People often focus on the job and income potential that comes with

a college degree. However, a college degree can actually have some

surprising effects on your overall health and quality of life as an adult.

College is an investment and a time commitment, and the tangible and 【M1】__________

intangible benefits of a degree often justify the effort.

A college degree not only increases the breadth and depth of your

employment options, but also offers great insulation from downsizing

during the recessions. Not surprisingly, income data also shows the 【M2】__________

impact a college degree can have to earnings. Advanced degrees, 【M3】__________

including a master’s, doctoral or professional degree, led to typical

earnings ranging from $ 1,300 to $ 1,735 per week.

College is often a major transformation in life for people. For some 【M4】__________

students, it is the first time they have been away from home, made

major decisions independently and did many tasks, such as laundry, for 【M5】__________

themselves. Additionally, students get a chance to grow socially and

professionally through professor and peer relationships. The bonds

developing during college often provide a network for careers and 【M6】__________

relationships after school as well. Community service and extracurricular

involvement also provide students with opportunities to become more

civic-minded.

Colleges also commonly provide them exposure to a diversity of 【M7】__________

groups, which help in increased cultural awareness and sensitivity. A 【M8】__________

September 2007 College Board study found that 70 percent of people with a

bachelor’s degree had employer-sponsored health benefits and pension plans.

The study also found that college graduates tend to engage in healthy 【M9】__________

lifestyles. They also contribute more to active citizens through 【M10】_________

community involvement, voting and blood donation.

What role does speaking play in second language acquisition? It has

no direct role, since language is acquired by comprehensible input, but in 【M1】__________

fact someone who is not able to speak for physical reasons can still

acquire the full ability to understand language. However, speaking does

indirectly help in two ways: speaking produces conversation, which

produces comprehensible input, and your speaking allows native

speakers to judge what level you are at and then adjust their speaking

downward you, providing you with input that is more easily understood. 【M2】__________

What kind of input is optimal for acquisition? The best input is

comprehensible, which sometimes means that it needs to be slow and 【M3】__________

more carefully articulated, using common vocabulary, more slang, and 【M4】__________

shorter sentences. Optimal input is interesting and/or relevant and

allows the acquirer to focus on the meaning of the message and not on

the form of the message. Optimal input is not grammatically sequenced,

and a grammatical syllabus should not be used in the language classroom,

in a part because all students will not be at exactly the same level and 【M5】__________

because each structure is often only introduced once before moving on to

anything else. Finally, optimal input must focus on quantity, although

most language teachers have to date seriously overestimated how much 【M6】__________

comprehensible input is actually needed for the acquirer to progress. 【M7】__________

In addition to receive the right kind of input, students should have 【M8】__________

their affective filter kept low, meaning that classroom stress should be

minimized and students “should not be put on the defensive”. One result

of this is what students’ errors should not be corrected. Students should 【M9】__________

be taught how to gain more input from the outside world, including

helping them acquire conversational competence, the mean of managing 【M10】_________

conversation.

Early anthropologists, following the theory that words determine

thought, believed that language and its structure were entirely dependent

on the cultural context which they existed. This was a logical extension 【M1】__________

of that is termed the Standard Social Science Model, which views the 【M2】__________

human mind as an indefinite malleable structure capable of absorbing any 【M3】__________

sort of culture without constraints from genetic or neurological factors.

In this vein, anthropologist Verne Ray conducted a study in the

1950s, given color samples to different American Indian tribes and 【M4】__________

asking them to give the names of the colors. He concluded that the

spectrum we see it as “green” “yellow”, etc. was an entirely arbitrary 【M5】__________

division, and each culture divided the spectrum separately. According to

that hypothesis, the divisions seen between colors are a consequence of 【M6】__________

the language we learn, and do not correspond divisions in the natural 【M7】__________

world. A similar hypothesis is upheld in the extremely popular meme of

Eskimo words for snow—common stories vary from fifty to downwards 【M8】__________

of two hundred.

Extreme cultural relativism of this type has now been clearly

refuted. Eskimos use at most twelve different words for snow, which is

not much more than English speakers and should be expected since they 【M9】__________

exist in a cold climate. The color-relativity hypothesis have now been 【M10】_________

completely debunked by more careful, thorough, and systematic studies

which show a remarkable similarity between the ways in which different

cultures divide the spectrum.