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With the development of Internet technology, teachers are constantly seeking innovative methods to match the potential enhancement of technology. Although many studies have been done before, these are not enough in this field. The purpose of this article is to explore innovative designs to change traditional instruction mode and test its impact. The case was carried out in English as a Second Language (ESL), classroom of NO.9 middle school of Bengbu, an underdeveloped area of China. We compared online instruction with traditional textbook literature methods to improve the reading skills of students; a questionnaire survey designed specifically for this study was conducted at the end of semester; and the collected data were processed. The findings of this study indicated that online instruction is effective, students have gained more knowledge and information through Internet than before, it helped them to improve reading skills, arouse students' interest and motivation in learning, exam results of students have been improved significantly, and it created a positive learning situation.

Urban ecosystems feature intense anthropogenic activities and environmental stressors that filter species with varying life-history traits. The traits therefore provide an essential aspect to understanding how species respond to urban environments. We conducted this study in Chongqing, a mountainous city in southwestern China, and tested the hypothesis that the velocity of urban growth can alter functional compositions of urban plant communities through selection on species' taxonomic distributions and functional traits. We found that for most traits, their values spanned a wide range across the 70 spontaneous species in this study, and seed size and leaf element composition played a key role in contributing to the functional differentiation among species. At the same time, urban growth intensity was negatively correlated with leaf N concentration, the N:P ratio, and specific leaf area (SLA), and positively correlated with the leaf C:N ratio. This suggests that species in urban centers are associated with an acquisitive nutrient-use strategy and may gain strong competitive strategies to be favored by greater selective pressure in those long-term urban centers. Lastly, we show that urbanization as a strong filter tends to reduce the chance of species with unique traits for the spontaneous plant communities. Our study offers insights into mechanisms through which spontaneous plant communities are filtered by urbanization with a special focus on the ecological consequences of the velocity of urban growth. • Functional trait values spanned a wide range across the 70 urban spontaneous species. • Seed size and leaf chemical composition contributed to among-species functional differentiation. • Urbanization as a strong filter tends to reduce the chance of species with unique traits. • Taxon restrictedness decreased with increasing urban growth intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]