access even during peak times. This service does come at a cost of $20/month.

However, ChatGPT can not replace Google. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence robot that provides solutions to your questions, but Google is a search engine in which you can search for as much information as possible. ChatGPT has limited knowledge due to its programming but Google has unlimited knowledge which is updated every day.

【推荐3】The Internet has become a way of life for many people around the world. So what would happen if one fine morning, you woke up to find the Internet has no existence? How would your life be changed? Well, your lifestyle might be impacted. If you were an Internet addict, you would find that your life has come to an end. With no online facilities, a considerable part of your time would be spent waiting in long lines at banks, post offices or government offices. You would be waiting for days or even weeks for your mail to arrive from another corner of the world. Suddenly, you would realize that your fast-­paced life is running at a snail’s pace.

Without the Internet, your socializing would also be impacted. If you’d gotten very used to socializing online, you would now be clueless as to how you could share the pictures of your recent trip you went for with your friends across the globe. It would be difficult to interact with people living outside your locality.You might have to become a member of a club or a community in your neighborhood to make new friends.With no online social media, you would find yourself saying this very often: Let’s go and talk to them!

With no way to use emails, instant messaging, chat or social media, we would have to take advantage of the option of a telephone conversation, or sending a snail mail. Communication via the Internet is free, whereas the options available otherwise would cost you extra money and time. Your would have to write letters and buy stamps, as we used to do before the Internet became popular.   

The Internet has become a huge sea of information and resources. No Internet would mean no instant and easy access to information at the click of a button. You would have to walk down to your local library and actually search the whole place to get the information you’re looking for, with little chances that you’ll find what you seek instantly. The students who were accustomed to using the Internet for completing their assignments would have a tough time.There would be no way to get an education without actually going to a school or a college physically.

Without the Internet, things at your workplace would be turned upside down. If your work was largely Internet-­based, your company might have to shut down.If your work involved only minor use of the Internet, for example, using online system to acquire statistics from the Internet, this simple task would now be a complicated and time­consuming process.Your desk would be full of documents and files, and you would have a nightmare searching or sorting them out by hand.In any case, life without the Internet would seem like a nightmare! So enjoy living in the paradise we call the Internet and make wise use of it！