VIP Class Notes (Jesse) [S / R]

I woke up at 9 o’clock. When I woked up the sun was shining. I found the breakfast was not prepared for me and I went to a shop to find something to eat. After breakfast, I played phone and chat with my friend and talked with them about how I achieved yesterday.

I woke up at 9 o’clock and when I woke up the sun was shining. I found the breakfast was not / had not been prepared for me so I went to a shop to find something to eat. After breakfast, I played on / with my phone and chatted with my friend and talked with them about what I achieved / how I did yesterday.

Vocabulary

played a game on my phone

qualify (v)
qualification (n)
eg. I got the IELTS test score of 6.5 which means I qualify for living in America. This qualification is very important for my life.

foreigner – wai guo ren

sth opens doors = it gives you opportunities

most of the time – 大部分时间

Mandarin – zhong wen
Cantonese – guang dong hua

surge < > drop 

millennium – 1000
century – 100
decade – 10

understanding 
get your head around
get to grips with

ting bu dong = I can’t understand you
kan bu dong = I can’t understand it

ting bu qing chu = I can’t hear it clearly
bu li ni = I’m not listening to you

As you probably know, learning a foreign language is sometimes challenging. But it can also be fun. We spend hundreds of hours at school trying to get our tongues round different vocabulary and grammar in order to earn a qualification. But learning to speak a second language is more than just passing an exam – it opens doors to new opportunities, helps you to communicate with others and makes travelling overseas more fulfilling.

It might come as a surprise that, according to research by the BBC, the number of teenagers learning foreign languages in UK secondary schools has dropped by 45% since the turn of the millennium. German and French have fallen the most. While these languages from two of the UK’s closest trading partners have declined at GCSE level, there has been a noticeable surge in some others, such as Spanish and Mandarin.

Another survey of secondary schools suggests a third of students have dropped at least one language from their GCSE exam options. There are many reasons for this, including a perception by some students that languages are difficult. Getting to grips with the lingo of another country can certainly be a challenge and some pupils think ‘Why bother?’ when English is spoken by hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Others have questioned the need for a second language when translation technology is advancing.