Interest in Learning Chinese May be Growing Exponentially
Chinese media has come out with a report saying that more than 40 million foreigners around the world are learning Chinese. We decided to see how fast Chinese language learning is growing in the United States.
A spokesperson told us Chinese is among the top 10 languages sold with a huge increase over a one year period from 2008 to 2009 in corporate sales, an increase of 719 percent.The American Council of the Teaching Foreign Languages has just released a report that suggests also Chinese the fastest growing language, with a growth rate of 195%
中國媒體報導指出，全球目前已超過4000萬人正在學習中文，中文在美國成長的速度到底有多快。根據VOA向提供電腦語言學習服務公司Rosetta Stone的調查，在08到09年銷售量中，中文以719%的成長比例，列該公司年度10大暢銷語言，美國外語教學協會也指出中文在美國擁有195% 的成長率，大家跟著VOA來一窺中文在美國受歡迎的程度吧！
【Vocabulary and Expressions】
(Based on Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary)
1. have an analogy with: 與…情況類似
2. perception: a belief or opinion, often held by many people and based on appearances
3. character: a letter, number or other mark or sign used in writing or printing, or the space one of these takes. EX: The address was written in Chinese/Japanese characters (= systems of writing).
4. alphabetic: = alphabetical，字母的
5. syllabic: 音節的
6. literate: able to read and write
7. realm: an area of interest or activity
8. cognitive: connected with thinking or conscious mental processes
9. PISA:The Programme for International Student Assessment
【Multiple Choice】
1. The growing popularity of Chinese is similar to the ____learning in the past.
A) French B) Japanese C) Russian D) Korean
2. Which part of Chinese learning is the most difficult for English-speakers?
A) Listening B) Speaking C) Reading D) Writing
3. Chinese people have great success in math and science. The reason is that ____.
A) Chinese is more logic than English
B) cognitive skills are obtained through learning Chinese characters
C) Chinese-speakers are more educable due to the tradition brought by Chinese
D) Chinese-speaking nations provide more resources than English-speaking countries
4. Learning Chinese allows English-speaking students to see things differently due to the different ____ between Chinese and English.
A) pronunciation B) punctuation C) lexicon D) grammatical structures
5. Chris Livaccari thinks that Chinese is ____.
A) definitely the fastest growing language in the world
B) not the fastest growing language in the world
C) growing pretty fast only in the United States
D) highly likely to be the fastest growing language around the world
【Fill-in the Blanks】
Please listening to the talk and choose the best answer for the blanks
Chris Livaccari:"I think there are __5__ of things, but I would say one is many people have commented on the spectacular success of China in the education realm, especially if you look at math and science and if you look at the results of the PISA exams that were released last Wednesday, the spectacular success in science and math __6__ among Chinese-speaking nations, has been observed as potentially something that is __7__ by the fact that Chinese students are trained from a very early age at things like pattern recognition and memorization through their learning of Chinese characters. So I think there is a link in terms of students' cognitive skills development that is trained by learning Chinese characters."
"The other thing that is very important I think about learning Chinese and Chinese characters for American students, in terms of the benefit, is that because Chinese is such a different language, __8__, from English, it really enables students to see things from a completely different perspective. And helps them understand the idea of multiple perspectives and multiple __9__. So that, I think, for American students is the most important benefit to learn a challenging language that can build their confidence and learn a language that is quite different that can open their eyes to how language works and how multiple perspectives work."
6. A) numbers B) a number C) few numbers D) number
7. A) in particular B) is particular C) particularly D) particular
8. A) contributed B) contribute to C) contributed to D) distributed to
9. A) structure B) structural C) structurally D) construction
10. A) points B) points of view C) viewpoints D) views
【Answers】
Select the area between the two arrows to reveal the answers:
-->1.B 2.D 3.B 4.D 5.D 6.B 7.A 8.C 9.C 10.C <--
Source: http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/Chinese-May-Be-Fastest-Growing-Language-Learning-111887289.html
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