Week 1：真实生活英语练习
本篇是一组英文阅读与表达练习，不是医疗建议。睡眠问题持续影响生活时，请咨询合格的医疗专业人士。
如何使用这一课
- 先不查词读完一小段，写下你听懂或读懂的主旨；
- 圈出 5 个值得复用的表达，确认它们的语气和搭配；
- 用英文复述 60–90 秒，不追求逐句翻译；
- 保存录音或短文，隔一周用相同主题做一次平行复测。
语言焦点
| 表达 | 用途 | 我的改写 |
|---|---|---|
I get asked ... | 引出反复出现的问题 | |
You are not alone. | 承认共同经验 | |
Apart from ... | 限定讨论范围 | |
What kept me moving was ... | 讲述支撑自己的行动 | |
It is not a diagnosis. | 说明证据边界 |
WHY I WROTE THIS LESSON
I often receive questions from GitHub. One question keeps returning: How can I speak clearly about more than one topic?
That question matters to me because I used to confuse fluency with sounding like a native speaker.
To be honest, I could not speak comfortably even after studying English for years.
Fluency in this lesson does not mean copying one accent. It means finding words that fit a real situation, getting the main idea across, and repairing the conversation when a sentence does not arrive clearly.
That is why I am using an ordinary topic and a few expressions that people use in everyday conversations.
Let’s begin.
FIRST TOPIC
One of the most common problems I hear about nowadays is I am so tired. And you are not alone. I experienced the biggest failure in my life in the past year. The startup company I ran went bankrupt. I lost my wealth, a precious friendship, and the person I loved. For a whole year, I couldn’t sleep well and felt very tired every day.
Trust me, I know that terrible feeling.
So, our first topic will be: why are you always tired?
Whether you are experiencing unemployment, a breakup, or uncertainty about the future, we can slow down and talk like old friends.
This lesson combines a personal story with language practice. Tiredness can have many causes, and this page cannot identify yours. We will use three everyday buckets as prompts for speaking, not as a medical checklist.
The three prompts are:
- sleep anxiety
- routine and movement
- stress
Sleep Anxiety
Sleep anxiety is a phrase for worrying about sleep; it is not a diagnosis. For some people, worrying about whether they will sleep can make rest feel harder, creating a vicious cycle.
I have read about sleep for years, but the subject is easy to oversimplify. Advice that sounds certain online may not fit a particular person. This lesson therefore keeps the language general and leaves personal health decisions to qualified professionals.
You may hear the terms internal clock, circadian rhythm, and chronotype. They are useful vocabulary for discussing sleep timing, not a shortcut to diagnosing yourself.
People also say that everyone needs exactly eight hours, that everyone must wake at the same time, or that every screen is equally harmful. These slogans leave out individual schedules, responsibilities, and symptoms. Use them as claims to question, not rules to follow blindly.
If sleep or daytime functioning remains difficult, write down the pattern and seek local professional advice. Do not use a language lesson to diagnose a health condition.
ROUTINE, MOVEMENT, AND CAPACITY
The second prompt is routine and movement. I am not prescribing a workout or claiming that one habit fixes fatigue. Notice which routines make a task easier to start, which ones drain you, and what your body is asking you to check with a professional.
DEALING WITH STRESS
The third prompt is how to deal with stress. Stress is not a character flaw, and “relax properly” is not a complete plan.
Start with one observable change: reduce a distracting cue, put a task within reach, write down the next action, or ask someone for support.
I mentioned in an article on Zhihu that I struggled with compulsive gaming for a period. I once described the change as a “dopamine detox”, but that popular label is not a clinical mechanism or established treatment. What helped me was changing cues and routines, reducing access, restoring sleep and daily structure, and seeking support. Persistent loss of control deserves qualified professional help.
When energy is low, low-friction activities often win over tasks that require planning. That observation is a starting point, not a moral judgment.
Instead of asking why you are not more disciplined, ask which cue, task size, or environment could change the next ten minutes.
At the low point of my life, programming gave me one small place to act.
I needed a high-performance rich-text editor for a previous company’s product. I could not find an open-source project that met our needs, so I built one and released it on GitHub. When I felt distracted, I worked on one small part. The challenges included:
- Designing and coding the editor
- Developing the core and the plugin system
- Designing a data structure for complex tables and submitting a PR to slate.js
- Refactoring the rendering engine to get rid of React
If you are interested in this project, you can join and contribute.
I was relieved to finish it after more than a year of steady work. The project did not solve every problem in my life, but it gave the next hour a shape.
Today’s lesson is long because real life rarely fits one explanation. Use one expression in your own sentence, then close the page and explain what you actually need.
Thank you for reading. Remember: this is a language exercise, not a diagnosis or a treatment plan.
证据与安全说明
本课把个人经历、日常词汇和健康话题分开。持续的失眠、低落、失控或身体不适，应记录事实并向当地合格的医疗或心理专业人士求助；不要用文章、短视频或 AI 回答替代诊断。
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