【推荐1】I work as a university professor at an art school in Australia. Last year, I decided to________ online classes to gain some knowledge of Chinese to prepare for an exchange project.

My teacher and I would meet a few times a month to practice________ and go over grammar. During our communication, he also________ details of his life. Gradually, the________ of the first few lessons gave way to more familiarity and comfort. I stopped feeling embarrassed and began to open up about my own________ and my battle with Chinese. “Don’t worry; I’m here to________ you. You’re hardworking and I’m sure you’ll do well in it,” said my teacher. I had ________ my students with similar words in my own teaching. It was________ to hear them directed at me. The tables turned.

“You are ________ today,” my teacher would say when I used varied vocabulary or expressions. When I heard these four words, I got a feeling of_________. It also surprised me that my confidence could be encouraged by such________ praise. That was when I became aware how________ I had praised my students. I thought much praise made them self-satisfied. But now, I had a change of heart and________ that these plain words can mean a lot. Words________ And now I become more________ when I use them.

【推荐2】Very few of us become fluent in another language by studying it in high school.

I made a(n) _______ to maintain (保持) the little bit of French that I learned in school, but eventually realized that this was useless. I knew well that new languages are _______ learned when young, and that our abilities _______ with age. However, just before my 50th birthday, I _______ French classes.

After I was _______ to see which group I belonged to, I was put in almost the basic learning group. When I looked around in my first Saturday morning class, I was _______ by how many of the students learning French as a third, fourth, or _______ fifth language.

While I’d always considered myself as a quick _______, that was no longer the case. I absorbed new vocabulary very slowly. What I learned one week seemed to _______ as soon as I learned the next skill. I looked up the same ________ and phrases over and over again.

Now, a couple of years later, I can listen to the news in French and catch 90 percent of it on the first try, read a novel if the language is not too difficult, and hold on to the end of a conversation if it doesn’t go too ________. Who knows what I might still achieve? I’ve learned so much beyond grammar and vocabulary. I’ve met people from around the world who have the ________ to make a fool of themselves to learn something new. I have a ________ understanding of how something can look ________ different from another perspective (角度). I’ve learned that a language is not just a set of words, but a way of ________.

But most of all, I’ve learned that it really is never too late to learn something new.

【推荐3】When I first entered university, my aunt, who is an English professor, gave me a new English dictionary and advised me to use it. I was _______ to see that it was an English-English dictionary, also known as a monolingual (单语的) dictionary. Although it was a dictionary intended for non-native learners, none of my classmates had one and, to be honest, I found it extremely _______ to use at first. I would _______ words in the dictionary but still could not fully understand the meanings. I was used to the _______ English-Chinese dictionaries, in which the words are _______ both in English and Chinese. I really wondered why my aunt gave me such _______ to make things so difficult for me. Now, I understand that monolingual dictionaries are_______ in learning a foreign language.

As I _______, there is, in fact, often no perfect equivalent (对应物) between two _______ in two languages. My aunt even ________ that even a Chinese “equivalent” can never give you the ________ meaning of the word in English! Therefore, she insisted that I read the definition of a word in a monolingual dictionary when I wanted to get a better ________ of its meaning. Gradually, I have come to see what she ________.

Using a monolingual dictionary has helped me in another important way. This dictionary uses a(n) ________ number of words, around 2, 000, in its definitions. When I read these definitions, I am ________exposed to the basic words and learn how they are used to explain objects and ideas. Because of this, I can express myself more easily in English.

【推荐2】Azure Warrenfeltz, a 4-year-old girl, is fluent in Japanese and Spanish. She also can ____bits of French, German, Arabic and Italian, and she soon hopes to learn some Mandarin Chinese.

In today's globalized world, Azure is one of many young American children whose parents insist her ____include foreign languages.

"It's such a ____environment now, you never know what you might need," says Azure's mother, Julie Warrenfeltz, who started schooling her daughter in foreign languages when she was 6 weeks old. "She couldn't ____a violin, she couldn't stand upright, but I wanted her to do ____."

Not only is learning a foreign language easier for children than it is for ____, but children who are exposed to other languages also do better in school. They are more ____to diversity, says François Thibaut, who runs The Language Workshop for Children, which has nine schools around the East Coast.

Language study for children is based on immersion (沉浸), he says. Kids sing songs and play games to help develop language comprehension skills. When children start learning languages at birth, they have the ____ to learn many languages at once without getting ____— because, as the brain develops, so too does the ability to separate one ____from another.

【推荐3】There are about fifteen hundred languages in the world. But only a few of them are very_______. English is one of them. Many people ______ it，not only in England and the USA, but in other parts of the world. About 20 million speak it ______ their native language. It is difficult to say how many people are learning it as a ______ language. Many millions are ______ to do so.

Is it easy or difficult to learn English? Different people may have different ______. Have you ever ______ such advertisements (广告) in the newspapers or magazines? “Learn English in six weeks, or your ______ back...” Of course, it never ______ quite like this.

The only language that seems easy to learn is the mother tongue. We should ______ that we all learned our own language well when we were ______. If we could learn English in the same way, it would not seem so difficult. ______ what a small child does. He listens to what people say. He ______ what he hears. When he is using the language, taking in it, ______ all the time, just imagine how much ______ that he gets!

So it is ______ to say that learning English is easy ______ a good command (掌握) of English depends on (取决于) a lot of practice. And practice needs great effort and ______ much time. Sometimes teachers, records, tapes, books, and dictionaries will ______. But they can't do the student's ______ for him. 21cnjy