Fashion, a term that applies to clothing, hairstyle, footwear, furniture and so on, is like a wind and is changing rapidly. From school-going kids to working professionals, everyday wants to look their best. Fashion is promoted mostly by TV advertisements and celebrities. Many people defined their fashion statement as comfort. They wear whatever makes them feel comfortable. Of course you need to consider the occasion too. You can't wear a jogging suit and go for a wedding and similarly you won't wear a skirt to go jogging.

    Nowadays, fashion has become a common language for people all over the world, it helps to connect people internationally, because it travels from one city to another. Sometimes, fashion can be an inspiration for many to discover their hidden potential, and it persuades individuals to attend fashion schools and make something out of their career. In other words, fashion inspires some people to expand their knowledge and creativity to turn their hobby into a career. And therefore, fashion offers employment opportunities to those who dream about being a part of the fashion industry.

    Additionally, following your own fashion statement makes you a more independent thinker. If you think you have the ability to carry the attire(服装),then it fills you up with a great deal of confidence. It also helps you to make new friends easily. If you share the same interest as other people, then connecting with them won't be difficult. You will have a common thing to base your decisions on.

    However, there are also negative impacts of fashion. For example, today some students focus more and more on fashion than on their studies. They want to know everything about fashion, but little about their school or college activities. There are other problems, too. People experimenting with their hair or skin often forget about the allergies(过敏)they may have to face when using cosmetic(美容的)products. Being fashion-conscious can even make you anxious and depressed if you don't feel you are dressed up to the mark. Worse still, fashion can do harm to our environment through the procedure and ingredients used to produce fashionable products. Often, animal fur is used in jackets and fur coats. A large number of birds are killed, and experiments are done on animals to check if the products would be allergic to humans.

    On a concluding note, fashion will not be harmful to our society if we learn to create a balance between our studies and interests. There is no harm in being fashionable, but don't let it interfere with your way of life and career.

    The history of chocolate begins with a plant whose name is cacao. For centuries, people worldwide have been enjoying the rich favor of chocolate, a product made from cacao{#blank#}1{#/blank#}Americans eat an average of more than five kilograms of chocolate per person every year. The specialty shop shows the culture of chocolate and sells chocolates from different areas of the world.

    Historians believe the Mayan people of Central America first learned to farm cacao plants around 2,000 years ago{#blank#}2{#/blank#}Then they grew them around their homes. They cooked the cacao seeds and pressed them into soft powder. They mixed the powder with water to make a delicious chocolate drink. There are often images of cacao plants on Maya buildings and art objects. The rulers drank chocolate at ceremonies{#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    The Aztecs also valued chocolate in the Aztec culture. But the cacao plant could not grow in the area where they lived{#blank#}4{#/blank#}They even used cacao seeds as a form of money to pay or give as offerings to the gods. Only the very wealthy people in Aztec societies could afford to drink chocolate because cacao was so valuable.

    The explorer Christopher Columbus brought cacao seeds to Spain after his trip to Central America in 1502. The wealthy people of Spain first enjoyed the chocolate drink{#blank#}5{#/blank#} Nowadays, the English, Dutch and French all plant cacao trees in their own countries.

A. Chocolate is very sensitive to temperature.

B. The Mayan took the cacao trees from the rainforests.

C. Chocolate is especially popular in the United States.

D. Chocolate has been prepared as a drink for nearly all of its history.

E. So they had to exchange goods with other societies for cacao seeds.

F. Since then, the popularity of the drink has spread throughout Europe.

G. And even poorer members of Mayan society could enjoy the drink sometimes.

    Something happens to many children when they are out of school over the summer months. It is called the “summer slide.” This may sound like a ride at a water park. But it's not. Summer slide is when children forget much of what they learned during the latest school year.

    To fight the effects of summer slide, teachers often give students homework over the summer. Many parents may send children to all kinds of camps or find other activities to keep them learning. Some even try to build up their children's strengths by getting them into extra tutoring.

    However, experts say keeping children busy all the time is not good for them. The result is often a tired child with an overcrowded schedule. This keeps a child's brain active constantly—learning, gathering information and preparing for the next event. And this may have the opposite effect the parents are not hoping for.

    What should parents do instead? Nothing. According to Lea Waters, a psychologist specializing in positive psychology and positive education, slowing down actually helps children become the best they can be. Machines need to be reset, while kids need to goof off（偷懒）. She says that goofing off really allows kids to have some downtime, when they're not focused on a specific task but are free to do something that they're interested in doing and that they can do more automatically and get enjoyment from, like shooting baskets or listening to the music.

    She also adds that goofing off does not mean the brain isn't working. It just goes into this default network mode（默认网络模式）and uses that time to process all the information it had during the day, to integrate（整合）new information. It makes a kind of decision about what information to put into memory and what to get rid of, which in fact helps to improve memory.

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When a thought has found words

    Poetry is the forgotten child of literature. Few people read it for pleasure and modern poets are looked upon as odd creatures from a strange universe. In Western high schools, poetry is seldom taught because it is considered old-fashioned and not relevant to the needs of today's students.

    In China, however, poetry is still an important part of the curriculum and, with recent changes announced by the Ministry of Education, the number of poems students will have to memorize and recite is being increased from fourteen to seventy-two. Now, before you gasp in horror, let's think about the reasons why studying so many poems, especially ancient poems, is important.

    First of all, poetry is an essential part of traditional Chinese culture. It is a pathway to understanding your history and your society. It is also the key to understanding the thoughts and emotions that are common to everyone but which we may be unable to express—the joy of Li Bai dancing with the moon, for example. Everyone has feelings of joy, love, loneliness, sadness and even anger, and a good poem can put those emotions into words and bring us self-understanding.

    Poems can also express beauty. In a few short lines, even something commonplace can become beautiful. Here is a poem called "Fog" by Carl Sandberg: The fog comes / on silent haunches (弓腰蹲着) / and then moves on. Yes, fog does move smoothly, silently and mysteriously like a cat, and Sandberg captures that feeling and image, and makes it beautiful.

    Of course, to really appreciate poetry, it has to be really aloud. After all, a poem is really just a song without music. Most ancient poetry, especially Western poetry, was actually spoken before it was written. Take Homer's Iliad (伊利亚德), the story of the Trojan War (特洛伊战争), for example. That epic saga (史诗般的故事) of Helen's kidnapping and the war that followed was apparently told for hundreds of years in palaces, taverns (客栈) and on street corners before Homer wrote it down and was given credit for it.

    The American poet Robert Frost said, "Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words." And poems are very concise—there is not a wasted word. You are lucky that you now have seventy-two poems to learn!

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The changes facing fast-food companies

    Fast food was once thought to be recession-proof. When consumers need to cut spending, cheap meals like Big Macs and Whoppers become even more attractive. As a result, fast-food chains have survived the recession better than their more expensive competitors. In 2009 sales at full-service restaurants in America fell by more than 6%, but total sales remained about the same at fast-food chains. In some markets, such as Japan, France and Britain, total spending on fast food increased.

    But in this ongoing recession(萧条), which is more severe, not all fast-food companies have been as fortunate. Many, such as Burger King, have seen sales fall. In the recession, while some people trade down to fast food, many others eat at home more frequently to save money. Smaller fast-food chains in America, such as Jack in the Box and Carl's Jr., have been hit particularly hard in this downturn because they cut back spending on advertising.

    In face of such challenges, some fast-food companies have sacrificed their own profits by trying to give customers better value. During the recession companies set prices low, hoping to tempt more customers through the door. But in many cases that strategy doesn't work. Some companies are rethinking their strategies. KFC has launched a chicken sandwich that costs around $5 to attract consumers away from $1 specials.

    Companies are also trying to get customers to buy new and more items, including drinks. McDonald's started selling better coffee as a challenge to Starbucks. Its “McCafe” line now accounts for an estimated 6% of sales in America. As fast-food companies shift from “super size” to “more buys”, they need to keep customer traffic high throughout the day. Many see breakfast as a big opportunity, and not just for fatty food. McDonald's has started selling porridge in America, because the profits can be high.

    But what about those growing waistlines? So far, fast-food firms have cleverly avoided government regulation. By providing options like salads and low-calorie sandwiches, they have at least given the impression of doing something about helping to fight obesity(肥胖). These offerings don't necessarily lead to profit loss, as they can broaden the appeal of stores to groups of diners that include some people who don't want to eat a burger.

    But calls for tougher government regulation never wear down. This year Congress passed America's health-reform bill, which requires restaurant chains with 20 or more stores to put the calorie-content of items they serve to the menu. And the recent proposal by a county in California to ban McDonald's from including toys in its high-calorie “Happy Meals”, because law makers believe it attracts children to unhealthy food, suggests that fast-food companies will have to continue trying something new.

    The changes facing fast-food companies

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Face up to Reality

Calls to stop the use of face recognition technology are growing louder, but it is already too late. Given its widespread use by tech companies and the police, a permanent roll back is impossible.

The European Commission is considering temporarily banning the use of the technology in public spaces, giving politicians in Europe time to develop measures to reduce the potential risks of face recognition systems. Some US cities, such as San Francisco, have already implemented bans.

{#blank#}1{#/blank#}Public areas make up a small proportion of the physical spaces we inhabit. What about the many that are privately owned, such as shops, schools and museums, in which face recognition is steadily being rolled out, sometimes without our knowledge?

Most of us now associate face recognition with CCTV cameras（闭路电视摄像机）. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Facebook, for example, runs face recognition on users' photos to automatically identify them in other images on the site, which has been functioning for years. Russian search engine Yandex has a smart search function that, given one image of a face, can find pictures online of the same person even in different poses and lighting conditions.

Other concerns relate to the fact that the technology is imperfect. An independent analysis of a face recognition trial by London's Metropolitan Police found that 81 per cent of matches the system flagged to a watch list of suspects were incorrect. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

So what is the possible solution? When we consider both the rate at which the technology is developing and its widespread use nowadays, it is crystal-clear that a ban on its use in public spaces would be too little, too late.

{#blank#}4{#/blank#}A set of effective rules on when and how it can be used needs to be decided quickly. Face recognition technology is here to stay; implementing a temporary ban would be the regulatory equivalent of burying our faces in the sand.

A. This applies to face recognition, as is often the case.

B. As a matter of fact, it is advancing in the online field, too.

C. What face recognition needs is strict and urgent regulation.

D. But the prohibitions are so limited that they are hardly bans at all.

E. And it's even less accurate for some minorities, which risks worsening racial issues.

F. Companies cannot let market make a final decision on the future of new technology.