Smartphone vs the classroom 智能手机 vs 传统课堂

open doors 打开（各种机会的）大门

linguistic 语言的

evening class 夜校

textbook 课本，教科书

accessible 容易获取的，可得到的

virtual teacher 虚拟教师

cash in 从……中捞到钱财

course 课程

Esperanto 世界语

classroom 教室，课堂

get your head round (something) 理解、弄懂（复杂的事情）

peer support 同学之间互相支持

We know it’s good to learn another language. It opens doors, makes you more employable, helps you make new friends, and it’s fun too. But to improve our linguistic skills, many of us have to endure hours of school lessons or evening classes, with our heads buried in textbooks. It’s no wonder then that technology appears to be providing a better and more accessible way of learning.

There is certainly a huge demand for language learning, and having a smartphone means you can have a virtual teacher with you wherever you go. Many app developers are keen to cash in on the demand, and there are numerous learning apps available – including our own, free, BBC Learning English app! One of many popular apps, Duolingo, offers 91 courses in 30 languages and has more than 300 million users.

Some educational apps offer languages not popular enough to be taught at evening classes, or at most universities. And others offer ‘invented’ language courses in Esperanto, Elvish and Star Trek's Klingon – lessons you might not find in a traditional classroom. Whatever you want to learn, apps allow you to go at your own pace and fit learning around other commitments. But they’re not perfect – you might not get your head round the grammar and will lack the peer support you could get in a classroom environment.

新闻来源：BBC

What Wakes You Up Each Morning?
每天早上是什么叫醒你的？


wake up醒来
alarm闹钟
unpleasant令人不快的，不友善的
shake off抖落，摆脱
groggy眩晕无力，昏昏沉沉
melody曲调，旋律
fresh新鲜的，精力充沛的
alert警惕的，留心的


How do you wake up in the morning?

If you set an alarm on your phone or clock that sounds like this:
beep beep beep

That hard, unpleasant sound may be making it harder to shake off the sleepy feeling in the morning known as grogginess.

So, is there a better way to wake up? A recent study says yes. 

The answer is music. 
Researchers say alarms that have a melody 
– like the beginning of this song 
– can help people feel fresher in the morning.

The study, carried out by researchers in Australia, involved 50 people. 
The study subjects answered questions about the alarm sound they like to wake up to, how they feel about that sound and how they feel when they wake up. The findings appeared this month in the publication PloS One.

The researchers found that people who wake up to musical alarms reported feeling more awake and alert.


新闻来源：VOA

Ninety-Year-Old 'Chef of the Poor' Cooks for Rome's Homeless
90岁”穷人主厨“为罗马无家可归者烹饪

cut切
onion洋葱
professional专业的
cook厨师
chef主厨
set out to do有意做某事
bakery面包店
feed喂，给…食物
donated捐赠的
live out实现
homeless无家可归的人
sandwich三明治
adventure冒险


Dino Impagliazzo cuts onions like a professional cook. The Italian man makes a great vegetable soup, but most of his longtime "customers" can't even pay for a piece of bread.

Working with the energy of a much younger man, the 90-year-old, Impagliazzo is known as Rome's "chef of the poor."
Three days a week, he sets out to gather food with other volunteers. They are all part of RomAmoR (RomeLove), a group that he started. The volunteers go to markets and bakeries to collect donated food.

The other four days of the week, RomAmoR volunteers cook food and serve it in different places across the city.
Such efforts help Impagliazzo live out his dream of feeding the homeless.

It all began 15 years ago when a homeless man at a Rome train station asked Impagliazzo for money to buy a sandwich.
"I realized that perhaps instead of buying one sandwich, making some sandwiches for him and for the friends who were there would be better, and thus began our adventure," he said.


新闻来源：VOA

US Investigates Foreign Influence at Two of Its Top Universities
美国教育部调查哈佛和耶鲁大学的外国资金来源


launch展开
investigation调查
agency机构
announce宣布
report报告
Connecticut康涅狄格州
transparency透明
deserve值得，应该


The United States Department of Education has launched an investigation into Harvard University and Yale University. Earlier this month, the agency announced the schools had failed to report hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign gifts and contracts.

Yale University is in New Haven, Connecticut. It may not have reported at least $375 million in foreign money over the last four years, officials said in a statement. They are also concerned that Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, may not have fully met reporting requirements.

"This is about transparency," U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos said in a statement. "If colleges and universities are accepting foreign money and gifts, their students, donors, and taxpayers deserve to know how much and from whom."

Harvard and Yale Ensnared in Education Dept. Crackdown on Foreign Funding（The New York Times）

Education Department Probes Harvard, Yale Over Foreign Funding（NPR）


新闻来源：VOA

What are ‘Cheapfake’ Videos?

粗糙欺骗视频是什么？

edit剪辑

campaign运动，活动
tear撕破；眼泪
selective选择性的
mislead误导


An edited video of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has raised questions about social media and political campaigns in the United States.


The video was produced last week after President Donald Trump's State of the Union speech. The video shows Pelosi repeatedly tearing up a printed copy of the speech while the president spoke.


Trump posted the edited video on Twitter.


Pelosi did tear the pages of her copy of the speech. But she did so only after Trump finished speaking – not during the address as the video shows.


Pelosi's office asked Twitter and Facebook to take down the video. Both companies refused to do so.


Researchers worry the video's "selective editing" could mislead people.


"Selective editing" is a term for editing or changing videos in a way that does not show what really happened. Such recordings are sometimes called "cheapfake" videos.


新闻来源：VOA

When you are old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.


当年华已逝


当年华已逝，你两鬓斑白，沉沉欲睡，
坐在炉边慢慢打盹，请取下我的这本诗集，
请缓缓读起，如梦一般，你会重温
你那脉脉眼波，她们是曾经那么的深情和柔美。
多少人曾爱过你容光焕发的楚楚魅力，
爱你的倾城容颜，或是真心，或是做戏，
但只有一个人！他爱的是你圣洁虔诚的心！
当你洗尽铅华，伤逝红颜的老去，他也依然深爱着你！
炉里的火焰温暖明亮，你轻轻低下头去，
带着淡淡的凄然，为了枯萎熄灭的爱情，喃喃低语，
此时他正在千山万壑之间独自游荡，
在那满天凝视你的繁星后面隐起了脸庞。


文：叶芝

At Home with Australian Couple who Protected Baby Kangaroos from Fires
澳大利亚一对夫妇在家袋鼠宝宝免受大火之灾


bushfire森林大火
threaten威胁
flee逃离
orphan孤儿
kangaroo袋鼠
joey袋鼠宝宝
pouch袋子
full-grown长大的
surround周围
vehicle车辆
cause原因，事业


Even as a bushfire threatened the rural Australian community of Wytaliba, Gary Wilson and his partner Julie Willis decided not to flee their wooden house.

The two had a home full of orphaned baby kangaroos to protect.

More than 10 of the baby kangaroos -- called joeys – stayed safe inside fabric pouches that hung in the couple's living room. 

Each piece of cloth looked like the opening in which mother kangaroos carry their young.

Wilson and Willis have taken care of wild animals before. Recently, full-grown kangaroos and other wildlife that had left their care long ago came back to the house in search of protection as the fires grew nearer.

"We had way too many animals in the house and around the house so we really couldn't go," Wilson told the Reuters news agency from his home. 
"We decided we were going to stay and fight." Their home is now surrounded by burned land and vehicles.

Willis said the joeys will one day be released into the wild.

She said, "We didn't have children ourselves; this is what we spend our time doing. We think it's worthy - a worthy cause - looking after our babies no matter what they are..."

新闻来源：Reuters

What is Good Digital Citizenship?

什么是良好的数字公民素养？

survey调查

turn off关闭

get away from逃离

pressure压力

social media社交媒体

a series of一系列

non-profit非营利

platform平台

post推文

perfect完美

acceptable可接受的

tear apart撕裂

Some adults and teachers may think young people want to spend all of their time using social media. 

But a recent survey shows that may not be true. 

It found that students sometimes want to turn off their electronic devices to get away from the pressure to take part in social media.

For the study, researchers led a series of discussions at classes in the United States. 

They asked young people what they thought about social media.

The survey was a project of Common Sense Media, a non-profit group based in California, and a learning games platform calledKahoot!.

Eight out of ten students said that "some people think too much about their social media posts and are always trying to be perfect." About a third said it was acceptable "to post a version of yourself on social media that's not 100 percent real."

The students also talked about the issue of publishing unkind or hateful comments online. More than half of those questioned said that social media are "tearing us apart more than they are bringing people together."

新闻来源：VOA

South Korea Celebrates Historic Oscar Wins for ‘Parasite’
韩国庆祝电影《寄生虫》捧得小金人

Yonsei University 延世大学
Best Picture最佳影片
critics 影评人，批评家
crowds大众
underside底层
expressive生动，表现力强，意味深长
dark comedy黑色喜剧
false虚假的
obviously显然地


Parasite won the Oscar for Best Picture and three other Academy Awards Sunday night.

At Yonsei University in Seoul, the university Bong attended, students belonging to a school movie club watched the awards show together.

Another student, Jeong Ho-cheol, praised Bong for pleasing both movie critics and crowds. He said, "His way of dealing with the underside of Korean society and problems such as rich-poor gaps and the way he expresses those issues are very expressive."

Parasite is a dark comedy about a poor South Korean family that makes up false job experiences so they can work for a wealthier family. The wealthy family gives them positions as tutors, housekeepers and personal drivers.

Kim Kyung-hyun is a professor of visual studies at the University of California, Irvine. He told VOA, "Parasite tells a universal story in a way that has made it obviously very successful worldwide."

新闻来源：VOA

UK to ban petrol cars

英国2035年禁售燃油车

petrol汽油

diesel柴油

hybrid混合动力

emit散发，排出

virtually几乎，实际上，虚拟地

carbon碳

hydrogen氢动力

van货车

vehicle车辆

Irish爱尔兰

fossil化石燃料

phaseout逐步废除

Britain will ban the sale of new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars from 2035, five years earlier than planned.

The change comes after experts said 2040 would be too late if the UK wants to achieve its target of emitting virtually zero carbon by 2050.

People will only be able to buy electric or hydrogen cars and vans, once the ban comes into effect.

The UK is one of many countries looking to end the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles.

At the start of January, the Irish government announced plans to ban the sale of "fossil fuel cars" by the year 2030, while Denmark has also proposed a phaseout of new diesel and petrol car sales in 2030.

新闻来源：China Daily