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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When I was a kid, there was only one way my parents would let me stay home from school and that was if I had a high fever. Most of my friends could stay home due to a stomachache or a mild fever——but not me... I had to be dying in order to stay home. By the way, my parents are both doctors. My parents used to say that they were teaching me how to have a good work ethic(职业道德). I didn't understand the connection until last week.

   The other day I was on the train and sat behind a young man who was complaining to his friend about his life. He went on for twenty minutes about how his passion in life was to make movies, but he wouldn't pursue it because he had no clue if he could make enough money and he didn't want to waste time because it would take years to make it big. He then admitted to thinking about buying stocks(股票)by borrowing money because he thought he could easily make six figures within one year. His friend agreed with hin and said, "The stock is good because you can make tons of money and only work for a short time. "

   I think they were indulging(沉溺)in the wildest fantasy. Many people these days don't realize that when things seem to happen immediately, it is only because a lot of effort, determination and time have gone into them and it isn't due to some miraculous(不可思议的) event. The easier it looks, the more hours go into it. There is no excuse for laziness.

   Looking at the two young men, all of a sudden I was having a flashback of being ten years old and watching the television show Fame.

   In the show the dance teacher told her students, "If you want fame, fame costs and here's how you start paying for it ... in sweat." Every time we watched that show, my dad would proudly say how right the teacher was because in order to succeed you have to work hard.

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 She had to pack up her bedroom in Virgina Beach, where she lived with her mother, two sisters and brother. She had to say goodbye to her two dogs, who used to sleep in her bed, and to the beach, where she loved to ride waves on her boogie board.

   But it was time to take the leap, however, heartbreaking and awkward it would be. Even at 14, Douglas knew that.

   So off she went about 1,200 miles to West Des Moines, Lowa, to train with a coach from China and live with a white family she had never been met. When she arrived, Douglas thought that she must be the only black person in the state. When she woke up she always said, "This isn't my bed set. Where am I?"

   Liang Chow, who had coached the Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson, transformed Douglas into one of the best gymnasts in the world, helping her skyrocket from an average member of the national team to the top of the sport. And a couple with four daughters became her second family, nurturing her Iown while her real family supported her from afar.

   That move also was important in Douglas's making history. By winning the Olympic all-round title, she became the first black woman to do so. She also became the fourth American woman to win the all-round, following Mary Lou Retton in 1984, Carly Pattemson in 2004 and Nastia Liukin in 2008.

   Douglas won, scoring 62.232 points, and led the competition from beginning to end. Viktoria Komova, who sobbed into her coach's chest when she learned she had lost, won the silver, with 61.973 points. Aliya Mustafina, the 2010 world all-round champion, won the bronze, with 59.566 points. The other American in the competition, Aly Raisman finished fourth after losing a tiebreaker(决胜局) to Mustafina.

   Douglas said she had felt confidence all along that she would win. "It was just an amazing feeling," she said, giggling(咯咯笑): "I was just like, believe, don't fear, believe." After sacrificing(牺牲)so much, she had no other choice but to push forward, she said.

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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.