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Directions: Please read the following passage within the limited time, and then do the exercise.
Length of Text: 378 words Time Allowed: 4.5 minutes
3. Seeking Help Close at Hand
1 Have you ever looked all over town for the best spring clothes, the best textbooks, or something else that you think is the best, only to realize you could just buy it at the neighborhood supermarket?
2 People who want to practice English are wasting time on the same sort of chase
.
3 Many think only native speakers can help them improve conversation skills. So they look
wherever they can for foreigners. They spend hours in Internet chatrooms or listen to VOA (Voice Of America) or BBC (The British Broadcasting Corporation.)
4
Although these efforts are all worthwhile, catching up with native speakers may simply take them too much time.
5 Why do English learners so often pass up thousands of chances to speak with one another? Almost everyone studies English from middle school onward. So finding Chinese people who speak the language is as easy as finding a red lantern
on New Year's Eve.
6 No one wants to do it, though.
7 Some say they don't think they can learn much from talking to other Chinese people. They think that locals lack a native's accent and a working knowledge of current slang
. They fear they will expose themselves to grammatical errors. And, of course, it's just so much easier to speak Chinese.
8 What they say is probably true. But chances are that every serious language learner, even a beginner, knows something the next person doesn't?a word, a phrase, a grammar point or a pronunciation rule.
9 So by speaking English together, two learners can trade inside knowledge. Also, any sort of practice is worthwhile. Maybe neither speaker is fluent, but both are forcing words to flow from brain to mouth and from ear back to brain. This rudimentary
flow of words is the most important thing of conversational skill. It doesn't matter who's doing the talking. Finally, when both speakers run out of words, they can laugh a bit realizing neither one is a native speaker.
10 The best thing about Chinese students speaking English with one another is: there's no need to break up anyone's schedule probing the campus, the bars, the Net and the radio for native speakers. They can do it today, tomorrow and as often as they like.
Comprehension Exercise