Learn English with Apps
Improve your English with our fun and exciting learning apps! Designed for all the family, our games, videos and quizzes will help you learn English at home or on the move.
Learning Time with Timmy
Children aged 6 years and younger can now play exciting games and listen to English words to learn about numbers, colours, shapes and food with Timmy and his friends.
Download for: iOS | Android(Google Play)
LearnEnglish Kids: Videos
Watch children's favourite stories like Little Red Riding Hood in this video stories app. It features audio and text narration, and a parents' guide that offers expert advice on how to help children learn English.
Download for: Android (Google Play) | Android (Amazon App Store)
LearnEnglish Grammar (UK Edition)
Perfect your grammar through thousands of questions in this interactive grammar workbook. Questions range from beginner to advanced level.
Download for: iOS | Android |WP8
IELTS Word Power
Get ready for the IELTS exam! Practise with over 100 questions to test your word power in 11 categories ranging from science and technology to work and business.
Download for: iOS | Android
LearnEnglish GREAT Videos
Practise your listening skills by watching 24 short videos about UK culture. Learn about the history of the English language and explore London's museums and other famous sites in the UK.
Download for: iOS | Android
A librarian in Indonesia's Java island is lending books to children in exchange for trash （垃圾） they collect in a creative way to clean up the environment and get the kids to read more.
Each weekday Raden Roro Hendarti rides her three-wheeler with books piled up at the back for children in Muntang village to exchange for plastic cups, bags and other waste that she carries back.
She told Reuters she is helping to get the kids reading as well as make them aware of the environment. As soon as she shows up, little children, many accompanied by their mothers, surround her "Trash Library" and request for the books. They are all carrying waste bags and Raden's three-wheeler quickly fills up with them as the books fly out. She's happy that with her mobile service, the kids are going to spend less time on online games as a result.
"Let us build a culture of literacy （读写能力） from young age to lessen the harm of the online world," Raden said. "We should also take care of our waste in order to fight climate change and to save the earth from trash," Raden said.
She collects about 100kg of waste each week, which is then sorted out by her colleagues and sent for recycling or sold. She has around 6, 000 books to lend and wants to take it to neighbouring areas as well.
Kevin Alamsyah, an 11-year-old reader, searches for waste lying in the village. "When there is too much trash, our environment will become dirty and it's not healthy. That's why I look for trash to borrow a book," he says.
The literacy rate for above 15-year-olds in Indonesia is around 96 percent, but a September report by the World Bank warned that the outbreak of COVID-19 will leave more than 80% of 15-year-olds below the minimum reading proficiency （技能） level identified by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
In order to get rid of goldenrod from the city, the government of Wuhan is encouraging residents to report any findings of the plant, which is classified as a harmful alien （外来的） species.
Goldenrod is one of the most successful and widespread alien plant species. It is often referred to as "the flower of the devil", as it spreads extremely fast and causes other plants to die.
Besides Hubei province, the plant has also been found expanding in other provinces such as Jiangxi and Zhejiang. Although local authorities have tried to get rid of the plant, it is proving to be a difficult task. Goldenrod represents just one of the alien species that are aggressive towards the country's native species. Statistics show that by 2020, nearly 800 kinds of alien species had invaded （侵略）the country, among which 638 species have invaded the country's agricultural and forestry ecosystems, causing direct economic losses of about 200 billion yuan ($ 31. 36 billion).
At the United Nations Biodiversity Conference held in Kunming, Yunnan province, the invasion of alien species was the subject of discussions, as it was regarded as one of the two most important factors leading to the loss of biodiversity, the other being human-caused ecological damage.
China passed its Biosecurity Law on April 15, 2021, which provides the legal basis for preventing the invasion of alien species and protecting biodiversity in the country. The relevant departments also strictly carry out port inspections and quarantines （检疫）so as to keep harmful organisms out of the country, and they strengthen early warning and monitoring systems so as to address the invasion as early as possible.
However, while government departments are making every effort to prevent and control the situation, the participation of the people should not be ignored. It is also necessary, as Wuhan is doing, to encourage people to pay attention to invasive species and actively play a role in keeping them at bay. Preventing any invasion by an alien species and protecting biodiversity should not just be the government departments fighting alone, but also a people's war.
It may come as a surprise that human beings are not alone in having invented vaccination （疫 苗）. Work just published in the Journal of Experimental Biology by Gyan Harwood of the University of Illinois confirms that honeybees got there first.
Being social insects, honeybees are at a constant risk of diseases sweeping through their living places-the beehives. Most animals which live in crowded conditions have particularly strong immune systems, so it long puzzled insect experts that honeybees do not.
Part of the answer, discovered in 2015, is that queen bees vaccinate their eggs by passing into them, before they are laid, little bits of proteins from disease-causing virus. These will activate the development of a protective immune response in the developing young. But that observation raises the question of how the queen receives her antigen （抗原）supply in the first place.
To find it out, Gyan Harwood teamed up with a group led by Heli Salmela. Together, they collected about 150 nurse bees and divided them among six queenless mini beehives equipped with groups of baby bees to look after. They fed the nurses on sugar-water, and for three of the beehives they mixed the sugar-water with P. larvae, a virus that causes a deadly disease.
In this case, tostop such an infection happening, Dr. Harwood and Dr. Salmela heat-treated and so killed the virus in advance. And, sure enough, it's confirmed that some bits of P. larvae were getting into royal jelly （蜂王浆） produced by those bees which had been fed with the mixed sugar-water. Moreover, examination of this royal jelly revealed increased levels, compared with royal jelly from bees that had not been fed with P. larvae, of defensin-1, which is thought to help bee immune systems defend the bees from virus infections.
These findings suggest that nurse bees are indeed, via their royal jelly, passing antigens on to the queen for vaccination into her eggs. They also mean, because baby bees, too, receive royal jelly for the first few days after they hatch, that the nurses are vaccinating as well. It seems protective.
Wherever we go, we are surrounded by history. Across the globe, cultural heritage （遗产）is passed down through the generations. Yet we fight a never ending and very expensive war to preserve it for the future. And today, it is under attack as never before. Technology is often seen as something that destroys the past. .
Creating copies via 2D images is extremely laborious and time-consuming. AI technologies are being used to do all the required sourcing, allowing lots of images to be cross-referenced and stored in a matter of hours.
. Al will also make restoration and preservation of existing cultural heritage far easier and vastly superior to previous methods.
Airborne technology （机载技术） is being increasingly used in the fight to preserve our cultural heritage. . LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) has already been used to reveal over 60, 000 Mayan structures that were lying undiscovered in the jungles of Guatamala, without needing a single boot on the ground. Drones（ 无人机）are also being used to excellent effect, documenting and monitoring huge areas and removing the need for all that costly manpower.
Human interaction with the most important sites and architecture is doing a great deal of harm. Virtual reality (VR) technology will play a leading role in preserving our cultural heritage in the coming years. , VR technology will gradually become the way that people experience them We'll all eventually be able to walk through places, look at (and touch!) artifacts and works of art without ever seeing them with our own eyes.
. Efforts in research, data sharing and project work will need to be pooled internationally. Using the technical expertness of specialist organizations will become ever more important to sustainably promote and preserve the cultural heritage of countries all across the world.
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A. It is being used to save and find it B. Technology has shaped conflict in several ways C. But it is now the most essential weapon in the battle D. Our cultural heritage will be protected via technology E. This will enable even more accurate and better copies to be created F. As more cultural heritage sites and objects are digitally mapped and recorded G. When it measures distances by hitting a target and analyzing the reflected light |
Last May I bought some sweet potatoes for food. Several days later, a tuber （块茎） left in the kitchen was sprouting （发芽）. Thinking it was a waste of money to throw it away, I1the tuber into a pot hoping it might take root and2something that could be put on the dinner table.
3, the tuber did take root and began to grow. In the following months I4it when necessary and it grew very well. Seeing that it was autumn and that the plant would not grow any longer, I decided to5. I pulled out the plant, which took some6and began to dig with my fingers to see if there was any tuber in the pot. When my fingers could almost7the bottom of the pot, I took the root and pulled it carefully, for the potato could8easily. As almost no earth was left, I tried to pull again and again but I failed to lift it up. In9, I pushed the pot over and found the root was outside the pot! It had grown through one of the holes in the bottom.
Then and there I changed my opinion of this plant, for the seemingly soft plant gained the10of me. Very carefully I11all the soil out of the pot,12the root might be harmed or broken. Holding the root, I was deep in thought. The root outside the pot looked like a13and strong finger of an old farmer who has14his life to make a living. The end of the root was dark grey and15. Obviously, the peel （皮） must have been removed during its struggle with the16of the heavy pot. It struck me that the tuber, though seriously17, had struggled hard and it seemed it had never18Such is a sweet potato, an ordinary-looking plant with19characteristics. It managed to grow where I thought it was almost impossible to20.
Shaanxi kuaiban is a (tradition)Chinese form of storytelling in the Shaanxi local language to the strong regular repeated sound of bamboo clappers. On June 10, 2021, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism （recognize） a new group of 325 national intangible （非物质的） cultural heritage items in Beijing, increasing the list established in 2006 to 1, 557 items. Shaanxi kuaiban, can date back to the late Qing Dynasty(1644-1911), has been included. It can (perform) by a group or alone. With one or two pairs of kuaiban of different sizes in hand, the performers speak in the local language while (tell)stories, which are usually about sufferers or heroes.
Shaanxi kuaiban is popular that there are many professional artists and performers in China. According to its performers, the art was originally used by farmers (share) their knowledge and earn money. time going by, more and more people perform Shaanxi kuaiban in different particular events-for example, at festival celebrations, (party) and art shows. Supported by the government, it has been one of the (good)art forms in Shaanxi and has been introduced to local schools as part of their art education.
增加： 在缺词处加一个漏字符号（）, 并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除： 把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改： 在错的词下划一横线, 并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意： 1．每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2．只允许修改10处, 多者（从第11处起）不计分。
Last week, I chosen to compete in an English-speaking contest by my school. I worked very hard and unfortunately I was beaten in the final. I felt discouraging and even lost confidence in my English study. But my English teachers always cheers me up and encourages her. She helps me where I am in trouble. Now, I know, there is no reason to feel guilty. In fact, I should feel really proud of represent my school. In addition to, I shouldn't attach so much importance to winning. As the saying goes, "It is not the winning, but the taking part that count." It's impossible to win all the time and everyone must learn to accept failure peaceful.
1）描述事情的起因和过程；
2）谈谈个人收获和感受。
注意：
1）词数100左右；
2）可适当增加细节，使行文连贯。
A Meaningful Thing I Did for My Class
