The Three-Body Problem 《三体》
初一英语
This Hugo Award (雨果奖) winner is the most well-known work of Chinese science fiction (sci-fi，科幻小说). Its translator, Ken Liu (刘宇昆), helped it become popular.
Liu was born in China and grew up in the US. He can speak both Chinese and English. He also writes sci-fi stories himself. That made him the best choice to translate the story. Liu didn’t translate the book word for word. Instead, he tried to make it easier for English readers to understand. For example, he changed the structure (结构) of the story and moved its historical background (背景) to the beginning.
Foreign readers like the English version (版本), including former US president Barack Obama. Many English speakers have become fans of Liu Cixin and Chinese sci-fi.
初二英语
YOU’VE seen lots of bridges, but do you know how to build one? All eighth-graders at O’Maley Middle School in Massachusetts, US, know how. They built many wooden (木质的) bridges in their school.
Two or three students worked together in teams. Each team got the same task for the activity: to make a bridge that can safely carry the students over it. What’s more, there’s an ice cream under each bridge that they can’t touch.
It was not easy to build such a strong bridge. Students first designed (设计) and tested their bridges through a computer program. Then they put their ideas into practice and began building with wood and glue (胶水).
Gregory Davis and his two teammates chose an arch (拱形) bridge with curved (弯曲的) sides and the deck (桥面) across the top. It held up when all three stood on it.
Brianna Ferrarra and her team also stood on their bridge. “It was all right at first,” she said, but later it gave way under four students. However, they got the delicious ice cream.
The students enjoyed their bridge-building experience.
“I really liked it because I like learning with my hands, and it’s interesting to build something that would work in real life,” Danielle Bauke told local newspaper, Wicked Local.
“I would probably like to do it again and come up with different designs,” said Ferrarra. “It was fun.
PISA国际测试出炉，中国学生三项能力素养均居第一。
Chinese teens performed well on a recent international test. The 2018 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that 15-year-olds in Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang ranked (排名) first worldwide in reading, science and mathematics.
The PISA is carried out every three years. PISA 2018 tested around 600,000 students in 79 countries and regions (地区).
Chinese mainland (大陆) students first took part in the test in 2009, when students from Shanghai ranked first. The city’s students also got the top ranking again on the 2012 PISA, when students from the UK ranked 26th in math.
The PISA rankings have raised global interest in Chinese teaching methods (方法). The UK, for example, has had more exchanges with Chinese teachers and schools in order to improve the performance of its students.
Nearly 600 teachers from England and China, mainly from primary schools, have engaged in exchange programs since 2014. Around 5,000 of Britain’s 16,000 primary schools have used math-teaching methods from Shanghai.
“We’ve benefited (受益) from working with Chinese partners because of the very high quality (质量) of lesson planning and teaching for memorization (记忆) in China,” Philip Avery from the Bohunt Education Trust said. In return, Chinese partners have benefited from English teaching methods that help to develop character (性格) and innovation (创新), he added. TEENS
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