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本文作者： 21ST

　　EU language family continues to grow

　　欧盟官方语言增至23种英语成为”中间语”

　　AS the European Union has grown, so too has the number of its official languages. In January, Bulgaria and Romania will enter the European Union, and Gaelic will be formally recognized as one of Ireland's official languages, alongside English. With Bulgaria's entry, another alphabet, Cyrillic, will go into use in Brussels along with the Latin and Greek alphabets. Moreover, Spain has obtained the right to have the regional languages Basque, Catalan and Galician recognized as semiofficial languages. This will bring the number of official EU languages to 23. That means that all official documents, including 90,000 pages of past treaties and agreements, will have to be translated into all of those languages. One side effect is that English is emerging increasingly as the EU's lingua franca.

　　High school students need to learn to write

　　新西兰中学生英文写作水平近乎等同小学生

　　MANY high school students have English writing skills that are no better than primary school children, New Zealand's Ministry of Education said recently. Data gathered between 2000 and 2004 shows that while New Zealand students generally performed well in English reading, their ability in writing was the cause for concern. Nearly half of secondary school students had the same distribution of writing scores as primary school pupils, indicating they were not improving beyond curriculum three level.

　　BBC to teach by radio in Saudi Arabia

　　BBC教学节目进军中东英语学习市场

　　IN a move to promote English teaching, BBC has signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia to teach the language by radio beginning on January 20. "The Riyadh Radio has inked the deal with BBC Learning English, a division of the international radio and online broadcaster BBC World Service, to provide tailored bilingual programmes for students of English across Saudi Arabia," said Abdullah Ali Al-Alevi, chief of the English section of Riyadh Radio. The lessons will cover comprehension and explain the basics of English through topical and interesting stories that will include references to the UK's lifestyle and culture.