Learning English requires not only mastering grammar and vocabulary but, more importantly, being able to use it naturally in real-life contexts. However, the sentences in textbooks are often too formal and far from everyday expressions. To speak authentic, natural English, one must engage with real conversations in authentic settings. Here, we have selected commonly used English expressions for daily life, covering social, work, and travel scenarios, helping you break away from 'textbook English' and learn the way native speakers really communicate. Below is this issue’s content from 'Computer English 1: Adding Text to a Computer System.' Keep practicing, and your English will become more practical and natural!

Dialog 1 Hey Bill can you tell me what's wrong with my computer? I can't move the mouse. I can't use the keyboard. Nothing is working right. It looks like your hard drive crashed. That sounds bad. What if you didn't save your work? You might lose the most recent changes you made. But it shouldn't be too bad. You just need to reboot your computer.

Dialog 2 Oh no! I can't remember when I saved my file and there are too many directories on my hard drive. I'll never find it. Do you remember the name of your file? I named it 'CarmPaper'. Just click on the Start button at the bottom left of your screen. There you will see an item called 'Find'. Click on that and type the name of your document. The computer will locate it in no time.

Dialog 3 What's the best kind of printer to buy? That depends on what you want to print. I guess that makes sense. I mostly print Word documents and some PowerPoint files. In that case, I would suggest a color double-draft printer. They are really pretty cheap and compact, but they produce sufficient graphic quality to print PowerPoint files.

Dialog 4 I've decided to buy a CD writer. What are you planning to do with that? I'm doing photography, and I've decided to start storing my pictures on a CD-ROM.

Passage: Computer System Professional terms: combination, electro-mechanic, intelligence, term. The term computer is used to describe a device made up of a combination of electronic and electro-mechanical components. By itself, a computer has no intelligence and is referred to as hardware. A computer doesn't come to life until it is connected to other parts of a computer system. When one computer system is set up to communicate with another computer system, connectivity becomes a sixth system element. In other words, the manner in which the various individual systems are connected—by phone lines, microwave transmission, or satellite—is itself an element of the total computer system.

Professional terms: constitute, create, instruction, operate, perform, response, task. Software is the term used to describe the instructions that tell the hardware how to perform a task. Without software instructions, the hardware doesn't know what to do. People, however, constitute the most important component of the computer system. They operate the computer hardware, create the computer software instructions, and respond to the procedures that those instructions present. Right now let's discuss the importance of data and information.

The purpose of a computer system is to convert data into information. Data is raw, unevaluated facts and figures, concepts, and instructions. The raw material is processed into useful information. In other words, information is the product of data processing. This processing includes refining, summarizing, categorizing, and otherwise manipulating the data into a useful form for decision-making. For example, the facts and figures contained in a stack of customer orders waiting to be entered into a computer-based order entry system are data. After the data is entered and processed, an output report about how that data affected product inventory would be information.

People capture data in a variety of ways—for example, by reading, listening, or seeing. Then they may record the data on a document. For instance, Roger Schuh records his name on an employee time card by first entering the letter R. Each of the remaining letters in his name is an element of data. The numbers 12, 22, and 5 used to indicate overtime hours are also data. By themselves these data elements are useless; we must process them to make them meaningful. The report produced when Roger's data is run through a computer-based employee record system gives us information—for example, the amount of money due to Roger for his overtime work.

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