A
Learning Chinese could be one of the most important decisions you ever make.Chinese is becoming the language to learn in the 21st century.With the world's largest population and a rapidly growing middle class, China stands to become the engine of the world's economy in the coming years.This will make learning Chinese very important for people in many industries, or for those of us who wish to visit China or learn from its culture and history.
There is an ongoing effort to modernize the writing system and standardize the language.An increasing number of people learning Chinese are learning the Mandarin, so unless you absolutely need to learn another dialect (such as Cantonese), be sure you are studying Mandarin.
For native English speakers Chinese is one of the most difficult and most different languages to learn.The vocabulary is wholly unfamiliar and unlike anything we know.In addition, in the Chinese tone system, words are spoken in rising or falling tones, which help to distinguish between them.Furthermore, there is the Chinese writing system — a collection of thousands of individual ideograms (表意文字), or symbols, which represent a word or an idea.These ideograms have no phonetic value — that is to say, we can't tell how the word is pronounced by how it is written.There is a method to present written Chinese in a phonetic script called pinyin.If you are learning Chinese, you'll be working with this pinyin system, but the beauty of the traditional writing system shouldn't be passed up.All these factors make learning Chinese difficult for us.Yet, for a determined learner, there's always a way to overcome it.
语篇解读：本文是一篇说明文。文章介绍了学习汉语的重要性、汉语的特点以及学习汉语的困难。
1．Learning Chinese is becoming more and more important, because .
A．Chinese engines are very welcome
B．China has the world's largest population
C．there are more and more rich people in China
D．China has become important to the world economy
解析：选D 细节理解题。根据第一段中的China stands to become the engine of the world's economy in the coming years.This will make learning Chinese very important for people in many industries可知，学习汉语变得越来越重要是因为中国对世界经济变得重要，故选D。
2．From the text we can learn that .
A．the author thinks Chinese is as difficult as English
B．the author is interested in the Chinese language and its culture
C．foreign languages can play a great role in industrial
development
D．as long as the pinyin system is learned well, one can learn Chinese well
解析：选B 推理判断题。根据最后一段作者对汉语拼音和汉语文字体系的理解可知，作者对汉语和中国文化很感兴趣，故选B。
3．The last paragraph mainly tells us about .
A．the difficulties of learning Chinese
B．the advantages of learning Chinese
C．the Chinese tone system
D．the Chinese writing system
解析：选A 段落大意题。根据最后一段中的For native English speakers Chinese is one of the most difficult and most different languages to learn.可知，本段主要介绍了学习汉语的困难，故选A。
4．What would be probably written following this text?
A．The sources of Chinese characters.
B．The importance of learning Chinese.
C．The advice on how to learn Chinese.
D．The difficulties of learning other languages.
解析：选C 推理判断题。根据最后一段最后一句Yet, for a determined learner, there's always a way to overcome it.可知，接下来作者可能会介绍如何克服困难学习汉语的建议，故选C。
