Their wealth, fame and power put their heads and shoulders above us ordinary people. But according to these   (1)  , true happiness lies in some of life’s   (2)   pleasures. David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage all   (3)  that their families are the key to their well-being. But others gave unexpected brief ideas about their celebrity lives. The Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, 55,   (4)   that what most keeps her spirits high was a   (5)   in magic and fairies. She said, “I do believe in fairies. I do believe in magic and when you blow on a dandelion（蒲公英）, you will see the light of the enchanted （被施魔法的）spreading their wings and   (6)  on their own journeys, just like you have today when you opened your eyes. Don’t let the day   (7)   without looking for fairies and magic. That makes me   (8)  , as every day is.”

Meanwhile, former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney revealed that he got his   (9)   through his stomach as well as his family. He said, “I love to hear the noises in the  (10)   as the meal is prepared and then my little grandson climbs on my knee and   (11)  a bite for every bite that I take.”

Food was also   (12)   to Strictly Come Dancing judge Len Goodman who said eating a bacon sandwich was enough to   (13)  a smile on his face, while rocker Rod Stewart, claimed that a simple cup of tea made him  (14)   happy.

For our most gifted sports stars,   (15)  , it seems the key to the good life is a   (16)  dog.

Tennis champion Andy Murray said he badly   (17)  Rusty and Maggie May when he was playing in tournaments around the world. Former England striker Gary Lineker   (18)   , saying, “Walking my dog makes me happy.” The joy at the word “ walkies” never decreases. Such   (19)    for something so simple is   (20)  satisfying. 

    In the US, speaking more than one language fluently is not very common—except in Los Angeles, California. The city has one of the largest populations in the US of young people between the ages of 18 and 34. More than half of them in Los Angeles are bilingual, which means they speak more than one language.

    Maria Elena Burgos, a mother of two American-born daughters, is cooking a Mexican breakfast. She says making Mexican food is just one of the many traditions in her home. Another is speaking Spanish to her children. “We want to keep the Spanish somewhere in their learning too, not only at home.” She says being bilingual will give them more opportunities in the future. Knowing Spanish also means the children can talk with their relatives in Mexico.

    Ms. Burgos’ daughters both want to know their family’s culture. “We are doing this in order to go back to our roots because that’s part of who we are,” they say.

    The US Census Bureau says more than half of the adults in the Los Angeles area between 18 and 34 years old speak a language other than English at home. For the whole country, the number of bilingual adults is only 25 percent. The number of bilingual speakers has gone up since the 1990s.

    “In the past, the children and grandchildren of immigrants did not continue to speak the parents’ native language. But now the opposite is true”, says University of California Los Angeles professor Raul Hinojosa.

    In the last ten years, more immigrant parents say they want their children to keep speaking their native language. Mr. Hinojosa calls their choice the “path of pride”. The decision to keep a native language is clear in Los Angeles now. And, as the number of minorities in the US continues to grow, he thinks bilingualism will spread to the rest of the country.

你的作文应包括以下内容：

1．简要描述两幅图的内容；

2．举例说明你的经历和做法;

3．提出你的建议。

注意：

1．可参照图片适当发挥；

2．作文词数150左右；

3．作文中不得提及有关个人身份的任何信息，如校名、人名等。

参考词汇：mask (面具) negative emotions (消极情绪)

    When your child is supposed to be doing homework, are they chatting with their friends on Facebook or playing games? Many studies have shown that multitasking doesn’t   (1)  ,   (2)   your child is probably proudly claiming they can do ten things   (3)  ! Many people believe that they can   (4)   two or more tasks at the same time, but Dr. Edward Hallowell says this is   (5)  . The reality is that multitasking   (6)   poor job performance.

    New hand-held   (7)   such as smartphones, iPads, games and social networking sites make it very easy to multitask and “attention   (8)  ” leading to difficulty focusing on the task   (9)  , such as listening in the classroom or doing homework. “  (10)  , the brain actually   (11)   kids for multitasking even if performance on every task gets worse and worse. Kids don’t know they’re doing   (12)   because they feel better when they multitask,” says Dr. Edward Hallowell.

      (13)   the appearance of hand-held devices and social networking sites, teachers have noticed a difference in   (14)   performance, critical thinking skills and how information is   (15)  . “Multitasking prevents people from gaining a deep understanding of the information they are trying to learn,” says Dr. Edward Hallowell. Kids have a difficult time sticking with a “difficult to understand” topic and   (16)   to allow themselves to be distracted（分散的）, to tune out and switch   (17)   to Facebook or using their cell phones   (18)   working harder at understanding a difficult subject or problem. In the long   (19)  , multitasking affects grades, One study showed that kids that use the Internet while in class did   (20)   on tests resulting in lower grades.

B

    Laughter Yoga(大笑瑜伽) is one form of yoga. Madan Kataria, a doctor in Mumbai, India invented it. He believed that people had forgotten how to really laugh. Through his research he made an interesting discovery. The human mind does not know the difference between forced laughter and real laughter. Forced laughter can also lead to a feeling of happiness.

And then Kataria had the idea for a group of people who would laugh together. He gathered(聚集) a few of his friends together. They met in a public park in Mumbai. That small group grew and grew! And this is how people began to do Laughter Yoga. People doing Laughter Yoga usually meet together in a Laughter Club. Kataria’s friends formed the first Laughter Club in 1995.

Today, there’s over 5,000 Laughter Clubs in 53 countries. But what exactly do people do in a Laughter Club? People in Laughter Yoga meetings usually do a series of exercises include body movement, correct breathing, and of course, laughter!At the beginning of the meeting, people may have to force themselves to laugh. But by the end, everyone is usually laughing in a real way! Each meeting is a little different. But there are common exercises groups may do.

Experts say that the exercises help blood move around the body faster. They also say that Laughter Yoga helps people deal with the bad things in their lives. They say that a person may go into a Laughter Club meeting feeling sad, angry, or worried. But then, people act happy. After a time, forced laughter becomes real laughter. This is one reason why people may enjoy Laughter Yoga so much!

 When we think about giving help to developing countries，we often think about giving money so that these countries can build schools and hospitals，buy food and medicine，or find clean water supplies．These seem to be most important basic needs of the people we are trying to help．However， it’s far from enough．We have to come up with(想出) some better ideas to help them．

    I was very surprised then，when I read about a plan to make cheap laptop computers for children in developing countries．A man called Nicholas Negroponte invented a cheap laptop computer，which can run without electricity．He decided to invent this computer after he visited a school in Cambodia．

    The laptop which Mr．Negroponte has designed is a little different from the normal laptop computers you can buy in shops．One difference is that it will be covered in rubber(橡皮，橡胶) so that it is very strong and won’t be damaged easily．As electricity supply can be a problem in developing countries，the computer also has a special handle(手柄) so that children can wind the computer up to give it extra power when needed．

    These special laptop computers will cost less than $100 and Mr．Negroponte wants to build as many as 15 million machines in the first year of production．The idea is that these computers will help the children’s education as they will be able to access the Internet．These computers might not help the people in developing countries immediately，but by improving children’s education they should help people to find their own solutions to their problems in the long term．

    Another idea to help children in developing countries is to recycle old mobile phones so that they can be used again．In the UK，and，probably in many other countries too，millions of mobile phones are thrown away every year．The waste created by throwing away these old phones is very bad for the environment，so it seems to be an excellent idea to recycle them．In this way we shall be able to achieve two important goals at the same time．We will reduce the waste we produce and help others．In other words，we will be able to “kill two birds with one stone”，and that is always a good thing．

Christmas came in extravagant(奢侈的) fashion to the Muslim desert emirate(酋长国) of Abu Dhabi as a shining hotel uncovered a bejeweled(饰以珠宝的) Christmas tree valued at more than 11 million dollars on Wednesday.

It is “the most expensive Christmas tree ever” with “a value of over 11 million dollars”, said Hans Olbertz, general of Emirates Palace Hotel, at its inauguration(落成典礼).

The 13-metre (40-foot) evergreen, located in the gold hall of the hotel, is decorated with silver and gold bows, ball-shaped decorations and small white lights. But the necklaces, earrings and other jewellery hung around the tree’s branches are what give it a record value. “It holds a total of 181 diamonds, pearls, sapphires and other precious stones,” said Khalifa Khouri, owner of Style Gallery, which provided the jewellery.

“The tree itself is about 10,000 dollars,” Olbertz said. “The jewellery has a value of over 11 million dollars—I think $1,141,150.”

“This will probably be an entry into the Guinness book of world records,” Olbertz said, adding that Emirates Palace planned to contact the organization about the tree which is to stay until the end of the year.

Asked whether the tree might be against religious sensibilities in the United Arab Emirates, where the vast majority of the local population are Muslim, Olbertz said he did not think it would. “It is a liberal(自由的) country,” he said.

The hotel has had a Christmas tree up in previous years, but this year “we have to do something different”, and the hotel’s marketing teamhatchedthe plan, said Olbertz.

   Fans of the movie Finding Nemo may remember the terrifying fish that scares Dory and Marlin at the bottom of a trench.

   But in reality this "monster", a black seadevil, is only about 9 cm long, which would make it about a third of the size of Dory and potentially smaller than Marlin or Nemo.

   While this inaccuracy may seem harmless, it could cause problems for future conservation efforts, as people are more likely to support conservation of adorable rather than scary-looking animals.

   The black seadevil is just one of the mysterious "monsters". From 2000—2010, scientists described about 1,200 new species in the Census of Marine Life Program. While this figure may seem astonishing, a further 5,000 individual dead creatures are in specimen(标本) jars, waiting to be described.

   Specimens must be methodically collected, identified, and then the identity of new deep-water species must be confirmed.

   If we call unusual deep sea animals monsters, then we may harm their conservation as people are unlikely to connect with them or care about saving them.

   On the other hand, their rarity clearly makes them popular on social media sites. For other species, this has already resulted in increases in illegal trading for unusual pets. Deep sea species may potentially become illegally obtained specimens or food. Humans may end up eating these animals of the deep to extinction before their species are even known to science.

   Every habitat on earth is interconnected, and whatever we as humans do has an influence on marine ecosystems. In reality, about 80% of our oxygen is produced by microorganisms(微生物) in the oceans. This makes our oceans both the lungs and lifeblood of our planet and we must all try harder to save them.

What can we know about the black seadevil in reality?

What does the author think of the progress of describing new species?

What does the underlined word "this" in Paragraph 7 probably refer to?

What can we infer about those unusual sea animals?

When the residents of Buenos Aires want to change the pesos they do not trust into the dollars they do, they go to an office that acts as a front for thriving illegal exchange market.

As the couriers carry their bundles of pesos around Buenos Aires, they pass grand buildings like the Teatro Colon, an opera house that opened in 1908, and the Retiro railway station, completed in 1915. In the 43 years leading up to 1914, GDP had grown at an annual rate of 6%, the fastest recorded in the world. In 1914 half of Buenos Aires’s population was foreign-born. Its income per head was 92% of the average of 16 rich economies.

It never got better than this. Its income per head is now 43% of those same 16 rich economies; it trails Chile and Uruguay in its own backyard.

The country’s dramatic decline has long puzzled economists. “If a guy has been hit 700,000 shots it’s hard to work out which one of them killed him.” says Rafael di Tella. But three deep-lying explanations help to throw light on the country’s decline. Firstly, Argentina may have been rich 100 years ago but it was not modern. The second theory stresses the role of trade policy. Thirdly, when it needed to change, Argentina lacked the institutions to create successful policies.

Argentina was rich in 1914 because of commodities; its industrial base was only weakly developed. The landowners who made Argentina rich were not so bothered about educating it: cheap labor was what counted.

Without a good education system, Argentina struggled to create competitive industries. It had benefited from technology in its Belle Epoque period, but Argentina mainly consumed technology from abroad rather than inventing its own.

Argentina had become rich by making a triple bet on agriculture, open market and Britain, its biggest trading partner. If that bet turned sour, it would require a severe adjustment. The First World War delivered the initial blow to trade. Next came the Depression, which crushed the open trading system on which Argentina depended. Dependence on Britain, another country in decline, backfired(失败) as Argentina’s favored export market signed preferential deals with Commonwealth countries.

After the Second World War, when the rich world began its slow return to free trade with the negotiation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, Argentina had become a more closed economy. An institution to control foreign trade was created in 1946; the share of trade as a percentage of GDP continued to fall. High food prices meant big profits for farmers but empty stomachs for ordinary Argentines. Open borders increased farmers’ taking but sharpened competition from abroad for domestic industry. Heavy export taxes on crops allow the state to top up its decreasing foreign-exchange reserves; limits on wheat exports create surpluses(过剩) that drive down local prices. But they also dissuade farmers from planting more land, enabling other countries to steal market shares.

Fear may be felt in the heart as well as in the head, according to a study that has found a link between the cycles of a beating heart and the chance of someone feeling fear.

   Tests on healthy volunteers found that they were more likely to feel a sense of fear at the moment when their hearts are contracting（收缩） and pumping blood around their bodies, compared with the point when the heartbeat is relaxed. Scientists say the results suggest that the heart is able to influence how the brain responds to a fearful event, depending on which point it is at in its regular cycle of contraction and relaxation.

   Sarah Garfinkel at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School said, "Our study shows for the first time that the way in which we deal with fear is different depending on when we see fearful pictures in relation to our heart."

   The study tested 20 healthy volunteers on their reactions to fear as they were shown pictures of fearful faces. Dr. Garfinkel said, "The study showed that fearful faces are better noticed when the heart is pumping than when it is relaxed. Thus our hearts can also affect what we see and what we donˈt see—and guide whether we see fear."

   To further understand this relationship, the scientists also used a brain scanner（扫描仪） to show how the brain influences the way the heart changes a personˈs feeling of fear.

   "We have found an important mechanism by which the heart and brain ˈspeakˈ to each other to change our feelings and reduce fear," Dr. Garfinkel said.

   "We hope that by increasing our understanding about how fear is dealt with and ways that it could be reduced, we may be able to develop more successful treatments for anxiety disorders, and also for those who may be suffering from serious stress disorder."