What is the hottest English word these years? “Selfie" may be one of them. It was even named Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionaries in 2013. The word was first used in an Australian online forum in 2002. Now, almost everybody knows it.

 Selfie is a photo that one takes of oneself. People usually take selfies with a smart phone and send them to a social media website. Nowadays, more and more people are taking selfies. From your best friend to your favorite pop star, selfies are taking over Renren and Sina Weibo.

 What makes people love selfies? Selfies can help to remember what's going on in their personal life. "Almost every day, I take a photo of myself at school, and save it in my Qzone. These photos record my happy and sad moments." said Huang Xu, 16, from Hunan. Another usual reason for taking a selfie is to share online. They hope to make friends and share their feelings with others. "During summer vacation, my classmates and I shared many selfies online. Through these photos, we got to know each other's holidays and feelings," said Wang Lin, 15, from Henan. "I'm too shy to ask someone to take pictures of me, but it's easier to do it by myself."

 Although taking selfies is popular among young people around the world, they should be careful at the places where they take selfies. People are warned（警告）not to take light-hearted selfies in serious places, such as in some traffic accidents. In order to protect art works, selfie is banned in some museums and galleries, too.

Just 28 years ago, Berlin was a city divided into two by the Berlin Wall. How excitedpeople were as the Berlin Wall came down. Since then, Berlin has become one of the coolest cities in Europe. Here are the main reasons why I think Berlin is cool.

    First, Berlin has cheap hotels and everyday objects (物品). You needn't worry aboutspending too much money when visiting Berlin.

    Second, Berlin knows how to give parties, and there is a festival here every month ofthe year. Perhaps the most famous is the Berlin International Film Festival (the BIFF).

Third, Berlin has beautiful buildings of its own. The Brandenburg Gate is one of thecity's most famous buildings. It's the symbol (象征) of more than 200 years of history. The TV Tower is as good as the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the London Eye.

Lastly, Berlin is a city of living art. Artists can create works of art on the sides ofbuildings.

If you want to visit a European city with culture, cheap objects and lots of colours,Berlin is the place to be. What are you waiting for? Get to Europe's coolest city before anyone else discovers it

    Do you know Coco ， a 3D film by Lee Unkrich? It is one of my favourite movies and its score gets to as high as 9.1 of 10 on a Chinese website Douban. I was lucky to be the first one to watch it in China on November 24th, 2017.

    The film Coco tells a story about a twelve-year-old boy called Miguel Rivera. Coco was his grand-grandmother. Miguel had a musical dream but his family didn't like his dream. However, he still worked hard for it secretly and never gave up. One day, he went into a place full of the dead after touching a special guitar. Luckily，with the help of his grand-grand-grandfather, a great musician named Ekotto, he had a wonderful time and returned to the real world.

    You can still watch Coco on the Internet! Don't miss it! You will like it!

    The British government has started a ￡ 10 million Mandarin Excellence (普通话优秀) Program. The program will have helped over 5,000 British students to be fluent (流利的) in Mandarin Chinese by 2020.

    The program is led by local schools and supported (支持) by University College London. So far, 14 schools have taken part in the program. Hundreds of secondary school students in England have taken lessons in Mandarin Chinese. Over the next three years, they will spend eight hours studying Mandarin Chinese every week.

    Ned Miller is an officer of the British government. He said a high level of fluency in Mandarin Chinese would become more and more important. "Language skills are important for jobs and life. Mandarin Chinese is spoken by the largest number of people in the world. It is also one of the languages that matters the most to our country's future. If the United Kingdom wants to remain competitive in the world, we do need far more of our young people leaving school with a good command of Mandarin Chinese," Miller added. "We hope that our young people could be given the chance to study the language. We want them to be fluent in both spoken and written Mandarin. The Mandarin Excellence Program will help us do this. It will not only open the students' eyes, but also give them a great advantage when they enter the world of work."

    British kids, in fact, are not alone. In America, about 200,000 students are studying Mandarin Chinese. It is believed that 800,000 more will join them over the next couple of years.

    What is a typical day like for a high school student in the United States? Well, everyone's is very different. I can describe my normal day in high school for you,

    Our school day usually went from 8:30 am to 5: 30 pm. However

some days I had cheerleading(啦啦队) practice or play practice at 6:30 am. If I had cheerleading practice, I got ready at school, and if I had time, I ate breakfast at the school dining hall.

    Then I would go towards my locker and get my books for the first period. Each class went for about 50 minutes and we had 4 minutes to get to the next class. We studied everything from science to maths and Spanish to PE.

    I played the flute(长笛) in band, so one of my class periods was used for that. Lunchtime would be at 12:30 pm and then we had some time to hang out outside or by our lockers. At the end of the day there was a seminar(研讨会) period. It could be used for studying or meetings.

    After school, I would cheer at a basketball game, be a lifeguard(救生员) at work or has speech practice. My family always tried to have dinner together at 7 pm, but there wasn't always time. I would finally start studying at 8 or 9 pm.

    So there you have it! That's my typical day in high school.

    A four-year-old girl is lying in the arms of a doctor. She has just become mother-less. A bomb destroyed her home and killed her mother.

    Every day we see pictures like this on TV or in newspapers. We see young Iraqi children begging for food and water from American and British soldiers. They move through towns and cities towards the capital, Baghdad. We see these children following grown-ups, carrying bags of things almost the same size as their small bodies as they run away from their homes.

    "Dad, why are the Americans attacking us? Are we going to be killed? "asks the son of Abu Sinar, an lraqi engineer. Abu finds it hard to explain this war to his eight-year-old son.

    He tries to comfort him by saying, "The bombs are far away from us. The Ameri cans are fighting the soldiers. We are going to be all right. "Abu knows this isn't al-ways the truth, but what else can he do? In Baghdad, parents give their children sleeping pills to make them sleep so that they won't hear the sound of bombing. And all the schools are closed.

    "All we can do is to listen to and hear the war, "said Abu." People in Baghdad, men and women, young and old, have to live in fear. We don't know where the next bornbs are going. We can do nothing but wait to be killed. "