David Beckham was born in 1975 in London, at a place called Leytonstone. When he was a young boy, his greatest passion was in football. He played it whenever he had the chance. Sometimes he would go and watch a game with his friends. When David Beckham was 12 years old, he won the Bobby Charlton Soccer Skills award. This was an important step forward for this young boy, and it led him to go for a visit to a football training camp in Spain. As a boy he played for schools of Essex and also for his county team.

    In 1991, he became a trainee with Manchester United. This meant that he could practice football as much as he wanted to and play for the highly successful Manchester United Youth Cup team and Under-21 team. In April, 1995 he played his first football league game against Leeds Untied. During 1995 and 1996, David became a regular member of the team and Manchester United won in both football seasons, with David scoring many goals.

    His goals made him a household name. In the first game of the 1996-1997 season, he scored a surprising goal from beyond the halfway line; seeing the goalkeeper a little way out of his goal, Beckham became famous overnight. He continued to score astonishing goals, especially from free-kicks. The speed of one of his shots was timed at 157 kph. He also had the ability to make the ball go from left to right, or right to left, whenever he chose. Goalkeepers were never sure where the ball was going, and it regularly ended up in the goal.

    What do butterflies have in common with the human spirit? Meet Maggie, a middle-aged wife and mother who was about to find out.

    Maggie wasn't rich like a millionaire or poor in a manner of being homeless. She was living an average comfortable life. It was made even better when a baby girl came her way. She and her husband made sure their daughter had her needs met and they were still able to take a yearly vacation by the beach.

    Maggie was a partner in her husband's business. They both had a different set of duties and everything was in balance. One day a severe blow came to her husband's business, and over a three-year period the business dropped out of sight. Her husband had to totally reinvent himself and was eager to start a new business. She was happy for him and supported him fully, but still the money was not coming in.

    Maggie began to feel guilty that she wasn't contributing with any kind of income. She began job-hunting and found filling out applications somewhat difficult, especially the part asking for job references. She was self-employed with her husband for almost 20 years, which seemed to mean nothing as she was never called for an interview.

    When she was job-hunting her mom became more ill than she had been and ended up in the hospital for a week. Once Maggie's mom returned home she became her mom's helper one day a week. She did everything that her mother was not able to do any more. Of course her mom would pay her for her lime and labor but she still felt she needed to find another source of income.

    One of the first applications she had filled out finally came through. She passed the interview and was told she was exactly what they were looking for. Although it was only part-time it was exactly what she wanted. It was important for her to be home when her daughter arrived home from school.

    Within a few weeks, though, she received an e-mail saying that the company had changed the job into a full-time position so that she was not qualified. Maggie felt betrayed and felt she had been lied to. That evening she was alone at home. She welcomed the aloneness and wanted to put herself in the bathtub to kill the lonely time.

    As she knew she would, Maggie began to cry, softly at first just from the sharp pain of being rejected. Three long years of struggle had finally overwhelmed her.

    When she was able to cry no more, she became worn out and gave up. It was at that moment that a silent idea came to her: why not offer elderly people home care assistance? Using another talent for computers she printed off some flyers and cards and distributed them to her church, grocery stores and even placed a small ad in the newspaper. Within a week she had procured two new customers. Now, even though she's not a CEO of a major company she feels happy and productive again.

    Before a butterfly can come out of its chrysalis (茧) it has to go through a lot of struggling. Each time it pushes out to escape, acids are being removed from its wings. If someone were to come along and break the chrysalis open for it then the butterfly would die from those acids. Actually the struggle is necessary for the butterfly to survive. Then in the stillness, when the struggle is over, the butterfly can come out and share its beauty with the world.

    We as humans are not any different.

    Almost every night for more than 10 years, Kirk Alexander, 48, ordered a late dinner from his local restaurant Domino's Pizza. But for the past two weeks, he hasn't called for even once.

    “A few of my staff mentioned that we hadn't seen his order in a while. Then I found that it had been 12 days since he last ordered, which is not like him,” Domino's general manager Sarah Fuller said, feeling she could no longer ignore Kirk's recent absence.

    Sarah has known Kirk since 2009, when she started working at the Domino's Pizza as a deliver driver and often made the short trip to Kirk's home about six minutes away. She knew Kirk worked from home, and neighbors said he seldom left. She also knew that he had some health problems in the past. Something, Sarah worried, was wrong.

    Around 1 a.m. on May 8, Sarah sent delivery driver Sean Hamblen to visit Kirk's home. Sean arrived at Kirk's home and knocked on the front door several times. There was no answer. He later noticed that the lights and the TV in the home were on. When he called Kirk's phone, it went straight to voice mail.

    Sean drove back to the restaurant to tell Sarah and they decided to call 911. Soon, officers arrived at Kirk's home. So did Sarah and Sean. They heard a man calling for help from inside. Officers broke down the door and found Kirk on the floor in need of medical attention at once after suffering from a heart attack. One day later, they might have been too late.

    So is keeping an eye on regular customers part of Domino's business plan? Not really. “Kirk is part of our family here and we feel like we need to do something.” Sarah said.

    You may have heard of the American Dream, an ideal that has powered the hopes of Americans for generations.

    It began as a belief that the US was a land of opportunity, and that anyone could achieve success through hard work. The dream has referred to home ownership, a good job, retirement security or each generation doing better than the last for a long time.

    Yet today, this concept seems to have greatly changed. As Tune magazine pointed out, quite different from the older generation, many Millennials (the generation born after 1980) redefine the American Dream as “day-to-day control of your life”. They “prize job mobility, flexible schedules, any work that is more interesting than typing, and the ability to travel”, said the magazine.

    Home ownership, once the cornerstone of the American Dream, is becoming a smaller priority for this generation. Meanwhile, nearly 40% of them choose travel as part of their dream. And running their own business is a rising favorite, as nearly 26% of Millennials consider self-employment as part of their dream.

    So what has led to this huge change?

    Many point fingers at the poor economy. “Modern young Americans seem bound to face a world stamped by ever narrowing opportunity,” noted The Daily Beast.

    “The rate of 16-to-24-year-olds out of school and out of work is unusually high at 15%. Many college graduates have taken jobs that don't require a degree,” Time reported.

    The magazine worries that these difficulties may lead to a lost generation who are “unable to ever truly find their feet on the corporation's ladder”.

    Dan Kadlec, a reporter of Time, sees Millennials as resetting their expectations. “This situation is different for young adults today,” he wrote. “A true American dream has to feel attainable, and many Millennials are feeling they can only attain a day-to-day lifestyle that suits them.”

    The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California is one of the world's most beautiful bridges. It is also one of the most visited places in the world. Vehicles(车辆)cross the bridge an average of 41 million times each year. More than 1800 hundred million vehicles have used the bridge since it opened more than 70 years ago.

    The bridge was painted "International Orange" because that color went well with the natural surroundings. The color also is easier to see in the heavy fog that often covers the area. But the Golden Gate Bridge was not named for its orange color. It was named for the body of water that it crosses，the Golden Gate Strait.

    The Golden Gate Strait is the entrance to the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean. The Golden Gate Bridge links the city of San Francisco with Marin County, California.

    Planning for the bridge began in the 1920s when the area around San Francisco was growing. People living in the area needed another way to get to the city besides small ferries(渡船).

    Joseph Strauss was the chief engineer for the project. Work began in 1934. Mr. Strauss demanded the strongest safety protections in the history of bridge building. These included the first use of "hard hats" to protect the workers' heads and special glasses to protect their eyes.

    A special safety net was suspended(挂)under the bridge. This net saved the lives of 19 men during the construction. However，11 other workers were killed when they fell from the bridge through the net. Still，this was a new safety record for the time.

    The Golden Gate Bridge opened in 1937.It extends 1280 meters across the water. The total length is 2737 meters. It was the largest suspension bridge(吊桥)in the world until 1964.That is when the Verrazano Narrows Bridge opened in New York City. Today，the Golden Gate Bridge is the ninth longest suspension bridge in the world.

    If you want to become a fluent English speaker you should take some advice. There are four skills in learning English. They are reading, listening, speaking, and writing. The most important thing you must remember is that if you want to improve your speaking and writing skills, you should first master the skills of reading and listening.

    Read as much as you can. But your reading must be active. It means that you must think about the meaning of the sentence, the meaning of the unfamiliar words, etc. There is no need for you to pay much attention to grammars or try to understand all the unfamiliar words you come across, but the fact that you see them for the first time and recognize them whenever you see them, for example, in other passages or books, is enough. It would be better to prepare yourself a notebook so you can write down the important words or sentences in it.

    As for listening, there are two choices: besides reading, you can listen every day for about 30 minutes. You can only pay attention to your reading and become skillful at your reading, then you can catch up on your listening. Since you have lots of inputs in your mind, you can easily guess what the speaker is going to say. This never means that you should not practice listening. For listening you can listen to cartoons or some movies that are specially made for children. Their languages are easy. Or if you are good at listening you can listen to VOA or BBC programs every day. Again the thing to remember is being active in listening and preferably taking some notes.

    If you follow these pieces of advice, your speaking and writing will improve quickly, and you can be a fluent English speaker one day.