As the birds wake up the people on the farm early in the morning, one man is already up. In fact, he has never slept not once in the past 36 years.

    The man has never been ill after so many years of insomnia(失眠). This has not only made him famous, but also interested many scientists to study him.

    Sixty-four-year-old Thai Ngoc said he could not sleep at night after getting a fever in 1973, and since that time he has experienced more than 14，000 sleepless nights.

  “I don't know whether the insomnia has impacted my health or not, but I'm still healthy and can work normally like others,” Ngocsaid.

His wife said,“My husband used to sleep well, but these years, nothing can make him get to sleep.” She said when Ngoc went to Da Nang for a medical examination, doctors said he was healthy.

    Ngoc now lives on his farm at the foot of mountain, busy farming and taking care of pigs and chickens all day. “I have tried sleeping pills and some other medicine, but nothing helps,  even to sleep for a few minutes,” he said.

    Ngoc often does more farm work or helps his neighbors during the sleepless night.

    An old man was fishing on the bank of a river. A child came to see him fishing. The old man was really good at fishing and it didn't take long for him to catch a full basket of fish. The old man saw that the child was very cute, and he wanted to give her a whole basket of fish. But the child shook her head.

    The old man was surprised and asked, "Why don't you want the fish?"

    The child answered, "I want the fishing rod(竿)in your hands."

    The old man asked, "Why do you want the rod?"

    "It doesn't take long to eat all the fish in a basket. But if I have the fishing rod, I can go fishing by myself and I won't be afraid of not having any more fish to eat."

    I think you will certainly say that the child is very smart. Wrong! If she doesn't know how to fish, she can not have fish to eat, even though she has the fishing rod. It's useless to only have a fishing rod. Fishing skills are the most important, not the fishing rod.

    Too many people think that if they have a "fishing rod" in their life, they will no longer fear(害怕)the wind and rain. They are just like the child, who thought that if she had a fishing rod, she would have fish to eat.

There are four people in Jim's family. They are Kate, Jim, their father and their mother.

Jim is Kate's brother. He is fourteen. Kate is Jim's sister. She is twelve. They are in the same(相同的) school. Jim is in Class 1, Grade 3. Kate is in Class 2, Grade 1. They're good students.

Their father Mr. Green is a teacher. He is thirty-nine. He teaches English in a school near his home.Their mother is a teacher, too. But she teaches Chinese in a middle school.

Now they are all at home.Mr. Green is watching TV.Mrs. Green is making cakes. Jim and Kate are doing their homework.

Taking notes(笔记) is an important part of learning. Students listen to the teacher. They write down the important things. Or they use a computer. These days, many students take a computer to class to type(打字) their notes. 

Some people think that using a computer is better. People type faster than they write. That means they can write more. If you can type fast, you can type every word the teacher says. 

Computers are becoming very common in classrooms. Almost every student in university has a computer small enough to take to class in order to type notes. Fewer students write things down. So there is a trend in schools now to spend less time on teaching kids how to write. Schools are moving away from teaching younger students how to write by hand. Many people see no need for writing by hand. 

However, studies advise that it is good to write things down. When people can't write every word, they have to think about it more. They have to pick out what is important. And the act of writing seems to help them to remember. Studies show that people who write down their notes remember the information better. A new study, done by Princeton University and University of California, found that students who took notes by hand learned more than those who used a computer. In the study, 65 university students listened to the teacher and took notes with pens or computers. Then they did tests about how well they remembered and understood the lesson. Results show that pen users do better than those who take notes with their computers. 

 My name is Susan. I am a student of Sunny Middle School. It's a nice and beautiful school. Here is a map of it.

 Look at the map of our school. This is the music hall, just next to the science building. The music hall is a yellow building with two floors. We often listen to music in it. Sometimes, we have music lessons in it, too. The science building is vellow, too. A small shop is between the science building and the teachers' building. We can buy many kinds of school things in it. The teachers' building is white. Our teachers often correct(批改) our homework or prepare (准备) lessons in it. In front of the teachers' building is the school hall. It's new and nice. We often have parties or speeches(演讲) in it. There is a large sports field in our school. All the students go there and do exercises together in the morning. The classroom building is between the school hall and the sports field. We spend most of the time in our classroom. It's big and clean.

I love my school. It's a beautiful place and I can learn a lot in it.