2 . For me, it’s the moment I know that New Year has truly begun. I prepare a glass of wine and sit down to ______ New Year cards.

I love sending cards to the mixture of people who’ve adorned (装扮) my life, even if I now ______ see them. I enjoy pushing stamped envelopes into the postbox and decorating my place with the cards I’ve ______.

A report says that 80% of people would prefer a(n) ______ card over an e-card. However, we send around 100 million fewer cards every year, thanks to social media.

I ______ it. When you’re used to your WhatsApp pinging non-stop, the idea of uncapping a pen seems out of date. But it’s because we have to put more ______ into choosing, writing and sending cards that the ritual becomes so ______.

What saddens me is that while many people ______ social lives online, there are some, ______ the elderly, who aren’t good at online communication and for whom a card is badly needed comfort that they haven’t been ______. One friend, who has just moved to a different city where he ______ no one, ended up decorating his house with cards sent to the previous (以前的) owners, just to fight off his ______.

So this New Year, let’s put down our phones, ______ those dusty address books and send cards to our cousins and friends. The ______ they will feel when one gets cards instead of the usual electricity bills will make it worth the ______.

3 . There are many types of English around the world. Some well-known ______ in Asia include Manglish in Malaysia, Singlish in Singapore and Japanese English. In Tokyo, ______ can be seen everywhere. But they’re just not always ______. Now, a group of eight women ______ experts has formed the Association for the Betterment of Public English in Japan to help.

The experts say the government uses online translation too much. They think computer translation creates strange and ______ words and expressions. Many of them look funny to ______   English speakers. They are now getting local governments to pay attention to the English translation on official websites and public brochures.

The researchers worry this could bring harmful ______ on Japan’s image(形象). “We’re not trying to look down on people. But it just ______   us to see errors in the English translations. With the Olympics probably happening this year, we just want to ______ the official English is correct.” One of these experts said.

The volunteers have started ______ local governments and have so far received positive replies. Local authorities in Urayasu have set up a working group to ______ the city’s multilingual(多语种) online services later this year.

“And foreign people living in Japan should at least be given correct, understandable ______, especially if they need to evacuate after a natural ______. It could be a matter of life or ______. Public signs in good English may increase their chances of ______. Those that are wrongly translated may get them killed.”

5 . Schools are not just a microcosm (缩影) of society; they mediate it too. The best ________ to alleviate the external pressures on their pupils while equipping them better to understand and handle the world outside—at once sheltering them and broadening their horizons. This is ambitious in any circumstances, and in a divided and unequal society the two ________ can clash outright (直接地).

Trips that many adults would consider the ________ of a lifetime—treks in Borneo, a sports tour to Barbados—appear to have become almost routine at some state schools. Parents are being asked for thousands of pounds. Though schools cannot ________ from these trips, the companies that arrange them do. ________ , pupils arrive at school hungry because their families can't afford breakfast. The Child Poverty Action Group says nine in every classroom of 30 fall below the poverty line. The discrepancy is startlingly apparent.   ________ a fundraising requirement for students does not help, as better-off children can tap up richer aunts and neighbors.

Probing the rock pools of a local beach or practicing French on a language exchange can fire children's passions, boost their skills and open their eyes to life's possibilities. The Sutton Trust, which focuses on improving social mobility, says educational outings help bright but ________ students to get better A-levels. In this globalized age, there is a good ________ for international travel, and some parents say they can manage the cost of a school trip abroad more easily than a family holiday. Even in the face of immense and mounting financial pressures, some schools have shown remarkable determination and ingenuity in ________ that all their pupils are able to take up opportunities that may be truly life-changing. They should be ________ . Methods such as whole-school fundraising, with the proceeds (收益) ________ , can help to extend opportunities and fuel community spirit.

But £3,000 trips cannot be ________ when the median income for families with children is just over £30,000. Such initiatives close doors for many pupils. The NASUWT teaching union has warned of parents pulling their children out of school because of expensive ________ trips; for other students, these trips confirm their intuition that the world has wonderful things to show—but not to people like them. Even parents who can see that a trip is little more than a party or celebration may well feel ________ that their child is left behind.

The Department for Education's guidance says schools can charge only for board and lodging if the trip is part of the syllabus, and that students receiving government aid are exempt from these costs. However, many schools seem to ignore the advice；and it does not cover the kind of glamorous, exotic trips, which are becoming increasingly ________ . Schools cannot be expected to bring together communities single-handed. But the least we should expect is that they do not foster divisions and exclude those who are already disadvantaged.

9 . Traditionally uniforms were manufactured to protect the worker. When they were first designed, it is also likely that all uniforms made symbolic sense---those for the military, for example, were at first_________to terrify the enemy; other uniforms indicated a distinction in ___________---chefs wore white because they worked with flour, but the main chef wore a black hat to show he inspected and supervised.

The last 30 years, however, have seen an increasing__________on their role in mirroring the image of an organization and in uniting the workforce, particularly in “customer facing” industries. From uniforms and workwear has appeared “___________clothing”. “The people you employ are your ambassadors，” says Peter Griffin, managing director of a major retailer in the UK.

“What they say, how they look, and how they behave is of vital importance.” From being a simple means of _______ who is a member of staff, the uniform is emerging as a new channel of marketing communication.

Truly effective marketing through___________images such as uniforms is a subtle art, however. How we look sends all sorts of powerful messages to other people. Dark colours give a sense of _________while lighter colour shades suggest people are approachable. Certain dress style creates a sense of conservatism(守旧)，while others a sense of _________to new ideas. If the company is selling quality, then it must have quality uniforms. If it is selling style, its uniforms must be stylish. If it wants to appear_________, everybody can’t look exactly the same.

But turning corporate philosophies into the right combination of colour, style, degree of branding and uniformity is not always _________. According to Company Clothing magazine, there are 1,000 companies supplying the workwear and corporate clothing market. Of these, 22 ________ for 85% of the total sales---￡380 million in 1994.

A successful uniform needs to _________two key sets of needs. On one hand, no uniform will work if staff feel uncomfortable or ugly. On the other hand, it is ________if the look doesn’t express the business’s marketing strategy. The greatest challenge in this respect is time. When it comes to human awareness, first impression counts. Customers will assess the way staff look in just a few seconds, and that few seconds will_________their attitudes from then on. Those few seconds can be so important that big companies are prepared to ________years, and millions of pounds, getting them right.

10 . Never in recorded history has a language been as widely spoken as English is today. The reason why millions are learning it is simple: it is the language of international business and,     _______, the key to prosperity.

David Graddol, the author of English Next, says it is _______ to view the story of English simply as success for its native speakers in North America, Britain and Ireland, and Australasia — but that would be a mistake. Global English has entered a more complex stage, changing in ways that the English-speaking countries cannot control and might not _______.

An important question one might ask is: whose English will it be in the future? Non-native speakers now _______ native English speakers by three to one. The majority of encounters in English today take place between non-native speakers. According to David Graddol, many business meetings held in English appear to run more smoothly when no native English speakers are _______. This is because native speakers are often poor at ensuring that they are understood in international discussions. They tend to think they need to avoid longer Latin-based words, but in fact _______ problems are more often caused by their use of idioms, metaphors, phrasal verbs, etc.

Professor Barbara Seidlhofer, Professor of English and Applied Linguistic at the University of Vienna, records and transcribes spoken English interactions between speakers of the language around the world. She says her team has noticed that non-native speakers are _______ standard English grammar in several ways. Even the most experienced speakers sometimes omit the “s” in the third person singular. Many omit definite and indefinite articles where they are _______ in standard English, or put them in where standard English does not use them. Nouns that are not plural in native-speaker English are used as plurals by non-native speakers (e.g, “informations,” “knowledges,” “advices”). Other variations include “make a discussion,” “discuss about something,” or “phone to somebody.” Many native English speakers will insist these are just _______. “Knowledges” and “phone to somebody” are simply wrong. Many non-native speakers who teach English around the world would __________. But language changes, and so do concepts of grammatical __________.

Those who insist on standard English grammar remain in a(n) __________ position. Academics who want their work published in international journals have to obey the grammatical rules followed by native English-speaking elites (精英).

But spoken English is another matter. Why should non-native speakers bother with what native speakers regard as correct? Their main aim, __________, is to be understood by one another, and in most cases there is no native speaker present.

Professor Seidlhofer says, “I think that what we are looking at is the __________ of a new international attitude, the recognition and awareness that in many international contexts non-native speakers do not need to speak like native speakers, to compare themselves to them, and thus always feel ‘__________’.”