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keep in touch, apologise for, provide.. with..., benefit-from, rather than |
Next month, I'm traveling to a remote area of Central Africa and my aim is to know enough Lingala—one of the local languages—to have a conversation. I wasn't sure how I was going to manage this—until I discovered a way to learn all the vocabulary I'm going to need. Thanks to Memrise, the application I'm using, it feels just like a game.
"People often stop learning things because they feel they're not making progress or because it all feels like too much hard work，" says Ed Cooke, one of the people who created Memrise. "We're trying to create a form of learning experience that is fun and is something you'd want to do instead of watching TV."
Memrise gives you a few new words to learn and these are "seeds" which you plant in your "greenhouse". When you learn the words, you "water your plants". When the application believes that you've really memorized a word, it moves the word to your "garden". And if you forget to log on, the application sends you emails, reminding you to "water your plants".
The application uses two principles about learning. The first is that people memorize things better when they link them to a picture in their mind. Memrise translates words into your own language, but it also encourages you to use "mems". For example, I memorized motele, the Lingala word for "engine"，using a mem I created—I imagined an old engine in a motel (汽车旅馆) room.
The second principle is that we need to stop after studying words and then repeat them again later, leaving time between study sessions. Memrise helps you with this, because it's the kind of application you only use for five or ten minutes a day.
I've learnt hundreds of Lingala words with Memrise. I know this won't make me a fluent speaker, but I hope I'll be able to do more than just smile when I meet people in Congo. Now, I need to go and water my Vocabulary!
There are many different taboos (禁忌) around the world. A taboo is a social action that is not (allow). Almost every culture in the world has (it) own taboos. When you meet people from different cultures, it is important (understand) what you can and cannot do. If we are not aware these differences, some unusual (thing) might happen. For instance, in China, it (be) rude to put the chopsticks into a bowl of rice straight as it is often done for the dead. If you visit Nepal, you will find Nepalese often greet each other with the hands pressed together instead of shaking hands, while in North America and the UK, people greet one another by (shake) hands. If you will do business with a South American, it seems (impolitely) to be dressed in the light colors. What about Japanese? They (like) the lotus and do not give it as a gift to Japanese because they regard it as the mourning flower. While these different customs might seem strange to you, remember that you consider normal probably seems just as unusual to others.
At first, Michael Surrell didn't see the black smoke or flames shooting from the windows of his neighbors' home. He and his wife had just parked around the corner from their own house in Allentown, Pennsylvania, when they got a call from one of his daughters: "The house next door is on fire!" He went to investigate. That's when he saw a woman crying desperately on their porch.
"The baby's in there!" the woman cried. Though the fire department had been called, Surrell, then 64, instinctively ran inside. "The baby" was 8-year-old Tiara Roberts, the woman's granddaughter.
Entering the burning house was like "running into a bucket of black paint," Surrell says. The thick smoke caused him to stumble blindly around, burned his eyes, and made it impossible to breathe. The conditions would have been dangerous to anyone, but for Surrell, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (慢性阻塞性肺病), they were life-threatening.
After a few minutes in the smoke-filled house, he retreated outside to catch his breath. Surrell knew he couldn't hold his breath for long. Taking a deep breath, he went in a second time. The darkness was overwhelming. Yet because the house had a similar layout (布局) to his, he found the stairs and made it to the second floor. He turned to the right and was met by intense heat. He was already out of breath.
His throat and lungs burned as if he'd breathed in fire instead of the smoke and soot in the air. Every blink stung his eyes. All he could hear was the crackling and popping of burning wood. Then a soft but distinct moan (呻吟声) emerged. Still unable to see, Surrell fell to his knees on the hot wood floor. He crawled toward the sound, feeling around for any sign of the girl.
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Finally, he touched something—a shoe, then an ankle.
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Surrell woke up in the hospital a couple of days later.
