学进去

It was the first time Moham went to a restaurant in his new neighborhood. He looked up at the menu board, and ________ how he could understand what all of these strange names meant. Moham decided that he would ________ ask the waitress for ice cream in a cup. She smiled brightly, wrote down his ________ and disappeared behind the big glass display case (陈列柜).

A moment later, she came back with a tall paper cup. ________ it was a long straw (吸管) and some kind of drink. Moham, quite ________, took the cup and thanked her, thinking about the possibility that he had used wrong words.

“It’s the soda you ordered,” ________ said, “an ice cream drink in a cup.”

He smiled at the waitress, pointed at one of the ________ in the display case, and said, “That one, please,” which seemed to ________ better.

Moham took the cake and his unexpected soda to a table and sat down to eat. Why was it that English had been so ________ for him in his classes in Tunisia, but when it came to ________ speaking, he couldn’t even get what he wanted to eat?

Just then, a girl, who sat at the next table and had watched the whole ________, smiled at him and said, “Hey, welcome to our beautiful city! Don’t feel ________ about your English—you’ll get better at it ________ you’ve lived here for a while. I’m from Spain, and the first time I tried to order a salad here, I ________ with a plate of pig’s feet. At least you got a soda!”

Hearing this, Moham felt much better. He wasn’t the only one ________ to communicate, and his new city began to feel just a little more like he could call it home.