When I was growing up, I was embarrassed to be seen with my father. He was severely lame and very short, and when we would walk together, his hand on my arm for balance, people would stare. I would feel ashamed at the unwanted attention. If he ever noticed or was bothered, he never let on, nor did he say anything about it.

   It was difficult to coordinate (协调)our steps—his pausing, my impatience—and because of that, we didn't say much as we went along. But as we started out, he always said, "You set the pace, I will try to adjust to you."

   Our usual walk was to or from the subway, which was how he got to work. He went to work sick, and despite bad weather. He almost never missed a day, and would make it to the office even if others could not. A matter of pride.

   When snow or ice was on the ground, it was impossible for him to walk, even with help. At such times my sisters or I would pull him through the streets of Brooklyn, NY, on a child's sleigh to the subway entrance. Once there, he would grasp the handrail until he reached the lower steps that the warmer tunnel air kept ice-free. In Manhattan the subway station was the basement of his office building, and he would not have to go outside until we met him in Brooklyn on his way home.

   When I think of it now, I wondered at how much courage it must have taken for a grown man to subject himself to such indignity and stress. And at how he did it—without bitterness or complaint.

   He never talked about himself as an object of pity, nor did he show any envy of the more fortunate or able. What he looked for in others was a "good heart" ,and if he found one, the owner was good enough for him.

   Now that I am older, I believe that is a proper standard by which to judge people, even though I still don't know precisely what a "good heart" is. But I know the times I don't have one myself.

   My father has been gone many years now, but I think of him often. I wonder if he sensed my unwillingness to be seen with him during our walks. If he did, I am sorry I never told him how sorry I was, how unworthy I was, how I regretted it . I think of him when I complain about incident, when I am envious of another's good fortune, when I don't have a "good heart".

   At such times I put my hand on his arm to regain my balance, and say, "You set the pace, I will try to adjust to you."

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[1] After an exhausting swim practice on a cold winter evening, I received an invitation from my friend Lucy, asking me to attend a dance. At the top of the invitation, Young Angels was written across the page. Young Angels was organizing a dance to raise money for community service projects. I thought it was such a great idea that I not only wanted to attend it, but also wanted to become involved.

   [2] This was over two years ago and since then, I have become a lead member in Young Angels of America. At each dance, teens not only have fun with their friends but are also informed about different charities. Knowing that I have taught others how they can get involved makes me feel satisfied

and delighted.

   [3] The most memorable experience of my time in Young Angels was the Middle School Winter Dance in 2007, when we had a special child help organize the dance and participate in the event. This child was Lily. Lily had a dreadful disease that will eventually kill her. Lily had the best attitude towards life: she enjoyed every moment and made the best of it. Lily got me inspired to help others and never take any moment for granted.

  With the increasing popularity of text messaging and social media sites like Twitter, which allow limited characters, people have become increasingly creative with conventional English words. Laugh out loud has transformed into lol and even the simple ok is now better recognized as just k. It is therefore not surprising to hear that HarperCollins, one of the world's largest publishers has decided to start legitimizing(使合法化)the new language by adding it to the 12^th print edition of the Collin's English dictionary.

   In order to find the ones that were most widely used and understood, the company asked fans to submit their favorite made-up words on collinsdictionary, com. The officials then narrowed the thousands that were suggested, to a shortlist of ten by analyzing the usage of each word across a range of UK and International print, as well as, digital media.

   The words were then released for public vote on Twitter: All fans had to do was to choose their favorite word using a hashtag(标签). After sifting(细查)through the submissions, HarprCollins announced that adorkable had won its way into the publication with 30% of the votes. For those that are unsure of what it means here is the official definition that will appear in the September 2016 edition of the Collin's English dictionary—a socially inept(笨拙)or unfashionable person that conducts themselves in a charming or loving way.

   Other words that were also popular included Felfie, a farmer selfie, Fatbery, a large mass of solid waste or grease clogging up a sewage system and Nomakeupselfie, selfie of a woman without her make-up, posted online to raise awareness for a charity.

   Now that HarperCollins has opened the door, don't be surprised to see shortened words getting increasingly popular, even among English experts.

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(1)Each spring brings a new blossom of wildflowers in the ditches(路沟) along the highway I travel daily to work.

   (2)There is one particular blue flower that has always caught my eye. I've noticed that it blooms only in the morning hours, for the afternoon sun is too warm for it. Every day for approximately two weeks, I see those beautiful flowers.

   (3)This spring, I started a wildflower garden in our yard. I can look out of the kitchen window while doing the dishes and see the flowers. I've often thought that those lovely blue flowers from the ditches would look great in that bed alongside other wildflowers. Every day I drove past the flowers thinking," I'll stop on my way home and dig them." Gee, I don't want to get my good clothes dirty..." Whatever the reason, I never stopped to dig them. My husband even gave me a folding shovel(铲子)one year for my trunk to be used for that expressed purpose.

   (4)One day on my way home from work, I was saddened to see that the highway department had moved the ditches and the pretty blue flowers were gone. I thought to myself, "Way to go, you waited too long. You should have done it when you first saw them blooming this spring."

   (5)A week ago we were shocked to know that my oldest sister-in-law has a terminal brain tumor(脑瘤晚期). She is 20 years older than my husband and unfortunately, because of age and distance, we haven't been as close as we all would have liked.

   (6)I couldn't help but see the connection between the pretty blue flowers and the relationship between my husband's sister and us. I do believe that God has given us some time left to plant some wonderful memories that will bloom every year for us.

   (7)And yes, if I see the blue flowers again, you can bet I'll stop and transplant them to my wildflower garden.

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  I was born and raised in England in a culture where privacy and "keeping yourself to yourself" were valued traditions. Speaking to strangers was not encouraged. People were most hospitable and friendly—but only when they had been introduced to new people.

   However, I have been lucky enough to spend some time in both Italy and the US, where I found traditions of hospitality and politeness to be very different.

   I experienced Italian hospitality firsthand on a crowded railway carriage travelling, one afternoon, from Genoa to Florence. Sinking gratefully into an empty seat, I was berated (斥责) in rapid Italian by a gentleman who was returning to this seat it had not been "spare" after all. I apologized in English, and got up to allow him back into the seat. The gentleman obviously had no understanding of the English language, but he, too, realized my genuine mistake. He smiled and gestured for me to remain in the seat, and he himself remained standing in the corridor for the remainder of the journey. The other occupants of the carriage smiled and nodded at me and made me feel quite welcome among them. I feel that if this had been in England, a foreigner who made a mistake would not always be so kindly treated.

   Transport also featured in the differences I noticed between English and American culture. I flew to New York on a plane with mainly English passengers. We sat together in near silence. Nobody spoke to me nor, as I expected, to anyone else they did not know. They felt it was not polite to intrude on someone else's privacy. However, when I travelled across the United States, whether by plane or Greyhound bus, I was never short of conversation. Conversation was going on all around me and whoever sat next to me was happy to introduce themselves and ask me about myself. They obviously felt it would have been rude not to speak to another person, whether they were strangers or not.

Ashley Power’s mother bought a computer for her when she was eight. When she was thirteen, she was surfing the Internet regularly, but she couldn’t find anywhere for teenagers to meet and talk. And one day she thought, “If I had my own website, I’d make it a really interesting site for teenagers.”

  So, when Ashley was sixteen, shelaunchedher own website, called GooseHead. Young people got excited when they searched on this website and step by step they introduced the site to others and made more friends. She had no idea how big a success it would be, but three years later, the site was the most successful teen site in the USA! It was getting 100,000 hits every day, and Ashley had about 30 employees.

  After a few years, the website closed down. Then Ashley, who lives in Los Angeles, was asked to write a book called GooseHead Guide to Life. It's safe to say that this is a book for teens that they'll enjoy. The book is about how to design a website and start a business. It begins with a section called “All about Ashley,” where Ashley tells readers what it is like to be the boss of a company when you are only sixteen. “I was so happy. But it was crazy in a lot of ways. I was stressed. I mean, I was only sixteen — I didn’t even have a car! If you were sixteen and you had your own company, you’d be stressed, too!”

In an interview Ashley gave advice to teenagers who wanted to start their own business, “Just be strong and have your dreams and work hard at them. And don’t listen when people tell you that you can’t do it, because I heard ‘no’ a lot. Just keep going until you hear ‘yes’!”

From the moment we're born, we begin to die, but death is actually a fairly new invention. As a natural way of life, death has been around for only a small percentage of the time that life has been on our planet.

    Our planet is about 4．6 billion years old. Life began about 3.8 billion years ago. For most of those 3.8 billion years, living creatures were immortal (不死的), and did not die. From 3.8 billion years ago to one billion years ago, each living creature was made up of a single cell. A single-celled creature would grow to a certain size, and then split into two, and each of those two cells would then keep on growing until they divided and so forth. These single -celled creatures would never die of old age. They might die from being run over by a rolling stone, or from being eaten by another bigger single-celled creature, but apart from that they would not die.

    But about 1 billion years ago, some of the single-celled beings evolved into creatures with many different types of cells. These new creatures had some cells for thinking, other cells for moving, other cells for digestion, and so on. And at the same time, death was born. It seems strange, but there actually are a few advantages of dying—at least, as far as the species is concerned.

    Firstly, an immortal species can't adapt to any changes in the environment. Only their children, with a slightly different DNA, can. Another disadvantage of immortality is that the parents and their kids would be fighting for the same amount of food. And thirdly, the DNA of these immortal creatures would constantly be damaged by radiation from space, and chemicals in the environment, leading to more shortcomings in the eggs carried by the mother.

No one can fail to stand in awed(令人敬畏的)admiration of the great discoveries of history—Newton's laws of motion, Kepler's principle of planetary movement, Einstein's general theory of relativity. Equally awe-inspiring are artistic creations in painting, theatre, music, and literature, which have also been brought about by discovery through personal efforts. These great stories bring us an interesting subject. What do these extraordinary achievements of well-known scientist and artists have to do with problem solving?

    A great scientific discovery or a great work of art is surely the result of problem-solving activity. The solution to a problem, we are told, often comes to thinkers in a "flash of insight(顿悟)", although they may have been turning the problem over in their minds for some time. As a particular form of problem solving, these creative acts are based on the broad knowledge gained in the past, whether this be of the "public" sort known to science, or of the "private" sort known to the artist.

    Many creative thinkers state that they have completely devoted themselves to the subject matter of the problem, often over fairly long periods of time. Indeed, it would be strange if they had not done this. Nothing in such statements supports the idea that there is anything very different about the problem solving that leads to discoveries of the great comtributions to the society. The act of discovery, even in the relatively predictable (可以预见的) sense that it occurs in everyday learning, involves (涉及) a "sudden insight" which changes the problem situation into a solution situation. As we have seen, everyday discovery also requires that the learner have the knowledge of the rules gained in the past, which is involved in the solution.

 [1] Why play sports? You might say "to get exercise" and you'd be right. To have fun? That's true, too. But there's more. In fact, there are at least 5 more reasons. According to the Women's Sports Foundation. girls who play sports get a lot more than just fit.

   [2] Girls who play sports do better in school. You might think that athletics will take up all your study time. But research shows that girls who play sports do better in school than those who don't. Exercise improves learning, memory, and concentration, which can give active girls an advantage in the classroom.

   [3] Girls who play sports learn teamwork and goal-setting skills. Sports teach valuable life skills. When you work with coaches, trainers, and teammates to win games and achieve goals. You're learning how to be successful. Those skills will ________ at work and in family life.

   [4] Sports are good for a girl's health. In addition to being fit and maintaining (维持) a healthy weight, girls who play sports are also less likely to smoke. And later in life, girls who exercise are less likely to get breast cancer or osteoporosis(骨质疏松).

   [5] Playing sports builds self-builds. Girls who play sports feel better about themselves. Why? It builds confidence when you know you can achieve your goals. Sports are also a feel-good activity because they help girls get in shape.

   [6] Exercise cuts the pressure. Playing sports can reduce stress and help you feel a little happier. How? The brain chemicals released during exercise improve a person's mood. Friends are another mood-lifter. And being on a team creates tight bonds between friends. It is good to know your teammates will support you—both on and off the field!