【推荐1】With their visas in hand and their bags packed, students may feel prepared for their study abroad experiences. _______ once they set foot in foreign lands, some students realize that they don’t have the skills to communicate their thoughts and feelings in their _______ culture.

Guo Yichen, a student at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, observed a (an) _______ of poor communication during her time abroad.

When Guo first got to the US, she stayed in the house of a 63-year-old lady, with another Chinese girl. Guo and her housemate were _______ to take turns tidying up the bathroom. But the housemate never _______, because she didn’t know how. Her mother had always cleaned the bathroom for her back home. And when the landlord asked about it, the housemate _______ replied, “I never needed to do housework back home, and I won’t do it here _______.”

“I was shocked by how _______ her answer was,” said Guo. “She could have explained it in a better way.” It was _______ surprise that the girl was asked to move out almost immediately.

In fact, “difficulty in ________” is among the three major psychological problems that ZMN Education, an agency on overseas education, ________ among Chinese students studying abroad, the other two being “fear of class discussion” and “fear of homework based on critical thinking”.

A professor at the University of California, Berkeley, once told the agency that many of his Chinese students only came to see him when they got __________ scores. They should have talked to him after each class to get a better grade __________, he said.

According to the agency, studying abroad itself may trigger (引发) certain mental problems because it is a “________ and stressful shift to new environments and ________”. It has been found that students are 23 times more likely to ________ a mental health condition than business travelers headed abroad.

And during this period of major life transitions (过渡), ________ better communication skills is particularly vital. It helps you get assistance and solve problems.

Students need to understand the value of empathy—the effective awareness of the emotions of others—as well as ________ themselves clearly, especially in cross-cultural communications. It would be better if students participate in a(an) __________ abroad program during vacations before trying year-long overseas study. That way, they could have __________ coping with a strange world independently.

【推荐3】An important part of any business relationship is informal conversation. Before you start a discussion, ____, make sure you understand which topics are ____ and which are considered taboo (禁忌) in a ____ culture. Latin Americans enjoy ____ information about their local history, art, and customs. ____ questions about your family, and be sure to show pictures of your children. You may feel free to ask ____ questions of your Latin American friends. The French think of conversation as an art ____, and they enjoy the value of lively discussions as well as ___. For them, arguments can be interesting — and they can ____ pretty much or any topic— ____ they occur in a respectful and intelligent manner.

In the United States, business people like to discuss a ____ range of topics, including opinions about work, family, hobbies, and politics. In Japan, China, and Korea, however, people are much more private. They do not talk much about ____ thoughts, feelings, or emotions because they feel that doing so might take away the harmonious business relationship they’re trying to ____. Middle Easterners are also private about their personal lives and family ____. It is considered ___ , for example, to ask a businessman from Saudi Arabia about his wife or children.

As a general ____ , it’s best not to talk about politics or religion with your business friends. This ___ get you into trouble, ____ in the United States, where people hold different views. In addition, discussing one’s salary is usually considered unsuitable. Sports is ____ a friendly subject in most parts of the world, although be careful not to ____ a national sport. Instead, be friendly and praise your host’s team.

【推荐1】For many people today, reading is no longer relaxation. To keep up their work they must read letters, reports, trade publications, interoffice communications, not to mention newspapers and magazines: a never-ending flood of words. In ______ a job or advancing in one, the ability to read and comprehend ______ can mean the difference between success and failure. Yet the unfortunate fact is that most of us are ______ readers. Most of us develop poor reading ______ at an early age, and never get over them. The main deficiency ______ in the actual stuff of language itself-words. Taken individually, words have ______ meaning until they are strung together into phrased, sentences and paragraphs. ______ however, the untrained reader does not read groups of words. He laboriously reads one word at a time, often regressing to reread words or passages. Regression, the tendency to look back over ______ you have just read, is a common bad habit in reading. Another habit which ______ down the speed of reading is vocalization—sounding each word either orally or mentally as one reads.

To overcome these bad habits, some reading clinics use a device called an ______ , which moves a bar(or curtain)down the page at a predetermined speed. The bar is set at a slightly faster rate ______ the reader finds comfortable in order to “stretch” him. The accelerator forces the reader to read fast, ______ word-by-word reading, regression and vocalization practically impossible. At first ______ is sacrificed for speed. But when you learn to read ideas and concepts, you will not only read faster, but your comprehension will improve. Many people have found their reading skill drastically improved after some training. ______ Charlce Au. a business manager, for instance, his reading rate was a reasonably good 172 words a minute ______ the training, now it is an excellent 1,378 words a minute. He is delighted that how he can get through a lot more reading material in a short period of time.

【推荐2】Never in recorded history has a language been as widely spoken as English is today. The reason why millions are learning it is simple; it is the language of international business and, _______, the key to financial success.

David Graddol, the author of English Next, says it is _______ to view the story of English simply as a success for its native speakers in North America, Britain, etc.— but that would be an easy mistake. Global English has entered a more complex stage, changing in ways that the English-speaking countries cannot control and might not _______.

An important question one might ask is: whose English will it be in the future? Non-native speakers now _______ native English speakers by three to one. The majority of encounters in English today take place between non-native speakers. According to Graddol, many business meetings held in English appear to run more smoothly when no native English speakers are _______, whose use of idioms, metaphors, phrasal verbs, etc. often cause _______ problems.

Professor Barbara Seidlhofer, Professor at the University of Vienna, records and transcribes spoken English interactions around the world. She has noticed that non-native speakers are _______ standard English grammar in several ways. Even the most experienced speakers sometimes omit the “s” in the third person singular. Many omit definite and indefinite articles where they are _______ in standard English, or put them in where standard English does not use them. Nouns that are not plural in native-speaker English are used as plurals by non-native speakers (e.g. “informations, knowledges, advices”).

Many native English speakers will insist that these are just _______. “Knowledges” and “phone to somebody” are simply wrong. Many non-native speakers who teach English around the world would ________. But language changes, and so do concepts of grammatical ________.

For now, those who insist on standard English grammar remain in a(n) ________ position. Academics who want their work published in international journals have to obey the grammatical rules followed by native English-speaking elites(精英).

But spoken English in another matter. Why should non-native speakers bother with what native speakers regard as correct? Their main aim, ________, is to be understood by one another, and in most cases there is no native speaker present.

Professor Seidlhofer says, “I think what we are looking at is the ________ of a new international attitude, the recognition and awareness that in many international contexts non-native speakers do not need to speak like native speakers, to compare themselves to them, and thus always feel ‘________ .’”