Mike gets up at half past seven. He has an egg and some milk for breakfast. Then he goes to school. When he is on his way to school, he is thinking, “I told my teacher that my mother w as ill on Monday. I told him my bike didn't work on my way to school on Tuesday. What should I say today? Mike thinks it over, but he doesn't have a good idea.

  “May I come in?” says Mike at the door.

  “Oh, my boy,” says Mr. Brown. “Please look at the clock on the wall. What time is it now?” “It's eight ten,” says Mike. Mr. Brown is not happy and says, “You are late for class three times this week. If all the students are like you, the clock is no use, I think.” “You are wrong, Mr. Brown,” says Mike. “If I don't have the clock how do I know I am late for school?”

    Liu Yingying is a student at No. 17 Middle School in Shanghai. She is 14 years old. She likes English and she often (经常) reads English books at home. She can speak English well and write many English words. She likes speaking English with her classmates and teachers at school. Her teachers like her. Liu Yingying likes music and she can play the piano. She often practises (练习) it at home in the morning.

    Liu Yingying has got a happy family. Her father is a worker in a car factory and her mother is a hotel manager. Her father likes sports. His favourite sport is table tennis. Her mother likes sports, too. But she likes swimming. What about Liu Yingying? She likes playing tennis.

C

    O. Henry was a pen name used by an American writer of short stories. His real name was William Sydney Porter. He was born in North Carolina in 1862. As a young boy he lived an exciting life. He did not go to school for very long, but he managed to teach himself everything he needed to know. When he was about 20 years old, O. Henry went to Texas, where he tried different jobs. He first worked on a newspaper, and then had a job in a bank. When some money went missing from the bank, O. Henry was believed to have stolen it. Because of that, he was sent to prison（监狱）. During the three years in prison, he learned to write short stories. After he got out of prison, he went to New York and continued writing. He wrote mostly about New York and the life of the poor there. People liked his stories, because simple as the tales（故事）were, they would finish with a sudden change at the end, to the reader's surprise.

    It's Sunday morning. Peter and his friends had a great plan for the weekend, but the weather is bad.

Sarah: We have to change (改变) our plan for the weekend. What about going to the museum?

Sheila: I' m sorry. I don't want to go to the museum.

John: Well, how about going to the cinema?

Peter: That's a good idea. What's on at the Palladium?

Sarah: Smurfs The Lost village. It's a very interesting new cartoon movie.

Peter: How boring! I always feel bored with such cartoon movies. I think they are for little kids.

John: Well, an exciting movie is also on at the Palladium, The Fate of the Furious. I always love action movies.

Sarah: I heard it was fantastic. Let's go to see it.

Peter: OK. Action movies are my favorite.

Sheila: Great. Let's buy the tickets online now.

    Clara Daly was sitting on an Alaska Airlines flight from Boston to Los Angeles when she heard a worried voice over the loudspeaker: "Does anyone on board know American Sign Language?"

    Clara, 15 at the time, pressed the call button. An air hostess came by and explained the situation. "We have a passenger on the plane who's blind and deaf," she said. The passenger seemed to want something, but he was traveling alone and the air hostesses couldn't understand what he needed.

    Clara had been studying ASL for the past year to help blind and deaf people and she knew she'd be able to finger spell into the man's palm. So she rose from her seat, walked toward the front of the plane, and knelt by the seat of Tim Cook, then 64. Gently taking his hand, she signed, "How are you? Are you OK?" Cook asked for some water.

    When it arrived, Clara returned to her seat. She came by again a bit later because he wanted to know the time. On her third visit, she stopped and stayed for a while.

    "He didn't need anything. He was lonely and wanted to talk," Clara said.

    So for the next hour, she talked about her family and her plans for the future. Cook told Clara how he had become blind over time and shared stories of his days as a traveling salesman. Even though he couldn't see her, she "looked attentively at his face with such kindness," a passenger reported.

    "Clara was amazing," an air hostess told Alaska Airlines in an interview. "You could tell Cook was very excited to have someone he could speak to, and she was such an angel."

Cook's reply: "Best trip I've ever had."