With the development of the Internet, it has made our lives more convenient. While 【小题1】(shop) , we no longer have to wait in line or carry cash around. We can get the 【小题2】(late) information and download softwares, documents and 【小题3】(image) whenever we need. At 【小题4】same time, online communities and social networks have also changed people’s lives and remove the distance 【小题5】usually exists between people. Take a woman 【小题6】(call) Jan Tchamani

【小题7】example, she was 【小题8】(serious) ill and stuck at home, feeling lonely.【小题9】, surfing the Internet helped her know other old people and get support and advice from them.She also started an IT club 【小题10】(help) other old people. Her next goal is to start a charity website to raise money for children in poor countries.

Duolingo: Millions Aspire to be Multilingual

Follow the money, follow the language app. In 2009, Luis Ahn and his postgraduate student Severin Hacker launched Duolingo, a free app with an annoying green owl as its mascot (吉祥物). Although its unique selling point is a childish competitiveness, with league tables, elaborate boxes spilling cartoon jewels, and a high TikTok profile, it 【小题1】(soar) ahead of its competitors ever since.

Duolingo now teaches more than 40 languages to more than 70 million students, 54%   【小题2】 are aged between 18 and 34. It has a paid-for version for those who want to avoid advertisements. 【小题3】 it has yet to turn a profit, in 2019 Forbes Magazine counted it among the 25 next billion-dollar startups. In February this year alone, it 【小题4】(register) more than 13 million new downloads.

It is an early adopter of the advanced artificial intelligence model GPT-4, its offerings 【小题5】(include) look-at-me gimmicks such as courses in Star Trek’s Klingon, but also minority languages such as Xhosa and Navajo. The length it takes【小题6】(complete) a course varies. However, the 216 units currently available in Spanish — its【小题7】(popular) language, with more than 30 million learners — would take several years of a 15-minute-a-day habit.

While few actually complete a course, Duolingo, like its many competitors, shows that there is an aspiration to be multilingual. Earnest academic papers have been written about how much these learners benefit. 【小题8】demonstrate that it is a useful aid in classroom teaching, while others point out that it will never enable anyone to conduct a complex conversation about astrophysics, or get beyond the earliest stages of fluency.

Both are right. Languages are social constructs that exist to enable communication between people. While apps cannot replace interpersonal conversation or immersion in a culture, they【小题9】 supplement it. Their success should serve as a wake-up call: a reminder【小题10】 foreign languages have a valuable role to play in any fit-for-purpose education system, as much for personal enrichment as for career advantage in a networked world.

What Is Xiaomi?

Xiaomi is the fourth-biggest smartphone player in the world. It’s India’s top-selling smartphone brand and one of China’s top players. But its breadth is much more than that. It’s present in 74 markets around the globe, with nearly 15,000 employees and more than 300 million people are using its products or services.

Though Xiaomi may be a 【小题1】(compete)for Apple, it’s somewhat of a friend to other companies. Xiaomi smartphones run a version of Android Android operating system and the Chinese tech company is partnering with Microsoft to cooperate on artificial intelligence.

The company makes about 72% of its profits from China, and 28% from the rest of the world. Xiaomi gains most of its profits from smartphones, but it’s also expanded into other products like music and video streaming, too. The Beijing-based company wants its smartphones to be just the start of an entire device ecosystem for its users, 【小题2】 may explain why it’s sometimes 【小题3】 (refer) to as the “Apple of China”.

When the company 【小题4】 (establish), Xiaomi only sold its products online in an effort to reduce costs. It avoided spending money on advertising and relied on brand loyal customers 【小题5】(spread) the word. Xiaomi’s selling point was simple—offering high-quality devices but at 【小题6】(low) prices than others. And it worked. Xiaomi became China’s number one smartphone in 2014. But the company learned that. 【小题7】 (sell) its phones online directly to consumers made it difficult to reach new customers, like 【小题8】 in China's small cities.

Then Xiaomi began to change up its strategy. Recently, it 【小题9】(open) a large number of stores in big cities, such as Bejing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. It plans to open 2,000 stores worldwide by 2019 with just about half of them in China.

It's not just 【小题10】 smartphone business. Xiaomi also makes things like smart watches, headphones, speakers, VR headsets, air purifiers, rice cookers, kitchenware, luggage, hats and wallets.