For any problem my English teacher finds with us, she talks to us face to face. Although it is very     1     for my teacher, it is more     2     than other types of feedback. During the face-to-face communication, my teacher tells us exactly where our problems are and how we can     3    . It also gives us an opportunity to     4    further questions about anything we don’t understand. I think this kind of feedback is helpful. I love it.

I don’t think memorizing the word list is the best way to learn words. First, you should learn words in     1    . For example, when reading English stories, try to keep reading on even when you come across some new words. A lot of time, you’ll be able to guess the meaning of an     2     word without looking it up. Also, you should learn words in     3    . For example, we say “open the book”, but “turn on the computer”. Or we say “eat an apple”, but “    4     the medicine”.

6 . In some ways, it is surprising that languages change. After all, they are passed down through the generations reliably enough for parents and children to communicate with each other.     1     For example, while Japanese has changed relatively little over a thousand years, English evolved rapidly in just a few centuries. Many present day speakers find Shakespear’s sixteenth-century plays difficult and Chaucer’s fourteenth-century The Canterbury Tales nearly impossible to read.

Languages change for a variety of reasons. Large-scale shifts often occur in response to social, economic, and political pressures, as there are many examples of language change fueled by invasions, colonization, and migration.     2     Frequently, the needs of speakers drive language change. New technologies industries, products and experiences simply require new words. By using new and emerging terms, we all drive language change. But the unique way that individuals speak also fuels language change because no two individuals use a language in exactly the same way.     3     Through our day-to-day interactions, we pick up words and savings from other people and integrate them into our speech. Teens and young adults, for example, often use different words and phrases from their parents. Some of them spread through the population and slowly change the language.

    4     Vocabulary can change quickly as new words are borrowed from other languages, or as words get coined, combined, or shortened. Some words are even created through misinterpretation of form. As noted in the Linguistic Society of America’s publication Is English Changing?, the word pea is one such example. Up until about four hundred years ago, pease could refer to either a single pea or many peas. At some point, people assumed that pease was the plural form of a new word, pea, based on the way pease sounded. While vocabulary can change quickly, sentence structure — the order of words in a sentence changes more slowly.     5     For example, during the Great Vowel Shift five hundred years ago, the pronunciation of vowels in English changed dramatically. This shift represents the biggest difference between the pronunciation of Middle English and Modern English.

In a study, subjects who practiced the made-up language moderately beforehand made     1     (few) errors than those who practiced extensively or not at all. High levels of knowledge can make people too attached to traditional ways of viewing problems across fields. High conscientiousness (自觉性) is related to lower job     2     (perform), especially in simple jobs where it doesn't pay to be a perfectionist.

How long we stay on the clock and how we spend that time are under careful examination in many workplaces. The young banker who eats lunch at his desk is probably seen as a go-getter,     3     his colleagues who chat over a relaxed conference-room meal get dirty looks from the corner office. People from cultures that value relationships more than ours does     4     (shock) by the thought of eating alone in front of a computer.

10 . In many languages, the word for “mother/mom” takes an m-sound. Is there any reason for such near-universality?

Linguists(语言学家) generally argue for “the arbitrariness of the sign”: no connection exists between the word dog and the furry quadruped. A rare exception is onomatopoeia, where words representing the bark of a dog (bow-wow) and the buzz made by a bee are more or less similar to the sound. Yet most things are not subject to naming this way.

What about mama? It does not sound like a mother, but the fact is that some sounds are more widespread than others around the world. There are many dozens of observed consonants which are rare and hard for non-natives to learn.

In contrast, a few—such as b, m, p, t, d and k—show up far more frequently, in nearly every spoken language in the world. That is almost certainly because they are easy to make. A baby vocalising will, at first, make a vowel-like sound, usually something like “ah”, which requires little in the way of control over the mouth. If they briefly close their mouth and continue vocalising, air will come out of their nose, thus making the m-sound that is used in “mother” around the world.

Though the “mamas” bear the most obvious similarity, the “papas” have striking commonalities, too. Babies can easily stop their breath when they close their lips (rather than going on breathing through the nose). This produces a b-or a p-sound. It is surely for this reason that so many names for “father” use these consonants: papa in English, abb in Arabic and baba in Mandarin. T-and d-sounds are similarly basic, involving a simple tap of the tongue against the teeth: hence daddy, tatay (Tagalog) or tayta (Quechua).

Father and mother are, therefore, an oddity. F-is not especially easy to utter(发音); th-sounds are even harder. English, Greek and Spanish are unusual in having them. Even Anglophone children may struggle with th-sounds when they are five, or older still in many cases.

Anyway, it is hard to find linguistic universals amid the world’s dazzling variety.