Most of all, try to think about why your parents do this or do that. They are still practising being parents and need help you can give them. Some day, when you become a parent, they may be able to help you how to get on with your children.

We've all done it at one time or another: took out our mobile phones to take a picture of a sunset that is too beautiful to forget, or photographed a particularly impressive dish at a restaurant.

   It's obvious that we record our lives to keep our memories from fading, but with such widespread use of camera phones and new devices like the Narrative Clip that automatically takes a picture every 30 seconds—how much is too much? Are we taking too many pictures?

   If you look at recent research by Linda Henkel, a psychology professor at Fairfield University, you might think the answer is yes. Her research has suggested that taking photos can actually damage your ability to recall details of the event later. In her study from 2014, students were led on a museum tour and asked to take photos of certain works of art—and only observe others. When they were tested the next day, they were less able to remember details of objects that they had photographed. This is what Henkel calls a "photo-taking impairment effect".

   "What I think is going on is that we treat the camera as a sort of external (外部的) memory device," Henkel says. "We have this expectation that the camera is going to remember things for us, so we don't have to continue processing that object and we don't involve in the types of things that would help us remember it."

 The poaching(偷猎),or illegal killing, of rhinos in South Africa is growing worse each year. The government recently reported that a record number of rhinos were poached in 2014, a year which had more rhino killings in South Africa than ever before.

      The World Wildlife Fund, or WWF, says about 20, 000 rhinos live in South Africa. That is more than 80 percent of the rhinos in the world. Edna Molewa, South Africa’s Environment Minister, says, “During 2014, we are sad to say this, 1, 215 rhinos were killed. This is a rise in the number of poached rhinos from 1, 004 in 2013 and indeed very worrying.”

      The animals are hunted for their horns. Many people in Asia believe the horn has curing power, which drives poachers, at all costs, mad for more horns. But there is no scientific evidence for this belief. The horn is made of keratin. That is the same thing as human hair, fingernails and toenails.

      Ms. Mo1ewa said 386 suspected poachers were arrested last year, an increase from the year before. But rhino protection workers say poachers often go unpunished after arrest. South Africa’s legal system is ineffective. Ms. Mo1ewa said more needs to be done and South Africa is taking strong measures to protect rhinos. The efforts include moving some of the animals to secret places in neighboring countries. “Now approximately 100 rhinos have been moved to neighboring states in the SADC region during 2014 and 200 more rhinos will be moved this year,” Molewa said.

      Jo Shaw, the rhino program manager at the WWF, said, “We’re talking about a loss of a hundred rhinos a month, or more than three a day. We really need to see effective action not just at a national level but internationally.” She says officials should find the criminal groups responsible for the poaching and punish them. Government officials are to meet in Botswana in March at the Intergovernmental Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade.

The reason why women love to spend hours in shops while men prefer to be in and out of the high street in minutes can trace back(追溯) to their hunter-gathering past, find scientists.

While women spent their days gathering food, often with children, men were hunters who made plans about how to catch and kill their prey (猎物). These two ways of getting food in the past show how we shop in modern times, the study believes.

Women would spend hours trying to find the right things, because they had in the past spent ages trying to find the best quality and health-giving food. Men, on the other hand, decided in advance what animal they wanted to kill and then went looking for it. Once it was found and killed, they returned home.

Daniel Kruger, professor of the University of Michigan, said the study could be the answer to why there are a lot of collisions when couples go shopping together. He said it could also help couples to avoid fights in the shops if they understood the reasons why each sex had different ways of deciding on the perfect present.

“In modern times, women are much more likely than men to know when a specific type of item will go on sale. Women also spend much more time choosing the perfect color and texture.”

Professor Kruger said his study was important because if men and women understood each other’s shopping habits they could avoid arguments while shopping.

As anyone who freelances (做自由职业) knows, there are lots of advantages of working at home alone. But there are drawbacks too, like the potential loneliness. No wonder co-working spaces are becoming so popular: they permit self-employed individuals to feel like they are part of all office environment, while making them get some work done too. But renting a co-working space does cost money.

Now a Swedish project is aiming to change that by turning people’s under-used homes into temporary co-working spaces, available to freelancers for free. Hoffice was started by freelancers Christofer Gradin Franzen and Johline Zandra about a year ago in Stockholm when they invited a few people into their home office to work together. It was a great success, and the project has since spread to a number of cities in Europe, North andSouth America,Australia,Indiaand Japan. Anyone can sign up and offer their home space as a free co-working space, or go find a Hoffice near them.

On a Hoffice day, everyone arrives and starts work at a certain hour. After 45 minutes, everyone gets up to take a break, stretch, do qigong or yoga for 10 to 15 minutes. Afterwards, people can gather around again, and re-state their intentions and goals for the rest of the work day, as a way to motivate each other. Meals can be eaten together at a certain hour, potluck-style(家常饭)or by bringing your own lunch.

This process creates an encouraging and supportive work environment. As some freelancers describe, “By working at Hoffice, we give ourselves and each other the gift to spend our days in a social working environment, where we are extremely productive without ignoring our other human needs. We also make sure to give us and each other what we need to feel calm, happy, inspired and creative during the working day. ”

So Hoffice is not just about sharing space；itˈs also about a free exchange of ideas. And perhaps the best thing is that Hoffices are free to use.

  Waste can be seen everywhere in the school. Some students ask for more food than they can eat and others often forget to turn off the lights when they leave  the classroom. They say they can afford these things. But I don't agree with them.

        Waste can bring a lot of problems. Although China is rich in some resources we are short of   others,  for example,  fresh water. It is reported that we will have no coal or oil to use inyears.

       So if we go on wasting our resources,  what can we use in the future and where can we move? Think about it. I think we should say no to the students who waste things every day.   Everybody should stop wasting as soon as possible.

      In our everyday life, we can do many things to prevent waste from happening, for example, turn off the water taps when we finish washing,  turn off the lights when we leave the classroom, try not to order more food than we need,  and so on. Little by little,  everything will be changed. Waste can be stopped one day, if we do our best.

 A few years ago it was common to speak of a generation gap(代沟) between young people and their elders. Parents said that children did not respect and listen to them, while children said that their parents did not understand them at all. What had gone wrong? Why had the generation gap suddenly appeared? Actually, the generation gap has been around for a long time. Many people argue that it is built into every part of our society.

One important cause of the generation gap is the opportunity that young people have to choose their own ways of life. In a more traditional society, when children grow up, they are expected to live in the same area as their parents, to marry people that their parents know and like, and often to continue the family jobs. In our society, young people often travel great distances for their education, move out of the family at an early age, marry or live with people whom their parents have never met, and choose jobs different from those of their parents.

In our society, parents often expect their children to do better than they did, to find better jobs, to make more money and to do all the things that they were unable to do. Often, that is another cause of the gap between them. Often, they discover that they have very little in common with each other.

Finally, the speed at which changes take place in our society is the third cause of the gap between the generations. In a traditional culture, senior people are valued for their knowledge, but in our society the knowledge of a lifetime may become out of date. The young and the old seem to live in two very different worlds, separated by different skills and abilities. No doubt, the generation gap will continue in American life for some time to come.

   Can you understand the beginning of this essay（短文）?

   “My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we usd 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & 3 kds FTF.”

   The Scottish teacher who received it in class had no idea what the girl who wrote it meant. The essay was written in a form of English used in cell phone text messages. Text messages (also called SMS) through cell phones became very popular in the late 1990s. At first, mobile phone companies thought that text messaging would be a good way to send messages to customers, but customers quickly began to use the text messaging service to send messages to each other. Teenagers in particular enjoyed using text messaging, and they began to create a new language for messages called “texting.”

   A text message is limited to 160 characters, including letters, spaces, and numbers, so messages must be kept short. In addition, typing on the small keypad of a cell phone is difficult, so it’s common to make words shorter. In texting, a single letter or number can represent（代表） a word, like “r” for “are”, “u” for “you,” and “2”"for “to.” Several letters can also represent a phrase, like “lol” for“laughing out loud.” Another characteristic（特征） of texting is the leaving out of letters in a word, like spelling “please” as “pls”.

    Some parents and teachers worry that texting will make children bad spellers and bad writers. The student who wrote the essay at the top of this page said writing in that way was more comfortable for her. (The essay said, “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 kids face to face.”)

   Not everyone agrees that texting is a bad thing. Some experts say languages always develop, and this is just another way in which English is changing. Other people believe texting will disappear soon. New technology for voice messages may soon make text messages a thing of the past.