I have never understood the importance of parties in the classroom. As a mother of two school age children, I believe that public schools should no longer   (1)   classroom parties during the school day.

  (2)   is very important to students in school today. Our school year is already too short. Teachers can only just get all the basics of the courses (课程) into the   (3)   instructional minutes of the day.   (4)  , there is no time for anything useless or silly.   (5)   time is best spent focusing on the primary goal — learning.

And what about food? For health and safety reasons, schools often require that   (6)   for these activities should be bought from a store. This   (7)   a real problem for many families. Biscuits for a class of students, plus drinks and napkins can   (8)  what it costs a family to eat a meal at home. The   (9)  of a classroom party is   (10)   a problem for many people, especially in these difficult times.   (11)  , we all know that our children have eaten enough sugar and junk food without the school   (12)   such unhealthy choices.

All the   (13)   that a party can create is unacceptable! I   (14)   those birthday parties held at home for my children. I would just buy the disposable (一次性的) plates, cups, and napkins   (15)   I didn’t need to do any cleaning up. But even so, I just   (16)   to fit all the party time rubbish into the rubbish bin (垃圾桶).   (17)  the trash thrown out by a school of 16 classrooms and over 400 students. It only adds to the   (18)   of our planet’s environment.

I am not sure when our public schools decided that classroom   (19)  needed to become a part of the school calendar (日历), but I do not see the   (20)  . So I do believe schools should forbid (禁止) classroom celebrations.

Why do Chinese people love hot pot (火锅）so much? As the winter months are coming in, more and more people are sitting around a table, enjoying this kind oftraditionalmeal. I find myself wondering what it is about this traditional meal, which has existed for more than 1,000 years. What makes it a Chinese food favorite? It seems that the answer lies beyond the dish itself.

Hot pot isn’t just designed to keep you warm during the cold months; it’s also asocialexperience. It’s a “theater” cooked food that turns a meal into an event. There is a lot of fun for everyone to have in adding some foods to the hot pot.

Hot pot is eaten over two to three hours. For this reason, it is often considered an evening’sentertainment，and a time to spend with friends and families. However, many Westerners would beput offby the idea of other people sticking chopsticks in their food. When we come to eat at the table in the UK, we tend to have our own shares, although the experience is still a social one.

    Asimilarexperience to the hot pot can be found in Korean barbecue restaurants, which let you cook your own meat.This allows people to have their meat done .

 For most Westerners, the idea of going to a restaurant to cook their own food is very strange. But I find it’s now one of my favorite meals in Beijing. The steam from the pot left my clothes smelling of food when I got home, but perhaps this was also part of the experience. When the cold wind is blowing outside, I am sitting aroundwith my good friends, eating and drinking. For me it’s like a dinner party where my taste buds (味蕾)and myappetiteare equally satisfied in the warm company of friends.

Languages have been coming and going for thousands of years, but in recent times there has been less coming and a lot more going. When the the world was still populated by hunter-gatherers,small, tightly knit (联系)groups developed their own patterns of speech independent of each other.Some language experts believe that 10,000 years ago, when the world had just five to ten million people, they spoke perhaps 12,000 languages between them.

Soon afterwards, many of those people started settling down to become farmers, and their languages too became more settled and fewer in number. In recent centres, trade,industrialisation. the development of the nation-state and the spread of universal compulsory education. Especially glbalisation and better communications in the past few decades,all have caused many Languages to disappear,and dominant languages such as English．Spanish and Chinese are increasingly taking over.

At present, the world has about 6 800 languages. The distribution of these languages is hugely uneven. The general rule is that mild zones have relatively few languages. Often spoken by many people while hot. wet zones have lots, often spoken by small numbers.Europe has only around 200 Languages: the Americas about 1,000. Africa 2 400; and Asia and the Pacific perhaps 3,200, of which Papua New Guinea alone accounts for well over 800. The median number (中位数)of speakers is a mere 6.000, which means that half the worlds languages are spoken by fewer people than that

Already well over 400 of the total of, 6,800 languages are close to extinction(消亡), with only a few elderly speakers left. Pick, at random, Busuu in Cameroon (eight remaining speakers),Chiapaneco in Mexico(150). Lipan Apache in the United States(two or three)or Wadjigu in Australia (one, with a question-mark): none of these seems to have much chance of survival.

The values of artistic works,according to cultural relativism(相对主义),are simply reflections of local social and economic conditions.Such a view,however,fails to explain the ability of some works of art to excite the human mind across cultures and through centuries.

History has witnessed the endless productions of Shakespearean plays in every major language of the world.It is never rare to find that Mozart packs Japanese concert halls,as Japanese painter Hiroshige does Paris galleries.Unique works of this kind are different from today’s popular art,even if they began as works of popular art.They have set themselves apart in their timeless appeal and will probably be enjoyed for centuries into the future.

In a 1757 essay,the philosopher David Hume argued that because“the general principles of taste are uniform(不变的)in human nature”,the value of some works of art might be essentially permanent.He observed that Homer was still admired after two thousand years.Works of this type,he believed,spoke to deep and unvarying features of human nature and could continue to exist over centuries.

Now researchers are applying scientific methods to the study of the universality of art.For example,evolutionary psychology is being used by literary scholars to explain the long-lasting themes and plot devices in fiction.The structures of musical pieces are now open to experimental analysis as never before.Research findings seem to indicate that the creation by a great artist is as permanent an achievement as the discovery by a great scientist.

Americans use many expressions about fish and fishing. For example, if something sounds fishy, it may not be true. Sometimes I feel like a fish out of water when I go to a party and everyone but me is doing the latest dance. When I ask my friend if she likes my new dress, I would like her to say something nice. In other words, I am fishing for a compliment.

   Some expressions involve different kinds of fish. Information that is used to draw attention away from the real facts of a situation is called a red herring(鲱鱼). Once I went to a county fair and tried my luck with a game of chance. It was so easy; it was like shooting fish in a barrel(桶). Then I went on the fastest, highest and most frightening ride: the roller coaster. At the end of the ride, I did not feel so well. A friend said I looked green around the gills.

     I grew up in a small town where everybody knew about my life. There were times when I thought I was living in a fish bowl. So I moved to Washington, where things were different and I found I was a little fish in a big sea.

     Now I take the train to work every day during rush hour when many other people travel to their jobs. Sometimes we feel that we are packed in like sardines. Sardines are tiny fish that lie close to each other in cans.

    One man who works in my office is a cold fish. He is unfriendly and does not like to join us at office parties. Another man in my office likes to enjoy alcoholic drinks at parties. In fact, you might say he drinks like a fish. We need to help him stop drinking.

The Beijing Youth Daily on Thursday called attention to the struggles of traditional operas in China.

The newspaper said the number of unique traditional Chinese opera styles had decreased to 286 from368 in1959, with three disappearing every two years on average. Altogether, 74 opera styles had only one troupe left, and most were at the risk of fading away.

Xie Boliang, a professor at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts, said, “It is well known that people should be held accountable for soil erosion, but why do we feel at ease when traditional operas fade away?”

Overwhelmed by modern culture and entertainment such as movies, TV programs and pop music, traditional Chinese operas have been severely marginalized. Despite being included on the state-level Intangible Cultural Heritage list, some operas still have no place to perform.

Because of the market slump (衰退) and low salaries, more traditional Chinese opera practitioners are finding other work, as are many directors and playwrights. Sun Jiazheng, chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, said traditional operas are important carriers of Chinese culture, and should be preserved.

The State Council issued a circular in July calling for the promotion and protection of traditional Chinese operas, saying that it would allocate financial support and extend preferential policies to opera troupes and schools.

A new word has suddenly become wildly popular in China —"tuhao" — which loosely translated means "nouveau riche". There have been more than 100 million references to the word "tuhao" on social media since early September.

Itˈs being used to describe everything from the new Peopleˈs Daily building, to expensive celebrity weddings full of bling, and the new gold-coloured iPhone.

In Chinese "tu" means earth and "hao" means rich. To say someone is tuhao is to imply they come from a poor peasant background, and have made it rich quick — but donˈt quite have the manners, or sophistication to go along with it. Itˈs like the term "nouveau riche", says Professor Steve Tsang at the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies in Nottingham - but has even more negative meanings, suggesting a certain vulgarity(粗俗).

"Tuhao" is actually an old word, dating back perhaps as far as the Southern Dynasty 1,500 years ago, but it has always meant something rather different. During the communist revolution, from the 1920s to early 1950s, it was widely used to refer to landholders and gentry who would bully those beneath them.

This new usage of the term took off in September after a widely-shared joke about a rich, but unhappy man, who goes to a Buddhist monk for advice, expecting to be told to live a more simple life. The monk replies instead with the phrase: "Tuhao, letˈs be friends!"

Chinese Internet users are highly creative in their use of language, and are constantly inventing, and re-inventing words as a way of getting past censorship(审查) rules. But in this case, its popularity seems to be down to the fact that it expresses Chinaˈs changing society so well — many people sneer at those with wealth, but are secretly jealous.

In the United States, when one becomes rich, he wants people to know it. And even if he does not become very rich, he wants people to think that he is. That is what ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ is about, It is the story of someone who tried to look as rich as his neighbors.

The expression was first used in 1913 by a young American called Arthur Momand. He told this story about himself. He began earning $125 aweek at the age of 23. That was a lot of money in those days. He got married and moved with his wife to a very wealthy neighborhood outside New York City. When he saw that rich people rode horses, Momand went horseback riding every day. When he saw that rich people had servants, Momand and his wife also hired a servant and gave big parties for their new neighbors.

It was like a race, but one could never finish this race because one was always trying to keep up. The race ended for Momand and his wife when they could no longer pay for their new way of life. They moved back to an apartment in New York City.

Momand looked around him and noticed that many people do things just to keep up with rich life—style of their neighbours. He saw the funny side of it and started to write a series of short stories, He called it ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ because ‘Jones’ is a very common name in the United States.’ Keeping up with the Joneses’ came to mean keeping up with rich lifestyle of the people around you. Momand’s series appeared in different newspapers across the country for over 28 years.

People never seem to get tired of keeping up with the Joneses. And there are ‘Joneses’ in every city of the world. But one must get tired of trying to keep up with the Joneses because no matter what one does, Mr. Jones always seems to be ahead.

   People in the United States honor their parents with two special days：Mother’s Day, on the second Sunday in May, and Father’s Day, on the third Sunday in June. These days are set aside to show love and respect for parents. They raise their children and educate them to be responsible(有责任感的) citizens. They give love and care. These two days make us think about the changing roles of mothers and fathers. More mothers now work outside the home. More fathers must help with child care.

These two special days are celebrated in many different ways. On Mother’s Day people wear carnations. A red one symbolizes a living mother. A white one shows thatthe mother is dead. Many people attend religious services to honor parents. It is also a day when people whose parents are dead visit the cemetery(墓地).On these days families get together at home, as well as in restaurants. They often have outdoor barbecues for Father’s Day. These are days of fun and good feelings and memories.

Another tradition is to give cards and gifts. Children make them in school. Many people make their own presents. These are valued more than the ones bought in stores. It is not the value of the gift that is important, but it is “the thought that counts”. Greeting card stores, florists, candy makers, bakeries, telephone companies, and other stores do a lot of business during these holidays.