This week on Ask a Teacher, we answer a question from Ramiro, who is in Brazil.

在本周《名师答疑》节目中，我们要回答巴西的拉米罗提出的一个问题。

Hello!

你好！

Could you tell me the difference between a task and an assignment?

你能告诉我“task”和“assignment”的区别吗？

And how do we use them in our daily life?

在日常生活中我们要如何使用它们？

Thank you!

谢谢！

Dear Ramiro,

亲爱的拉米罗，

As you may know, both task and assignment are nouns describing an activity that you must complete.

正如你可能知道的，“task”和“assignment”这两个名词描述的都是你必须完成的活动。

A task is something you have to do.

“task ”是你必须要做的事情。

An assignment is usually a task that someone gives you to do.

“assignment”通常是某人指派给你的活。

A task describes an activity that can be done in your daily life.

“task ”是指你日常生活中可以完成的活动。

But you can give a task to yourself, or someone else can give you a task to complete.

但是你可以给自己定一个任务，或者别人给你一个任务去完成。

Any activity you want to finish can become a task.

你想完成的任何活动都可以成为任务。

Think about a day in your life and the responsibilities you have.

想想你生活中的一天以及你所承担的责任。

What are the tasks you must do during your day?

你每天必须完成的任务是什么？

You can have one task or many tasks. For example:

你可以有一个或多个任务。例如：

My task today is to feed the cats before leaving for school.

我今天的任务是在去学校之前把猫喂了。

Tasks are often connected to a bigger goal.

“Task”通常与更大的目标联系在一起。

Here is an example:

下面是一个例子：

Although learning a computer programming language is a difficult task,

虽然学习一门计算机编程语言是一项艰巨的任务，

I will do my best to study it for my future career.

但为了将来的事业，我将尽自己最大的努力学好它。

An assignment means someone is giving you an activity or task to complete.

“assignment”是指某人指派给你去完成的一项活动或任务。

For example, imagine your teacher says:

例如，想象一下你的老师说：

Our test is on Friday, so your assignment tonight is to study everything we learned this past month.

我们周五考试，所以你们今晚的作业就是复习过去一个月所学的所有知识。

Teachers give students assignments every day.

老师每天给学生布置作业。

But students need to know how to take a big assignment and separate it into smaller tasks.

但是学生们需要知道如何把大的任务分解成较小的任务。

Students might understand this example:

学生可能会理解这个例子：

My assignment is to read the whole book.

布置给我的作业是读完整本书。

But luckily, I only need to read 10 pages a day.

但幸运的是，我每天只需要读10页。

Both tasks and assignments are often related to time.

“task”和“assignment”通常都与时间有关。

For example, we make lists of tasks to better organize our time.

例如，我们列出任务清单来更好地安排我们的时间。

For example:

例如：

By 12 p.m. today, I need to do the following tasks: take out the garbage, walk my dog and go shopping.

明天之前，我需要完成以下任务：倒垃圾、遛狗和购物。

"Task" and "assignment" are often used in work situations too.

“Task”和“assignment”也经常用于工作场合。

If you ever worked in a job, the boss may say:

如果你曾经做过一份工作，老板可能会说：

Your assignment is to finish all three tasks before the end of the day.

你要做的就是在今天结束之前完成这三项任务。

Well, Ramiro, we hope this helps to answer your question.

好的，拉米罗，我们希望这能帮忙解答你的疑问。

And to our listeners everywhere, what question do you have about American English?

世界各地的听众，关于美式英语你有什么疑问吗？

Send us an email at learningenglish@voanews.com.

那就给我们发送电子邮件到learningenglish@voanews.com吧。

And that's Ask a Teacher!

以上就是本期《名师答疑》的全部内容！

I'm Armen Kassabian.

阿曼·卡萨比恩为您播报。

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