It was an oral English class and in front of us was standing our teacher Lila Betray, who was a university student from the US. Somehow we came to the point whether any of us could sing an English pop song in front of the class. You know, maybe three or more out of ten Chinese students are shy in class. As a result, there was silence in class for quite a while, which made everybody feel rather embarrassed(尴尬的), including the teacher.

    I was a shy boy. However, just at that moment, a great idea struck me suddenly."Seize the enjoyment! Seize the opportunity. Yes, there couldn't be a better opportunity." I said to myself. "Why not seize it? Why should I have always to be the guy regretting missing the opportunity just because of shyness? Yes, maybe I should have a try!"

    So, I raised my hand. And I remember that it took me quite a while to think what the song's name was. Though I sang no more than five sentences because of forgetting the lyrics(歌词), their clapping hands told me that I did the job well. Later, I got a gift and I was really happy.

    I think that is one of the most unforgettable moments in my life. Through this experience, I've also got to know that we should believe that we can do the job well, no matter how difficult it seems for us. Just have a little more courage.

    Sue Hendrickson is a self-taught fossil（化石）hunter. As a kid, Sue Hendrickson often walked with her head down. “People said, 'Look up. Smile!” she says. “Now, I realize I was born to look for things and just didn't know it.”

    Sue Hendrickson does more than look—she finds valuable things: Shipwrecks（沉船）with treasure, ancient sunken cities, and in 1990, she found Sue, the world's largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex（霸王龙）. Is Hendrickson lucky? Well, maybe. But she also knows how to look.

    “I limit the area where I'm going to look,” she says. No one knew the location of the sunken ship San Diego in the Philippines. For a year, Hendrickson and other researchers searched papers and sailors' diaries. “The descriptions of the ship's sailors led us to the wreck,” she says. The team also used a tool that can respond to metal. This tool found the San Diego. All the work paid off. The 400-year-old ship was complete, with valuable gold and silver coins.

    To find the dinosaur she calls “the biggest animal that ever walked on earth,” Hendrickson started with maps made to search for oil. What Hendrickson found was the largest and most complete T-rex found to date. The T-rex is 42 feet long with 200 bones! Because it is so complete, scientists were able to infer that Sue walked at about 6 miles per hour and did not run faster than 15 miles an hour. Before Sue was discovered, they thought T-rex was much faster. To learn more about T-rex Sue, go to the Field Museum in Chicago.

    There's plenty left to be found, Hendrickson says, including answers to mysterious such as how T-rex lived. “I tell kids that they need to grow up and work them out because all of us old persons haven't yet!”

    In this Pennsylvania city, Pittsburgh is shrinking but getting wealthier. Since 2000, its population has declined by 95,000 while its income per capita (人均) has shot up 24 percent. The trend is taking hold in many other cities, like Buffalo in New York, Providence in Rhode Island and New Orleans.

    Some of these areas have created more high-paying jobs in energy, health care or education. Others have managed to reshape their producing industry for a new economy. Higher-paying jobs have a greater effect because they create demand for additional services. "The story in Pittsburgh is very positive, and other areas are looking at it as an example of the transformation that might be possible,” said Guhan Venkatu, who wrote an economic history of the area called “Rust and Renewal” for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

    Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh have helped bring tech jobs and innovation(革新) to the area by sponsoring tech centers that help graduates start companies without moving to Silicon Valley or San Francisco. This has helped keep Pittsburgh's educated young population growing even as the entire population in the city has dropped.

    Pittsburgh has more STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) jobs than other shrinking cities, about 80, 000 or 7% of all jobs. STEM jobs add productivity and income growth to the area. Manufacturers of high-tech medical equipment in the Pittsburgh area also have doubled employment in the last 10 years.

    However, some experts question whether growing income per capita can really make up for a declining population. According to Patrick Adler, a researcher at the University of Toronto, population loss does matter if it means lower-skilled workers have fled because of a lack of opportunity. What's more, high-paying jobs in education and health care can disappear if the population declines too greatly. So it'd be wise to find ways to increase the population.

    The United States of America is mainly an English-speaking country. The majority of the population speak English as their native language. Besides, education, social activities, etc. are conducted in English. Across but for the most part, Americans speak one common language. This language is sometimes called American English.

    However, not everyone in the USA is a native speaker of English. Most immigrants (移民)are speakers of other languages. There are hundreds of communities around the USA where English is not the most commonly used languages. Chinese, Italian, German, Greek, Spanish and French are all spoken in various communities in the USA. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language after English. It is widely spoken in New York and across the southern part of the country. For speakers of other languages, learning English is important, but teaching people to speak English as a second language was given little attention. Non-English speakers were expected to "pick up" the language by meeting with others in public. Recently, this has changed.

    Today, most large public schools and community colleges have ESL(English as a Second Language )programs; American English teachers feel that English students should learn the language the way they will use it. Therefore, ESL programs offer different English lessons to different students. Some programs teach students to communicate in English in public. Other programs teach the kind of English people who will need for their jobs. American ESL instructional methods do not lay emphasis on grammar or translation, but on the importance of communication. The goal is to get the English learners to learn by using the language.

    Many people have long dreamed of being able to fly around as simply as riding a bicycle.

    Yet the safety and strength of a flying bike was always a big problem. Over the past 10 years' developments in technology have moved the dream of personal flying vehicle closer to reality. Now, two groups of inventors say such vehicles may be available very soon.

    Grant Stapleton from Malloy Aeronautics says the Hoverbike, which is able to get in and out of small spaces very quickly, will be a truly personal flying vehicle." It can be moved across continents very quickly because it can be folded and packed," he adds.

    Mr. Stapleton says safety was the company's main concern when developing the Hoverbike, He says the designers solved the safety issue by using overlapping rotors (折叠旋翼)to power the vehicle. The company is testing both a one-third size model and a full-size prototype (原型))of the Hoverbike.

    Inventors say their Hovebike will most likely be used first by the police and emergency rescue teams.

    In New Zealand, the Martin Aircraft Company is also testing a full-size prototype of its personal flying bike, called Jetpack. It can fly for more than 30 minutes, up to 1,000 meters high and reach a speed of 74 kilometers per hour.

    Peter Coker is the CEO of Martin Aircraft Company. He said Jetpack" is built around safety from the start" In his words, reliability is the most important part of it. We have safety built into the actual structure itself very similar to a Formula One racing car."

    Jetpack uses a gasoline-powered engine that produces two powerful jet streams. Mr. Coker says it also has a parachute (降落伞)that can be used should there be an emergency.

    "It opens at a very low altitude and actually saves both the aircraft and the pilot in an emergency," he adds.

    High school was a hard time for Me in the beginning because I had just moved to a small town and knew basically no one. I loved to play basketball but was afraid to go to tryout (选拔)for the school's team because I didn't know anyone. One day all that changed when I missed the bus home and decided to shoot baskets on the school playground to kill time. The coach Mr Colbath had been watching me make various baskets and was pretty impressed with my moves.

    He came up to me and asked me who had taught me to play like that. I told him that my dad had taught me how to play basketball. He asked me if he would see me at the tryout on Friday, but I said no and told him why. He told me to have a try because I played very well and would maybe make some friends on the court. After thinking for a few minutes. I finally decided to have a try.

    On the day of the tryout, the coach came, found me and helped me practice before the tryout. He helped me a lot and I did very well at the tryout and many members of the team were quite impressed. I did make the team and over the next few years the coach helped me both on and off the court. He helped me do my math which I had such a difficult time with and he even taught me how to live independently.

    I will never forget Mr Colbath. He really inspired me and changed my life. I would not be the person that I am today if he had not taken such an interest in me when I was in high school.