[佳句赏析]If you can't work out this problem, you can have your brother help you.

　　如果你解不出这道题，你可以让你的兄弟帮助你。

　　3．[教材原句]While the students found the soldier's idea interesting, the system was too difficult to be of practical use.

　　虽然学生们都觉得士兵的想法非常有趣，但这个系统太复杂而不实用。

　　[句型点拨]be of＋n.(抽象名词)结构。

　　[佳句赏析]Basic research is of great importance in all scientific fields.

　　在各个科学领域里，基础研究是非常重要的。

　　The development of Chinese characters

　　The Chinese language differs from Western languages in that, instead of an alphabet, it uses characters which stand for ideas, objects or deeds. Chinese words are formed by putting together different characters. In many cases, a single character can also make up a word. The history of the Chinese language can be examined by looking at how these characters developed.

　　Chinese writing began thousands of years ago. According to an ancient story, a man named Cang Jie invented Chinese writing. One winter day while he was hunting, he saw the tracks of animals in the snow and observed that the appearance of each one was different. Then he had the idea that he could use different shapes to represent different objects. The first Chinese characters were drawings of physical objects. Some characters have been simplified and others have been made more difficult over time. However, as a whole, the characters have developed from drawings into standard forms. The character for a mountain was at first three mountaintops together.This became one mountaintop and three lines, and over time turned into the character used nowadays.

　　Not all characters were developed from drawings of objects. Sometimes to express ideas, some characters were made by combining two or more characters together. For example, 'rest' was made up of the characters for a man and a tree. The character 'prisoner' was formed with a 'man' inside a square. Other characters were developed for directions and numbers. It is easy to distinguish their meanings by looking at them, for example, the characters for 'up' and 'down'， which are opposites of each other.

　　Though these kinds of characters indicate meanings, one of their shortcomings is that they do not show how they should be pronounced. Therefore, a method was developed to have one part of a character indicate the meaning and the other suggest the pronunciation. Many Chinese characters used today were made this way.

　　In the 1950s the Chinese government introduced simplified Chinese characters and now they have widespread use in China's mainland.

　　汉字的演变

　　汉语与西方语言不同，区别在于它不使用字母，而是用汉字表示观点、物体或行为。汉语中的汉字是通过把不同的汉字组合而构成的。在许多情况下，单个的汉字也可以构成一个单词。通过考察汉语中单个汉字的发展过程就可以明白汉语的历史。

　　汉字书写起始于数千年前。根据古代传说，一个名叫仓颉的人发明了汉字。冬季的一天，他在打猎的时候看到雪地上的动物的足迹，并注意到每个足迹的外观是不同的。于是，他想到可以用不同的形状代表不同的物体。最初的汉字只是表现有形物体的图画。随着时间的推移，有些汉字被简化了，有些变得更复杂。然而，整体上看，汉字已经从图画的形式发展成为了标准形式。汉字"山"起初是三座在一起的山峰，接着变为一座山峰和三条线条，随着时间推移又变成了我们今天使用的汉字。

并非所有的汉字都从物体的图画演变而来。有时，为了表达想法，有些汉字是结合了两个或更多的符号。例如，"休"是由汉字"人"和"树"结合在一起而构成的。"囚"则