Try reading the following sentences as fast as you can. “She sells seashells by the seashore. The shells she sells are surely seashells. So if she sells shells on the seashore, I’m sure she sells seashore shells.”

Not very easy, was it? What you’ve just read is called a tongue twister (绕口令). It is an exercise made up of sounds that are hard to pronounce(发音，读) in order to help people pronounce words faster and more correctly. Try the next example.

“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper. Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers? If Pete Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?”

Tongue twisters usually do not have much meaning. They are just designed to improve people’s ability  to pronounce words. Although they may be very difficult, these exercises are very important to people who are trying to speak English correctly. This is because tongue twisters help people to tell the differences between similar sounds.

So if you wish to pronounce words more smoothly, you’d better try picking out some tongue twisters and practicing them.

1.Tongue twisters are helpful in improving ___________ skills.

A. listening        B. writing      C. pronunciation     D. communication

2.The first tongue twister is hard because ___________.

A. it is very boring to read            B. it teaches us a lot of knowledge

C. we don’t know who “she” is        D. the sounds of “s” and “sh” are similar

3.The passage is probably taken from _________ in a school newspaper.

A. Story Time          B. Study Garden

C. Latest News          D. Lost and Found

I have a good friend. Her name is Kate. She is  1  American girl. She is eleven. She lives  2  her family in China. There  3  four people in her family. They’re her father, her mother, her brother and herself. She   4  a cat. Its name is Mimi. It’s Sunday today. They are all at home. Look! Kate is playing with Mimi. Her father is reading  5  . Her mother is  6  the house. Where is her brother, Jim? He is doing his homework in his  7  . Kate likes Chinese very much,  8  she can’t speak it very well. Jim  9  playing soccer. He  10  play it very well.