Another great wall
Since the end of imperial rule, China leaders have had a colorful (huge) engineering ambition: to build a dam on the mighty Yangtze River. In May this year, 87 years after China nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen first proposed to build a dam at the lower reaches of the scenic Three Gorges, workers added the last few pieces of concrete to raise the Three Gorges Dam to a full height of 6 10 feet and a circumference of 1.4 miles.
The dam has the highest requirements: it is the largest concrete structure in the world, and it is also the largest dam in terms of displacement, flood control and power generation. It is five times as wide as the Hoover Dam, and the reservoir it created stretches for about 400 miles, which is longer than Lake Superior. When it is fully put into use in 2009, the dam's 26 turbines will generate 84.68 billion kWh of electricity every year, meeting nearly one-tenth of China's demand.
If the project goes as planned, the dam will also curb the summer rainfall that often floods residential areas in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, which may save thousands of lives. However, the cost is huge, even exceeding the price tag of $25 billion. The dam has changed the geographical features of China, and its reservoir has formed a huge artificial lake, which is located between amazing and once spectacular remote cliffs. Dozens of towns, some of which have cultural relics (dating back to 2000 years ago), have appeared. At least 654.38+300,000 people have been resettled.
Regardless of the pros and cons, the dam is rapidly becoming a beacon for tourists, the Great Wall across the Yangtze River. China people predict that it will attract more than1000000 tourists this year. They came to see an engineering miracle, a huge building, which consumed the river and then sprayed it into the sky by high-pressure jet. "Calm". The "lake" promised by Mao Zedong in a poem has indeed replaced the muddy rapids. The Three Gorges, though smaller, has gained a new tranquility.
How to improve my English and pronunciation quickly and simply?
Point 1 Make clear why you want to learn English. Do you want it to be used in your work, help you find a job, talk to English speakers and help you study?
The second point is how good you want your English to be. How strong do you want to be in speaking, listening, reading and writing English?
The third point is to have a clear self-image when you reach the proficiency you want. What will you see, what will you hear and how will you feel?
If possible, sign up for language courses. If you can't, put yourself in an environment where you can use English, which will lead to ......
Fifth, look for opportunities to learn and use English. Speak English whenever possible. Listen to English radio and CD, read and write in English. If you look for opportunities, you will find them.
Point 6: Write down new words and phrases in your notebook. Take your notebook with you so that you can read it when you are free.
Practice, practice, practice. There is a saying in English. If you don't want to lose it, use it Speaking of learning a foreign language, this is true.
Eighth, find a study partner or colleague. Find someone who can learn English with you. Talk to each other. Send messages to each other in English.
Ninth, learn less and learn more. Get into the habit of learning English for ten minutes every day. This is much better than studying once a week for longer.
Finally, at the beginning of a learning phase, ask yourself, "What do I want to learn today?" At the end of a class, ask yourself, "What did I learn today?"
There is a story about a teacher telling his students. When you speak, think and dream in English, you know that you have made progress in English.
One day, a student came into the classroom with great excitement and said, "Teacher, teacher, I had a dream in English last night." The teacher said, "That's great. What did you dream about? " The student said, "I don't know, it's in English."
I don't know. I don't think there is an easy way to learn a language-I don't think people who promise quick solutions can be trusted. We learn slowly, and we study hard.
As far as pronunciation is concerned, the most important thing is listening! I think, usually we try to pronounce correctly before we really hear the difference. How do we check whether we are doing this?
Record ourselves. I think we need to record ourselves. We need to record what we repeat and listen to. So, perhaps the most useful thing is to listen to the radio with a tape recorder, record a short paragraph, and then say it ourselves, and then compare the way we say it with the way we say it in the language we are learning on the radio.
This is a slow process. We need to spend a lot of time rehearsing. I remember when I was studying, for example, when I was walking or riding a bike or doing other things, I tried to make those sounds, the difficult sounds I was learning.
The more we do, the more we hear. Of course, another thing about pronunciation is that with the improvement of our pronunciation, our understanding ability will also improve. As we learn to distinguish similar sounds, we begin to hear them-which makes it easier to understand.
Spelling is a problem One of the biggest problems in English is that spelling gets in the way, because there are many ways to spell the same sound. It is also because letters can be written without pronunciation, and also because letters can be written and pronounced in a very unexpected way. When we learn to read, it will interfere with our pronunciation and cause problems in itself.
Is there a difference between pronunciation and fluency?
They are completely different. Pronunciation is to pronounce the sounds correctly, and of course, to pronounce the intonation and rhythm correctly-not just a single sound, but to put all the sounds together.
There may be a little overlap in fluency. Fluency means things are easy. Fluency is more about confidence in vocabulary, how to put words together in grammar-confidence in this-and confidence in your ability to express yourself.
These psychological factors are more important than whether you can pronounce a single sound well. In fact, people who have poor pronunciation, but can organize their pronunciation fluently and speak it quite quickly, usually spend a lot of effort on pronunciation, so people who slow down and speak one word at a time are easier to understand.
Let me give you a piece of advice. When you speak, don't think about a single voice, don't think about right. Think about a set of words, think about a set of meaningful words and express them as quickly and smoothly as possible.