Many of us mistakenly believe that it’s wrong to think we have many good qualities. We may spend a lot of time blaming ourselves for our negative qualities, thinking that self-criticism is the key to improving our performance. However, a constant focus on our supposed shortcomings can stop our efforts to make friends with other people. How can we believe that others could like us if we believe our inner being is flawed(有缺点的)?

If someone seems to dislike you, the reason for that dislike might have little or nothing to do with you. The person who doesn’t like you might be fearful, shallow, busy or shy. Perhaps you and that person are simply a mismatch for each other at this particular time.

Don’t take yourself out of the game by deciding that your flaws are bigger than your good qualities. In fact, some of the very qualities you consider to be flaws may be irresistible to someone else. For all the factors that might cause one person to reject you, there are at least as many factors that will work in your favor with someone else.

You might be thirty pounds over your ideal weight, but you may have a wonderful laugh and a real enthusiasm for life. There are many people who don’t mind your extra pounds. You may drive a shabby car, but you might be a great dancer and a loyal friend. There are people looking for loyalty, fun, sweetness, or wisdom, and the package it comes in is not important. If you are worried that you are not beautiful enough to attract friends, keep in mind that not everyone is looking for physical beauty in their friends. You can decide to feel inferior because you don’t have much money or you don’t drive a nice car. You can believe that this is the reason that you don’t have many friends in your life. On the other hand, if you are very wealthy you may be suspicious that everyone is after your money and that nobody really likes you as a person.

The point is that you can focus on anything and believe it’s the reason you do not have friends and cannot make any.

There’s a trend that more city people decide that they want to grow crops and raise some live-stock (家禽). After all, there are few things more satisfying than biting into a bunch of tender, red carrots you grow yourself, or a fresh egg from the backyard.

Most gardeners understand that the soil in big cities is often polluted with lead and know to get their soil tested. But most are pretty clueless about how to prevent other types of pollutants, like heavy metals and asbestos(石棉)from getting into their vegetables.

Part of the problem is that “there might be pollutants that gardeners can’t test for,” says Brent Kim, a program officer. Most soil tests look for lead, cadrniunt(镉)and arsenic(砷). But they don’t test things like chemicals left behind by cars, which might have escaped into the soil.

So if you’re thinking of staring an urban garden, Kim says, once you’ve found a plot of land, you should learn what’s now an empty plot or a backyard might once have been a parking lot, a gas station or a chemical ground. “Knowing its past will give you some idea about what might be in that soil,” he says.

“People tend to think raised beds are going to solve their pollution problem,” Kim says. But polluted soil could easily kicked onto your plants, especially if the beds are low to the ground.

“Another consideration is that you have to be careful about the materials that you’re using to build a raised bed,” Kim says. Recycling wood from an old construction site might seem like a good, eco-friendly idea. But that wood could be treated with chemicals you don’t want touching your fruits and veggies, Kim says. And it’s always a good idea to use gloves while gardening, and wash all your produce thoroughly.

“I see these urban growing spaces as these oases(绿洲)in the middle of these urban environments,” Kim says. “They bring communities together, and they help people save money on fresh produce. Urban growing spaces are amazing. Let’s keep doing this, but let’s do it safely.”

It’s not what you look at that matters;it's what you see.

——Henry David Thoreau

1 学校上学、放学时间及开设的课程． 

2 学生的校内外活动． 

3 学校的环境及师生关系． 

注意：①词数100左右  ②可根据内容要点适当增加细节，以使行文连贯．

参考词汇：after-school activities课外活动；play sports做运动；kind and helpful和蔼乐于助人 

Cell phones：Is there a cancer link?

Could your cell phone give you cancer? Whether it could or not, some people are worrying about the possibility that phones, power lines and Wi-Fi could be responsible for a range of illnesses, from rashes to brain tumors.

Some say there is evidence to support the growing anxieties. David Carpenter, a professor of environmental health sciences at the university at Albany, in New York, thinks there’s a greater than 95 percent chance that power lines can cause childhood leukemia (白血病). Also there’s a greater than 90 percent chance that cell phones can cause brain tumors. “It’s apparent now that there’s a real risk, ”said Carpenter.

But others believe these concerns are not justified. Dr Martha Linet, head of radiation epidemiology (流行病学) at the US National Cancer Institute, has looked at the same research as Carpenter but has reached a different conclusion. “I don’t support warning labels for cell phones, ”said Linet. “We don’t have the evidence that there’s much danger.”

Studies so far suggest a weak connection between EMFs (电磁场) and illness—so weak that it might not exist at all. A multinational investigation of cell phones and brain cancer, in 13 countries outside the US, has been underway for several years. It’s funded in part by the European Union, in part by a cell phone industry group. The final report should come out later this year, but data so far don’t suggest a strong link between cell phone use and cancer risk.

 Mental health的文章， 向校报英文版Mental Health投稿。 文章应包含以下内容：

1. 心理健康的重要性。

2. 保持心理健康的建议：了解自我，接纳自我；善于与他人相处；

热爱生活，学习和工作。

注意：1. 词数为100左右。

2. 可适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。

                   How to keep mental health

Let children learn to judge their own. A child who learns to talk does not learn by being corrected all the time; if corrected too much, he will stop talking. He notices a thousand times a day the difference between the language he uses and the language those around him use. Little by little, he makes the necessary changes to make his language like other people’s, in the same way, children learn to do all the other things without being taught— to walk, run, climb, ride a bicycle— compare (比较) their own performances（表现） with those of more skilled people, and slowly make the needed changes. But in school we never give a child a chance to find out his mistakes if we thought that he would never notice a mistake unless it was pointed out to him, or correct it unless he was made to. Let him work out, with the help of other children if he wants it, what this word says, what the answer is to that problem, whether this is a good way of saying or doing this or not. If it is a matter of right answers, as it may be in mathematics or science, give him the answer book. Let him correct his own papers. Why should we teachers waste time in doing such work? Our job should be to help the child when he tells us that he can’t find the way to get their own understanding, how to know what they know or do not know.   

     How to deal with waste has been a problem since humans started producing it. As more and more people choose to live close together in cities, the waste-disposal（处理）problem becomes increasingly difficult.

       During the eighteenth century, it was usual for several neighboring towns to get together to select a faraway spot as a dump site. Residents or trash haulers（垃圾拖运者）would transport household rubbish, rotted wood, and old possessions to the site. Periodically（定期地）some of the trash was burned and the rest was buried. The unpleasant sights and smells caused no problem because nobody lived close by.
           Factories, mills, and other industrial sites also had waste to be disposed of. Those located on rivers often just dumped the unwanted remains into the water. Others built huge burners with chimneys to deal with the problem.

        Several facts make these choices unacceptable to modern society. The first problem is space.  Landfills(填埋场)are most needed in heavily populated areas. Such areas rarely have empty land suitable for this purpose. Property is either too expensive or too close to residential（住宅区的）neighborhoods. Long-distance trash hauling has been a common practice, but once farm areas are refusing to accept rubbish from elsewhere, cheap land within trucking distance of major city areas is almost nonexistent.

      Awareness（意识）of pollution dangers has led to more strict rules of waste disposal. Pollution of rivers, ground water, land and air is a price people can no longer pay to get rid of waste. The amount of waste, however, continues to grow.

       Recycling efforts have become commonplace, and many towns require their people to take part. However, even the most efficient recycling programs can hope to deal with only about 50 percent of a city’s reusable waste.