【推荐1】People will tell you the only way to really learn a language is to completely immerse(浸入)yourself in a country where that language is spoken. Not all language learners, of course, will have the opportunity to spend some time in an immersion environment. But if you can't actually fly across the world to learn a new language, you can always create an immersion environment where you can talk to native speakers.

That's where Babbel comes in. Babbel is one of the most popular language learning apps on the market for studying new languages at your own pace. The app emphasises real-life conversational skills, so you won't be stopped by grammatical structures and verb patterns.

And right now, you can get 15%off a lifetime subscription (订阅)to Babbel Language Learning（$150; stacksocial. com）.A lifetime subscription is huge when it comes to getting the most out of the app, since you'll be able to return to lessons time and time again and brush up on whichever section or topic you might need.

So how does it all work? First, you'll choose one of the 14 languages. While Babbel offers familiar languages like Spanish and Italian, it also offers less commonly studied ones like Polish, Indonesian and more. Once you pick your language, you'll choose a wide range of real-life topics. Each course takes about 10 to 15 minutes, so you can pick one up on the way to work, during your lunch break, or really at any point you have some time to kill.

Beyond this, Babbel includes a ton of additional features tailored to making sure you learn the language in a real, practical and accurate way. The app uses speech recognition technology to make sure your pronunciation is accurate compared with how native speakers would say certain words.

【推荐2】A state in Australia is fixing cameras as part of an effort to reduce the number of people using wireless devices (设备) while they drive. Road safety experts are worried about the growing number of accidents because of drivers using smartphones on the state’s roads. They say drivers who use phones while driving greatly increase their chances of causing an accident.

The units use AI to set aside drivers who are not touching their phones. Human beings then make sure if the pictures show illegal behavior before a notice is sent to the vehicle’s owner. A violation (违反) carries a fine of $232. Some cameras will be set up on roadsides forever. Others will be moved, from time to time, around the state.

Two fixed cameras took photos of 8. 5 million vehicles as part of a six-month test earlier this year. The cameras took photos of more than 100, 000 drivers with their hands on phones. One driver was using a phone and an Apple iPad at the same time. Another driver had a passenger guide the vehicle while they both held phones.

Not everyone agrees with the new program. Peter Khoury is a member of Australia’s National Rosds and Motorists’ Association. He accused (谴责) the government of using secret methods to cut down on phone that does not follow the law. The association supports stricter action against drivers who pay too much attention to their phones. However, the association wants the government to set up signs warning drivers that phone cameras are operating in an area.

Government modeling found that the phone cameras could prevent 100 deaths and serious injuries over five years.

Drivers are allowed to use phones in hands-free carriers and through wireless connections (连接). But it does not follow the law to touch a phone while driving except to pass it to a passenger. Drivers who are sitting at red lights or stopped in heavy traffic should also follow the new law.

【推荐3】Today, many people spend a lot of time reading online, whether reading news, social media, or e-books. While online reading opens up a lot of knowledge to people, there are some drawbacks, too. These include eyestrain, headaches, as well as difficulty in even finishing reading the text. Now a new reading plugin (插件) has been intended to help people overcome these problems and read faster online.

The reading plugin called Bionic Reading, which was developed by Swiss designer Renato Casutt, was created with the belief that your brain can read faster than your eyes. The plugin makes the first few letters of each word in bold (粗体), which actually allows your eyes to skip over parts of the text and your brain to fill in what is missing. Incredibly, reading like this feels like finally unlocking 100 percent of people’s brain.

Casutt came up with the plugin by accident. He was reading a book in a foreign language and realized he could read it faster and well master it if he separated it into parts. He has worked for six years to develop Bionic Reading and is still working to perfect it. Many people who want to strengthen their reading ability show interest in it, but more research is needed before it can be definitively shown that the system improves reading ability. But people with dyslexia (诵读障碍) have confirmed that Bionic Reading did help them focus on what they are reading.

Casutt’s goal is to integrate the plugin into all reading apps and online services. “In a digital world dominated (支配) by shallow forms of reading, Bionic Reading aims to encourage a more in-depth reading and understanding of written content,” he said. Bionic Reading is available in several apps like Fiery Feeds, Lire, and Next App. The best way to know if it helps you read better online is to try it yourself and find out what it is all about.

【推荐2】A generation understandably frightened by “adulting” may well welcome the linguistic (语言的) comfort food of childlike language. And once established, the habit can easily make the jump to those of us more advanced in years. After all, a kid is inside every one of us, and few people are resistant to the infectiousness of creativity. Young people are the primary drivers of language change, but even we “olds” — as the young are used to putting it — like to change things up now and then. As new slang creeps across generational divides, however, it inevitably stirs up people’s deepest linguistic anxieties. Does the new trend of kidspeak represent a dumbing-down of the English language? Just the opposite: with the rise of kidspeak, we are actually witnessing English’s enrichment.

It has long been ordinary for one language to borrow from another, and even from a dialect of the same language: Black English has lent mainstream English words like diss and the “angry” meaning of salty. Kidspeak extends our word stock in exactly the same way that Old Norse, French, and Latin once did. On the internet, for example, kidspeak refers to a “smol kitty” and a “smol baby,” but not a “smol mailbox” or “smol Blu-ray player.” Smol, then, is not merely a way of spelling small, but a more specific term referring to cuteness. Just missing out on becoming Word of the Year at the American Dialect Society’s 2019 meeting was yeet, seemingly meant to imitate the sound of something being thrown into a container or through a net (and often pronounced with a celebratory gesture to that effect). One now speaks of “yeeting” an empty can into the trash, and the word has even developed an irregular past-tense form, yote. We have kidspeak to thank for introducing these new layers of playfulness into our vocabulary.

English today is arguably more fertile than it’s been since Shakespeare’s time, and those worried about the novelty of kidspeak might consider that not so long ago pedants (顽固派) were insisting the proper person should say “bal-coh-nee” for balcony, stamp out “nonwords” such as standpoint, and use obnoxious to mean “Tripe for injury.” Their arguments failed miserably when presented to everyday speakers, who tend to have good intuition about how language should work.

Amid today’s news cycles, the emergence of kidspeak is something to celebrate. This new slang is a totally natural and endlessly witty collective advancement of the American idiom. It makes for more interesting talk. I, at least, am glad to be living with the English of right now, surrounded by all the new words.