Yours,

Li Hua

4 . Elements of Latin have made their way into many western countries. Data varies, but as much as 70% of words in English have a Latin or Greek root. By learning more about these roots and how they combine (结合) to create words, you will have an advantage in understanding new words, even if you’ve never seen them before.

The great thing is that you’re not learning the whole language with its grammar. You just need to memorize some parts of the vocabulary that you often see in English. So how do word roots work?

Every word has a root. This part contains the key to a word’s meaning. Take the word “happy”, for example. This word only contains the root, which means full of joy. Some words, however, have extra parts. We call these affixes (词缀), including prefixes, the part attached before the root, and suffixes, the part attached behind the root. Based on the additional meaning of the prefixes and suffixes, the meaning of the final word will be shaped to mean something new.

Take the word “autobiography” for example. The root is “bio”, meaning life. You may have noticed that many words with “bio” have something to do with life or living beings—biology, biography, and so on. When the suffixes “graph”, meaning to write, is added to it, it means a story about someone’s or something’s life. “Auto” means by oneself. Altogether, an “autobiography” is a story about a person’s life, written by the person himself or herself.

In a word, a better grasp of word roots can make you understand the English language better, and will help you with your vocabulary recognition and memory skills.

5 . Learning a new language like English can be a challenge, but with regular study, it can be done.     1    . Here are some guidelines to help you improve your English.

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Learning any new language is a time-consuming process. Rather than try a few hours of review once or twice a week, most experts say short, regular study sessions are more effective. As little as 30 minutes a day can help you improve your English skills over time.

Read, watch, and listen

Reading English newspapers and books, listening to music, or watching TV can also help you develop your writing and speaking skills. By doing so repeatedly, you’ll unconsciously (无意识地) improve your pronunciation, accents, and grammar. Keep pen and paper handy and write down unfamiliar words you read or hear.     3    . Use them the next time you are role-playing dialogue in class.

Play vocabulary and grammar games

You can also improve your English skills by playing vocabulary games that are related to what you’re studying in class. For example, if you are going to study English on topics that focus on vacations, take a moment to think about your last trip and what you did.     4    .

Write it down

    5    . Take 30 minutes at the end of class or study to write down what happened during your day. Once you’re comfortable writing about you day, challenge yourself and have some fun with creative writing exercises. Choose a photo from a book or magazine and describe it in a short paragraph, or write a short story or poem about someone you know well. You may even discover you’ve got a talent for writing.

6 . As we all know, children are fast learners when learning a second language. However, adults can study a second language as fast as children, a new study reports. Adults can develop the increased neural (神经的) connections with language study that can avoid dementia (痴呆) by four years, as well as make traveling a lot easier.

In an examination of Spanish second-language learners, the researchers found that after simplest training, the brain activity between sentences that relied on grammatical features unique to each language was similar to that of native speakers. “I think it is the reason why people think university foreign language teaching is good. It shows that, even with limited time in the college classroom, learning can happen quite quickly and well.” said professor Alison Gabriele, the co-author of the paper.

Beyond that, it gives parents more reasons to study a second language as part of a family effort. Further research has shown that learning a language as a family effort improves everyone’s abilities and gives opportunities for learning something that are mostly absent from classroom settings. National Leographic reports in an interview with Christine Jemigan, author of Family Language Learning: Learn Another Language, Raise Bilingual Children, that as for immersion (沉浸) in language study, practicing a second language with people is the most important part, and who talks to each other more than a family? Language learners need to be brave. Besides, they should ready themselves for making mistakes and receive others’ advice.

Most people will be far more comfortable making mistakes around family members than in a classroom setting. Furthermore, any home activity. whether that’s gardening. playing in the yard, watching movies, going shopping, cleaning, or cooking a meal, becomes an opportunity for language learning Jernigan suggests preparing vocabulary before an activity and using it as short homework. Jernigan suggests using subtitles (字幕) too, so you can see which words are being used.

Yours,

Li Hua

Yours,

Peter