2 . Online education has grown fast over the past ten years. The explosion of technology has made teaching outside the traditional classroom possible for teachers and has provided learners with easy access to course materials. Its attractiveness, benefits, and challenges are addressed.

In April, 2005, I was approached by a student who was interested in our doctoral program. However, the first question out of her mouth was, “Do you offer any online courses?” Later that day, as I was reading the conference program guide trying for interesting presentations, I noticed many workshops on web-based learning and online education. I later attended two of those workshops and met several professors from different universities who had either taught online courses for quite some time or who were discovering the best practice for teaching online. These experiences helped me realize at least to some extent the degree of growth in online education.

My responsibilities for the term included gaining more understanding of online education. Consequently, I made several attempts to enrich my knowledge of distance learning and online teaching. I consulted with my colleagues who were teaching online courses. This helped me recognize the importance of getting materials prepared even before the start of a term. I also learned that online courses may consume more time than regular classroom teaching. And I attended several workshops regarding online education and established a network with those who were involved in online programs at other universities. I will consider these people as my consultants as I begin to design my own online course. Also, I conducted a brief survey with 15 students and two faculty members who had taken or taught an online course before to understand their experience. Eventually I completed a literature review which gave me the foundation and the background of understanding the need for online education.

5 . Are you a different person when you speak a foreign language? That’s just one of the questions The New Yorker’s writer and native North Carolinian Lauren Collins explores in her engaging autobiography, about her tough efforts to master French after marrying a Frenchman whose name — Olivier — she couldn’t even pronounce properly. When in French ranges from the humorously personal to a deeper look at various theories of language acquisition and linguistics.

The couple met in London “on more or less neutral ground: his continent, my language.” But the balance shifted when they moved to Geneva for Olivier’s work. The normally voluble Collins found herself at a loss — “nearly speechless.” The language barrier, and her dependence on her husband for simple things like buying the right cut of meat worsened her mixed feelings about “unlovely, but not ridiculous” Geneva. She comments, “Language, as much as land, is a place. To be cut off from it is to be, in a sense, homeless.”

Her sense of alienation (疏离感) leads to an examination of America’s miserable record when it comes to foreign languages: “Linguists call America ‘the graveyard of languages’ because of its singular ability to take in millions of immigrants and make their native languages die out in a few generations,” Collins writes. Educated in Wilmington, N.C., and at Princeton, she could — like the vast majority of Americans — only speak their mother tongue.

Eight months after she moved to Switzerland, Collins gave up on the natural acquisition of language and finally enrolls in a French course. As she struggles with grammar and vocabulary, Collins notes smartly that vert (green), verre (glass), ver (worm), vers (toward), and vair (squirrel) compose a quintuple homonym (同形异义). “Although it’s difficult, French can be tried,” she says.

Yet French is actually considered among the easiest languages for an English speaker to learn, especially compared to Arabic or Mandarin Chinese. Collins, whose notably rich English vocabulary includes glossolalia (nonsense speech) and shibboleth (catchword or slogan), finds plenty of terrific French words to love. She writes, “English is a trust fund, an unearned inheritance, but I've worked for every bit of French I've banked.”

Unlike Jhumpa Lahiri, who became so hooked on Italian and used it to write In Other Words, Collins’ goals for learning French were more modest: “I wanted to speak French and to sound like North Carolina.” She also wanted to be able to deal with chimney sweeps and butchers, communicate with her in-laws, and “to touch Olivier in his own language.” She admits that she feels different speaking French: “Its austerity (朴素) made me feel more confused.”

6 . The universal use of technology has resulted in a constant current of information interrupting the “flow” of our life. This ________ pattern was initially marketed as “call-waiting” for our phones. But now our eyes, ears, and fingers are glued to our technology 24/7. We are ________ by emails, texts, or the news on our Facebook pages. My friend Ron refers to this technology as “weapons of mass distraction.”

But how is this mass distraction ________ us? According to a 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation report, children from eight to eighteen spend an average of seven hours and thirty-eight minutes a day using entertainment media. In addition, a study found that exposure to ________ media was associated with attention problems in a sample of 210 college students.

The ________ is just part of the larger picture. Dealing with a crowd of daily text messages and emails makes it difficult for us to be by ourselves when all that activity stops. Although a sense of ________ is natural at times, our addiction to the nonstop interaction afforded by technology deepens that feeling when access to the technology is unexpectedly ________. Just think how you feel when you lack cell phone or web access. Is it possible that our obsession with continually checking our emails and text messages has contributed to our ________ to genuinely relate with others?

Apart from the effects of technology on our ________ and our ability to be at ease without technology, let’s examine how interacting with our devices ________ the development of our fundamental communication and social skills. Many researchers observe that everyday conversation between human beings is becoming increasingly ________.

Many of today’s children are growing up with a built-in dependence on devices, making it difficult for them to feel ________ in everyday social situations. Often they find it ________ to make eye contact or deal with even the simplest face-to-face interactions without the aid of technology as an intermediary (媒介).

Over time these children forget how to relate with each other because they have become habituated to using technology to ________ direct contact with others and life itself. ________, some neuroscientists believe that use of the internet actually rewires our brains.

7 . More than half the world’s population live in cities, and by 2050 the UN expects that proportion to reach 68%. This means more homes, roads and other infrastructure. Such a construction ________ does harm to tackling climate change, though, because making steel and concrete generates around 8% of the world’s carbon-dioxide emissions. If cities are to ________ and become greener at the same time, they will have to be made from something else.

As it happens, Chicago might become part of the ________. In recent years, as architects have become increasingly interested in modern timber (木材) — construction methods, wooden buildings have been getting steadily ________. The current record is held by the 85-metre-tall Mjostarnet building in Norway, completed in 2019. But this would be ________ by the River Beech Tower, a 228-metre building proposed for a site beside the Chicago river.

As the AAAs meeting heard this week, wood is one of the most ________ sustainable alternatives to steel and concrete. It is not, however, everyday wood but a material called engineered timber, composed of different layers for specific purposes. Besides engineering the shape of a component, designers can arrange the grains (纹理) in the layers to provide levels of ________ that equal steel, in a product that is up to 80% lighter. Engineered timber is, ________, usually assembled into large sections of a building in a factory. That cuts down on the number of ________ that have to be made to a construction site.

All this ________ to carbon-dioxide emissions. Michael Ramage of the University of Cambridge told the meeting of a 300-square-metre four-storey wooden building that generated 126 tonnes of CO₂. Had it been made with ________, emissions would have risen to 310 tonnes. If steel had been used, they would have topped 498 tonnes. Indeed, from one point of view, this building might actually be viewed as “carbon ________”. When trees grow, they lock carbon up in their wood — in this case the equivalent of 540 tonnes of CO₂, representing a long-term reduction of CO₂ from the atmosphere.

If building with wood takes off, it does raise concern about there being enough trees to ________. But with sustainably managed forests that should not be a problem, says Dr Ramage. A family-sized apartment requires about 30 cubic metres of timber, and he estimates Europe’s sustainable ________ alone grow that amount every seven seconds. Nor is fire a risk, for engineered timber does not burn easily, because the inner cores of large ________ timbers are protected by a charring (炭化) layer if burnt.

9 . The earthquake was over and the city was in ruins. I had no choice but to walk home as all the _______ had stopped as a result of the quake. On my way home I _______ an old lady at a bakery giving out free bread, which made my heart warm. A man was holding a sign saying, “Please use our toilet.” He was _______ his house for people to go to the restroom.

My friend, _______ wanted to be of help to others, stood in the cold with a sign, “If you don’t _______ a motorcycle, I’ll be glad to drive you home.” And then I saw him pick up an old man and drive him all the way to a faraway place!

Then the next day I drove to have my car _______. There was not enough _______ and many gas stations were closed or had very long lines. I got worried, since I was _______ fifteen cars. Finally, when my turn came, the man smiled and said, “_______ this situation, we are only giving $30 worth of gas per person. Is that alright?” “________. It’s nice that we are all able to ________,” I said. His smile gave me so much comfort.

At the escape centre I saw a man ________ when people brought food to him. It was the first time in three days that food had been brought to their centre. However, after he cleaned up the tears, his next ________ surprised me. “I am very grateful that we are provided with food. But people in the city next to us haven’t ________ any food at all. Please go to that centre as well.” Hearing that, I realised there was a bright future on the other side of this ________.

10 . Every artist knows in his heart that he is saying something to the public. Not only does he want to say it well, but he wants it to be something that has not been _______ before. He hopes the public will listen and understand—he wants to teach them, and he wants them to learn from him.

What _______ artists like painters want to teach is easy to make out but difficult to explain, because painters translate their experiences into shapes and colors, not _______. They seem to feel that a certain _______ of shapes and colors, out of the countless billions possible, is exceptionally interesting for them and worth _______ to us. Without their work we should never have noticed the _______ shapes and colors, or have felt the _______ which they brought to the artists.

Most artists take shapes and colors from the world of nature and from human bodies in _______ and repose(静止); their _______ indicate that these aspects of the world are worth looking at, that they contain beautiful ________. Contemporary artists might say that they ________ choose subjects that provide an interesting pattern, that there is nothing more in it. Yet even they do not choose entirely without ________ to the character of their subjects.

If one painter chooses to paint a gangrenous(坏疽性的)leg and anther a lake in moonlight, each of them is directing our attention to a(n) ________ aspect of the world. Each painter is telling us something, showing us something, ________ something-all of which means that, consciously or unconsciously, he is trying to ________ us.