You wake up in the morning, the day is beautiful and the plans for the day are what you have been looking forward to for a long time.Then the telephone rings, you say hello, and the drama starts. The person on the other end has a depressing tone in his voice as he starts to tell you how terrible his morning is and that there is nothing to look forward to. You are still in a wonderful mood? Impossible!

Communicating with negative people can wash out your happiness. It may not change what you think, but communicating long enough with them will make you feel depressed for a moment or a long time.

Life brings ups and downs, but some people are stuck in the wrong idea that life has no happiness to offer. They only feel glad when they make others feel bad. No wonder they can hardly win others' pity or respect.

When you communicate with positive people, your spirit stays happy and therefore more positive things are attracted. When the dagger of a negative person is put in you, you feel the heavy feeling that all in all, brings you down.

Sometimes we have no choice but to communicate with negative people. This could be a co-worker, or a relative. In this case, say what needs to be said as little as possible. Sometimes it feels good to let out your anger back to the negative person, but all this does is to lower you to that same negative level and they won't feel ashamed of themselves about that.

Negativity often affects happiness without even being realized. The negative words of another at the start of the day can cling to you throughout the rest of your day, which makes you feel bad and steals your happiness. Life is too short to feel negative. Stay positive and avoid negativity as much as possible.

Chinese are very generous when it comes to educating their children. Not caring about the money, parents often send their children to the best schools or even abroad toEngland, theUnited Statesand Australia. They also want their children to take extra-course activities where they will either learn a musical instrument(乐器) or ballet, or other classes which will give them a head in life. The Chinese believe that the more expensive an education is, the better it is. So parents will spend an unreasonable amount of money on education. Even poor couples will buy a computer for their son or daughter. However, what most parents fail to see is that the best early education they can give their children is usually very cheap.

Parents can see that their children are very skilled in some areas while poor in others. What most parents fail to realize though, is that todayˈs children are short of self-respect and self-confidence.

The problem is that parents are only educating their children on how to take multiple-choice tests and how to study well, but parents are not teaching them the most important skills that they need to be confident, happy and clever.

Parents can achieve this by teaching practical skills like cooking, sewing and doing other housework. Teaching a child to cook will improve many of the skills that he will need later in life. Cooking requires patience and time. It is an enjoyable but difficult experience. A good cook always tries to improve his cooking, so he will learn to work hard and finish his job successfully step by step. His result, a well-cooked dinner, will give him much satisfaction and lots of self-confidence.

Some old machines, such as a broken radio or TV set that you give your child to play with will make him curious and arouse(激发) his interest. He will spend hours looking at them, trying to fix them; your child might become an engineer when he grows up. These activities are not only teaching a child to read a book, but rather to think, to use his mind. And that is more important.

      My summer hols wr CWOT. B4. we usd 2 go 2 NY 2C my bro, his GF＆ thr 3 : -@ kids FTF. ILNY, its gr8.

   Can you understand this sentence? If you can't, don't feel too bad: neither could the middle school teacher in England who received this as homework. This is Netspeak: the language of computerized communication found on Internet or cellphones. To newcomers, it looks like a completely foreign language. So, what is the "translation" of the sentence above? My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend, and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York; it’s great.

   Schoolteachers and parents say this new form of writing is harming(破坏) the English language. Increasing spelling and grammatical mistakes can be seen in students' writing. They fear the language could become corrupted (面目全非的).

   Everyone should just relax, say linguists (语言学家). They believe Netspeak is in fact more of a good thing. David Crystal, from the UniversityofWales, argues that Netspeak and Internet create a new language use and the almost lost art of diary writing has been picked up again. Geoffrey Nunberg, from Stanford University, agrees. "People get better at writing by writing," he says, "Kids who are now doing text messaging, e-mail, and instant messages will write at least as well as, and possibly better than, their parents."

   Linguist James Milroy says, for centuries, it is believed without exception that young people are hurting the language. And you canbet your bottom dollarthat when today's teenagers become tomorrow's parents, they too will think this way, Milroy argues that languages do not and cannot become "corrupted(堕落的)"; they simply change to meet the new needs.

   However, Netspeakers do agree that it is important to teach young people how to speak and write Standard English. Cynthia Mcvey says, "I can understand Netspeak worries teachers and it's important that they get across to their pupils that text messaging is for fun, but that learning to write proper English is a must for their future.”

   Perhaps we should give teenagers a little more trust anyway.Erin, age 12, says, "I wouldn't use text language in my homework. Texting is just for fun."

● Our Needs

People are different, but they all have the same needs. Needs are things people must have to live. Our bodies need food and water. We also need air to breathe. We need a place to live to keep us safe. We need clothes to keep us warm. If we did not have these things, we could not survive（生存）.

Needs may be different for people who live in different areas. If you live where it is cold, you may need special clothes to keep you warm. If you live where it is hot, you may need more water.

People have found new ways to meet their needs. Farmers grow food that people eat. They used to plant seeds by hand. They used to pick plants by hand. Now they have machines that so this work.

● Our Wants

Wants are things people would like to have but do not need to live. Suppose you hope to get a football for your birthday. A football is a want. You can live without it.

Sometimes we might want something so much that it feels like a need. We have to make choices, though. If you need a new coat for winter, you might not be able to get the football you want. We must choose what we need over what we want.

Sometimes we must make choices between things we want. Suppose you want to go to a birthday party for your uncle. That day, a friend asks you to go to a movie. The movie is at the same time as the party.

If you choose to go to the party, then what would you give up? What would you give up if you went to the movie?

We are all interested in equality, but while some people try to protect the school and examination system in the name of equality, others, still in the name of equality, want only to destroy it.

Any society which is interested in equality of opportunity（机会）and standards of achievement must regularly test its pupils. The standards may be changed - no examination is perfect - but to have no external(外部的 )tests or examinations would mean the end of equality and of standards. There are groups of people who oppose this view and who do not believe either in external examinations or in any controls in schools or on teachers. This would mean that everything would depend on luck since every pupil would depend on the efficiency（实力）,the ideal and the purpose of each teacher.

Without external examinations, employers will look for employees from the highly respected schools and from families known to them - a form of favoritism will replace equality. At the moment, the bright child from an ill - respected school can show certificates（证书）to prove he or she is suitable for a job, while the lack of a certificate shows the unsuitability of a dull child attending a well - respected school. This defence of excellence and opportunity would disappear if external examinations were taken away, and the bright child from a poor family would be a prisoner of his or her school's fame（名誉）,unable to compete for employment with the child from the favored school.

The opponents（对手）of the examination system suggest that examinations are an evil force because they show differences between pupils. According to these people, there must be no special, different, academic class. They have even suggested that there should be no form of difference in sport or any other area: all jobs or posts should be filled by unsystematic selection. The selection would be made by people who themselves are probably selected by some computer.

These people are not just against school organization, but are at war with the whole idea of modern competitive society and they are using children in schools for their destructive（破坏性的）purposes. There is no reason why we should allow such people to determine the way our schools are organized when it is to the obvious disadvantage of the pupils, of the schools and of our society as a whole.

Most people around the world are right-handed. This also seems to be true in history. In 1799, scientists studied works of art made at different times from 1,500 B.C. to the 1950s. Most of the people shown in these works are right-handed, so the scientists guessed that right-handedness has always been common through history. Today, only about 10% to 15% of the world’s population is left-handed.

    Why are there more right-handed people than left-handed ones? Scientists now know that a person’s two hands each have their own jobs. For most people, the hand is used to find things or hold things. The right hand is used to work with things. This is because of the different work of the two sides of the brain. The right side of the brain, which makes a person’s hands and eyes work together, controls the left hand. The left-side of the brain, which controls the right hand, is the centre for thinking and doing problems. These findings show that more artists should be left-handed, and studies have found that left-handedness is twice as common among artists as among people in other jobs.

    No one really knows what makes a person become right-handed instead of left-handed. Scientists have found that almost 40% of the people become left-handed because their main brain is damaged when they are born. However, this doesn’t happen to everyone, so scientists guess there must be another reason why people become left-handed. One idea is that people usually get right-handed from their parents. If a person does not receive the gene(基因) for right-handedness, he/ she may become either right-handed or left-handed according to the chance and the people they work or live with.

   Though right-handedness is more common than left-handedness, people no longer think left-handed people are strange or unusual. A long time ago, left-handed children were made to use their right hands like other children, but today they don’t have to.

As teenagers, you have many dreams. These dreams can be very big, such as winning the Nobel Prize. Or they can be small. You may just want to become one of the ten best students in your class.

  Once you find a dream, what do you do with it? Do you ever try to make your dream real?

  Follow Your Heart by Australian writer Andrews tell us that making our dreams real is life’s biggest challenge.

  You may think you’re not very good at some school subjects, or that it is impossible for you to become a writer. These kinds of thoughts stop you from getting your dream, the book says.

  In fact, everyone can make his dream come true. The first thing you must do is to remember what your dream is.

Don’t let it leave your heart. Keep telling yourself what you want. Do this step by step and your dream will come true faster because a big dream is, in fact, many small dreams.

  You must also never give up your dream.

  There will be difficulties on the road to your dream. But the biggest difficulty comes from yourself. You need to decide what is the most important. Studying instead of watching TV will lead to better exam results, while saving five yuan instead of buying an ice-cream means you can buy a new book. As you get closer to your dream, it may change a little. This is good as you have the chance to learn more skills.

In modern society there is a great deal of argument about competition. Some value it highly, believing that it is responsible(负责任) for social progress. Others say that competition is bad; that it sets one person against another; that it leads to unfriendly relationship between people.

 I have taught many children who held the belief that their self-worth depended on how well they performed at tennis and other skills. For them, playing well and winning are often life-and-death affairs(事件). The development of many other human qualities is sadly forgotten.

 However, while some seem to be lost in the desire(渴望)to succeed, others take an opposite attitude. In a culture which values only the winner and pays no attention to the common players, they are strongly against competition. Most of them are young people who have suffered under competitive pressures from their parents or society. Teaching these youngsters, I often observe(观察) in them a desire to fail. They seem to find failure by not trying to win or achieve success. By not trying, they always have an excuse: " I may have lost, but it doesn't matter because I really didn't try." What is not usually accepted by themselves is the belief that if they had really tried and lost, that would mean a lot. Such a loss would be a measure(估量) of their worth. Clearly, this belief is the same as that of true competitors who try to prove themselves. Both are based on the mistaken belief that one's self-worth depends on how well one performs in the competition. Both are afraid of not being valued. We can discover a new meaning in competition only as this kind of fear begins to disappear.

How often one hears children wishing they were grown-ups and old people wishing they were young again! Each age has its pleasures and its pains, and the happiest person is the one who enjoys what each age gives him without wasting his time in their useless regrets.

 Children live at a time when there are few responsibilities (职责) for them to make a living. If a child has good parents, he is well fed, looked after and loved no matter how he behaves. It is impossible that he will be ever again in his return. What’s more, life is always giving new things to the child—things that have lost their interest for older people because they are too common for them. But a child has his pains: he is not so free to do what he wishes to do; he is repeatedly being told not to do something, or being punished for what he has wrongly done.

 When a young man starts to earn his own living, he can no longer expect others to pay for his food, his clothes, and his room, but has to work if he wants to live comfortably. If he spends most of his timeplaying aboutin the way that he used to as a child, he will go hungry. And if he breaks the laws of society just as he used to break the rules of his parents, he may go to prison. If, however, he works hard, keeps out of trouble and has good health, he can have the great happiness of building up for himself his own position (位置) in society.