雙語閱讀｜“task”和“assignment”有什麼差別？

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

在本周《名師答疑》節目中，我們要回答巴西的拉米羅提出的一個問題。

Hello! Could you tell me the difference between a task and an assignment? And how do we use them in our daily life? Thank you. As you may know, both task and assignment are nouns describing an activity that you must complete.

你好！你能告訴我“task”和“assignment”的差別嗎？在日常生活中我們要如何使用他們？謝謝！正如你可能知道的，“task”和“assignment”這兩個名詞描述的都是你必須完成的活動。

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

“task”是你必須要做的事情，“assignment”通常是某人指派給你的活。

A task describes an activity that can be done in your daily life. But you can give a task to yourself, or someone else can give you a task to complete.

“task”是指你日常生活中可以完成的活動。但是你可以給自己定一個任務，或者别人給你定一個任務去完成。

Any activity you want to finish can become a task.

你想完成的任何活動都可以成為任務。

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擔的責任。

What are the tasks you must do during your day?

你每天必須完成的任務是什麼？

You can have one task or many tasks. For example: My task today is to feed the cats before leaving for school.

你可以有一個或多個任務。例如：我今天的任務是在去學校之前把貓喂了。

Tasks are often connected to a bigger goal. Here is an example: Although learning a computer programming language is a difficult task, I will do my best to study it for my future career.

“Task”通常與更大的目标聯系在一起。下面是一個例子：雖然學習一門計算機程式設計語言是一項艱巨的任務，但為了将來的事業，我将盡自己最大的努力學好它。

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

“assignment”是指某人指派給你去完成的一項活動或任務。

For example, imagine you teacher says: Our test is on Friday, so your assignment tonight is to study everything we learned this past month.

例如，想象一下你的老師說：我們周五考試，是以你們今晚的作業就是複習過去一個月所學的所有知識。

Teachers give students assignments every day.

老師每天給學生布置作業。

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

但是學生們需要知道如何把大的任務分解成較小的任務。

Students might understand this example: My assignment is to read the whole book. But luckily, I only need to read 10 pages a day.

學生可能會了解這個例子：布置給我的作業是讀完整本書。但幸運的是，我每天隻需要讀10頁。

Both tasks and assignments are often related to time.

“task”和“assignment”通常都與時間有關。

For example, we make lists of tasks to better organize our time. For example: By 12 p.m. today, I need to do the following tasks: take out the garbage, walk my dog and go shopping.

例如，我們列出任務清單來更好地安排我們的時間。例如：今天晚上12點之前，我需要完成以下任務：倒垃圾、遛狗和購物。

"Task" and "Assignment " are often used in work situations too. If you ever worked in a job, the boss my say: Your assignment is to finish all three tasks before the end of the day.

“Task”和“assignment”也經常用于工作場合。如果你曾經做過一份工作，老闆可能會說：你要做的就是在今天結束之前完成這三項任務。

Well, we hope this helps to answer your question.

好的，我們希望這能幫助解答你的疑問。