Many companies today hold meetings to discuss their new plans. As people are paying more attention to the environment problems, more companies are looking for ways to reduce their bad influence on the environment. Many of them achieve this by using web meeting.

 Web meeting is a technology that allows people to communicate better over the Internet. It's an easy way of hosting and attending a meeting. Participants(与会者) don't have to leave the office. Each of them will receive an invitation with the meeting time and date on it.  When the meeting is ready to begin, they must sit before their computers.

     With web meeting, all participants can attend the meeting at their own desks. They don't need to drive a car to travel to and from the meeting. As a result, no fuel(燃料) is used and less time is taken up in attending a web meeting.

     Materials for the meeting are simply e-mailed to all the participants before it begins. Then participants can just read them on the screen. For the company, this not only saves the use of paper but also greatly reduces the mailing cost.

     As a meeting hall is not used, the only power for a web meeting is the power that is used by the computers. Besides, organizers don't have to pay for food or accommodation(住宿)for the participants. All this means that less energy is used.

     In a word, web meeting is a cheaper, greener, and more friendly way of hosting and attending a meeting. Companies that hold web meetings are willing to work hard for a better environment. So they can more easily find their working partners who have the same green ideas. In return, they develop good relationship with other companies and improve their business.

    Dogs like living with people. They are very friendly. They can do many things for people. Some dogs help people to look after sheep, other dogs help them to find the lost children. And some of the dogs can help the blind. They are the Seeing Eye Dogs.

    Now we can see this kind of dogs all over the world. They work for the blind.

    The Seeing Eye dog is strong and easy to train(训练). He helps the blind to walk from place to place. Before a dog becomes a Seeing Eye dog, it must go to a training school for about three months. First the dog has to learn to sit or stay when he hears the trainer's call. In his next lesson the dog learns to take his trainer across busy streets. The dog has many things to learn. At the end of the training school, he must take tests(测试). When it passes the test, it can become the Seeing Eye dog.    

    The new master(主人) may be a man, a woman, or even a child. It takes the dog and his blind master about a month to learn to work and live together.

    Hello, everyone. Here is something important for everyone going to London next month. As you know, you are going to stay with a family for two weeks. Now, the most important thing is money. You should take about $530 with you. I think it will be enough for everyone. Then, when you arrive, your new family will meet you. You must remember to wear a red shirt. So the family will find you easily. They've been told that you all wear red shirts. You'll also need to take with you 4 photos of yourself, and of course, it's very important that you take the school letter while you're there. If you have any problems, you can call Leech School office. I'll give you the office phone number now：it's 580—4436 and the person to ask for is Mrs. Belcher. She's in the office from nine o'clock in the morning until five in the afternoon every day. OK. That's everything. Have a good journey!

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    As a first grader, the last thing on Kylie' s mind was to be an inventor (发明家) . When she made a board game (棋类游戏) about Ladybug (瓢虫) for her science class, the student from Pleasanton, California, thought it would just make her homework fun. Now her board game the Ladybug Game goes into many stores in America. Kylie is happy to talk to WR News about her invention.

(WR=WR News; K=Kylie)

WR: How did you get the idea for the Ladybug Game?

K: I just did it for Mrs. Ditto's science class. We had to make something to tell our classmates about insects (昆虫). I really like board games and I play them a lot. So I made a board game myself.

WR: Why ladybugs?

K: I like their colors. Ladybugs come in many different colors. And I think they have a cool life cycle (生命周期).

WR: Your dad took your game to a friend and the friend helped more people know it. How did you feel when you heard that going to sell your board game?

K: It was really cool. When I got into some stores sometimes the people said "You're the girl on the box!"

WR： Do you think you will invent some other things someday?

K: I don't know, but I'm sure that it will be fun.

A History of English…in Five Words

    In 1582, Richard Mulcaster, headmaster of a British school, wrote that the English would not go beyond their island. However, it didn't stay that way. Today, English is spoken all over the world.

    English is a colorful and diverse (多样的) language that long has picked up words from many other languages. Here are five words that show the English language's interesting history.

English

    English began in the language spoken by the early Germanic people in the fifth century AD. It is from them that the word “English” comes. First it is the Latin word Angli which means the people of Angul, where the Germanic people were from.

Beef

    Although roast beef is seen as a traditional English dish, the word “beef” was introduced from the French boeuf during the Middle Ages. It was one of a group of words, including pork and mutton, that were taken from the speech of the French who moved in Britain following the Norman Conquest (诺曼底登陆) of 1066. However, the farmers who kept these living things continued to call them by their old English names: cow, pig and sheep. This difference passes on till today.

Dictionary

    Dictionary is a borrowing from Latin dictornarius liber, “book of words”. It first appeared in English in the 6th century, along with a huge number of other words from Latin and Greek. The first English dictionary was written by Robert Cawdrey in 1604. Cawdrey focused only on the difficult words whose meanings would have caused problems for those not educated in Latin and Greek.

Tea

    Tea was brought into Britain early in the 17th century, becoming very popular by the 1650s. By the 18th century it had become a symbol（标志） of fashionable society and a best-selling of the coffee house culture.

    The word tea rises from the Chinese word cha. A love of tea is so ingrained (根深蒂固的) in British life that the expression “cup of tea” has come to stand for anything viewed positively. The saying “It's not my cup of tea.” means: I don't like it.

Emoji

    Emoji began developing in Japan in the 1990s for use by teenagers: the word “emoji” comes from the Japanese e “picture” + moji “letter”. Its successful acceptance in English has been helped by its similarity to words with the e-prefix (前缀) like e-mail. The Unicode Consortium's (统一码 联盟的) official lists emojis and their meanings, but users keep finding creative new ways to employ them. Emojis are just another example of the development and diversity of English.

    There are some easy things you can do to protect the environment and the earth.

    Choose ideas from the list or come up with a few of your own.

    Plant flowers, grass or trees.

    Whenever you visit a park or a beach, take away what you bring there-keep rubbish in a bag until you can put it in a dustbin.

    Turn off the lights, TV sets when you leave the room. This saves a lot of electricity.

    Turn off the tap when you brush your teeth. You can save some water by not letting it run. Also, use a glass cup instead of a paper cup because this saves paper.

    Keep the doors and windows closed in winter to keep warm air in.

    Give your old books and magazines to a library instead of throwing them away.

    Give your old clothes to poor children you know instead of throwing them away.

    Use both sides of paper.

    Stop pouring dirty water into the rivers or lakes nearby.

    Encourage all your friends to do the same things you do to help protect the earth. You don't have to wait until Earth Day to do these things, Make every day Earth Day. If everyone protects the environment, the world will become much more beautiful.