A year ago, I volunteered to teach at a small village school in Guizhou Province. As a volunteer teacher, I travelled a long way to the area. On my way there, I thought about the village, the school and the children there. However, my heart sank (下沉) when I arrived there. It wasn’t what I expected. It didn’t look like a school at all! The school had only three rooms, one for Grades 1, 2, and 3, and the other for Grades 4, 5 and 6. There was a third one for me.

The children welcomed me warmly on my first day. They asked me a lot of questions, and I told them stories about myself and my life in Shenyang. The next day, I gave them an exam to find out their level. To my surprise, though the exam was very easy, over half of the students flunked it, yet they all wanted to learn new things. I knew they needed me.

I was busy preparing lessons, correcting exam papers every night. I enjoyed teaching these lovely and hard-working children, and I could see that they were making progress with my help. I have also learned a lot from them. I understand their lives better, and we are now good friends.

I have worked there for a year now. I’m very happy, and the experience has been very useful for me. I love the small village and the children there, and they still need me.

This year students in my school can enjoy Beijing Opera in our music classes. The music teacher will teach us how to play Beijing Opera.

【小题1】 Because we can learn a lot from it, especially the history and traditional culture. They also think it can improve our Chinese. There are so many poems and stories in Beijing Opera.

Some students don’t think so. 【小题2】They prefer pop music. They don’t understand why their school will take Beijing Opera into classes.

【小题3】They think learning Beijing Opera is helpful. But they’re afraid it will affect our study. 【小题4】 If we have opera lessons, we’ll have less time to study.

I think different people have different hobbies. 【小题5】They can give different kinds of classes. We students can choose what we like.

As an English person, I can speak three languages — English, German and French, so do you think the British people are very good language learners? The fact is that they aren’t.

Some statistics (数据) from the survey done by the European Commission (欧盟委员会) showed that 62% of the British people only speak English. 38% speak at least one foreign language and 18% speak two or more. Compared with the British people, 56% of the people in other European countries speak at least one foreign language and 28% speak two or more. From this you can see that the British people are famous for not speaking foreign languages and that they are not good language learners in Europe.

And the survey also showed that English is the most widely-spoken foreign language. Many European people can have a conversation in English. That’s why many people don’t think it is necessary to learn a foreign language.

In Britain, students aren’t required to learn a foreign language. That means learning a foreign language is only a choice at school. In British schools it’s common for children to start learning a foreign language at 11 and many of them give it up at 14. So why don’t students continue learning foreign languages at school? Because they think it’s more difficult to get good marks in languages than in other subjects such as science or history.

To solve this situation, the British government is looking for different ways to improve language learning at school. One way is to start learning it at a much younger age. Another one is to give school children more choices.