Learning to speak English well may be the best thing you can do to improve your life. That’s right. If you can communicate in English, you can:

Contact people from all over the world. Talk about your ideas and opinions on the Internet discussion groups. Send e-mail to interesting people. Learn about their life and culture. Travel more easily. Communicate with people wherever you go — English is spoken in more than 100 countries. Ask directions, have a conversation, or…ask for help. Who knows, maybe English will save your life someday!

Push your career forward. If you want to find a good job in business, technology, or science, get out of that armchair and start learning English now! (If you already have a good job, start learning before you lose it!)

Knowing English will let you:

Put “excellent knowledge of English” in your CV (履历). Get your dream job, and earn more money.

Gain technical knowledge. English is the language of technology, especially high technology like computer science, genetics, and medicine. If you’re going to read about technology, you’ll probably have to do it in English.

Learn computer science. Read technical articles without difficulty or write your own articles!

Be a world-class businessperson. It’s simple. International business is done in English. And all business today is international. So if you want to play, you have to know English — to contact other business people, go to conferences, read international business newspapers and magazines, etc.

Become a better scientist. Contact scientists from other countries, go to international conferences, and visit academic centers abroad. Learn about new scientific discoveries by reading papers, books, and magazines.

Use your computer more effectively. Most computer applications are in English, so you will understand them better and become a better employee.

Americans often try to say things as quickly as possible. So, for some expressions, we use the first letters of the words instead of saving each word. Many common expressions or long names are shortened this way.

B-Y-O-B is a short way of saying, “Bring Your Own Bottle.” The letters BYOB are often found at the bottom of a written invitation to a simple social, event or gathering of friends. For example, let’s say I had a New Year’s Eve party. I might include on the invitation. “Please come to my party and BYOB.” The bottle each person brings is what the person wants to drink at the party or wants to share.

However, an invitation to a special event -such as a wedding-would never say BYOB. An invitation to an official or very special event often has other letters written at the bottom. The letters are R-S-V-P. These letters represent the French expression “Repondez S'il Vous Plait.” In English the words mean “Respond If It Pleases You.” Americans use the letters as a short way to say, “Please answer this invitation.”

Another expression usually used for business and not parties is A-S-A-P. So, a colleague might say she needs something done ASAP. It means as soon as possible. She might also need something done by C-O-B. That means she wants to finish it by “Close Of Business” or the end of the work day.

Beginning letters are often used to represent the names of universities. A famous one is MIT. That is short for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Another major university is UCLA. Almost no one ever says its real name, the University of California at Los Angeles. That takes way too long!

When sociolinguist Calvin Gidney say The Lion King in theaters two decades ago, he was struck by the differences between Mufasa and Scar. The characters don't have much in common. Mufasa is heroic and faithful, while Scar is cynical (嘲讽的) and power-hungry. 【小题1】 Mufasa has an American accent, while Scar, the lion of the dark side, roars in British English.

Gidney, an associate professor at Tufts University, saw Scar’s accent as part of a disturbing pattern in the film -foreign accents and non-standard dialects were being used to voice all of the "bad” characters. Gidney also noticed that Scar’s minions (部下) , the hyenas (鬣狗),spoke in ether African American English or English with a Spanish accent.

Gidney found this trend concerning. "I thought it was really disturbing and it was necessary to ‘take back the jungle' from the British- sounding evil lion, plus the African American-sounding and Latino-sounding hyenas," he said.

Gidney was inspired to conduct a study of language patterns in animated kids' entertainment. He teamed up with Julie Dobrow, a senior lecturer at Tufts who specializes in issues of children and media, to study how these trends play out on kids' television shows. They’ve since analyzed about 30 shows and 1,500 characters, and they’re still at work on the project.

For their initial study in 1998, Gidney and Dobrow had a team of coders analyze 323 animated TV characters. 【小题2】

In many of the cases studied, villains (恶棍) were given foreign accents. 【小题3】 Meanwhile, the study found that most of the heroic characters in their research sample were American-sounding.

The most wicked（邪恶的）foreign accent of all was British English, according to the study. 【小题4】 German and Slavic accents are also common for villain voices. None of the villains in the sample studied seemed to speak Standard American English. When they did speak with an American accent, it was always in regional dialects associated with low social and economic status.

Since television is an important source of cultural messaging for children, this correlation of foreign accents with "bad "characters could have concerning influence on the way kids are being taught to engage with diversity in the United States.