There are many reasons why people from all over the world might need to improve their English: for further study, for business, for pleasure or because     1    . If you are one of them, you need to find chances to improve your English outside class. For example,     2    , and try to watch them with subtitles（字幕）. It can also help to read the words to understand the film. Watching television in English helps improve your English, too.

Reading things written in English can really help you to improve your English. If regular books are too difficult,     3    . Reading the newspapers and comic books can be very helpful as well.

Also listen to talk radio in English. This can also help you improve your English because     4    . But talk radio may not make a lot of sense at first. The more you listen, the more sense it makes.

Books on tape or CD are another great way to improve your English. Plan to listen to these as you are on the way home or to school. Many books on tape can be borrowed from libraries, so if     5    , you can still listen to many of them for free.

I’ve lived in many different countries, and now I’m in Hong Kong. _________ all of that time, I learned five or six different languages. I love learning languages. Not only are they important, but I also find them interesting.

I lived in Barcelona, Spain for ten years before. When I first _________ there, the most important thing was being able to communicate with local people. Let me tell you about some of my _________ in learning a language. I didn’t attend classes because I didn’t think I was good in classes. I _________ to learn by just talking to people, finding out what I needed to say by checking dictionaries and listening carefully.

I watched the typical kinds of programs that we can see on TV every day. It was _________ because they always had the same topics. So I could become _________ with the words as they were repeated again and again. Gradually, I learned many new words and _________. To have a better understanding of the language, I took a dictionary with me sometimes, or I asked other people what a word meant.

Anyway, the best _________ I ever had was just talking to people in the street, or in shops. I would _________ in my mind what I wanted to say before I went in. At first, I was afraid. __________ after you get over the embarrassment, it’s quite funny. You will find people to be very kind and patient in most cases.

8 . My father used to tell restaurants by their bread baskets. According to _____ “If you can’t get little things right, how can you do big things right?”

I feel that way about commas(逗号). Something can go wrong _____ a piece of writing when commas are used carelessly around the page. My writing students often put a comma wherever they feel one _____.

Then again, _____ kind of poor writings is quite opposite: no commas can be found anywhere. I always feel a bit disappointed, even _____, when I see the lovely comma abused (滥用) in these ways. Such abuses mean that my students don’t know how _____ this mark. But commas are important. They separate ideas. They show relationships. In talk, commas can mean life or death, “Kill ducks!” or “Kill, ducks!”

Then again, I also failed to learn the importance of the comma _____ I taught writing to first-year students. I remember the program head, _____ strict, white-haired woman, saying, “You have no idea where the commas go or why.” I felt terrible. How could I have misunderstood something so basic?

Well, the thing is, commas aren’t so basic, and learning to use them _____ years. Oscar Wilde once joked about ______ a hard day of writing was like: spending the morning taking out a comma, and in the afternoon, putting it back in. That sounds about right.