1 . While English is getting more important in our schools, Chinese has become popular among foreign kids. But Chinese can be more difficult to learn. At least 16-year-old Piao Chenglong thinks so. “English is easier for me. Chinese characters (汉字) have too many strokes (笔画),” said Piao. “But I want to learn it. I want to study at Beijing University when I grow up.” Piao is from Korea. He came to China in 2008.

In Korea, there are more than 300, 000 Chinese learners like Piao. Some Korean students begin to learn to write the language on their first day at school. To help students learn Chinese, Korea holds speaking competitions for high school students every year.

Chinese isn’t just popular in Korea. People from all the world want to learn it. The Ministry of Education of China says that nearly 130 million people from 85 countries are learning Chinese. This number will be increasing to 800 million in the coming years.

In America, Chinese is the second most popular foreign language after Spanish. Some American middle schools have Chinese classes. Students learn to make jiaozi and tie Chinese knots (中国结). Some even try to write and draw in the Chinese way!

People want to learn Chinese because China is becoming such an important country. Foreign countries want to understand China better to help them with business. The Chinese government is also helping the world learn Chinese. It has sent more than 200 Chinese teachers to more than 60 countries in the world. Many more Confucius Institutes (孔子学院) will be set up in the world. These institutes will teach Chinese to foreign students.

4 . Most worthwhile careers require some kind of specialized training. Ideally, therefore, the choice of a（n） ______ should be made even before the choice of a curriculum in high school. Actually, ______ , most people make several job choices during their working live, partly ______ economic and industrial changes and partly to improve their positions. The "one perfect job" does not exist. Young people should therefore ______ into a broad flexible training program that will ______ them for a field of ______ rather than for a single job.

Unfortunately, many young people, knowing ______ about the occupational world or themselves for that matter, choose their lifework ______ a hit-or-miss basis. Some ______ from job to job. Others ______ to work in which they are unhappy and ______ they are not fitted.

One common mistake is choosing an occupation for ______ real or imagined prestige.

Too many high-school students—or their parents for them-choose the professional field, ______ both the relatively small proportion of work vacancies in the professions and the extremely high educational and personal ______ . The imagined or realprestige of a profession or a "white-collar" job is ______ good reason for choosing it as a life's work. ______ , these occupations are not always well paid. Since a large proportion of jobs are in mechanical and manual work, the majority of young people should give serious ______ to these fields.

Before making an occupational choice, a person should have a general idea of what he wants ______ life and how hard he is willing to work to get it. Some people desire social prestige, others intellectual satisfaction. Some want security; others are willing to take ______ for financial gain. Each occupational choice has its demands as well as its ______ .

5 . Nowadays with the development of technology, people have gradually depended on the mobile phones seriously. Many people, especially young adults, like to use social media to connect with others. However, everyone takes no notice of an important point. That’s face-to-face communication between people is missing.

Social media is all about connecting with others. But a new study suggests that too much social media use makes people feel alone and lonely. The study finds that heavy use of platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram leads to isolation among young adults.

In the study Brian Primack and his team interviewed 1,787 U.S. adults aged 19 to 32 about their use of social media platforms. Surprisingly, people that spend more time on social media feel lonelier than others.

Tom Kersting，a psychotherapist(心理治疗师)，said “Although people think being on social media all the time makes them connected to others, they are actually disconnected, because the more time one spends behind a screen, the less time one spends face-to-face.”Kersting continued. “They are spending a lot of time looking at everyone else’s posts, where they are, where they are going and what they are doing. The constant connection to others’ perfect life experiences causes feelings of being left out, and of being lonely.”

So what’s the answer? “It’s simple,” says Kersting, “All you need to do is to have a strong will. The solution to this is to refuse the addiction to looking at everyone else’s life. Just focus on your own life, where you’re going, what you are grateful for, and what you want to achieve in this world. Then go out and do it, and stop wasting so much time comparing.”

6 . Several years ago, Jeremy Clarkson, presenter of the famous BBC television programme Top Gear’, discovered that one of his guests was half German and half Irish. Immediately, he said: “That’s quite a strange combination. It’s like, this must be done absolutely perfectly... tomorrow”.

This is a joke about the stereotype (刻板印象) that Germans are efficient and Irish are lazy. Many people could understandably be offended by these kinds of assertions (断言). We do not know every Irish person, so how can we then conclude that every Irish person is lazy?

I recently read on a website that Irish business people were described as being ‘generally rather casual’ and ‘more outwardly friendly than many European countries’. German business people, on the other hand, are considered to be very direct and according to the website, they do not need a personal relationship in order to do business. Once you hear advice like this, it becomes easier to understand where jokes like the one in the first paragraph come from.

So why do some people disagree with the kind of stereotypes as seen in Clarkson’s joke, but agree when it comes to generalizations (概括)? What is the difference between the two?

By definition, a stereotype is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. A cultural characteristic, on the other hand, is a pattern of behaviour that is typical of a certain group.

So what does this really mean? Stereotypes are simply overstated assumptions about groups of people. Imagine if a tourist visited a small town in Switzerland and saw a number of locals playing the alphorn instrument, and then claimed that Swiss people can play the alphorn. This would be a stereotype! This is an overstated image of the Swiss which is based on one tourist’s experience.

If, however, this tourist were to say that the Swiss are very punctual, this could be seen as a cultural characteristic. This is because it is a pattern of behaviour which is very typical in Switzerland: from their transport system to their business meetings.

In this way, some people argue that generalizing another culture is not just useful, but important. Politicians always have to be mindful of the cultural characteristics of different countries. By becoming aware of different cultural characteristics, they can avoid causing offence in those cultures.

However, others argue that generalizing cultures will always lead to offensive stereotypes. They argue that the best thing we can do is to stop generalizing cultures and start treating people as individuals.

All this raises important questions: Can making generalizations about groups of people be a positive thing? Or should we always avoid making broad assumptions about different groups?

9 . Six months before she died, my grandmother moved into an old people’s home and I visited her there. The room was clean and warm, and the care assistants were kind and cheerful. A general knowledge quiz show was on the television, and the only other sound was snoring. People moved only when they needed to be helped to the bathroom. It was disappointing. Grandmother talked a lot about how much she missed seeing her grandchildren, but I knew from my sister that they hated going to visit her there.

So I was interested to read a newspaper article about a new concept in old people’s homes in France. The idea is simple, but revolutionary — combining a residential home for the elderly with a nursery school in the same building. The children and the residents eat lunch together and share activities. In the afternoons, the residents enjoy reading or telling stories to the children, and if a child is feeling sad or tired, there is always a kind lap to sit on.

The advantages are huge for everyone concerned. The children are happy, because they get a lot more individual attention. The residents are happy because they feel useful and needed. And the staff are happy because they see an improvement in the physical and psychological health of the residents and have an army of assistants to help with the children.

Nowadays there is less and less contact between the old and the young in an increasing number of countries. There are many reasons for this, including the breakdown of the extended family, working parents with no time to care for ageing relations, families that have moved away, and smaller flats with no room for grandparents. But the result is the same-increasing numbers of children without grandparents and old people who have no contact with children, and more old people who are lonely and feel useless, along with more and more families with young children who desperately need more support. Ifs a major problem in many societies.

That’s why intergenerational programs, designed to bring the old and the young together, are growing in popularity all over the world.

Got a moment — or, perhaps, 15 seconds? In the age of fragmented time, TikTok, which is a massive hit in China right now, can perfectly fill in the gaps when people have nothing     1     (good) to do between two events; its daily plays     2     (spread) over one billion in the past few years. The Vine-like app allows users to produce creative short videos that combine music with mouth shapes or body moves. They can dance, sing, cook or do     3     their hearts desire.

    4     (launch) in September 2016, TikTok is owned by Zhang Yiming, one of China’s top tech leaders; he chairs ByteDance. Similar to how Vine worked     5     a time-limited video platform, TikTok is a     6     (collect) of brief 15-second music videos, mainly focused on young people,     7     it’s certainly suitable for all ages.

On the platform, childish and strange behaviors are     8     (true) acceptable. In high-pressure world, it is no surprise that TikTok has become so successful – all you need to do is pick up your phone and open the app to relieve some stress and have     9     laugh. The app pushes related videos and products based on users’ preferences and consequently, TikTok can be quite addictive – many people just want to enjoy a few minutes at first, but end up     10     (consume) several hours’ video time.