Nobody likes to do chores, especially kids. How can you make your kids get into a good habit of doing their chores? Try making chores fun for them.

   Play some music:Music makes everything seem like a party, doesn’t it? Play your kids’ favorite music and let them dance around while they are doing their chores.

   Make it a treasure hunt:It’s a good way when you would like them to clean the house. Let them know that you hide a $ 5 bill someplace. If they find it, they can keep it.

   Change often:If your kids keep doing the same chores for months, they may feel bored. Teaching them a new task is fun for both you and the kids. They will feel more grown-up when they get a new task.

   Do it together:It’s never fun to be the only one working and watching everyone else relaxing. If everyone takes part in doing chores, you will finish them faster and have more fun.

In learning a foreign language, one should first pay attention to speaking. It is the ground-work of reading and writing. You’d better try your best to speak. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. While you are doing this, a good exercise is to write---- keep a diary, write notes or letters and so on. Many mistakes in your speaking will be easily found when you write. Through correcting the mistakes, you can do better in learning a language.

  If you are slow in speaking, don’t worry. One of the helpful ways is to improve your English by reading, either aloud or low to yourself. The important thing is to choose something interesting to read. It mustn’t be too difficult for you. When you are reading in this way, don’t stop to look up the words if you can guess their meanings or if they are not important to the sentence. You can do that some other time.

Choose the best answer（根据短文内容，选择最恰当的答案):

Note-taking is a skill that can help you do well in all your schoolwork . It can make you confident when you are studying. But unluckily, most students don’t know how to take notes.

   ★Write down key facts.If your teacher writes notes on the blackboard, that’s great. You can copy them or write down the most important facts of all in class. Different teachers do things differently. For example, some teachers may focus on(关注)lots of dates and facts in class, but they only write the important ones on the blackboard. Other teachers may not write anything down, but they may say something important again and again.

   ★Ask.Don’t be afraid to ask your teacher to repeat(重复说) what you miss. If your teacher speaks too fast and you can’t follow what he is saying, you can ask him after class.

   ★Compare.Comparing your notes with your classmates can be good for your learning. It can also help you and your classmates correct(纠正) some mistakes.

   ★Organize.Note-taking also needs organization. Keep notes for each subject in one notebook, so that you can find everything easily when a test comes.

   ★Good note-taking takes time.If you decide to recopy your notes every evening, you’ll surely have less time to watch TV. But you’ll save time in the coming test.

   Animals, including insects（昆虫）, don’t have a “language” like ours. They do not “talk” to each other in words and sentences（句子）. But if we watch them, we can see that they have their ways of communicating(交流) with each other.

　　Can you see the rabbit’s tail? When rabbits see this white tail moving up and down, they run away. They know that they are in danger. The rabbit told them something without making a sound. It has given them a signal(信号).

　　Many other animals use this kind of “language”. When a cobra(眼镜蛇) is angry, it raises its head and makes itself look powerful(有力的). This warns other animals. When a bee(蜜蜂) found some food, it goes back to its home. It cannot “tell” the other bees where the food is by speaking to them, but it does a little dance. This tells the bees where the food is.

   Some animals “say”things by making sounds. A dog barks, for example, when a stranger comes near. A cat purrs when it is pleased. Some birds make several different sounds, every sound has its own meaning. Sometimes we human beings（人类） speak in the same way. We make sounds like “Oh” or “Ah” when we are afraid or happy or when we drop something on our toes.

Reading is the key to school success, and like any skill, it takes practice. A child learns to walk by practicing until he no longer has to think about how to put one foot in front of the other. An excellent sportsman practices until he can play quickly, correctly and without thinking. Educators call it “automaticity (自动性)”.

A child learns to read by sounding out the letters and finding the meaning of the words. With practice, he stumbles less and less, reading by the phrase. With automaticity, he doesn’t have to think about the meaning of words, so he can give all his attention to the meaning of the text.

It can begin as early as first grade. In a recent study of children in Illinois schools, Alan Rossman of Northwestern University found that automatic readers in the first grade not only read almost three times as fast as the others, but also got better results in exams.

According to Rossman, the key to automaticity is the amount of time a child spends reading, not his IQ. Any child who spends at least 3 to 4 hours a week reading books, magazines or newspapers will probably reach automaticity. It can happen if a child turns off TV just one night for reading at home.

You can test yourself by reading something new which is suitable (适合的) for your level. If you read aloud with expression, with a sense of the meaning of the sentences, you probably are an automatic reader. If you read brokenly, one word at a time, without expression or meaning, you need more practice.

Many people go to school for an education. They learn languages, history, politics, geography, physics, chemistry and mathematics. Others go to school to learn a skill so that they can make a living .School education is very important and useful. Yet, no one can learn everything from school. A teacher ,no matter how much he knows ,can not teach his students everything they want to know .The teacher’s job is to show his students how to learn. He teaches them how to read and how to think. So, much more is to be learned outside school by the students themselves.

It is always more important to know how to study by oneself than to memorize some facts or a formula(公式).It is actually quite easy to learn a certain fact in history or formula in mathematics .But it is very difficult to use a formula in working out a math problem. Great scientists before us didn’t get everything from school. Their teachers only .showed them the way. Edison did not even finish primary school. But they were all so successful. They invented so many things for mankind. The reason for their success is that they knew how to study. They read books that were not taught at school. They would ask many questions as they read. They did thousands of experiments. They worked hard all their lives, wasting not a single moment. Above all, they knew how to use their brain.

Hello. I’m from England. This is my new school. It’s near my home. I walk to school every day. There are some buildings in the school. The red building is our teaching building. There are twenty-eight classrooms in it. The offices are behind the classrooms. A sports hall, three dining halls and five science labs are in the yellow buildings in front of the library. I like playing basketball in the sports hall. There is a hospital in my school, too. It’s white. My new school is not big, but it’s my favourite school.

Here are some English study skills for beginners.

★Listening

Listening is a great way to improve your pronunciation and intonation (语调). You can start by listening to short stories for children because they are usually easy.

★Reading

Reading is a good way to help you learn new words. And it will also help you learn English grammar. Children’s books are great for beginners.

★Vocabulary

When you come across new words in the reading, write them down in your notebook. You can write down thetranslationin your native language to help you understand.

★Speaking

While doing your reading exercises, read them aloud. You can also look for some articles (文章) on the Internet to read.

Learning any language needs practice — lots of practice. You don’t have to spend hours studying each day; just 30 minutes a day for four or five days a week will help you improve it.