A young boy was walking with his father along a country road. When they came across a very large tree branch, the boy asked:“Do you think I could move that branch?” His father answered:“If you use all your strength, I’m sure you can.” So the boy tried as hard as possible to lift, pull and push the branch but he couldn’t move it.

  Discouraged he said:“Dad, you were wrong. I can’t do it.” His father said:“Try again.” This time, as the boy struggled with the branch, his father joined him and together they pushed the branch aside. “Son,” the father said, “the first time you didn’t use all your strength. You didn’t ask me to help.”

  This is an important lesson. There are many things we can’t do alone, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get them done. We all are surrounded by resources that can be used to help us achieve our goals including family, friends and beliefs. Sometimes we fail to ask for help, because of pride. Sometimes we think it’s a sign of weakness to admit we need a hand. And sometimes we don’t even think about asking for help. Whatever the reason, it’s a waste.

  It’s important that we learn to use all our strength: this includes inner resources such as self-control, courage and even love. But it also includes outer resources. Just as we should be willing to help others, we should be willing to ask for the help of others.

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When Tsinghua Universityˈs new freshmen arrived on campus last August, the first question they were faced with at the registration desk was“Did you come alone or with your parents?” According to statistics, we know that more than half of the 539 students came alone. In a letter to freshmen this year, Chen Jining, the president of Tsinghua University, encouraged them to “start this new adventure by standing on your own two feet.”

 To help freshmen grow up, some universities have thought of new methods. At Tsinghua, for example, freshmen need to register and find their dormitory by themselves. The process requires two to three hours, during which volunteers take parents on a tour of the campus. At Zhejiang University, a banner（横幅）hanging in the information center says “Parents let go please; let us guide your children.” Lu Guodong, dean(系主任)of undergraduate studies at Zhejiang University, coined the slogan. “The slogan is for parents. Often parents like to do things or make decisions for their children. In their eyes, children never grow up,” said Lu.

 A girl arrived at the railway station with her luggage and looked around for her university’s welcome team. She was Jin Hongting,19, fromHebeiprovince and would study industry business administration at Beijing Union University. When asked why she came alone, Jin said: “There’s no need to bother my parents to come with me. It only takes four hours from my hometown to Beijing.”

 Sometimes, however, the distance between university and home is so great that many parents are too worried to let their children travel alone. To reassure（使放心）parents, Renmin University of China introduced a new method. It asked senior students to go back to their hometown and accompany freshmen back to the campus. This helps freshmen get used to living independently.

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For thousands of young people everywhere, college means taking their first big step into adult life. What you do in your first year of college can have a big effect on the rest of your college years. Here are some tips of mine for you.

Plan ahead.By the end of your first week, you’ll know when you should finish each of your study tasks. Put those on your list. More importantly, you need to finish them on time. Start making good use of your time at the beginning of the term.

Eat right.College students often gain weight in their first year. Without Mom and Dad planning your meals, it’s easy to lose track of just how many calories you’re taking in. Try to limit the fast food and keep a varied diet.

It was in my high school literature class.I was giving a lecture in the front of the classroom with my favorite shirt on．

A voice came, “Nice shirt,” I smiled from ear to ear. Then John said, “That shirt belonged to my dad.Greg’s mother works for my family.We were going to throw that shirt away, but gave it to her instead.” I was speechless.I wanted to hide.

I told my mother what had happened.She then telephoned her employer, “I will no longer work for your family,” she told him．

The next morning she went to a job interview for a teaching assistant in a local primary school, but the headmaster said without a higher education she could not teach. So my mother decided to go to university.

After the first year in college, she went back to that school and finally got the job of a teaching assistant, helping the disabled children who have little or no chance of learning.    

For almost five years, she saw teacher after teacher give up on the children and leave the job, feeling anxious.Then one day, the headmaster showed up in her classroom.The headmaster said, “We have watched how you treat the children and how they communicate with you over the last five years.We all agree that you should be the teacher of this class.”

My mother spent more than 20 years there and she was made Teacher of the Year.All of this came about because of the thoughtless comment made in the classroom that day. I have learned a lot from her.

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When Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California, his unmarried mother decided to put him for adoption because she wanted a girl. So in the middle of the night, his mother called a lawyer named Paul Jobs and said, “We have an unexpected baby boy, do you want him?” But his mother told his future parents to promise that they would send Jobs to college. After Steve Jobs graduated from high school, he went to college but decided to drop out because it was so ex­pensive that he had to sleep on the floor in his friends’ rooms.

At 20, he and a friend (Steve Wozniak) started a company in a garage on April 1, 1976. Jobs named their company—Apple in memory of a happy summer he had spent at an orchard（果园）in Oregon.

After 10 years of hard time and failures, starting from two kids working in a garage, Apple computer eventually grew into a big company with over 4000 employees.

At 30, jobs, however, was fired from the company he co-founded. But after he had to leave the company, Apple was under heavy pressure from rival— Microsoft and in 1996 posted billions of dollars in losses. Apple needed Steve Jobs and he was appointed as Apple’s CEO in 1997. Under his leader­ship, Apple returned to profitability introducing new products such as the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.

Steve Jobs once said, “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick, don’t lose faith. I’m con­vinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. "

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Japanese bookseller Yoshiyuki Morioka has come up with a highly unusual concept（理念）for a bookstore — he sells one book at a time in a tiny shop located in Ginza, Tokyo’s luxury shopping district. Ever since he started the store in May, he has stocked copies of only one title per week.

You might think that it’s hardly a bookstore if you can’t go in and spend at least a few hours looking through hundreds of books, but Morioka never planned to create a classic bookstore. It’s like a weekly ‘suggested reading’ service — you just go in and pick up the book chosen for the week, relieving（减轻）yourself of the burden of choice. Morioka said he came up with the idea — a store that only focused on one book at a time, after organizing several book-launch events at his old bookstore.

“Before opening this bookstore in Ginza, I had been running another one for 10 years,” Morioka said. “There, I had around 200 kinds of books, and used to organize several book launches per year. During such events, a lot of people visited the store to look for a single book. As I experienced this for some time, I started to believe that perhaps with only one book, a bookstore could be managed.”

The store itself is very small, with a small table in the center displaying the title of the week. According to Morioka, his concept has an obvious advantage. “For example , when selling a book on flowers, the store could exhibit a flower that actually appears in the book,” he said.

It isn’t clear how Morioka goes about choosing which books to display and sell. However , his concept has met with great favor—he claims to have sold over 2,000 books within only one month.

There is a woman named Tao Porchon-Lynch. She was born in India in 1918. So, if you do the math, she is 98. And at the age of 98, she has been recognized as the oldest yoga teacher in the world. She has been teaching yoga in a gym in her hometown, full-time, since 1967.

    But that is not all she has done. She has also been a model, actress and dancer. She became a model after she graduated from high school. She acted in more than ten fields. She won a lot of medals as a dancer in many competitions. She once said, “If you try your best and never give up, nothing is impossible.”And she is a firm believer in positive thinking. She dreams the impossible dreams, and she is also well-known as a thinker.

    Tao Porchon-Lynch is not the person who talks the talk; she is the person who walks the walk. When she makes up her mind to do something, she takes action to do it without delay. At the age of 85, she learned how to dance and even won several dance competitions. She offers this piece of advice to others, “Don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today. Don't delay. Tomorrow never comes.”

    So, what about retirement? At 98, she is well past the age when many people make retirement plans. Retiring, it turns out, is not Tao's style.“ A little girl, who is only 6 years old and is now learning yoga with me, once asked me,‘ Dear granny, what are you going to do when you retire?’ “ Tao Porchon-Lynch told the little girl that she had no plans to retire but instead would continue to teach yoga and dance her way to the next planet.

第一节  阅读表达

Green is an important colour in nature. It is the colour of grass and the leaves on trees. It is also the colour of most growing plants.

Sometimes, it describes something that is not yet ripe or finished. For example, a “greenhorn” is someone who has no experience, who is new to a situation. In the 15^th century, a “greenhorn” was a young cow whose horns had not yet developed. A century later, a “greenhorn” was a soldier who had not yet had any experience in battle. By the 18^th century, a “greenhorn” had the meaning it has today—a person who is new in a job.

Green is also used to describe the emotion of jealousy(嫉妒). The“green-eyed monster”is an expression used about 400 years ago by William Shakespeare in his play“Othello”.It describes the unpleasant feeling a person has when someone has something he wants. A young man may suffer from the“green-eyed monster”if his girlfriend begins going out with someone else. Or, that“green-eyed monster”may affect your friend if you get a pay rise while he does not.

In most places in the world, a “green light” is a signal to move ahead. In everyday speech, a “green light” means “agree to continue with a project”. We want you to know we have a “green light” to continue this project next week.

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If you are worried about things and are under a lot of stress at work or school, then you are probably not sleeping well. Worry can keep you awake, and turning in bed until the early hours of the morning when you eventually fall asleep. When you wake up, you don’t feel refreshed, but tired and worn out and unable to face a new day.

Dr. Henry Winkle, in a recent newspaper article entitled Stress and Sleep, indicates that stress / worry and (lack of) sleep are directly related. Dr. Winkle says,“The more we worry, the less we sleep, the more we are unable to deal with stress. If we can find a way to get a good night’s sleep，”he adds,“we can often find the energy to deal with what’s worrying us.”

So, what is a good night’s sleep? Research shows that the amount of sleep which people need in order to keep healthy varies a lot. Seven hours is about the average amount, though strangely enough, sleeping longer often gives you a headache instead of making you feel more refreshed.

Dr. Winkle believes that preparing for sleeping is important. People who work late should try to give themselves a short break and do something restful before going to bed. This could be watching TV or listening to music. Doing some exercise earlier in the day should help you to feel physically as well as mentally tired. A bedtime drink can also help, but coffee or tea should be avoided as they contain caffeine and will keep you awake.“When you put the light out，”Dr. Winkle says,“concentrate on relaxing your muscles, working slowly up from your feet, and you’ll be asleep before you know it.”

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