{#blank#}1{#/blank#}You probably think you will never be a top student. This is not necessarily so. however. Anyone can become a better student if he or she wants to. Here is how：

    Plan your time carefully. When planning your work, you should make a list of things that you have to do. After making this list. you should make a schedule of your time. First your time for eating, sleeping, dressing, etc. Then decide a good, regular time for studying. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} A weekly schedule may not solve all your problems, but it will force you realize what is happening to your time.

    Find a good place to study. Look around the house for a good study area. Keep this space, which may be a desk or simply a corner of your room, free of eeverything but study materials. No games, radios, or television. When you sit down to study, concentrate on the subject.

    Make good use of your time in class. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Listening carefully in class means less work later. Taking notes will help you remember what the teacher says.

    Study regularly. When you get home from school, go over your notes, review the important points that your teacher is going to discuss the next day, read that material. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} If you do these things regularly, the material will become more meaningful, and you'll remember it longer.

    Develop a good attitude towards tests. The purpose of a test is to show what you have learned about a subject. They help you remember your new knowledge. The world won't end if you don't pass a test,so don, t be over worried.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} You will probably discover many others after you have tried these.

A. There are other methods that might help you with your studying.

B. Don't forget to set aside enough time for entertainment.

C. Take advantage of class time to listen to everything the teacher says.

D. No one can become a top student unless he or she works hard.

E. Maybe you are an average student.

F. Make full use of class time to take notes of what the teacher says in class.

G. This will help you understand the next class.

    Be a Green Child

    What does it mean to be green? “Green” is more than just a color.{#blank#}1{#/blank#} Why green? Plants are green, and without them the Earth wouldn't be such a lovely home for us human beings. What can we do? Here's a four-step guide to being green.

    Reduce It!

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} For instance, a shorter shower means you used less water and less fuel since your house uses to run the heater that warmed up the water.

    Reuse It!

    Sometimes people call ours a “throwaway society”. It means that we're a little to willing to throw away old stuff (东西) and buy new stuff.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    For instance, if your baby brother becomes older and loses interest in his plastic basketball hoop (篮圈), why not give it to another family who has a little kid?

    Recycle It!

    Recycling has never been easier. Many communities will pick it up right in front of your house and some towns even require it. Recycled goods go to a recycling center, where they can be turned into new cans, bottles, and paper.

    Enjoy It!

    It's true that rubbish and pollution are problems, but the Earth remains a huge and beautiful place that's ready for you to explore.{#blank#}4{#/blank#} Go for a hike, visit local nature centers and gardens, and climb up mountains.

    But before you travel the globe, take a look at your own backyard. Is there a spot where you could plant a tree or put in a little fruit or vegetable garden? {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A. It also means taking special steps to protect the environment.

B. Many times, even if you no longer need something, someone else just might.

C. You can start locally by visiting the naturally beautiful spots in your city.

D. Turn off the water when you're brushing your teeth.

E. Get out there and get your hands dirty.

F. You can watch with pride as your tree takes root and your garden plants grow.

G. When you use less of something, you do a good thing for the Earth.

    Aside from the health benefits of laughter (which are numerous and significant), having a sense of humor about life's difficulties can provide a way to bond with others, look at things in a different way, normalize your experience, and keep things from appearing too overwhelming or scary. Properly developed, a good sense of humor can keep people and relationships strong.

    Studies show that having a smile on your face can make you feel better, and can lead you to actually feeling happier (rather than just looking happier). Even if the smile is fake, the benefits you will experience are real! Also, a fake smile leads readily to a genuine one. If you are able to put a smile on your face, the laughter will come more easily, and the stress will melt more easily.

    If your situation seems ridiculously frustrating, recognize what can develop into humor in just how ridiculously frustrating and annoying it is. In your imagination, take the situation to an extreme that becomes even more ridiculous until you find yourself amused. For example, when you're waiting in a long line at the store, you can imagine that hours pass, then days, visualizing yourself accepting visits from loved ones from your new home in this ultra-long line, holding your children's birthday parties in aisle seven so you can be there to enjoy them...you get the picture.

    Besides, find a friend with whom you can laugh also works! You can each share your frustrations, and laugh about them in the process. Even when your friend isn't there, you can feel less stressed by thinking about the retelling that will come later.

    You can have a “most annoying boss” game with your friends, or try to count how many times the same potentially frustrating event happens in a day.(“I was cut off in traffic 7 times today—I'm almost up to 10!”) This works well for predictable or repetitive annoying situations that you can't control; you can begin to value them in their own special way instead of letting them upset you.

    One of the factors that drive the popularity of shows like Modern Family or movies like the classic Ferris Bueller's Day Off, is that they take somewhat universal situations that many people find frustrating and push them a little further, pointing out the silliness of it all.

What's more, you can try joining Funny Clubs.Years ago, when Oprah had a show rather than a network, she did a part on Laughter Yoga that interested me, and I researched a club on my own, finding it to be a terrific place to enjoy a good laugh. Whether you mean business or laugh at the silliness of it all, taking part in the exercises of laughter yoga with other humor-participants can be a very effective way to get back in the practice of getting some more laughter into your day.

    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.

Who's in control of your life? Who's pulling your strings? {#blank#}1{#/blank#}We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. As Oscar Wilde puts it, most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry (模仿), their passions a quotation.”

So when people tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We long for this good feeling like a drug一we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live worsened lives to keep getting their fix (成瘾物), we worsen our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.

But just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom-the freedom to be ourselves. The truth is that we cannot control what other people think. People have their own schedule and they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they're more interested in themselves than in you. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}Everyone has different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probably pleasing no one in the process.

So how can we take back control? {#blank#}4{#/blank#}We should guide ourselves by means of a set of values-not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective, purposeful and happy life.

A. I's the inner self born in our mind that is keeping us under control.

B. Furthermore, if we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand.

C. As a matter of fact, people sometimes fail to understand who they are and where they are going.

D. For the most of us, it's other people-society, colleagues, friends, family or our community.

E.I think there's only one way-make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think.

F. Therefore, we are so eager for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, failing to do the things we really want to.

Discovering the Lost City

Sixty miles south, in Cusco, Hiram Bingham gazed thoughtfully at the old Incan stone wall. He had come to this place in search of Vilcapampa, the lost city of the Inca. But right here was the most beautiful stonework he had ever seen-huge stones cut so perfectly that not even a razor blade could be slipped between them.

The Inca had no iron tools to carve them, no wheel or animals to move them. The wall had endured time and earthquakes.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

It was a mystery.

He walked through the cobbled streets of the old capital, Cusco. The Spanish had come to this city, conquered the Inca, taken their gold, and built churches over their temples. Suddenly, he stopped. Before him was the famous Temple of the Sun. He placed his hands on the sun-warmed stones so beautifully carved, as if they had grown together.

{#blank#}2{#/blank#}Would it hold gold and riches like the Spanish had found in Cusco? More than ever he was determined to find that city.

The next day Bingham began his search. He would look for ruins-that might be the key. He and his party, accompanied by the military man Sergeant Carrasco, left for the holy valley of the Urubamba River. They came to the sleepy old village in the valley, long ago an important city.

"Are there any ruins nearby?" Bingham asked. "Do you know of the lost city of Vilcapampa?" No one knew of it. Traveling north, the adventurers came upon a remote and wild canyon. In the distance were snowcapped mountains over three miles high.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}Bingham's determination to find the lost city grew with each turn of the increasingly wild path.

Far below in the valley, Bingham's party camped on a sandy beach alongside the thundering rapids of the Urubamba River. Days had gone by. No one knew of any ruins.

{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

This time, through the interpreter, the farmer said, "Yes. There are very good ruins on top of the mountain called Machu Picchu." The farmer pointed straight up.

"Can you take us there?" Bingham asked.

...

A. Hidden in the mountains, the lost city would be built of stones like these.

B. What could he be thinking!

C. But now the adventurers aroused the curiosity of a local farmer named Arteaga.

D. How had they built them!

E. Cliffs rose thousands of feet above the roaring rapids of the Urubamba River.

F. Suddenly, the clouds drifted away and there it was.