Winners Club

    You choose to be a winner!

    The Winners Club is a bank account specially designed for teenagers. It has been made to help you better manage your money. The Winners Club is a transaction account（交易账户）where you receive a key-card so you can get to your money 24/7 — that's 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!

    It's a club with impressive features for teenagers.

    No account keeping fees!

    You're no millionaire so we don't expect you to pay large fees. In fact, there are no account keeping or transaction fees!

    Excellent interest rates!

    You want your money to grow. The Winners Club has a good rate of interest which gets even better if you make at least two deposits（储蓄）without taking them out in a month.

Convenient

    Teenagers are busy—we get that. You may never need to come to a bank at all. With the Winners Club, you can choose to use handy tellers and to bank from home using the phone and the Internet, you can have money directly deposited into your Winners Club account. This could be your pocket money or your pay from your part-time job!

Mega magazine included

    Along with your regular report, you will receive a FREE magazine full of good ideas to make even more of your money. There are also fantastic offers and competitions only for Winners Club members.

    The Winners Club is a great choice for teenagers. And it is so easy to join. Simply fill in an application form. You will have to get permission from your parent (so we can organize that cool key-card) but it is easy. We can't wait to hear from you. It's the best way to choose to be a winner!

    Hannah Levine decided she wanted to give hugs to all of the children and families in need at local hospitals.

    Because she couldn't give them hugs one by one, Levine, then a sixth-grader, decided she would use her talents(才能) to do the next best thing. She began to knit(编织) hats, scarves, and blankets for families staying at the Ronald McDonald House at Stanford. Her creations also went to Bundle of Joy, a program that provides newborn baby items for families in need, and to Knitting Pals by the Bay, a local organization that provides hand-knitted caps to cancer patients.

    "I love to knit, and I thought it would be a great idea to make all these handmade items for kids and adults who need them. It would be like a hug for them." Levine explained.

    Levine started the project about a year ago. "I think it's just really fun to do, and it keeps me busy." said Levine, now 13.

    Once she got started, Levine realized that her project could be much bigger than the goods she was able to produce with just her own hands. So she sent emails to her school and communities, asking for knitted donations(捐赠物) to the project she named "Hannah's Warm Hugs". She also posted advertisements at Starbucks and other locations in her area. The warm goods began to pour in.

    "It was amazing; more strangers than people she knew started dropping donations at our door." said Levine's mother, Laura Levine. "We ended up with this huge box of items she was donating."

    The knitted items numbered in the hundreds. Levine made her first round of donations around Hanukkah (an eight-day Jewish holiday in November or December) and later received thank-you letters from the organizations. Levine is still knitting, and she said the project will continue.

    "It has turned into a bigger thing than she had thought." her mom said. "It made her feel pretty good; it made us feel pretty good.”

    Do you love Beats headphones, True Religion jeans, and UGG shoes? These are some of the most popular brands(品牌) around. They are also expensive. But some experts say they are not much better than cheaper brands.

    For example, Jim Wilcox works for Consumer Reports. He tested all kinds of headphones. He says that $80 Koss Pro headphones provide basically the same quality and comfort as Beats. So why do people pay twice or even 10 times as much for the hottest brands?

    Experts say because it's fashionable, and expensive brands send a message. Brands say "I belong" or "I can afford it."

    Some people think that expensive brand names are worth the price. They say that some designer clothes are really of top quality and that they last longer than cheaper brands. Some teenagers choose to wear popular brands because these brands make them feel good about themselves.

    Alexandra Allam, 17, likes to buy brand-name products. "I'd rather spend the extra money getting something I know I'll be satisfied with." she says. Her friend Emmy Swan agrees, saying "As long as you can afford it, it seems reasonable to buy what you want." But not all teenagers agree. "Spending hundreds of dollars for designer is stupid and unreasonable," says Daniel Steinbrecher, 16. "It's fake（假的）happiness."

    People who are against wearing expensive brand names say that many designer brands aren't any better. "It's wasteful to buy things just because they are popular." says Edmund Williams, 15. "You'll feel better if you buy things because you like them. If you have extra money to spend, it would be better to give it to people in need."

    Almost every machine with moving parts has wheels, yet no one knows exactly when the first wheel was invented or what it was used for. We do know, however, that they existed over 5,500 years ago in ancient Asia.

    The oldest known transport wheel was discovered in 2002 in Slovenia. It is over 5,100 years old. Evidence suggests that wheels for transport didn't become popular for a while, though. This could be because animals did a perfectly good job of carrying farming tools and humans around.

    But it could also be because of a difficult situation. While wheels need to roll on smooth surfaces, roads with smooth surfaces weren't going to be constructed until there was plenty of demand for them. Eventually, road surfaces did become smoother, but this difficult situation appeared again a few centuries later. There had been no important changes in wheel and vehicle design before the arrival of modem road design.

    In the mid-1700s, a Frenchman came up with a new design of road—a base layer (层) of large stones covered with a thin layer of smaller stones. A Scotsman improved on this design in the 1820s and a strong, lasting road surface became a reality. At around the same time, metal hubs (the central part of a wheel) came into being, followed by the pneumatic tyre (充气轮胎) in 1846. Alloy wheels were invented in 1967, sixty years after the appearance of tarmacked roads (柏油路). As wheel design took off, vehicles got faster and faster.

    Do you know how to pick a good book you'll really like? Here are some tips.

    Start with Your Interest.   You can pick something that you love to read, not for school. They can be ancient martial arts(武术), computers, or fashion design. You name it, there are books about it.

    What's Your Type? Do you prefer fiction or nonfiction (or both)? Fiction books, like novels, can transport you to another world or help you imagine something beyond your own experience. Nonfiction books give you the who, what, when, and why of something.   Many of them read like novels from start to finish.

    Read the Description. The reviews and quotes(引语) on the back and inside covers of many books give you an idea of what the book is about. They can also help you pick future books, too. If you find a book you really like, take a minute to read the quotes and see which authors praised the book.  

    Find a Family Favorite. Which book did your mother love best when she was at your age? Find out and give them a read — then you can share your thoughts about the book.

    Finally, you'll probably enjoy what you're reading a lot more if you find a quiet place and make time for the book.  You can put on some good music, get yourself some tea and let yourself be carried away by the book. You'll see that time does fly when you're reading something you love!

A. How about your brothers and sisters?

B. They tell stories using facts — but that doesn't mean they're boring.

C. Reading is a good way to improve your English.

D. Most reading is best enjoyed when you can concentrate on it.

E. Often, they'll have similar styles and you might find books you like by those authors, too.

F. So you should read as much as possible when you are free.

G. Reading on your own isn't like reading for school.

    The little stream in the green forest flowed past and the beautiful wild flowers surrounded the small house there.

    All of a sudden, a deer raced into the yard, where a little boy was  1. The deer caught the boy's 2 with its antlers (鹿角). This scared the little boy so much that he  3 a loud cry, which brought his mother 4 out to see what the matter was. She came out just in time to 5the deer running off towards the mountains with her little boy.

    The boy's mother was greatly 6! She ran after the deer as fast as she could, and not too far away, she found her little boy sitting 7 on the grass. When he saw his mother, the little boy laughed and reached out his arms to her. His mother lifted him up and 8 him tightly. She was so happy that she 9.

    She hurried back to their home with her precious(珍爱的) son. When she got there, she stopped dead in her tracks, 10 at what she saw. The huge tree behind their house had fallen over 11 she was out running after the deer to save her son. The whole house was destroyed under its great 12.

    Then the little boy's mother 13 the day about a year before when a deer 14 from a hunter had run into her house. She felt sorry for the frightened deer, so she covered it with some clothes, 15 it with some fresh grass and let it return to the forest later.

    The deer seemed to 16 that she had saved its life, because as it left, it kept bending its head to her, as if thanking her for her 17.

    She never imagined that the deer 18 remember her kindness. The deer 19 knew the tree was going to fall and hurt her, so it came back to show its 20.

    When the boy's mother thought of all this, she said, "Saving the life of another is the same as saving your own life."

    How are you getting along with your senior high school? It may be hard for you as this is the first time that you (leave) your parents. I know that you are now having trouble (communicate) with others, and you may often feel lonely. That's you are new here and people don't know about you. But I think you can overcome the difficulty if you can follow the advice below.

    First, you should attach great (important) to taking an active part in the discussions and show your own opinions about the matters, and at the same time, learn to listen to other people's views (careful). Second, you should learn about your classmates' likes and dislikes,can make you get familiar with them. Only in this way can you get to know more (difference) people and show them that you are just as friendly. Last but not least, I'm always here ready to help. We can take part in some (activity) together and I can introduce you to others.

    There's no need (worry) too much, people will know you more very soon and will like to make friends with you if you can do the above. Just remember, "God helps those who help themselves".

增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（∧）并在其下面写出该加的词。

删除：在错的词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。

注意：1).每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；

      2).只允许修改10处，多者（从第11处起）不计分。

Dear Ms Brown,

    I'm writing this letter to express my thanks to you for help me with my English study during the past three years. I can still remember how poor mine English was when I came to senior high school. But I even felt frightened each time I attended an English class. Know this, you communicated with me patiently and let me know the important of learning English well. Then you taught me to work hard unless I wanted to succeed and even spent many of your free time helping me. With your help, I have made a great progress. I want to tell you the news that I had been admitted to a key university up to now.

    You are such a good teacher you have made my dream come true. Thank you.

Yours,

Tom

注意：

1).词数100字左右，不出现真实姓名与学校；

2).可适当增加细节，使行文连贯流畅；

Dear editor,

Yours,

Li Hua