Session Fifteen

1.Putting it all together – Part II

总结+英语与汉语的区别

A foreign student

When a student from another country comes to study in the United States, he has to find out for himself the answers to many questions, and he has many problems to think about. Where should he live? Would it be better living in a dormitory or in a private room off campus? Should he spend all of his time studying, or should he take advantage of the many cultural and social activities that are offered? At first, he may not feel that he fits in with the American culture. He may not feel confident when he speaks. Little by little, however, he learns how to handle himself in various situations. Finally he begins to feel very secure and ‘at home’. Unfortunately, this long-awaited feeling doesn’t develop suddenly. It takes time.

Volcanoes

Volcanoes are holes in the Earth’s crust which allow molten rock to escape from beneath. The molten rock, or lava, may flow out gently or it may be blasted high in the air with gas and ash in a violent explosion. There are eight hundred and fifty active volcanoes around the world. Do you know where these mountains of fire are found? Three quarters of them are found within a zone called the “Ring of Fire.” One edge of the zone stretches along the west coast of the Americas from Chile to Alaska. The other edge runs along the east coast of Asia from Siberia to New Zealand. Twenty percent of these volcanoes are located in Indonesia. Other big groupings are in Japan, The Aleutian Islands, and Central America.

The Chinese Language

Chinese is a most unusual language. It differs from English and most other major languages in that it has hundreds of different dialects. A person who lives in one section of the vast country of China, often cannot understand a fellow Chinese who lives in another section. These two major dialects are Cantonese and Mandarin. Cantonese is a southern dialect. Mandarin, a dialect that originated in northern China, is spoken by more Chinese than any other dialect.

Non-Chinese people often say that the Chinese seem to “sing” their language. Chinese sounds as though it is sung, because many words are only one-syllable long and because the tone of voice changes for each word. As in English, many words have more than one meaning. The speaker’s tone of voice indicates each word’s specific meaning.

Even more fascinating than the variety of spoken sounds is the Chinese written language. It has no alphabet. Instead, it employs signs called “characters.” Each spoken word in the language is represented by a separate character. Originally, the characters were drawings that depicted the meanings of words, but over the years, they have simplified, and most no longer look like the things they represent.

The Supercontinent

Around 100 to 150 million years ago, there may have been only one continent on our planet. At least that is what some earth scientists have decided after years of research. If you look at the map of the world carefully, you can see that the present-day continents could be thought of as the pieces to a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. In your imagination carefully put the pieces together to form the supercontinent. You will see that if you took away the South Atlantic Ocean and pressed South America and Africa together they would fit very nicely. You could continue removing oceans and seas and put other parts of the world together quite easily until you get to those last two pieces of Australia and Antarctica. Scientists believe that the continents of Australia and Antarctica were once linked together. They may have split slowly off from the supercontinent and then separated from each other as recently as 40 million years ago.