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."

What is the population of China? There are more than 1.3 billion people in China. It is  (1)  one fifth of the world’s population. How to control the population growth is a big problem. Some people think it’s  (2)  to control the population growth. But I don’t quite agree  (3)  them because where there is a will, there is a way.

The question is how we could  (4)  it known to everyone how serious the population problems are. Our farmland is becoming less and less to everyone. We have already got too many mouths to feed.  (5)  we control the population growth, many people will die  (6)  hunger. Too fast population growth will be bad for our nation. Though laws have been passed to control the population growth, in some places  (7)  is done to carry out the laws. We should make people  (8)  that it is foolish of them to give birth to too many children. They should no longer do what they have been doing for many years.

We are fighting  (9)  too fast population growth. Yet the fighting won’t end  (10)  everyone knows its importance and does something for it.

Everyone spends money on clothes, and everyone has their personal look. The best –known clothing companies ___41___ their “designer” clothes all over the world. But the ___42__ of these big name companies is in fact very small, and the clothes they make are more __43___ than the clothes made by less well-known companies. Many people even prefer them to cheaper clothes. Why?

Many young people today __44__ about the way they look. They often buy “designer “ clothes ___45___ they think they look cool. Then the less well-known companies make clothes which look the same. But they don’t sell as well because they don’t have the ___46___ .

People also think designer clothes are better made. For example, many people think the right running shoes will make you run __47____ or play better. Of course, this is not always true. It’s the training—not the trainers—that __48____ your speed or your score. But that’s not the point. People believe that it’s true… and then buy the shoes. The big companies only want to make a lot of money.

Above all, designer clothes are more popular because of clever advertising. All of the international companies spend __49___ dollars every year to make us buy their clothes. And they succeed!

Most people dress in a way that shows ___50___ their personality. But if some of us buy expensive clothes just to look cool, what does that say about us? Maybe it’s just clever advertising.

Life in the 21st century will be different from that in the 20th century, because many changes

 41  in the new century,   42  what will the changes be?

First, the population is growing very fast. There   43  more and more people in the world and most of them will live longer than before. Computers will be   44  smaller and more useful, and there will be   45  one in every home. And computer studies will be one of the most important   46  in schools.

Second, people will work fewer hours than they did in the 20th century, and they’ll have more free time for sports,   47  TV and traveling. Traveling will be even cheaper and easier. And more people will go to   48  countries for holidays.

Third, there will be changes in our food, too. People will use more land   49  new towns and houses. Then there will be less room for cows and sheep, so meat will be more expensive. Maybe no one will eat it every day, instead, they will eat more vegetables and fruit. Maybe people will be healthier.

Last, work in the future will be   50 , too. Robots will do the dangerous and hard work. Because of this, many people won’t have enough work to do. This will be a problem.

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.