Many Chinese students ask for advice on how to improve(提高) their English. There are three common questions.

The first question is about real English. Li Gang said, “I want to learn real English. But I don’t know what to do.” Watching English films is a good way to learn real English. You can watch them when you are tired after studying for a long time. While watching them, you can relax and learn real English at the same time.

    The second question is about speaking. Chen Ming said, “I’m too shy to talk with foreigners.”“How are you?” “Where are you from?” “What do you think of China?” These are good questions to start a conversation. Many people are shy when they speak English, so before you begin, take a deep breath(呼吸) and smile! Smiling always helps.

The third question is about vocabulary. Li Jia said, “I want to remember all the new words. I write them down, but I forget them soon.”

Try to remember eight or ten words a day. Write them on a piece of paper and put it in your bedroom. Spell the words whenever you see them, and change them every day. And when you’re shopping, how about counting the English words, or saying the English names for everything you see?

Have you ever heard of “a ball of energy”? People often use it to describe very active children. But today we tell about an invention (发明) called the soccket, that is a real soccer ball of energy. Julia Silverman, a physical scientist, explains that in fact the soccket is a portable generator(便携式发电机)．

Julia Silverman and Jessica Matthews developed the soccket as part of a group project for an engineering class at Harvard University. There are mechanisms(装置) in a soccket. When you kick, hit or throw it, energy is then kept in it instead of disappearing into the environment. Then the user can put something directly into the ball, like a lamp, or a mobile phone charger so that they can get energy from it. For every fifteen minutes of the game play, the soccket can provide enough electricity(电力) for an LED lamp for three hours, and the ball can store up to 24 hours’ electricity.

The International Energy Association reported last year that nearly one and a half billion people in the world had no electricity to use, and most of them live in sub-Saharan Africa and in India and other countries in Asia. Julia Silverman and Jessica Matthews both had worked in developing countries before they began the project. They knew that power shortages are a serious problem in many areas. There’s an energy crisis (危机) in the world. One fifth of the people in the world don’t have any electricity. And besides that, there are a lot of health problems because what people use instead of the electricity are harmful choices like kerosene(煤油) lamps, which produce a lot of smoke.

The soccket ball is one small solution to a big problem. Jessica Matthews and Julia Silverman hope their soccket ball will shine more light on the problem of power shortages. It gives people a chance to put their energy into the world’s most popular sport and get some energy in return.

  In your school, are you allowed to choose the subjects you want to learn? Of course, the answer is “No” here in China.

    In America there is a school trying something new. At a high school in Florida，students will be able to choose their own classes. We all know that some students are better at some subjects than others. Some students plan to go on to college，while others will not. At this school students are able to find subjects they are interested in, and possibly even find the field they would like to go into after school. They are allowed to choose a subject like biology, math, a foreign language, or study skills like computer or car repair .

    Some people think this is a good idea, because it helps students think about what they want to do in the future, and the school helps to give them the knowledge and skills needed to get there. They say that giving the students the chance to choose their own classes makes high school more interesting. Others disagree. They think that fourteen-year-old teenagers are too young to know what they will want to do in the future.

    How do you think? Would you like to be able to choose your own classes? Many useful changes have been made in education, but seeing the differences in each student is also important. How can we help each student become a better student?

A group of old classmates, who have succeeded in their work, got together to visit their teacher. Their conversation soon turned to complaining（抱怨）about the stress(压力) in their work and life. The teacher went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and many cups. Some of the cups are expensive and lovely, but some are cheap and not beautiful. The teacher told them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the teacher said, “Have you noticed e nice-looking expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the cheap ones? It’s OK for you to want only the best for yourselves, but that is why you have the stress in your work and life even if you're very successful now.”

 “All of you really wanted the coffee, not the cups, but you chose the best cups and were eyeing each other’s cups.”

“Now think about this: life is the coffee, and money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold life. They do not change the quality (质量) of life. Sometimes, we just care about the cups, and we fail to enjoy the coffee. So, don't let the cups drive you, enjoy the coffee instead.”

Why are so many people afraid to fail? Quite simply because we forget that failure (失败) is part of the human life. Every person is able to fight failure and finally succeed.

Most parents try hard to stop their children from knowing that they have failed. They don’t tell children that they are failed. One way is to lower standards(标准). When a child finishes making a table, its mother describes it as "Fantastic", though the table isn't good at all. Another way is to blame others. If John fails science, the mother will say his teacher is unfair or foolish.

There's a problem with the two ways. It makes a child unprepared for life in the real world. Young children need to learn that no one can be best at everything, no one can win all the time and that it's possible to enjoy a game even when you don't win. A child often feels terrible, of course, when he is not invited to a birthday party, or is not chosen into a football team. But parents should not say "It doesn't matter" quickly. The young should be allowed to experience disappointment(失望) — and be helped to come out of it.

Failure never gives people pleasure. It hurts both children and their parents. But it can be really good to your life when you learn to use it. You must learn to ask "Why did I fail?" Don't blame someone else. Ask yourself what you did wrong, how you can improve. If someone else can help, don't be shy about asking them. Success just repeats what has been done. It is not as good a teacher as failure. You can learn how to give a good party from an unsuccessful one.

When talking about picking a right school, a mother and teacher gave some pieces of advice.

  In the latest issue(期) of Youth magazine, the mother shared the school advice she gave her daughters with young people across the country.

 “I’ve told my daughters many times that I don’t want them to choose a name,”the mother said.“I don’t want them to think, Oh ,I should go to these top schools. We live in a country with hundreds of excellent universities. So the first question is: what’s going to work for me?”

 “When it was time to prepare for picking school, nobody around me believed I could get into Xiamen University. But through hard work I finally made it,”she continued.”So, my second piece of advice is :believe in yourself, no matter what other people might say. Once your goal is set, you only need to try your best to make it come true.”

“The last piece of advice is not to be worried even if your dreams don’t come true. As I’ve said above, there are so many good universities out there. So it’s important for everybody to understand that you can always find a university that gives you a great education.”

As the saying goes, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” This is never truer than when you are trying to master English. Lai Shixiong, a respected English master from Taiwan, has a story to share.

Like many non-native speakers, Lai failed when he first started learning English. When he was in high school, he once got an unbelievably low mark of 7 out of 100 on an English test. He almost gave up on English, but then he entered a military school（军校）, where he met a classmate who was good at English.

    Amazed by his classmate’s American accent, Lai decided to start learning English from the beginning. As he put it, “I saw myself as a baby who had just started to learn a language.” To correct his pronunciation, Lai practiced phonetic symbols (音标) hundreds of times every day using records.

    When he was able to pronounce words, Lai said he began to practice dialogues. Not being able to find someone to practice with, Lai created a learning atmosphere（氛围）of his own. “I just talked to myself as if I were in a dialogue,” he said.

Lai also thought of ways to improve his skills. He used English to describe everything he saw. He even translated speeches when he went to class meetings at the military school. He also read and listened to English news to learn new expressions.

“There is no shortcut to mastering a language. You have to practice,” Lai said. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.