How to Improve Speed Reading Skills

    Speed reading is one of many skills that can improve your reading comprehension and shorten your study time. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}.

    Look at groups of words, not single words.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#}. However, if you can get into the habit of reading groups or chunks of words at one time, then you can read much faster. Start by trying to look at a group of three or four words at once, then work up to looking at an entire line of words. Focus on words that give the sentence meaning, such as the nouns and verbs and pay less attention to the filler words, such as “A, the, and, etc.”

    Scan for keywords.

    Scanning is a highly effective way of extracting answers from a text without really reading it. If you know exactly what you are looking for—a name, a date, a statistic, or a specific word—you can find it quickly by skipping over large chunks of the text. To scan, first visualize the word, number, or phrase you would like to find. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}. The information you are looking for should pop out at you.

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    You can train yourself to read faster by timing yourself as you go. Start by getting your base time. Set a timer for fifteen minutes, and speed read as you normally do. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}. Do not count the words, just the pages or paragraphs. Record your figures: for instance, you might write “15min/6.5 pages.”

A. Then, run your eyes rapidly over the text

B. Race the clock

C. Check your comprehension

D. If you read a text one word at a time, then this will slow your reading speed way down

E. Here are some Speed Reading Techniques

F. One of the reasons you read slowly is that you have to pause sometimes to understand what a passage is saying

G. When the timer goes off, check to see how far you have got

     The answer to protecting and saving marine(海洋) wildlife can start with cutting back on something Americans use every day—plastic drinking straws. Actor Adrien Grenier, best known for playing Vincent Chase in 2015 movie Entourage, has launched a campaign to reduce the amount of single-use plastic usage in this country in order to protect and save marine wildlife and the environment. Plastic drinking straws are among many single-use plastic products contributing to the shocking loss of marine life, but they're a great place to start because they're something Americans are using by the hundreds of millions without any awareness that they're so damaging.

According to Ecocycle, an international environmental organization, Americans use more than 500 million straws daily, which are enough to fill 127 school buses each day, and they can't be recycled. They means plastic straws end up in landfills or oceans, where fish and other marine wildlife mistake the small bits for food and swallow them. After seeing a photo of a whale beached on the shore with a belly full of plastic, Grenier felt the inspiration to launch the Lonely Whale Foundation, hoping to inspire and educate others on the challenges facing marine life.

     Along with stopping the use of straws, Grenier hopes to educate consumers on the dangers of other single-use plastic items such as grocery bags and water bottles. While many Americans use these plastic products in their daily life, there are more sustainable alternatives that can help protect the environment. Ecocycle recommends the use of straws made from stainless steel, glass, and even bamboo instead of plastic. You can buy a number of these environmentally friendly straws online and in stores.

    Thomas Edison received a patent(专利) for his kinetoscope(电影放映机) on August31, 1887. It was a machine for viewing moving pictures. Edison had hoped to combine his no invention with the phonograph(留声机), which he had invented 10 years earlier. He thought that people would like to watch moving pictures that went along with the sound. He was not able to make them work together. The kinetoscope, however, was a popular attraction by itself. A person looked through small holes in a box-like machine and saw pictures in action. One of the first films made showed a man sneezing.

    A problem with this invention was that only one person could view the moving pictures at a time. By 1891, Edison had invented a projector that showed the film on a screen. Many people could watch together.

    In 1893, Edison built a motion-picture studio. He made over 300 silent films. Most of them were short. That was because the pictures flashed, or shook a lot. It was hard for people to watch more than 10 minutes at a time.

    The first films were mostly of real events. They would show famous people walking somewhere, cars on a street, burning houses, and other news stories. Then comedies and short dramas were made.

    Edison's movie studio closed in 1918. By then other companies were also making films. Better cameras were made. Sound was added. Then color came along. Today, movies are among the most popular forms of entertainment.

    What's it like to become a music star with millions of fans? These young artists know the feeling. Over the course of their short careers, they have attracted the attention of the biggest stars in the world and taken home prizes from major shows. For now they're just kids that everyone in music is watching. Check out the next generation of stars below.

    FIFTH HARMONY

    The 1990s was a brilliant period for girl groups. But after that few groups have been able to make much of an influence. This doesn't seem to bother Fifth Harmony, who landed the biggest hit of their career in 2016 with "Work from Home", a pop song that encourages everyone to ask for leave more often. When it climbed to No.4 on the Billboard Hot100, it was the first time that a girl group had entered the top 5 in the past ten years.

    LORDE

    It's been four years since the release of Born Heroine — the hot selling CD that made her a 16-year-old global sensation and the spokeswoman for a new generation of smart, strong-minded, creative female pop artists. She contributed to The Hunger Games soundtrack (插曲) in 2014, and for this time setting foot in Hollywood production also brought her more opportunities in her following career.

    TROYE SIVAN

    You might recognize the rising star Troye Sivan from YouTube, where he's been uploading videos since he was 12 and his channel already has millions of fans, or from the movies, where he played the role of young Wolverine in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

    Finding a friend doesn't seem like a difficult job. However, bad friends are easier to find than good friends these days. If you're sitting there and wondering if you have a bad friend, let me define it for you.

    A bad friend is someone whose jealousies and insecurities outweigh their love for someone. They might want to be a good friend but they're too messed up in their own head to ever actually do it. They wonder if their friends are going out without them or if they're being forgotten and left behind. People who are violently insecure don't have what it takes to be the quality of a friend.

    Bad friends are narcissistic(自恋的). They look for any opportunity to bring the conversation back to them. Worse, they might not even be aware that they're doing it. In their mind, they might think they are the best friend ever, which is truly frightening.

    Bad friends are quick-change. They're by your side when you're fun and you have something to give them but as soon as you're going through a difficult time, they will become indifferent quickly. They won't bring you cold medicine. They won't give you a ride to the doctor, everything they do is self-serving.

    If you find a friend who has these same characteristics, send them to your bad friend list immediately. Your friends are supposed to be the solution to your problems, not the source.

    I believe your twenties are a time when you need positive and helpful friends. In such a time, friendships aren't easy to maintain like they once were in school. Now we actually have to put work into it, we have to make a conscious effort to keep the friendship going. You need to ask yourself, "Is this person worth it? Do they treat me like a fool or what?" if you have doubts, try to make them clear by considering the past experiences. Toxic(有毒的) friendships do nothing but drag you down. My point is that you have to take care of yourself and stop getting in touch with your bad friends. Only surround yourself with people who bring out the best qualities in you. It may sound cruel but it's true.

How Do People Plan Their Life?

    The story of King Midas is not true. No man could really touch the things around him and make them turn to gold. It could be wonderful if we could turn things into gold as in the story. But the "magic touch" the life without work is seldom part of life in an everyday world.

    It costs money to do the things you want to do and to buy the things you want to buy. In order to give a present for a birthday you must first earn the money before you have any to spend. Your home your food and your clothes are basic needs. Everyone needs these three things. Many other things we want are really luxuries. Basic needs and luxuries together form our standard(标准)of living. Many of the things we feel we "need" in our homes would be regarded as luxuries to other people in other parts of the world.

    Have you ever helped plan a family budget(预算)?If you know you have to balance the whole money the family have earned you should pay for gas electricity water and your house. You should also plan for holidays and other special uses. At the same time you should have some of your money to be saved.

    How people earn their money and how they spend their money is an important aspect of the study of economics.