【推荐1】The old saying “Use it or lose it” doesn’t seem to be true when it comes to someone’s ability to preserve and use a foreign language, a new study has showed.

The research team tasked almost 500 British people who had taken French GCSE or A-level between the 1970s and 2020 with completing a French vocabulary and grammar test. They included a survey of whether participants had used their French knowledge over the years since their exams, and excluded (排除) anyone who had studied a language later on in life.

They found that participants who had taken their exam 50 years ago and not used French ever since performed as well as as recent school leavers and those who occasionally used French.

Lead researcher Monika Schmid said: “The knowledge of language is surprisingly stable over long periods of time, compared to other subjects such as maths, history or science. This is likely because of the way language is stored in memory. Vocabulary is memorized in the same way that facts, dates and names are, while this memory may become weaker over time, and grammar is learned in a similar way to riding a bike, a kind of muscle memory, which is much more stable. Vocabulary knowledge on the other hand, exists in a highly connected network, which means that we need only be reminded of a word that sounds similar to a foreign language word for our brain to recall it.”

“Many people are not willing to revisit languages they once learnt as they fear they will be forced to relive some of the more ‘boring’ elements of the courses, such as grammar, but our work suggests that this would not be necessary. We hope that it might encourage more people to pick foreign languages back up if they know it would only take a short amount of time in refresher lessons to go back to their original level,” Schmid added.

【推荐2】When Faith Wanjiku graduated from the Technical University of Kenya last year, she immediately enrolled (注册) at the Confucius Institute in Kenyatta University. She wanted to learn Chinese, as she believed that it would help her land a good job.

She has just completed the hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) 3 exam. HSK is a test of Chinese language level for non-native speakers, organized by the Confucius Institute Headquarters.

However, this level isn’t enough for Wanjiku, who plans to pass HSK 6. She wanted to increase her level of Chinese and improve her spoken Chinese. And Wanjiku isn’t alone. The number of people taking the HSK reached 6.8 million in 2018 and went up 4.6 percent from a year earlier, the Ministry of Education said on May 31.

Chinese is becoming an increasingly popular choice of language to study around the world. Currently, middle school students in Russia can take Chinese as an elective language test in the country’s national college entrance exam, Sputnik News reported.

In May, Zambia became the fourth country in Africa-after Kenya, Uganda and South Africa—to introduce Chinese language to its schools.

And many English-speaking countries have shown an interest in allowing their students to learn Chinese. The US government announced the launch of “1 Million Strong” in 2015, a plan that aims to bring the total number of learners of Chinese to l million by 2020.

Behind the growing popularity of Chinese language learning is the international community’s positive attitude toward Chinas future development, as well as the people’s longing to learn about Chinese civilization and culture.

Indeed, it’s as the former president of South Africa Nelson Mandela put it, “if you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.”

【推荐3】In Shakespeare’s HAMLET, Polonius asks the prince, “What are you reading, my Lord?” Hamlet replies, “Words, words, words.” Either, as is likely, Hamlet wasn’t interested in what he was reading, or, less likely, he didn’t understand the words he was reading. In this case, Polonius should have lent Hamlet a good dictionary.

Dictionaries are important tools for people who like to read. There are so many words in English that even the most educated person will sometimes meet an unfamiliar word and have to look it up. Languages keep changing, too, with new words constantly being added and new meanings being applied to old words. For example, the 12th edition of Xinhua Dictionary, the most popular dictionary in China, has added new words such as “chu xin” “fen si” “er wei ma” etc. As for new meanings, “girl” once meant “a small child of either sex”. And “naughty” didn’t mean you were “enjoying playing tricks”; it meant you were poor.

A printed dictionary can’t keep pace with all the changes, which is why most dictionaries have websites and apps to help you keep up-to-date (更新). However, I still prefer printed dictionaries because they give you more definitions and more examples of how a word is used. Even a simple word, such as “set”, has 430 meanings (the most of English words) but an online dictionary would only offer two or three. A printed dictionary also gives you the opportunity(机会) to discover new words as you run your finger down the page looking for the word you want.

There is no “official” English dictionary, but the Oxford English Dictionary is considered to be the best. For English language learners, however, I would recommend(建议)the Collins COBUILD Dictionary for Advanced Learners. Hamlet, by the way, was Danish and a college student. He would have appreciated the Collins Dictionary to help himself with his words, words, words. This dictionary has over 40,000 words and gives you full-sentence definitions with good examples of how words are used.

【推荐1】The amount of income is increasingly made on the sales of commercial time provided by television companies. Many television companies have used sports to attract viewers from particular sections of the general public, and then they have sold audiences to advertisers.

An attraction of sport programs for the major U. S. media companies is that events are often held on Saturday and Sunday afternoons — the slowest time periods of the week for general television viewing. Sport events are the most popular weekend programs, especially among male viewers who may not watch much television at other times during the week. This means the television networks are able to sell advertising time at relatively high prices during what normally would be dead time for programming.

Media corporations also use sports to attract commercial sponsors that might take their advertising dollars elsewhere if television stations did not report certain sports. The people in the advertising department of major corporations realize that sports attract male viewers. They also realize that most business travelers are men and that many men make family decisions on the purchases of computers, cars and life insurance.

Golf and tennis are special cases for television programming. These sports attract few viewers, and the ratings are unusually low. However, the audience for these sports is attractive to certain advertisers. In is made up of people from the highest income groups in the United States, including many lawyers and business managers. This is why television reporting of golf and tennis is sponsored by companies selling high-priced cars, business and personal computers, and holiday trips. This is also why the networks continue to carry these programs regardless of low ratings. Advertisers are willing to pay high fees to reach high-income consumes and those managers who make decision to buy thousands of “company cars” and computers. With such viewers, these programs don’t need high ratings to stay on the air.

【推荐3】After two years of working from home, we have adapted to communicating digitally, in short bursts of time. Remember in Before Times you could head to the gym after work and then get dressed for dinner and a night out? The pandemic(疫情) has changed this. Our social batteries have run out of charge. It’s been a long time since we had to perform our social role for an extended period.

For 23-year-old Jennie, the excitement of her friends and family to restart their social lives has left her astonished. “At the minute my parents are planning a trip abroad and I keep postponing getting back to them with a date,” she explains. “They don’t know it’s because of all of this. Just the thought of being in a room full of people is scary, it’s like going back to school.”

Heather Garbutt, psychotherapist of The Counselling & Psychotherapy Centre says communication is key to recharging your unused social battery. “Take it slowly and don’t immediately organise a large get-together,” she advises. “Go for a walk with somebody for no more than half an hour and gently get used to being with people again. It may actually be a shock to our system which has been shut down to some degree to cope with absence. We may have that longing to be with others, but that doesn’t mean we are free from anxiety. It would be good to start off with a conversation about what it’s going to be like when you are all together again.”

She says finding some casual topics to discuss also works. Understand that many of you may feel a bit awkward after being physically apart for so long. It’s a bit like learning to walk again after you’ve broken a leg. It may all be off-balance to begin with but you will find a new steadiness with practice. Whatever happens post-pandemic, your loved ones can’t judge if you want to take it easy and not engage in the festivities immediately. We are recovering from a post-pandemic stress disorder, after all.