在这一期节目里，Matthew决定前往澳洲动物园看看，来满足下他不断更新的好奇心。
A few days ago our sweet friend Matthew told us he adores animals he once saw at the zoo. That's why in this episode we want to share common animals with every kid and their parents. As I said before all kids love nature of course including wild animals.
However, it's very surprising that many adult students I've taught before couldn't name all the common animals straight away despite the fact that they've already built up their English vocabulary and some of them even reached the upper-intermediate level of English.
I guess the commonest animal name in English Chinese students may come out with is dog or cat and few are used to saying puppy or kitten. And you could imagine how hard other names of animals may be to our English learners. From such a bizarre phenomenon, I personally fathom how much effort our hard-working learners made is unfortunately in vain.
Almost two decades ago I used to go to local bookstores, where I could scout about any interesting book I wanted to read, while now I barely visit any bookstores if I'm looking for some materials relating to different languages. No matter how you slice it, many students still count on poor language material often full of Chinese mistakes or specifically Chinglish. One of the classic examples that give me a deep impression is wherever students coming from, they usually make use of similar English words when making an English sentence in either writing or speaking.
So the key to improving kids' English in a non-native English speaking country like China or Japan is to let them explore the real world as much as possible. Some may say they can't afford the cost of learning but bear in mind the virtual world may give you a shortcut to the authentic learning experience of English.