Keeping pace with teachers is a fine way to study English. Teachers are experienced and their plans are systematic. But remember to work in a way that suits you. It's important to learn from past mistakes as well. Keep a notebook to make a record of the mistakes you make－it'll help you avoid making the same ones later.

    The time of life may be hard，but you're not alone. You may be busy studying，but you can show your care by calling your friends or sending short messages. Don't let your friendships die.

    It's as important to live well as it is to study well. Going to bed no later than 11：30 pm is vital. It puts you in the right mood for the next day. You needn't follow a special diet，but make sure you are eating nutritious meals each day.

    The person who plays well，studies well. Having a lot of schoolwork doesn't mean having to give up other activities. Playing basketball or having a talk with your classmates can relax yourself. Time out is not a waste of time but helps you study more efficiently.

    Besides taking the big exam，you have other choices for college. I took the independent enrollment exam held by Peking University and some other students even were preparing to study abroad. Pay attention to any relevant information you can find，whether it's from school，the news media or other sources.

    Everyone should be so lucky as to have a friend like Francia Raisa. On Thursday, singer and actress Selena Gomez, 25, used Instagram to explain why she was "laying low" this summer. She posted a photo of herself in a hospital bed with her friend Francia Raisa holding hands. She said she recently received a kidney transplant from her best friend because of complications(并发症) from lupus(狼疮), an autoimmune disease, which means it is the result of the immune system attacking normal tissue, including the kidneys, brain, heart and lungs.

    People with lupus may first experience tiredness, joint pain or a little bit of rash(皮疹) on their bodies and can go for a long time before their doctors realize it is more serious. Many people see two or four doctors before the real problem is picked up. According to Dr. Kyriakos Kirou, roughly a third to one-half of people with lupus develop kidney disease, and up to one in five of them will eventually need a transplant, sometimes because they weren't treated with effective drugs to prevent the immune system from attacking the kidneys. Though Gomez said that she was "very well now," she warned about the dangers of not taking medical diagnoses seriously, like she initially did.

    Her Instagram post also called attention to two major health topics: the need for living organ donators and the fact that Gomez represents three groups more likely to be diagnosed with lupus and lupus-related kidney disease. Nine out of 10 people diagnosed with lupus are women, and most develop the disease between the ages of 15 to 44. And lupus is two to three times more common among women of color, including Hispanic women, according to the Lupus Foundation.

    Raisa is Latina, and Gomez's father is of Mexican origin. While it's not essential that the organ donator and receiver be of the same ethnicity, people who share a similar background sometimes are better matched, according to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing.

Dogs

    Almost everyone likes dogs, and almost everyone likes to read stories about dogs.

    I have a friend who has a large police dog named Jack. Police dogs are often very clever. Every Sunday afternoon my friend takes Jack for a long walk in the park. Jack likes these long walks very much.

    One Sunday afternoon a young man came to visit my friend. He stayed a long time. He talked and talked. Soon it was time for my friend to take Jack for his walk. But the visitor still stayed. Jack became very worried. He walked around the room several times and then sat down in front of the visitor and looked at him. But the visitor paid no attention (注意).He kept on talking. Finally Jack could stand it no longer. He went out of the room and came back a few minutes later. He sat down again in front of the visitor but this time he held the visitor's hat in his mouth.

    Here is another story about a clever dog. It was a seeing-eye dog. A seeing-eye dog is a special dog that helps blind people walk along the streets and do many other things. We call these dogs "seeing-eye" dogs because they are the "eyes" of the blind man and they help him to "see". These dogs usually go to special schools for several years to learn to help blind people.

    One day a seeing-eye dog and a blind man got on a bus together. The bus was full of people and there were no seats. One man, however, soon got up and left his seat. The dog took the blind man to the seat, but there was very little space. The dog began to push the people on each side with his nose. He pushed and pushed until the people moved down and finally there was enough space for two people. The blind man then sat down and the dog got up on the seat at his side. He lie down and put his head on the leg of the blind man. He was very comfortable and soon fell asleep. Everyone on the bus had to smile at the intelligence (聪明) of the dog in making space for the blind man and, at the same time, making a place for himself.

    Disease, poverty, hate, love — Charles Dickens' stories opened his readers' eyes to the most important themes of his age. Two hundred years later, his stories still speak volumes across the world, proving that Dickens' legacy (遗产) was far greater than just "great-literature".

    February 7 marks the 200th anniversary of the writer's birthday. To mark this date, BBC writer Alex Hudson listed six things Dickens gave the modern world. Let's take a look at two of them.

    A White Christmas

    Dickens is described as "the man who invented Christmas"— not the religious festival, but the cultural aspects that we associate with the festive season today.

    In the early 19th century, Christmas was barely worth mentioning, according to critic and writer Leigh Hunt. The committee which ran the Conservative Party even held ordinary business meetings on Christmas Day — unthinkable in the West nowadays, when everyone but the most necessary workers takes at least three days off.

    Many people believe that Dickens' popular descriptions of the festive period became a blueprint for generations to come. In his classic novel, A Christmas Carol, he not only put forward the idea of snow at Christmas, but also painted a picture of glowing warmth —“home enjoyments, affections and hopes".

    In his biography of Dickens, Peter Ackroyd wrote:" Dickens can be said to have almost single-handedly created the modern idea of Christmas."

    "Dickensian" poverty

    Dickens was one of the first to take an honest look at the underclass and the poor of Victorian London.

    He helped popularize the term "red tape" to describe situations where people in power use needless amounts of bureaucracy (官僚作风) in a way that particularly hurts the weaker and poorer members of society.

    "Dickensian" has now become a powerful word for describing an unacceptable level of poverty. In 2009, when the president of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in the UK wanted to talk about poverty in some areas of Britain, she did not use words like "terrible" or "horrific", but rather described it as "life mirroring the times of Dickens".

    In 1994 I wrote a letter. I stuck it in an envelope, put it away and completely forgot about it. It wasn't until we moved into our new home in 2006 that I found it again. It was addressed to me with explicit instructions not to open until my birthday 2005. It was now 2006 so I decided to open it. This is what it said: Dear Sherri.

    By the time you read this you will be 30. At the age of 18 I had so many hopes and dreams about where you'd be, what you'd be doing and with whom you'd spend your life with.

    Right now I hope that you have traveled and seen everything you've always wanted to, both in Canada and overseas, and maybe even settled down somewhere in Australia doing some research in the field of biology (genetics).I hope you're married to the man of your dreams. The man of mine is Gwynn. He is originally from South Africa (another place I wish to visit).

    However, if things don't go according to plan for you, I wish you all the love, happiness and joy in the world and don't settle for anything less than the best since that is absolutely what you deserve.

    Live long, be happy and live life to it's fullest.

    Love Sherri "18"

    When I read this for the first time since writing it I was floored. Even now having dug this up again another 4 years later I still can't help but think this is really cool. So much of what I wanted for myself has materialized. I did travel to a few more places in Canada although I haven't seen everything I'd like to.

    I did marry the man of my dreams and yes he still is my one and only. I lived in Australia for nearly 4 years, I had a career in Biology in the field of genetics for 10 years. I have two lovely kids I have not one dog but two dogs. Gwynn is a computer programmer.

    I suppose these were things that I really did want. Having never strayed too far from home overseas travel was a huge deal. Having never been away from my family moving to Australia for several years was an huge decision. I find it fascinating how the dreams of a young and naive little girl can become a grown woman's reality.

    How about writing a letter now to yourself in, say, 10 years from now? It's an interesting experiment.

    We talk continuously about how to make children more "resilient(有恢复力的)", but whatever were doing, it's not working. Rates of anxiety disorders and depression are rising rapidly among teenagers. What are we doing wrong?

    Nassim Taleb invented the word "antifragile" and used it to describe a small but very important class of systems that gain from shocks, challenges, and disorder. The immune system is one of them: it requires exposure to certain kinds of bacteria and potential allergens(过敏源)in childhood in order to develop to its full ability.

    Children's social and emotional abilities are as antifragile as their immune systems. If we overprotect kids and keep them "safe" from unpleasant social situations and negative emotions we deprive(剥夺)them of the challenges and opportunities for skill-building they need to grow strong. Such children are likely to suffer more when exposed later to other unpleasant but ordinary life events, such as teasing and social rejection.

    It's not the kids fault. In the UK, as in the US, parents became much more fearful in the 1980s and 1990s as cable TV and later the Internet exposed everyone, more and more, to those rare occurrences of crimes and accidents that now occur less and less, Outdoor play and independent mobility went down; screen time and adult-monitored activities went up.

    Yet free play in which kids work out their own rules of engagement, take small risks, and learn to master small dangers turns out to be vital for the development of adult social and even physical competence, Depriving them of free play prevents their social-emotional growth. Norwegian play researchers Ellen Sandseter and Leif Kennair warned: "We may observe an increased anxiety or mental disorders in society if children are forbidden from participating in age adequate risky play."

    They wrote those words in 2011. Over the following few years, their prediction came true. Kids born after 1994 are suffering from much higher rates of anxiety disorders and depression than the previous generation did. Besides, there is also a rise in the rate at which teenage girls are admitted to hospital for deliberately harming themselves.

    What can we do to change these trends? How can we raise kids strong enough to handle the ordinary and extraordinary challenges of life? We can't guarantee that giving primary school children more independence today will bring down the rate of teenage suicide tomorrow. The links between childhood overprotection and teenage mental illness are suggestive but not clear-cut. Yet there are good reasons to suspect that by depriving our naturally antifragile kids of the wide range of experiences they need to become strong, we are systematically preventing their growth. We should let go-and let them grow.