2 . You can tell a lot about people’s general state of mind based on their social media feeds. Are they always tweeting（发微博）about their biggest annoyances or posting pictures of particularly cute kitties? In a similar fashion, researchers are turning to Twitter for clues about the overall happiness of entire geographic communities.

What they’re finding is that regional variation in the use of common phrases produces predictions that don’t always reflect the local state of well being. But removing from their analyses just three specific terms -- good, love and LOL - greatly improves the accuracy of the methods.

“We’re living in a crazy COVID-19 era. And now more than ever, we’re using social media to adapt to a new normal and reach out to the friends and family that we can’t meet face-to-face.” Kokil Jaidka studies computational linguistics at the National University of Singapore. “But our words aren’t useful just to understand what we, as individuals, think and feel. They’re also useful clues about the community we live in.”

One of the simpler methods that many scientists use to analyze the data involves correlating words with positive or negative emotions. But when those records are compared with phone surveys that assess regional well-being, Jaidka says, they don’t paint an accurate picture of the local zeitgeist（时代精神）.

Being able to get an accurate read on the mood of the population is no laughing matter. “That’s particularly important now, in the time of COVID, where we’re expecting a mental health crisis and we’re already seeing in survey data the largest decrease in subjective well-being in 10 years at least, if not ever.”

To find out why , Jaidka and her team analyzed billions of tweets from around the United States. And they found that among the most frequently used terms on Twitter are LOL, love and good. And they actually throw the analysis off. Why the disconnect?

“Internet language is really a different beast than regular spoken language. We’ve adapted words from the English vocabulary to mean different things in different situations.” says Jaidka. “Take, for example, LOL. I’ve tweeted the word LOL to express irony, annoyance and sometimes just pure surprise. When the methods for measuring LOL as a marker of happiness were created in the 1990s, it still meant laughing out loud.”

“There are plenty of terms that are less misleading,” says Jaidka. “Our models tell us that words like excited, fun, great, opportunity, interesting, fantastic and those are better words for measuring subjective well-being.”

5 . Betty Azar is a world famous expert on teaching English grammar. Here are some of her opinions.

Why do students need to learn grammar?

When teachers are deciding which grammar points to teach,they should first ask two questions. First,will understanding the point help students be understood—will it help them understand better?Next, will learning the grammar point help students be acceptable as English speakers?

People usually think that grammar is all about memorizing rules. In fact,grammar is not just learning rules. It is a way to help students along the way to communication.

Teachers should know that students do not all learn in the same way. Each may have a different learning style when it comes to learning grammar. Some may see a pattern and understand the rule. Others need explanations and more practice. “But to teach grammar as a subject matter and test it as though you were testing the memorization of dates in history is sure to bore everybody and not reach the goals that you are trying to reach—successful communication experiences.”

Why do some teachers hate teaching grammar?

Many teachers are not comfortable teaching grammar because they do not know how to answer their students' questions. “Most native speakers of English didn't learn it in school," she says. "If you don't know any grammar of your own language and then you are asked to teach it,it's possible that your students may know more grammar than you and you can’t answer their questions."

Can teaching grammar really be fun?

Teachers should learn to make the teaching of grammar fun. She says,"My students enjoy learning grammar as much as I enjoy teaching it. I think grammar is fascinating. It is the glue that holds language together. It is really beautiful when you get to know it. Grammar is quite a remarkable(不同寻常的) thing."

6 . A new study of 8,000 young people in the journal of Health and Social Behavior shows that although love can make adults live healthily and happily，it is a bad thing for young people. Puppy love（早恋）may bring stress for young people and can lead to depression. The study shows that girls become more depressed than boys, and younger girls are the worst of all.

The possible reason for the connection between love and higher risk of depression for girls is “loss of self”. According to the study, even though boys would say “lose themselves in a romantic relationship”, this “loss of self” is much more likely to lead to depression when it happens to girls. Young girls who have romantic relationships usually like hiding their feelings and opinions. They won’t tell that to their parents.

Dr Marianm Kaufman, an expert on young people problems, says 15% to 20% young people will have depression during their growing. Trying romance often causes the depression. She advises kids not to jump into romance too early. During growing up, it is important for young people to build strong friendships and a strong sense of self. She also suggests the parents should encourage their kids to keep close to their friends, attend more interesting school activities and spend enough time with family.

Parents should watch for signs of depression—eating or mood changes—and if they see signs from their daughters or sons，they need to give help. The good news is that the connection between romance and depression seems to become weak with age. Love will always make us feel young, but only maturity(成熟) gives us a chance to avoid its bad side effects.

7 . For several years, Americans have enjoyed teleshopping- watching TV and buying things by phone.     1     In a number of European countries, people can turn on their TVs and shop for clothes, jewelry, food, toys and many other things.

    2    For example, the biggest Swedish company sells different kinds of things on TV in 15 European countries, and in one year it made $100 million. In France there are two teleshopping channels, and the French spend about $20 million a year to buy things through those channels.

In Germany, until last year teleshopping was only possible on one channel for 1 hour every day. Then the government allowed more teleshopping. Other channels can open for tele-business, including the largest American teleshopping company and a 24-hour teleshopping company.     3    

Some people like teleshopping because it allows them to do their shopping without leaving their homes. With all the problems of traffic in the cities, this is an important reason, but at the same time, other Europeans do not like this new way of shopping.     4     Many Europeans usually worry about the quality of the things for sale on TV. Good quality is important to them, and they believe they cannot be sure about the quality of the things on TV.

    5     They will have to be more careful about the quality of the things they sell. They will also have to work harder to sell things that the buyers cannot touch or see in person.

8 . In the modern world more and more people meet the problem of identity.The most interesting example is that of a so – called “banana”, which refers to an American who has an Asian face but holds Western values.

In Shanghai, there now live a group of people from abroad.They look no different from the locals and speak fluent Chinese or even Shanghai dialect, but when it comes to writing Chinese characters, they are almost illiterate（文盲）.Jack is such an example.He never learned to read or write Chinese characters, which he finds mysterious and difficult.From time to time, he files to the US as he does not feel Shanghai is where he comes from.“But when I am in the States, I feel that’s not my home either,” he said.

At De Gaulle Airport in France, there is a Swiss man who has been living in the waiting – room for a long time because he lost h is passport during his travels.He was refused entry into several countries.But when he was eventually allowed to return to Swizerland, he refused to leave the airport.His reason was very simple—“I am sure who I am.I need no acknowledgement from others,” he said during an interview.For th is reason   he was honored by the Western media as “the Hero of identity.”

As the Internet becomes more and more popular, the problem of identity becomes more serious.In a virtual world, people can have different addresses registered with different names.In the Internet chat room, even one’s gender（性别） is hard to determine.It seems that in the glohal village, people are saying hello every day to each other without knowing whom they are talking to.

What will be the next crisis（危机） of identity? With the development of cloning technology, it might be: who is the real “I”?