When parents send their children to school，often they don't know what happens day to day. Parents depend on what their children tell them about they are doing and what they are learning. Generally schools will host parent-teacher meeting at least twice a year. Parent-teacher meetings are short meetings between parents and their children's teacher. Usually they are held when teachers give put a student's grades for the term. The parent-teacher meetings give teachers a chance to let parents know how their child is doing. A teacher will let a parent know the student's advantages and bring to the parent's attention any problems with grades or behavior(行为).The meetings also offer parents the chance to ask questions and see what their child is learning.

    Most children do not go along with their parents to the meetings. This allows both the parent and teacher to talk honestly about the child's progress without making the child feel bad. Usually a teacher will offer advice to the parent on how to support their child's education.

    Britain is f{#blank#}1{#/blank#}as a country of animal lovers, and a many families have at least one pet. Americans also like animals, and about 60% of American families have a pet. People from other countries say that Americans think so much about animals and take them as well as people.

    At weekends people have many ways to see other animals. Many towns have a river with ducks. In Britain, people v{#blank#}2{#/blank#}farm parks, zoos, bird parks, and sea life parks.

    TV s{#blank#}3{#/blank#}about animals are very popular. Children are i{#blank#}4{#/blank#} in animals when they are very small. Children's life is wonderful b{#blank#}5{#/blank#}there are many different animals. Many animals in books have their own character: foxes are cunning(狡猾的), and cats are kind.

    We can watch stories about animals on TV. Animal World is very good. We can know more about animals. And we can see many other animals we can't see in our life.

    Animals are our friends and we s{#blank#}6{#/blank#}take the animals as our friends.

    A rabbit is running into its hole. You may ask, "What happened?"

    Well, when a rabbit sees something dangerous, it runs away. Its tail moves up and down as it runs. When other rabbits see this tail moving up and down, they run too. They know that there is a danger. The rabbit has told them something without making a sound. It has given them a signal.

    Many other animals use this kind of language too. When a bee found some food, it goes back to its home. It cannot tell the other bees where the food is by speaking to them, but it does a little dance in the air. This tells the other bees to go with it to find food.

    Some animals say things by making sounds. A dog barks, for example, when a stranger comes near. A cat purrs (发出呼噜呼噜的声音) when it is pleased. Some birds make several different sounds, each with its own meaning.

    But human beings have something that no animals have—a large number of words about things, actions, feelings or ideas. We are able to give each other information and to tell or inform other people what is in our mind or how we feel. By writing words down we can remind ourselves of the things that have happened, or send messages to people far away. No animal can do this. No animal has the wonderful power of language.

    No one knows how man learned to make words. As centuries went by, he made more and more new words. This is what we mean by language.

    People living in different countries made different kinds of words. Today there are about fifteen hundred different languages in the world. A very large English dictionary, for example, contains four or five hundred thousand words. But we do not know all of them. The words we know are called vocabulary. We should try to make our vocabulary larger. Read as many books as possible. When we meet a new word, look it up in the dictionary. A dictionary is the most useful book.

    Xie Wanying (October 5, 1900-Febrary 28.1999), better known by her pen name Bing Xin, was one of the most well-known Chinese writers of the 20^th century. Many of her works were written for young readers. Her pen name Bing Xin carries the meaning of a pure heart, and is taken from a line in a Tang Dynasty poem by Wang Changling.

    Bing Xin was born in Fuzhou, Fujian, but moved to Shanghai with her family when she was seven months old, and later moved yet again to the coastal port city of Yantai, Shandong, when she was four. Such a move had a key influence on Bing Xin's personality and philosophy (哲学) of love and beauty, as the hugeness and beauty of the sea greatly opened young Bing Xin's mind and heart. It was also in Yantai, Bing Xin first began to read the classics of Chinese literature, such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, when she was just seven.

    In 1913, Bing Xin moved to Beijing. She started her writing career as she wrote for a school newspaper at Yanjing University where she was a student and published her first novel. Bing Xin graduated from Yanjing University in 1923 with a bachelor's degree, and went to the United States to study at Wellesley College, earning a master's degree at Wellesley in literature in 1926. She then returned to Yanjing University to teach until 1936.

    In 1929, she married Wu Wenzao, her good friend when they were studying in the United States. In literature, Bing Xin founded the "Bing Xin Style" as a new literary style. She contributed a lot to children's literature in China such as A Myriad of Stars (1923), Spring Water (1923), Six-one sister (1924), To Young Readers (1926), Homeward South (1931), The Collected Works of Bing Xin (1932-1933). Bing Xin's literary career was productive. She wrote a lot of works — prose, poetry, novels, reflections and so on. There is a Bing Xin Literature Museum in Changle in Fujian Province. The Bing Xin Children's Literature Award is named in her honour.

The other day, my husband called me to the balcony(阳台). "Come, dear, look at that car!" 

"What's up?" I asked, looking down at the square in front of our apartment building. A driver was trying to park between two cars. 

"That must be a woman," my husband said.

"How do you know?"

"I've watched the car move back and forth twenty times. Men can't be so bad at driving!"

"What if the driver is a man?" I asked.

"I bet you 50 yuan that the driver is a woman!"

We stood on the balcony and watched the car. It felt a little silly. Five minutes later, the car was finally parked perfectly, and a man slowly got out.

"Fifty yuan please," I said to my husband as he silently walked away.

My husband is not alone in looking down on female drivers. On weekends, my friend Lily likes traveling around the city by bus. But she always hesitates to get on a bus if the driver is a woman. "I can't trust a female driver," she told me one day. "Women are not born to drive, you know."

"Sorry, but I don't know," I said. I go to work by bus every day, and I never think female drivers are any worse. In fact, they are often more careful than men. Research also shows that female drivers are 8.8 times less likely to cause accidents than male drivers.

There are not many female bus drivers, though. And in the history of Formula One(一级方程式赛车), only 0.26 percent of drivers have been women. Without role models, many girls may think they are not meant to be good drivers. But the ability to drive has nothing to do with gender. Women can drive well, too. It's time to stop making jokes about female drivers.

Dear Tony,

I go to a new school in Cambridge now. I like it very much. I'm making a lot of new friends. 

I'm studying new subjects, like science. It's very interesting. We're using computers and learning how to use the Internet. We write e-mails(电子邮件) to people in different countries. I'm learning how people live in different countries. It's great!

We do P. E. on Wednesday in the afternoon, Sometimes we stay in the sports hall to do sports and I like that too. I play basketball after school on Mondays. I like playing basketball a lot. I'm enjoying my new school!

Write and tell me what you're doing in your school in China!

John