| While writing plain English is no challenge, most of us struggle to find words or phrases to perfectly fall in place with the content. To help you improve your writing skills in English, we have collected some of the best web resources dedicated to this mission.
● Grammarly is one of the best online resources to significantly improve your vocabulary and writing. It is basically an online word processor, which goes beyond others in correcting over 250 types of English mistakes. The spell-checker and vocabulary enhancer are the standout features of Grammarly. ● Since the Grammarly app is also available for your web browser, you can simply install the extension and edit all of your Emails, social media posts, or any content that you create from your web browser. ●Although Grammarly is offered as free installation, a premium plan does exist which costs around $29. 95/month. |
| Thesaurus
● Overuse of cliches, adverbs or bulky phrases is some examples of poor writing, which needs to be addressed. In this case, the Thesaurus has a collection of some of the most overused expressions that must be avoided in written English. ● Sharpen your English skills with this powerful online and mobile application tool for free. Hemingway App
● The Hemingway app also provides a readability score for the entered text, which you could use to analyze the structure of the content you’ve written and build a connection with your readers. ●Though available as a free version for web interfaces, the standalone desktop software for Mac and Windows costs $9. 99/month. |
1. Which of the following can be learned from the passage?
| A．Grammarly is primarily focused on helping improve spelling and grammar in writing. |
| B．Thesaurus offers a large collection of word entries to enhance vocabulary. |
| C．The Hemingway App’s premium desktop software is available for a one-time payment of $9.99. |
| D．The Hemingway App assigns a distinct color to each type of grammar mistake it detects in the text. |
| A．Grammarly | B．Thesaurus | C．Hemingway App | D．all |
| A．Fiction writers looking for real life materials to spark their creativity. |
| B．Non-native English speakers wanting to improve their writing proficiency. |
| C．Language enthusiasts interested in exploring different web-based tools. |
| D．Magazine editors whose role involves reviewing and polishing manuscripts. |
2 . Some speaking activities do not give an exact picture of your true language skill. But storytelling does. Storytelling is the retelling of a story. It can be a short piece of invented story; or it can be the retelling of a news event. Or you can talk about something that happened in your own life.
For the storytelling activity, try to provide as much information as possible and aim for a recording of three minutes or fewer. Don’t just say, “I studied at the library.” Say, “
When listening to the recording, do not expect to find all or even most grammar or vocabulary mistakes.
| A．Put your speech into written or typed form. |
| B．The goal of giving such information is not to fill the time. |
| C．I walked into the library and thought about where I should sit. |
| D．That is because it forces you to think about your ideas as you say them. |
| E．Choose a place that you know well, like your home or a nearby bus station. |
| F．But you can easily find some mistakes, such as wrong verb and noun endings. |
| G．Storytelling frees you from forming complex ideas and lets you speak easily in English . |
3 . It’s a struggle to learn a second language at any age. Now, in a new study, scientist have found out the exact age after which your chances of reaching fluency in a second language seem to plummet: 10.
The study published in the journal Cognition, found that it’s “nearly impossible” for language learners to reach native-level fluency if they start learning a second language after age 10. “It turns out you’re still learning fast,” says study co-author Joshua Hartshorne. “It’s just that you run out of time, because your ability to learn starts dropping at around 17 or 18 years old,” People who start a few years after age 10 may still become quite good at a language, the authors say, but they are unlikely to become fluent.
Kids may be better than adults at learning new languages for sound reasons. Children’s brains are more plastic than those of adults, meaning they’re better able to adapt and respond to new information. Kids may also be more willing to try new things than adults are. Their comparatively new understanding of their native language may also be advantageous.
These findings may seem discouraging, but it was inspiring for scientists to learn that the key period for fluent language learning might be longer than previously thought. Some scientists believed that the window begins to close shortly after birth, while others made it longer to very early childhood. Compared with those judgments, age 17 or 18—when language learning ability starts to drop off—seems relatively old.
For this study, the researchers created an online test promising to guess people’s native language and home country based on their responses to English grammar questions. Almost 670,000 people took it, giving the researchers huge amounts of data from English speakers of many ages and backgrounds. Examining the responses and grammar mistakes allowed them to made unusually exact judgments about language learning.
1. What does the underlined word “plummet” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Appear gradually. | B．Increase greatly. |
| C．Double suddenly. | D．Drop sharply. |
| A．Adults’ learning ability can boost their second language. |
| B．All these new findings are quite discouraging for scientists. |
| C．Children are at an advantage in acquiring a new language. |
| D．People have different key periods for mastering a language. |
| A．The process of the study. | B．The findings of the study. |
| C．The subject of the study. | D．The purpose of the study. |
| A．Never Too Early to Learn New Languages |
| B．Better to Learn a New Language Before Age 10 |
| C．Never Say Die When Learning a New Language |
| D．Best Ways to Improve the Second Language Fluency |
1. 多积累词汇；
2. 阅读中文书刊；
3. 收听中文原声广播等。
注意：1.写作词数应为80左右；
2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
要点：
1. 阐述汉语的广泛用途；
2. 介绍学习汉语的方法。
注意：1.词数80左右；2.可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Dear friends,
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
6 . “Learning a language is easy. Even a child can do it!”
Most adults who are learning a second language would disagree with this. For them, learning a language is a very difficult task. They need hundreds of hours of study and practice, and even this will not meet with success for every adult language learner.
Language teachers often offer advice to language learners, “Read as much as you can in the new language.” “Practice speaking the language every day.” “Live with people who speak the language.” “Don’t translate, try to think in the new language.” “learn as child would learn.”“play with the language.”
But what does a successful language learner do? Language learning research shows that successful language learners are similar in many ways.
First of all, successful gain. They try to learn from their mistakes.
Successful language learning is active learning. Therefore, successful learners do not wait for a chance to use the language. They find people who speak the language and they ask these people to correct them when they make a mistake, they will try anyway to communicate.
Finally, successful language learners are learners with a purpose. They want to learn the language because they are interested in the language and the people who speak it. It is necessary for them to learn the language in order to communicate with these people and learn from them.
What kind of language earner are you? If your language learning has been less than successful, you might do well to try some of the techniques outlined above.
1. A successful language learner must____.| A．be very clever |
| B．depend on good book or teacher |
| C．try always to speak correctly |
| D．try to learn the new language independently, actively, and purposely |
| A．Never guess the meaning of a word |
| B．Don’t translate, try to think in the new language |
| C．Find every chance to speak the language |
| D．Read as much as possible in the new language |
| A．use the language freely |
| B．learn the language in a more natural way |
| C．learn the language while playing |
| D．use the language as a toy |
| A．methods | B．skills |
| C．tools | D．reasons |
7 . If you live in a place where most people speak the language you are learning, you may use the language for several hours each day. But you may not have these chances to practice English. You may even be self-taught.
Think in single words.
Another exercise is describing in your mind objects you don't know the words for. An example would be if you couldn't think of the word “garage,” Hinshaw says. “If you're looking at your house and you see your garage, but you can't think of the name in English. You can say, 'The place inside where I put my car.”
Think in sentences.
The next exercise is thinking in simple sentences. For example, if you are sitting in a park, you can tell yourself things like, “It's such a beautiful day” and “People are playing sports with their friends.”
Describe your day.
Another exercise experts suggest is to describe your daily activities. You can mentally make plans in the morning when you wake up.
| A．Describe unknown words. |
| B．Guess the meaning of a new word. |
| C．This would require future verb tenses. |
| D．A good first step is to think in individual words. |
| E．Hinshaw says doing this can help learners of any language. |
| F．Once this becomes easy, you can move on to more difficult sentences. |
| G．The good news is that thinking in English can bring you a huge step closer to fluency! |
现在，请你用英语给他回一封信，按以下要点答复：
1.看中文的书籍和杂志以学习汉字；给中国的朋友写信或发电子邮件练习书写；
2.看中文电影练习听力。
注意：1.词数100左右；
2.可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯；
____________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
增加：在缺词处加一个漏词符号（∧），并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1.每处错误及其修改均仅限一词
2.只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起）不计分。
With Teachers’ Day draw near, I would like to express my thanks to Ms. Li, who taught my English last year.
At that time, I was having a trouble studying English and my scores fell. Ms. Li encouraged me and tell me her story that she never gave up before her studies didn’t go well. She also said that it was necessary to make efforts so that I would not regret waste time. Her words were the best medicine because she stood in her shoes to deal with problems and gave me helpful advices. She didn’t simple comfort me. Her teaching methods also worked. It had never occurred me that studying could be so interested until I met Ms. Li.
