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English Club

5 . One year ago, I paid no attention to English idioms (习语), though my teacher told me about them again and again. But soon, the _________ of English idioms was shown in an amusing experience.

One day, I _________ to meet an Englishman on the road, and soon we began to talk. As I was talking about how I was studying English, the _________ seemed to be surprised. Gently shaking his _________ , shrugging (耸) his shoulders, he said, “You don’t say!” I was _________. I thought perhaps this was not a proper _________. I had better change it. So I said to him, “Have you ever been to the Great Wall?” “Certainly! It was amazing. Everyone back home will _________ me if I leave China without seeing it.” I continued, “The Great Wall is one of the _________ in the world. We are very proud of it.” But soon, “You don’t say!” came to my ears again. I couldn’t _________ asking, “Why do you ask me not to talk about it?” “Well, I didn’t ask you to do so,” he answered, __________ surprised. I said, “Didn’t you say ‘You don’t say!’?” __________ this, the Englishman laughed to tears. He began to __________, “‘You don’t say!’ actually means ‘Really’! It is a (n) __________ of surprise. Perhaps you don’t pay attention to English idioms.” Only then did I know I had made a __________ of myself. Since then I have been more __________ with idiomatic expressions.

8 . While high school does not generally encourage students to explore new aspects of life, college sets the stage for that exploration. I myself went through this______process and found something that has changed my______at college for the better: I discovered ASL-American Sign Language.

I never felt an urge(冲动)to______any sign language before. My entire family is hearing, and so are all my friends. The ______language were enough in all my interactions. Little did I know that I would discover my______for ASL.

The story began during my first week at college. I watched as the ASL Club______their translation of a song. Both the hand movements and the very idea of communicating without speaking______me. What I saw was completely unlike anything I had experienced in the______. This newness just left me______more.

After that, feeling the need to explore further, I decided to drop in on one of ASL Club's meetings. I only learned how to______the alphabet(字母表)that day. Yet instead of being discouraged by my______progress, I was excited. I then made it a point to______those meetings and learn all I could.

The following term, I registered an ASL class. The professor was deaf and any talking was ______. I soon realized that the silence was not unpleasant. ______if there had been any talking, it would have caused us to learn less. Now, I appreciate the silence and the ______way of communication it opens.

10 . 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.”