Everyone Can Change the World

    What can we do to help protect the environment? It seems useless to just pick up a piece of trash, but what will happen if you keep doing it every day? Tommy Kleyn, an ordinary man from the Netherlands, may give you the answer.

    Tommy Kleyn walked past a polluted river on his way to work every day. It used to be a beautiful view, but the trash on the bank made it dirty and smelly. So Tommy decided to pick up the trash along the river a little bit at a time after work. "It took me about 30 minutes to fill one garbage bag with trash, but one garbage bag didn't seem helpful in a place as polluted as this. I decided to fill one bag of trash each day as I passed by," Tommy said. Every day, Tommy took pictures of the river and shared them on his Facebook page. To his surprise, in just six days, he had made great progress with his cleanup effort. He felt happy and kept doing it. Gradually, more and more people knew about Tommy's story. Other people in the community began following in his footsteps and cleaning up trash on their way home, too.

    "The idea is to encourage people to fill one garbage bag with litter each day. It only takes 30 minutes, but it really makes a difference and you will be amazed at how good you feel afterwards," he said.

    People from all over the world have been moved and inspired by Tommy's story. No effort is useless if we keep doing it every day. Ordinary people like you and me can also make a difference to the world we live in if we take actions right now.

    Hemingway was one of the most famous writers. He was born in America in 1899. His father was a doctor and loved sports very much, and his mother taught music. Among the six children in the family,{#blank#}1{#/blank#}.

    Hemingway had written many books in his life. The Old Man and the Sea is one of the most famous and also my favorite.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}. The main character in the book is a fisherman.{#blank#}3{#/blank#} People think he is a man with bad luck, because he doesn't get a fish in eighty-four days. Every evening, he comes home with his empty boat.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}. Then on the eighty-fifth day the man takes a big fish.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}, the old man never gives up.

    Do you know that a student can produce up to 240 pounds of school waste and lots of waste gas (气体) during a term? This includes transportation, food, paper, pens, pencils and so on.

    Transportation    Some parents drive their kids to school every day. We all know waste gas from cars is a main cause air pollution. If parents who live in a neighborhood can take turns to drive their kids to school each day, that'll be better. Another way of going green is to walk to school if students live near their schools.

    Food    It's surprising that only one elementary school can produce up to 19,000 pounds of lunch waste each year. That's only one school. One way to help take care of the environment is to stop using plastic bags. There are all kinds of environmental boxes for students to put their food in.

    Paper, pens and pencils Lots of paper is thrown away by American students. They throw away about 1.6 billion pens every year. They waste many pens and chemicals (化学药品) in them are bad for the environment. Many more pencils are thrown away than pens. Pencils are made from trees, so if more pencils are thrown away, more trees will be cut down. So students should reuse (再使用) paper, pens and pencils instead of throwing them away.

    Backpacks As fashion comes and goes, almost every kid needs a new backpack every year. They can save lots of money and materials if they reuse the same schoolbags each year.

    Are you the only child in the family? If so, you are the most important in your family.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}But a lot of middle school students have a problem. They feel they're not as close to their parents as before.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}.

    Some students complain that their parents say a lot to them, but never listen to them. Some of them even say it angrily.

     “My parents don't allow me to play computer games, but other classmates are doing that”.

    Others say, when they're making phone calls to friends, their parents like to ask if they're speaking to a boy or a girl.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}Some students even decide to leave home because they're afraid to tell their parents when they have done something wrong, especially when they do badly in exams. Then they usually think running away is the only choice.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}I think they should find a good chance to talk with their parents and they needn't be afraid to tell their feelings to their parents. They can also get help from others like good friends or teachers. Keeping a diary can help them understand more about themselves and their feelings.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} you'll have a happy life and never think of running away.

A. These make them very unhappy.

B. Parents are the closet people to you in the world.

C. But they don't know running away may bring them some more problems.

D. If you follow the advice,

E. They even think their parents are unfair to them.

    Good manners mean good actions in social communication. ⑴A person who has good manners is welcome because he always thinks of others. A person with good manners won't say anything that will hurt others. A person with good manners won't influence people when they are talking.

    Then how can we learn to have good manners? ⑵In fact, that is not difficult at all. Good manners just mean respect (尊重) for other people.

⑴{#blank#}1{#/blank#} ⑵{#blank#}2{#/blank#} 

    The holiday is coming to us. Finally, after months of study, you have some time to yourself. So, why not read a book? Well, some people will say, "Why do you like reading books? We have Internet. It offers a lot of more colorful fun. Books are history!" But I am sure you can learn a lot from books than Internet.

    One clear reason is that a well-chosen book can give you a lot of wonderful words, as long as you have a good dictionary, of course. Believe me, it's far easier to get new words from a book or an article than it is from the TV or the Internet.

    But another more important point is that books give you something that the Internet can not. The general webpage(网页) is picture-heavy and the text is as easy to read as possible. While "easy" may attract you, unluckily it's not helpful for any long-term development of reading skills and the general language level. Because of that, reading on the Internet can't take the place of reading books.

    But perhaps the best reason is that just choosing what you read and doing it independently means that it's something you do by and for yourself. You can choose what you want to read. It's hard work, but you'll find that what once seemed like a duty is now a pleasure.