School Lunches from around the World

   Do you wonder what children are eating for lunch across the world? Take a look at different school lunches and learn something about kids'school lives across the world.

   In Japan, 99% of elementary school(小学)students and 82% of junior high school students eat kyushoku (school lunch). It includes a bottle of milk, a bowl of rice, usually some types of fish, a salad, some kinds of soup, usually with tofu and vegetables, and a piece of fruit.

   In the United States kids have hamburgers and chips for lunch. Those school lunches are making the kids so fat that many are unable to meet the physical fitness standards(标准). The good news is that Improving Nutrition(营养) for American's Children Act was recently passed. That will help to make school lunches more nutritional(有营养的).

   In Beijing, school lunches are usually provided from home. A food service worker picks up the fresh meals from home and sends them to schools.

Information Card

    This is an English girl. (1)Her name is Sonia. She has a great collection of balls. She has three soccer balls, five baseballs, six volleyballs and two basketballs. (2)They are under her bed。Sonia likes sports. (3) She plays basketball every day. She likes Kobe and she has nine (4) __照片__ of Kobe.

    Sonia has one brother and one sister. Her brother is Mike and her sister is Cindy. Mike likes vegetables very much. He always has (5)   西红柿   and carrots for lunch. Cindy likes fruit and she always eats apples and oranges for dinner. Sonia's brother and sister don't like sports and they don't have any balls.

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    With the Chinese language becoming more and more popular, the UK government planned to help more kids learn Chinese, Do you think it is necessary for British pupils to learn Chinese? Three people from different countries have given their opinions.

    Robert (Canada)

    I studied French for 2 years in high school and German for 4 years in college. I studied Chinese for about 4 months before moving to China. Since I speak Chinese every day, my writing, reading and listening are quite good. I think learning other languages is a great thing. It offers a new and different way of living and looking at our life and the world around us.

    Ted (the UK)

    Learning any language can be valuable, but it is not suitable for everyone. Chinese is a difficult language to learn, and the UK is not good at teaching foreign languages. However, China is a very large and developing market for business people. For them, Chinese is worth learning.

    Larry (the USA)

    I don't think Chinese will be as widely spoken throughout the world as English. It is too time-consuming ( 费时的) to learn as a second language. To learn Chinese, you have to devote yourself to learning how to write and read it. It's too difficult to learn Chinese. But some day Chinese will become more popular, and that is a good thing.

    Different people have different opinions. As for me, being able to speak more than just your native language is a great thing.

    An 11-year-old blind girl is proud of walking alone every day to and from school. Why? She has to walk past so many barriers (障碍物) in her way. The girl's home is near the school, yet her mother follows her without letting her know.

    The case of the girl shows the barrier-free facilities (设施) are not enough in her city. Many other cities are short of barrier-free facilities as well. There's no well-designed path for the blind. In fact, in the early 2000s, some cities started to build barrier-free facilities for disabled people. However, almost 20 years later, only a few large cities have had facilities of high quality.

    It's common that sidewalks are taken up with barriers. Few workers are sent to move them away, so it's dangerous for the blind to walk on them. Also, some other barrier-free facilities are badly destroyed（毁坏）. Only a few workers are assigned (分配) to do the task of repairing the broken ones.

    Some ideas can make a difference-build more barrier-free facilities and employ more of them require money. In a word, more money is needed to carry on with the work. It's our duty to make life easy for disabled people, so that they can live without barriers some day.