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This is the VOA Special English Education Report , from voaspecialenglish.com | http About eighteen thousand refugees from Burma have come to the United States each year since two thousand seven. Some have settled in Howard County, Maryland, between Baltimore and Washington. A local school began teaching English to the children of the refugees. But while the children learned the language, their parents did not. Currently almost fifty Burmese youngsters attend Bollman Bridge Elementary School. Laurel Conran teaches English to speakers of other languages. One of her students is Tha Neih Ciang. Another student is Tha Neih’s mother, Tin Iang. The teacher practices English with the mother at the mother’s workplace. Many Burmese refugees work at Coastal Sunbelt Produce. The company supplies fruits and vegetables to restaurants and other businesses. Laurel Conran started English classes there to help refugees from the country also known as Myanmar. The program is a six-week session held every Wednesday from twelve to one o’clock. Each week Ms. Conran goes to Coastal Sunbelt. As the Burmese workers eat lunch, they also practice their new language skills. They sit with an English-speaking volunteer in small groups.Lisa Chertok is a manager at the company and also has a child at Bollman Bridge. She helped Ms. Conran develop the lessons: “When the Burmese employees got here, they were very, very shy. Now I find that they are more responsive as employees. They’re more communicative …

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report from voaspecialenglish.com | http Many people have lettuce in a salad at the beginning of a meal. The ancient Egyptians and Romans had it at the end. Either way, gardening experts say lettuce is one of the easiest vegetables to grow in a garden.There are hundreds of kinds of head and leaf lettuces besides the most popular choices, like iceberg, Boston, bibb and romaine. The best time to plant the seeds is during cool weather. Gardening advisers at the University of Illinois Extension say the best planting temperature is fifteen degrees Celsius. You can use a seed tray to start the seeds indoors. The container should be deep enough to hold at least three centimeters of soil. Leave about one centimeter of space between the soil and the top of the container. The container should have holes in the bottom so extra water can flow out. Cover the seeds lightly with soil. If the soil is not already a little wet, give it some water, but not too much. Too much water could drown the seeds. Next, cover the seed tray with paper. Remove the paper when the seedlings are tall enough to touch it. You can transplant the seedlings into the garden when they are about two to three centimeters tall. Do this when the weather is not too hot and not too cold. Take out as much of the soil as you can with the seedlings. Plant them in the ground in a hole that is bigger than the lettuce roots. Keep the plants watered, but not too heavily. Planting …

This is the VOA Special English Health Report, from voaspecialenglish.com | http The journal Science chose an AIDS study as the twenty-eleven “Breakthrough of the Year.” The study found that antiretroviral drugs can greatly lower the risk of spreading HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It showed that infected people with early treatment were ninety-six percent less likely to infect their partners.The study was a clinical trial known as HPTN 052. Myron Cohen led an international team that began the study in two thousand seven. But Dr. Cohen says the work really began twenty years ago: “We had a strong suspicion based on all the biological studies we had done that when we treat people and lower the concentration of HIV in the blood and secretions, we were rendering them less contagious. But we didn’t understand the magnitude of the benefit.”Dr. Cohen heads the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases paid for the study.It involved heterosexual couples in nine countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas. The results have already had an effect on government policies. Those changes include treating HIV-infected people when their immune systems are still relatively healthy. Dr. Cohen says the study “has generated policy changes at the level of the United States and the World Health Organization and UNAIDS. And it’s inspired new community-based clinical trials …