I was asked in an email about learning idioms in a foreign language. Maybe I am different from most people，but I do not bother with them. To me they are kind of dessert of language learning. They come at the end of a meal. Once you have filled up with the key words and phrases that are used in a variety of situations，then you can add a few idioms. And by that time, you will be able to pick them up naturally anyway.
I find that many learners have trouble with idioms，as if repeating some very colloquial expressions is going to upgrade how they sound in a language. In fact, it is the opposite. Idioms are difficult to use correctly.
Yes，occasionally you hear idioms and do not understand. But，in my experience，there are always situations where you do not understand. It is best to focus on the most important words，what they mean and how they are used. Certainly，it is best for a nonnative speaker to stick to standard speech.
Some teachers even try to teach the “real language”．Then you hear nonnative speakers saying things like “I goanna”, “You wane” etc.
You will learn all the idioms you need just by exposing yourself to the language. In general，you can save any phrase that you find interesting，and if that includes idioms，go to it. But I would not make any special effort to go after idioms. I，in fact，avoid them. If I come across something in Russian that strikes me as a particularly idiomatic use of words，I just leave it aside; do not even bother trying to learn it. If it keeps on appearing，then I will learn it.
既然你已决定做这件事，就应该把它做好。
When you are ,you can .
you have got your license, drive the car yourself?
No matter where he is, he before breakfast.
When a mom attended school to help her disabled son, her son and the school thanked her in the sweetest way. It wasn't until after his college years that Marty became disabled after 1 down stairs. When her son 2 to get his MBA, Judy O'Connor attended every class with him to help him write and 3. Every day, Judy would sit by Marty in class, taking notes to make sure of 4 specific requests, raising her hand so he could answer questions, and silently filling in his 5 on test days. "After a little while, we found that working together we could 6 a great deal," Marty says.
On graduation day at Chapman University, Judy was dressed in black to mix in with the other 7. Little did she know she'd soon be the center of 8. When Marty's name was called, his mom helped 9 him to the front of the stage, 10 for a picture with Marty as he received his diploma. Over the loudspeaker, an 11 was made in a voice 12 with happy tears: The university was giving Judy an honorary (荣誉的)MBA." A lump came to my throat. I was proud of my son and 13 to be honored," says Judy.
The mother and the son had joked that Judy was putting in enough work to earn her own 14. To Marty, there was no question that his mom, a retired elementary school teacher with a business degree, had 15 earned her honorary MBA.
Perhaps just as important, Judy gave Marty 16. Life as Marty knew it before the 17 may have changed, but he encourages anyone in a 18 situation to keep up hope. "Just keep an open mind, 19 you can make your diversity into your advantage and take challenges as a(n) 20 for growth in your life," he says.
The Mystery of Dark Matter
If you look at the night sky, you'll often see stars moving very quickly. In fact, they move much more quickly than they should according to their size and the laws of physics. Scientists do not completely understand why the speed of these stars is so high. But many believe the reason is that much of the universe is made up of something called "dark matter". Groups of stars called galaxies, such as the Milky Way, might even consist of ninety per cent dark matter.
How much something weighs depends on where it is. The same object weighs only half as much on Mars as it does on Earth and almost three times as much on Jupiter. So scientists prefer to talk about the mass of something rather than how much it weighs, because mass does not change. They can work out the mass of galaxies by measuring the distance between them and the speed they move. Recently, Dr. Jorge Penarrubia and a team from Edinburgh University discovered something interesting. The mass of the Milky Way is only half as much as the mass of another nearby galaxy, Andromeda. This seems strange, but dark matter may explain why.
Finding out more about dark matter could help us understand how the universe began, but this is not easy. Lots of scientists with different types of expert knowledge are working on the problem. The Edinburgh team is working with many other universities like the University of British Columbia.
We can't see dark matter, it's very difficult to measure and we can't find out its mass. Unlike stars, dark matter doesn't produce or reflect light. But we can make a good guess that it is there because of the way things move and the way light bends. Experts now think dark mater may be very different from the mater which we find on Earth. There may also be five times as much dark matter in the universe as ordinary matter.
The Swiss scientist Fritz Zwicky first gave dark matter its name in the nineteen-thirties. Researchers have been looking for it ever since. Today, technology such as the Large Hadron Collider is collecting more and more information but this technology cannot tell us everything. New ways of finding dark matter will be needed. Investigating dark matter may even mean we will need to start asking questions about the way we look at the universe, including the ideas of Albert Einstein.
