选择知识点

The fast development of modern technology has not only provided people with more income, but also enable them to enjoy long weekends and holidays. Never before have so many people traveled to so many different parts of the world and, with the help of fast, comfortable forms of modern transport, more and more people are tempted to（试图）leave their homes to see more of the world. It seems as if there are travelers everywhere.

People travel because traveling benefits them in a number of ways. First, it enables them to get much pleasure from sight-seeing and photo-taking. Second, traveling makes them fully relaxed and ready to get back to work happily. Third, it offers them an opportunity to visit old friends and make new friends as well. Finally, it allows them to see different customs, learn new things, gain new experience and enables them to come back with a broader mind.

With so many advantages to traveling, I think people should be encouraged to travel from time to time, especially on holidays, if their pocket and health permit.

Low-Cost Gifts for Mother's Day

Gift No. 1

Offer to be your mother's health friend. Promise to be there for any and all doctor's visits whether a disease or a regular medical check-up. Most mothers always say "no need," another set of eyes and ears is always a good idea at a doctor's visit. The best part? This one is free.

Gift No. 2

Help your mother organize all of her medical records, which include the test results and medical information. Put them all in one place. Be sure to make a list of all of her medicines and what times she takes them. "Having all this information in one place could end up saving your mother's life," Dr. Marie Savard said.

Gift No. 3

Enough sleep is connected to general health conditions. "Buy your mother cotton sheets and comfortable pillows to encourage better sleep," Savard said. "We know that good sleep is very important to our health."

Gift No. 4

Some gift companies such as Presents for Purpose allow you to pay it forward this Mother's Day by picking gifts in which 10 percent of the price you pay goes to a charity (慈善机构) Gift givers can choose from a wide variety of useful but inexpensive things -many of which are "green" - and then choose a meaningful charity from a list. When your mother gets the gift, she will be told that she has helped the chosen charity.

English songs have been very popular for people around the world for many decades. Songs from Elvis Presley to Ricky Martin, from the Beatles to Eminem and from Natalie Cole to Britney Spears have all been enjoyed by people around the world, even for people who don’t speak English, and even for people who speak zero English.

From my experience, some people listen to English songs for 20-30 years but still don’t achieve any good English skills. Some people choose English songs to be their main learning method, but most of them fail.

Listening to English songs does not help you to speak English fluently. It does help you gain some vocabulary, but most of these words are unusual ones that you don’t use in everyday life. You won’t learn the sentence “It is a difficult project. We really need to meet the deadline.” in any English songs. All you will hear are love, passion, affection, hate and blue, for the feeling, not the color.

People like using English songs to practice English skills because it’s easy and enjoyable. They think that sitting in the car listening to English songs day after day will improve their English skills. It actually will not.

You will definitely not improve your listening skills because normal people don’t speak with a tune. People don’t talk like Eminem’s songs. You can’t get yourself familiar with English pronunciation or accent just from listening to English songs. The words that they pronounce in the songs are not the words that you will hear in your everyday life. They can even confuse you more about how English is pronounced.

I would fully encourage you to watch English movies and listen to radio news or other normal talks, but not music. Of course, you can consume it for fun but not with the aim of improving your English skills. Having good English skills is not that easy. Remember you should work hard to improve your English step by step.

(Q = Question; A = Answer)

Situation I

Q: If someone sits right next to me in an empty movie theater, is it rude to move?

A: Maybe, but nobody will fault you for it. Chances are that the close sitter doesn’t realize he disturbs you, so he may miss your annoyance. You undoubtedly aren’t the first person he’s met who needs enough room. Forgive his bad judgment, move quietly and enjoy the show.

Situation II

Q: If I use the bathroom at a store, do I need to buy something?

A: Consider frequency and urgency. Is this a one-time thing or an emergency? If so, you don’t have to buy anything, but it would be kind if you did. However, if you regularly use the bathroom at this place, then you are a customer, and you should act like one.

Situation III

Q: If someone is talking loudly on the bus, is there a nice way to ask him to keep it down?

A: No. Try other means: 1) Stare at him until he gets aware of it and quiets down. 2) Lift your finger in a silence motion(动作) and smile. 3) Put on earphones and ignore him.

Situation IV

Q: If I remember my friend’s birthday a day late, should I apologize or just wish her a happy birthday like nothing happened?

A: This is the reason why the word belated was invented. “Happy belated birthday!” is short for: “Well, I know I forgot, but then I remembered. Forgive me and happy birthday.”

Situation V

Q: Can I lie about seeing a text because I was loo busy or lazy to respond to it?

A: Don’t lie. Receiving a text does not mean you need to respond(回复) to it. Why waste a perfectly good lie when the truth will serve? “Yes,” you can say if ever asked, “I saw it.” No explanation is needed as to why you don’t respond.

If you are looking to putting a tree in your home for Christmas, there is always one debate that seems to arise in most households: whether you want a real tree or fake tree. Year after year, as we find ourselves cleaning old pine needles (松针) for months on end, we decide that we will never get another real tree. So that begs the question: Which kind of tree is better?

There is certainly a lot to be said for real trees. There is something fun about gathering the family together, going to a Christmas tree farm, and selecting or even cutting down your own tree. Real Christmas trees have that lovely holiday pine needle smell and they look great in your home.

Of course, on the other hand, they also leave a complete mess behind and needles that seem to keep appearing for weeks or even months after the tree comes down. You must also find a way to deal with your real Christmas tree after you’re done, which may mean cutting it into pieces so it will fit in the trash. Many dustmen will refuse to take away a tree that is left beside your regular trash, especially if it is a big tree or an old, yellow one with falling needles, making it hard to pick up. They don’t want a face full of sharp needles any more than you do!

With a fake Christmas tree, there is no mess, but there is also no Christmas smell and no exciting trip to the Christmas tree farm. Of course, these trees look the same in appearance as a real tree when decorated. Many of them come already with lights, so using that old, messy string of lights will be a thing of the past. For some people, a can of pine air freshener is enough to recreate the pleasant smell of a real tree.

As to which tree is the better choice, it is really a matter of personal preference. Both real and fake trees certainly have their benefits, and knowing which is better for you this Christmas really depends on what your family wants.

a.providing more fun

b.easy to clean up

c.giving off a natural smell

d.easy to decorate

 I wasn't interested in becoming a model at first. I worked as a receptionist in a beauty shop during high school. It was in South Dakota. A woman who had worked for Vogue—a famous fashion magazine said to me, “Why don't you go to New York and be a model?”

So I went to New York at eighteen. I went to the first model agency, they thought that I was too long-waisted. It was too bad since I came all the way from South Dakota. I did an information check on the internet and found that Hunting Hartford had just bought the agency. I looked up in the telephone book and dialed. Then I went there. About half an hour later, the man who had just taken over the agency—he had been a male model before—came in. I was just staring at this unfamiliar man when he said, “You! Come into my office!”

How do you feel as a fashion model? Quite OK, I should say. But you stop thinking when you are working. It takes a lot of nervous energy as well because the camera goes one, two, three very fast and you have to move very fast. I like my job because it gives me freedom. I can have half a day off to do things I like. I can't do that if I do a normal job. I never like becoming a secretary. They have to sit in the office for eight hours a day, facing the same people.

Most models, after one or two years, can't be still very interested in it. But I like being a model. Maybe I was a born one, as many people say.

Finally, I entered the university．Because of my careful savings, I did not have to work during the school year. Then, summer came and it was time to work harder than ever. I continued working as a waitress at night, instructed tennis camps several mornings a week and worked as a secretary for a few hours in the afternoons. I even decided to take a class at a community college. This class at the community college saved me $650. It was an extremely tiring summer and made me anxious to return to my relatively easy life at the university.

During my second and third years of undergraduate schooling, I decided to work about five hours per week in the campus admissions office answering phones. This provided a little spending money and kept me from drawing my savings out. The overall situation looked hopeful as I approached my senior year as long as I could make as much money as I had the previous summer. I wanted to go to Israel to study for 3 weeks, but I hesitated in making this decision because it would cost me $1,600 more to get the credits in Israel. About two weeks later my Mom called to tell me that I had $1,600 in the bank that I had forgotten about! One of my concerns about this trip was not only the cost, but the loss of time to make money; however, I made as much that summer in the ten weeks when I was at home as I had made during the fourteen weeks when I was at home the summer before. The way everything worked together to make this trip possible was one of the most exciting things that have ever happened to me.

This experience has shaped me in many important ways. The first thing that I learned was the importance of a strong work ethic. Working long hours did a lot to develop my character and helped me learn the value of a dollar. It also made me learn how to search for creative ways to settle difficult situations.

In her new book, “The Smartest Kids in the World,” Amanda Ripley, an investigative journalist, tells the story of Tom, a high-school student from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who decides to spend his senior year in Warsaw, Poland. Poland is a surprising educational success story: in the past decade, the country raised students’ test scores from significantly below average to well above it. Polish kids have now outscored(超过……分数) American kids in math and science, even though Poland spends, on average, less than half as much per student as the United States does. One of the most striking differences between the high school Tom attended in Gettysburg and the one he ends up at in Warsaw is that the latter has no football team, or, for that matter, teams of any kind.

Those American High Schools lavish more time and money on sports than on math is an old complaint. This is not a matter of how any given student who plays sports does in school, but of the culture and its priorities. This December, when the latest Program for International Student Assessment(PISA) results are announced, it’s safe to predict that American high-school students will once again display their limited skills in math and reading, outscored not just by students in Poland but also by students in places like South Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Singapore, and Japan. Meanwhile, they will have played some very exciting football games, which will have been breathlessly written up in their hometown papers.

Why does this situation continue? Well, for one thing, kids like it. And for another, according to Ripley, parents seem to like the arrangement, too. She describes a tour she took of a school in Washington D. C. , which costs thirty thousand dollars a year. The tour leader—a mother with three children in the school—was asked about the school’s flaws(暇疵). When she said that the math program was weak, none of the parents taking the tour reacted. When she said that the football program was weak, the parents suddenly became concerned. “Really?” one of them asked worriedly, “What do you mean?”

One of the ironies (讽刺) of the situation is that sports reveal what is possible. American kids’ performance on the field shows just how well they can do when expectations are high. It’s too bad that their test scores show the same thing.

“Blogging is helping students to think and write more critically(批评地),”says an Australian researcher, “and can help draw out people who would otherwise not engage in debate.”

These are the preliminary findings of PHD research by Anne Bartlett-Bragg, a lecturer at the University of Technology, Sydney, who has been using weblogs or blogs in her own teaching since 2001.

“The students are thinking more critically.” she says, “They are learning to be responsible and they’re communicating outside the boundaries of the classroom and the institution, and they like that. “Bartlett-Bragg says in conventional teaching, students often rely on the lecturer as the main source of ideas and critique (评论)for their work. “I’m a bit over listening to my students giving me back in an essay what I’ve told them in class.” she says. “I want them to think for themselves and get different perspectives.”

“What makes blogs useful is their interactive nature.” she says. These web-based forums(论坛)for discussing ideas, experiences or opinions allow students to discuss publicly what they are studying with other students and experts outside their own university. “I really encourage them to put their personal opinion in there, provided they are informed and backed up with evidence.” Bartlett-Bragg says because a lot of academics in her field of electronic or e-learning now have their own blogs, students can engage directly with them.

She says one of the most powerful facilities in weblogs is pinging, which involves a person positing a comment about someone else’s work on their own blog. They use the “Trackback” tool to notify the author when they have published the comment, basically inviting them to discuss it.

“They get such a buzz when they make a comment on another person outside the boundaries of the institution and that person responds, or even gives them some further reading.” she says. “They are getting new perspectives that I can’t give them in a normal lecture.”

As we know, many teen celebrities(名人) feel and think that having a slimmer figure can do great good to them. But, does size really matter? Are teenage fans trying hard to become like their celebrity idols(偶像)? Do celebrities really have the power to influence people, especially teenagers?

For the longest time, many parents blame teen idols for influencing the way their kids act. Have you noticed how teens idolize the celebrities these days? Even, their personal affairs are being followed by kids these days. Take for example the case of Lindsay Lohan of Mary Kate Ashley. They are definitely famous teen stars. But, since they are trying to project an image to satisfy a lot of people in show business, their health and body suffer. Many kids are aware of this problem. But they are easily influenced by these celebrities to exercise and eat less.

It is a fact that the media, and especially famous teen celebrities, can influence people powerfully. But teenagers are easily influenced because teenage years are the period when our personality and identity developments take place. Teens watching TV shows and reading magazines are easily pulled into the dieting and harmful eating habits because the media have some ways to pull these acts. They use thin models and celebrities to endorse(做广告宣传) products or to star in an up-and-coming shows or movies. With fierce competition, celebrities are forced to eat less and do extreme exercise routines to get the roles or offers that come their way.

Living in today’s time and generation is a bit disturbing to a lot of parents. Media, especially as well as the celebrities, have a very powerful influence to drive teenagers to good or bad. It’s good that we can control ourselves to avoid bad things from happening. If not, parents should really be aware and guide their teens to determine what’s in and what’s out.