I'm a strong believer that learning different languages makes you look quite good when you're in a foreign country and understand and speak the language. The list below is 4 apps (计算机应用程序) that will help you learn a foreign language! You can download (下载) them for free.

Babbel­Learn Languages

Babbel is an excellent language tool to help you progress step by step with learning a new language. It helps you learn grammar along the way as you work your way through the tasks and assignments (作业). You need to pay every month, but this will still be cheaper than taking physical lessons with a teacher!

Duolingo: Learn Languages Free

The app has many languages to choose from and will work through the basics all the way to advanced words and sentences. It's completely free too! It's well designed, looks great and will help you learn, remember and progress with just a little bit of time every day.

Tandem: Language Exchange

Rather than have you work through tasks and memorize different things, the app lets you match with people who share your interests but speak the language you want to learn. You can then have text, voice and video conversations with people who want to learn your native language, and in return you learn theirs, all by simply communicating with each other. It's a great way to learn with only $1 a day.

Learn English—busuu

This app is perfect if you want to learn English. There are all sorts of audio and visual learning aids. You'll find yourself working through interactive (互动的) tests and learning tools for vocabulary and dialogue.

Reading can be a social activity. Think of the people who belong to book groups. They choose books to read and then meet to discuss them. Now, the website BookCrossing. com turns the page on the traditional idea of a book group.

Members go on the site and register the books they own and would like to share. BookCrossing provides an identification number to stick inside the book. Then the person leaves it in a public place, hoping that the book will have an adventure, traveling far and wide with each new reader who finds it.

Bruce Pederson, the managing director of BookCrossing, says, "The two things that change your life are the people you meet and books you read. BookCrossing combines both."

Members leave books on park benches and buses, in train stations and coffee shops. Whoever finds their book will go to the site and record where they found it.

People who find a book can also leave a journal entry describing what they thought of it. E­mails are then sent to the BookCrossers to keep them updated about where their books have been found. Bruce Pederson says the idea is for people not to be selfish by keeping a book to gather dust on a shelf at home.

BookCrossing is part of a trend among people who want to get back to the "real" and not the virtual (虚拟). The site now has more than one million members in more than one hundred thirty­five countries.

Foreign visitors to the UK might be disappointed when they learn that not everyone there speaks like Harry Potter and his friends. Usually, there's an assumption by many non­Brits that everyone in Britain speaks with what's known as a Received Pronunciation (RP，标准发音) accent, also called "the Queen's English". However, while many people do talk this way, most Britons speak in their own regional accents.

Scouse, Glaswegian and Black Country dialect—from Liverpool, Glasgow and the West Midlands—are just three of the countless non­RP accents that British people speak with. There are even differences in accents between towns or cities just 30 kilometers apart. What is even more disappointing is that not speaking in a RP accent may mean a British person is judged and even treated differently in their everyday life.

In a 2015 study by The University of South Wales, videos of people reading a passage in three different UK accents were shown to a second group of people. The group then rated how intelligent they thought the readers sounded. The lowest­rated accent was Brummie, native to people from Birmingham, a city whose accent is considered working class.

However, there is no need to be disappointed though you are not speaking in a RP accent. In fact, doing the opposite may even give you strength.

Kong Seong ­jae, 25, is an internet celebrity from Seoul. After studying in the UK, he picked up several regional accents. He's now famous for his online videos, where he shows off the various accents he's learned. "British people usually get really excited when I use some of their local dialect words, and they become much friendlier. I think it makes a bit of bond between local people and foreigners to speak in their local accent," he said.

So if you're working on perfecting your British accent, try to speak like someone from Liverpool, Glasgow or Birmingham. You may not sound like Harry Potter, but you are likely to make more friends.

Public Health England (PHE) is targeting pizzas, ready meals, ready meat and takeaways. The government has also required the food industry to start using healthier food and encourage the public to choose lower calorie (卡路里) foods.

It is all part of an effort to cut calorie intake by 20% by 2024. The target will point to 13 different food groups, which are equal to about a fifth of the calorie taken by children. If action is not taken, PHE said, it would be prepared to ask the government to pass laws.

PHE would strictly monitor the progress by looking at which products people buy and would be prepared to punish companies which do not take on their duties. The government is also organizing a program encouraging adults to consume (吃，喝) 400 calories at breakfast and 600 each at lunch and dinner.

At present, adults consume between 200 and 300 calories more than they should each day. PHE chief nutritionist Dr. Alison Tedstone said the 400­600­600 tip would make it easier for people to make healthier choices by being able to judge what they should eat at each meal.

How many calories should we eat? It is suggested that a woman eat no more than 2,000 calories a day, while a man should limit his intake to 2,500. For children, it depends on the age. A four­year­old should consume no more than 1,300 calories a day, while for teens aged 17 and 18, it is about 3,000, but overweight children are eating up to 500 calories more than that.

Prof Russell Viner, from the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, said it was a necessary move. He said, "Over the past 40 years, there has been slow growth in food sizes, with pizzas and hamburgers simply much bigger than they were in our parents' time." The convenience of fast food and the advertisement of unhealthy food and drinks to children add to the problem.

Today we take a look at the word "smart". If someone says you are smart, what do they mean? Is it a good thing or something bad?  This is because the word "smart" has many meanings.

For example, someone could say you look smart or are dressed smartly. That means they like your physical appearance or what you are wearing.

But if something smarts, it can be unkind or hurtful, either physically or mentally. If you accidentally trip over a chair and fall down, you might shout, "Ow! That smarts!" Or if a friend says something that hurts your feelings, you can say you are smarting from the hurtful comments.

If you are standing too close to a campfire, you could say your eyes are smarting from the smoke of the fire. Here the word "smarting" means feeling a sharp pain.

 If someone is smart as a whip, they are able to think very quickly.

 Some people are considered street ­smart. They may not have a strong education. But they are good at dealing with people and problems in the real world. Other people might be book ­smart. This means they have spent many years in school. But they may not be so smart when dealing with people or real­world problems.

And then there is a definition of smart that means to talk or behave disrespectfully. If you say something disrespectful to your parents, they might say, "Don't get smart with me!" Here, "smart" means showing a lack of respect by saying something unkind. This definition of smart can also be used as a verb.

A. Do they really mean you are smart?

B. The answer is not as easy as you might think.

C. People have different attitudes towards being smart.

D. In fact, maybe that person is no longer your friend.

E. But the most common meaning of "smart" is to be intelligent.

F. However, different people have different ways of being smart.

G. If you smart off to the wrong people, they could hit you in the face.

An elderly woman is crediting (归功于) her neighbor's 4­year­old dog with saving her life during last week's dangerously cold temperatures.

Tim Curfman was 1 his garbage with his dog Midnight when he felt its 2 was unusual. It had its ears held up looking at him. It didn't 3 do that. Curfman got the feeling that something's 4. So he observed how his dog was acting and 5 it to a spot on the other side of his house. There, he saw his 87­year­old neighbor, Noreen, 6 in the snow. She was trying to fill her bird feeder when she fell.

Curfman 7 she was out there at least half an hour. She could not get up because she didn't have enough 8 to push herself up, and there was nothing around the corner to get a 9 of, either. The temperature was one degree below zero, but Curfman and Midnight were able to 10 her quickly.

Noreen, who didn't have serious injuries, was lucky to 11 frostbite (冻伤) even though her clothes were wet. Curfman called his wife and they together helped his neighbor up from the snow and into her 12, where his wife helped the elderly woman get into 13 clothes.

Noreen was 14 to Midnight for saving her life. "A dog like this 15 to be proud of because it's not every dog that pays attention to things like this," Noreen said in an interview.

Learning a foreign language is a challenging task, it can also be a very enjoyable experience. Here are a few (tip) on how to learn a foreign language well. Firstly, work on your own pace. You'll find more effective to study for half an hour rather than try to do a whole unit at once. Secondly, use language (communicate). Don't worry about (get) things wrong. The important thing is to build up your (confident) in speaking. Thirdly, build up your vocabulary. You should learn vocabulary by topics or in sentences, is very effective. Besides, get (use) to hearing everyday language at normal speed. Listening to the course recordings (frequent) is a good choice. And above all, have fun (learn) language.

1）学好汉语的建议；

2）你的祝愿。

注意：

1）词数100左右；

2）可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。

The way of Chinese people's life has been changed through the China's "New Four Great Inventions". What are "New Four Great Inventions"? They are High­speed rail, Shared bike, Online shopping and AliPay.

What did the China's "New Four Great Inventions" bring to us?

High­speed rail—Modern transportation makes everybody neighbor. The invention of the high­speed railway makes it easy to thousands of miles a day. Today China's rail transit technology is the best, the China's daily average of 4, 000 trains, sending about 4.6 million passengers.

Shared bike—Short walks become more convenient and faster, and carbon emissions are reduced, which is friendly to the environment. You can download the APP about shared bikes, pay some money, then you can use bicycles everywhere in the street. The Chinese shared bicycle programs have been becoming more and more popular.

Online shopping—Don't need to go out to find the needs for living. Online shopping, as the name implies, is to pay money online. Purchases (购买物) can be sent home. China has 751 million Internet users, 724 million mobile phone users; total transactions (销售额) on November 11 and December 12 hit a record high every year. Online shopping lets Chinese Internet users enjoy "shopping carnival" every day.

Alipay—A software which can replace cash payment. With intelligence phones' popularization, AliPay has become an indispensable (不可或缺的) APP. Through scanning the "QR code", AliPay wants to realize the ambition of "replacing cash payments" gradually. On 11th November 2018, both the mobile payment account and the transaction reached 213.5 billion

There is no doubt that China has already used its own power of "New Four Great Inventions" to become the great powerful technological country, showing the power of China once again.