On keeping a Diary in English

Keeping a diary in English is one of the【小题1】(effect) ways to improve our English writing ability.

【小题2】(compare) with other forms of writing, it is shorter and takes【小题3】time. It can help us to develop the habit of thinking in English.【小题4】we persist in this practice, gradually we’ll learn how to express ourselves in English. In keeping a diary in English, we certainly run up against many【小题5】(difficult). In the first place,【小题6】often happens that we have trouble【小题7】(find) appropriate words and phrases to give expression to our mind. Secondly, there are many idiomatic ways of saying things in Chinese. And it is extremely hard for us to put them into English properly.

As far as I【小题8】(concern), my suggestion is that we should always have a notebook and a Chinese-English dictionary within easy reach. Whenever something beats us, we can first put it down in our notebook and then consult our dictionary. We can also turn to our English teacher for help, if necessary. In short, I believe that it is【小题9】great use to keep a diary in English for【小题10】development of our writing skills.

English perfectly shows the “network effects” of a global tongue: the more people use it, the more useful it is. Parents expect their children 【小题1】(master)English, which is encouraging the 【小题2】(grow)of private schooling. Education authorities are switching to English medium, in part to control the outflow(外流) of children into the private sector.

Teaching children in English is fine if that is 【小题3】 they speak at home and their parents are fluent 【小题4】 it. But that is not 【小题5】 case in most public and low-cost private schools. Children are taught in a language they don’t understand by teachers 【小题6】 English is poor. The children learn neither English nor anything else.

Research shows that children learn 【小题7】(much)when they are taught in their mother tongue than they do when they are taught in any other language. In a study of children in 12 schools in Cameroon last month, those taught in Kom 【小题8】(do)better than those taught in English in all subjects.

English should be an important subject at school, but not 【小题9】(necessary)the language of instruction. Rather than switching to English-medium teaching, governments fearful of 【小题10】(lose) custom (光顾) to the private sector should look at the many possible ways of improving public schools.

You know how disappointed it can be if you are not able to communicate with the 【小题1】 (native) when you’re traveling, and you might think learning a new language is a tough task.

But fear not! We figured out 【小题2】 (exact) how many words you need to learn to speak a language well. A group of linguists (语言学家) have created a test 【小题3】 (see) how many words you know in English. There are 200,000+ words in the English language, but the test only 【小题4】 (include) 50 of them. You may not understand all of the 50 words. The linguists believe that if you multiply (乘) 【小题5】 number of words out of 50 that you understand by 500, you’ll almost know your English vocabulary.

A professor has found that native speakers of a language know 15,000 to 20,000 lemmas (词目). A lemma 【小题6】 (make) up of a root word (say: walk) and all of 【小题7】 (it) inflections (屈折形式) (walked, walking, walker, etc.). But if you learn a new language, you can never understand 15,000 lemmas.

He discourages people from learning all of the words in a language. There are 800 to 1,000 lemmas 【小题8】 are used most frequently in the language. He advises people to focus 【小题9】 these lemmas. With these lemmas, people can understand 75% of the language. And they will be 【小题10】 (confidence) enough to start a conversation, order at a restaurant, and deal with other daily communication.