Passage 1

Well, yesterday we talked about long-term trading in the stock exchange. This morning I will focus myself on short-term trading. Recently, short-term trading has become more popular.
    Short-term trading especially refers to the one called day trading. Day traders seek to earn money from the daily changes in the price of a stock. Day trading is an extremely risky form of investing.
    It is possible to gain a large amount of money very quickly by day trading. Most day traders, however, lose money. This is because they don’t invest according to the common rules, but invest and earn money entirely by chance.
    I believe that, very soon, investors should be able to trade stocks twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. So my next lecture will focus on electronic dealing and its impact.

According to research by a U. S. institution, the time required for native English speakers to learn different foreign languages varies, depending on the complexity of the language, resources available, and student motivation.
    The easiest languages, including Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian, require just 24 weeks of study, or 600 class hours, to achieve proficiency. These languages are the easiest because of their closeness to English.
    The most difficult languages are Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. They require, on average, 88 weeks, or 2,200 class hours, to reach speaking and reading proficiency.
    Each of the four "hard" languages is difficult for its own reasons. Arabic’s lack of vowels makes reading difficult for an English-speaking native, while Chinese requires the memorization of over a thousand unique characters.