For much of history, reading was a fairly noisy activity. Some 4,000 years ago, the commonly used words for ^“to read” literally 【小题1】(mean) to cry out” or “to listen”.

Today, silent reading is the norm (常态). The majority of 【小题2】(we) bottle the words in our heads as if sitting in the hushed confines of a library. Reading out loud is 【小题3】(large) reserved for bedtime stories and performances.

But a growing body of research suggests that we may be missing out by reading only with the voices inside our minds. The ancient art of reading aloud has a number of 【小题4】(benefit) for adults, from helping improve our memories and understand complex texts, to【小题5】(strengthen) emotional bonds between people.

Colin MacLeod, 【小题6】psychologist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, has extensively researched the impact of reading aloud on memory. So far he as well as his collaborators 【小题7】(show) that people consistently remember words and texts better if they read them aloud 【小题8】if they read them silently.

In another study, adults 【小题9】(age) 67 to 88 were given the same task - reading words either silently or aloud - before then writing down all those they could remember. They were able to recall 27% of the words they had read aloud, 【小题10】only 10% of those they'd read silently.

Long long ago, as a bookworm, I used to be a hard copy addict and was resolutely(坚决地) against the e-book. But as COVID-19 spreads across the whole world, it has been 【小题1】 (hard) for me to get access to new paper books, 【小题2】 made me really frustrated. 【小题3】(fortunate), thanks to Kindle, a kind of electronic reading device produced by Amazon, my reading world 【小题4】 (update) since its appearance. With a size of an adult’s hand, its small body can store about 2,000 e-books, which is equal to the capacity of around 10 library book shelves, 【小题5】 it’s space-saving. Aiming 【小题6】(protect) the book readers’ eyesight and provide them with better reading experience, Kindle adopts an e-ink screen for 【小题7】(it) display. On top of that, 【小题8】 impresses me most is that it is language-learner-friendly. It contains built-in dictionaries for 【小题9】 wide range of languages, and you can easily get a word’s meaning by pressing it for a few seconds. Now the more I use it, the more I come to realize that it is really a good 【小题10】(replace) for paper books and smart phones.

Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese immigrants began to settle abroad, restaurants appeared 【小题1】 (subsequent). Yet Chinese food has the curious distinction of being both one of the world’s best-loved cooking 【小题2】 (tradition) and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its 【小题3】 (rich) and excellence—but today that is beginning to change.

In the book, Invitation to a Banguer, the James Beard Award-winning cook and writer Fuchsia Dunlop 【小题4】 (explore) the history, philosophy and techniques of China’s rich and ancient cooking culture. Each chapter examines 【小题5】 classic dish, from Mapo tofu to Dongpo pork, knife-scraped noodles 【小题6】 braised pomelo pith(红烧柚子髓), to reveal a singular aspect of Chinese cooking, whether it’s the importance of the soybean, the lure(诱惑) of unique ingredients 【小题7】 the history of Buddhist vegetarian cuisine. Meeting local food producers, chefs and home cooks as she tastes 【小题8】 (she) way across the country, Fuchsia invites readers to join her on an unforgettable journey into Chinese food as it 【小题9】 (make), cooked, eaten and considered in its homeland.

Weaving together historical scholarship, mouth-watering descriptions of food and on-the-ground research 【小题10】 (conduct) over the course of three decades, Invitation to a Banquer is a lively landmark work to the pleasures and mysteries of Chinese cuisine.