Why play games? Because they are fun, and a lot more besides. Following the rules… planning your next move…acting as a team member…These are all “game” ideas that you will come across throughout your life.

    Think about some of the games you played as a young child, such as rope-jumping and hide-and-seek. Such games are entertaining and fun. But perhaps more importantly, they translate life into exciting dramas that teach children some of the basic rules they will be expected to follow the rest of their lives, such an taking turns and cooperating（合作）.

    Many children's games have a practical side. Children around the world play games that prepare them for work they will do as grown-ups. For instance, some Saudi Arabian children play a game called bones，which sharpens the hand-eye coordination（协调）needed in hunting.

    Many sports encourage national or local pride. The most famous games of all, the Olympic Games, bring athletes from around the world together to take part in friendly competition. People who watch the event wave flags, knowing that a gold medal is a win for an entire country, not just the athlete who earned it. For countries experiencing natural disasters or war, an Olympic win can mean so much.

    Sports are also an event that unites people. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world. People on all continents play it—some for fun and some for a living. Nicolette Iribarne, a Californian soccer player, has discovered a way to spread hope through soccer. He created a foundation to provide poor children with not only soccer balls but also a promising future.

    Next time you play your favorite game or sport, think about why you enjoy it, what skills are needed, and whether these skills will help you in other aspects of your life.

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    They wear the latest fashions with the most up­to­date accessories(配饰)．Yet these are not girls in their teens or twenties but women in their sixties and seventies. A generation which would once only wear old­fashioned clothes is now favouring the same high street looks worn by those half their age.

    Professor Julia Twigg，a social policy expert，said，“Women over 75 are now shopping for clothes more often than they did when they were young in the 1960s.In the 1960s buying a coat for a woman was a serious matter. It was an expensive item that they would purchase only every three or four years—now you can pick one up at the supermarket whenever you wish to. Fashion is a lot cheaper and people get tired of things more quickly.”

    Professor Twigg analysed family expenditure(支出)data and found that while the percentage of spending on clothes and shoes by women had stayed around the same—at 5 or 6 per cent of spending—the amount of clothes bought had risen sharply.

    The professor said.“Clothes are now 70 per cent cheaper than they were in the 1960s because of the huge expansion of production in the Far East. In the 1960s Leeds was the heart of the British fashion industry and that was where most of the clothes came from，but now almost all of our clothes are sourced elsewhere. Everyone is buying more clothes but in general we are not spending more money on them.”

    Angela Barnard，who runs her own fashion business in London，said older women were much more affected by celebrity(名流)style than in previous years.

She said，“When people see stars such as Judi Dench and Helen Mirren looking attractive and fashionable in their sixties，they want to follow them. Older women are much more aware of celebrities. There's also the boom in TV programmes showing people how they can change their look，and many of my older customers do yoga to stay in shape well in their fifties. When I started my business a few years ago，my older customers tended to be very rich，but now they are what I would call ordinary women. My own mother is 61 and she wears the latest fashions in a way she would never have done ten years ago.”

                                                                                        How Important Is Fashion?

    Is looking fashionable more important than being comfortable? Many people seem to think so, judging by the things they wear. But fashion is not everything. It is more important to be a healthy and good person.

    People go to great lengths to be fashionable. Some people think they have to have a certain body type, so they go on extreme, unhealthy diets in order to change their bodies. In addition, many women wear uncomfortable fashions, such as high-heeled shoes that create blisters(水泡), tight body shapers that limit blood flow, and sticky false eyelashes(假睫毛). Men and women alike spend time and money on produces that change their natural hair color and use hot irons and blow dryers to curl or straighten their hair. Some people spend several hours a day in front of a mirror. Is fashion important enough to spend so much time and effort on changing how you look like?

    If the purpose of fashion is to make a person feel good, it does not make sense that he or she would go through so much discomfort to be fashionable. Fashion should not come first. People should prioritize(优先考虑)being healthy and positive. What people wear does not indicate anything about their personalities. Instead of going on strict diets and starving, why not eat some healthy foods and then exercise? By doing these things, you can keep a healthy lifestyle and truly grow as a person.

Famous Modern Chinese Buildings

    Beijing International Airport

    The first place most visitors see when they arrive in China is Beijing International Airport. The airport was constructed in the 1950s. It has an indoor garden, a children's playground, and over 70 food businesses in Terminal 3 alone.

Shanghai World Financial Center

    Completed in 2008, SWFC took over 10 years to complete due to financial shortages and construction delays. Since its completion, it has won countless architectural awards.

    Tourists are welcome at SWFC's viewing platform, which at 474 meters above ground is the world's highest closed viewing platform.

    The Water Cube

    It was constructed for use during the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics. Now visitors can express surprise at the architecture of the building. They can enjoy the indoor atmosphere as well.

    Among the offerings of the Water Cube are a restaurant and bar, a shopping area, and Water World, a family water park

    The Bird's Nest, Beijing

    It was designed mainly for the 2008 Summer Olympics. It can hold up to 80,000 people and has been used for a winter theme park. Nowadays, its main income is as a tourist attraction. It draws more than 20,000 tourists every day.

    National Center for the Performing Arts

    It was completed in 2007. The building is surrounded by a man-made lake, requiring guests to enter via an underground hallway. It is home to an Opera Hall, Music Hall, and Theater.

    I start every summer with the best of intentions: to attack one big book from the past, a classic that I was supposed to have read when young and ambitious. Often the pairings of books and settings have been purely accidental: "Moby Dick" on a three-day cross-country train trip: "The Magic Mountain" in a New England beachside cottage with no locks on the doors, no telephones or televisions in the rooms, and little to do beyond row on the salt pond. Attempting "The Man Without Qualities" on a return to Hawaii, my native state, however, was less fruitful: I made it through one and a quarter volumes (册), then decided that I'd got the point and went swimming instead.

    But this summer I find myself at a loss. I'm not quite interested in Balzac, say, or "Tristram Shandy." There's always War and Peace, which I've covered some distance several times, only to get bogged down in the "War" part, set it aside for a while, and realize that I have to start over from the beginning again, having forgotten everyone's name and social rank. How appealing to simply fall back on a favorite-once more into "The Waves" or "Justine," which feels almost like cheating, too exciting and too much fun to properly belong in serious literature.

    And then there's Stendhal's "The Red and the Black," which happens to be the name of my favorite cocktail (鸡尾酒) of the summer, created by Michael Cecconi at Savoy and BackForty. It is easy to drink, and knocking back three or four seems like such a delightful idea. Cecconi's theory: "I take whatever's fresh at the green market and turn it into liquid." The result is a pure shot of afternoon in the park, making one feel cheerful and peaceful all at once, lying on uncut grass with eyes shut, sun beating through the lids...

    If English means endless new words, difficult grammar and sometimes strange pronunciation, you are wrong. Haven't you noticed that you have become smarter since you started to learn a language?

    According to a new study by a British university, learning a second language can lead to an increase in your brain power. Researchers found that learning other languages changes grey matter. This is the area of the brain which processes information. It is similar to the way that exercise builds muscles.

    The study also found the effect is greater when the younger people learn a second language. A team led by Dr. Andrea Mechelli, from University College London, took a group of Britons who only spoke English. They were compared with a group of "early bilinguals" who had learnt a second language before the age of five, as well as a number of later learners.

    Scans showed that grey matter density (密度) in the brain was greater in bilinguals than in people without a second language. But the longer a person waited before mastering a new language, the smaller the difference.

    "Our findings suggest that the structure of the brain is changed by the experience of learning a second language," said the scientists.

    It means that the change itself increases the ability to learn.

    Professor Dylan Vaughan Jones of the University of Wales, has researched the link between bilingualism and maths skills. "Having two languages gives you two windows on the world and makes the brain more flexible (灵活的)," he said. "You are actually going beyond language and have a better understanding of different ideas."

    The findings were matched in a study of native Italian speakers who had learned English as a second language between the ages of two and thirty-four. Reading, writing, and comprehension were all tested. The results showed that the younger they started to learn, the better. "Studying a language means you get an entrance to another world," explained the scientists.