Parents who help their children with homework may actually be bringing down their school grades. Other forms of parental involvement, including volunteering at school and observing a child's class, also fail to help, according to the most recent study on the topic.

    The findings challenge a key principle of modern parenting where schools expect them to act as partners in their children's education. Previous generations concentrated on getting children to school on time, fed, dressed and ready to learn.

    Keith Robinson, the author of the study, said, "I really don't know if the public is ready for this but there are some ways parents can be involved in their kids' education that leads to declines in their academic performance. One of the things that was consistently negative was their parents' help with homework." Robinson suggested that may be because parents themselves struggle to understand the tasks."They may either not remember the material their kids are studying now, or in some cases never learnt it themselves, but they're still offering advice."

    Robinson assessed parental involvement performance and found one of the most damaging things a parent could do was to punish their children for poor marks. In general, about 20% of parental involvement was positive, about 45% negative and the rest statistically insignificant.

    Common sense suggests it was a good thing for parents to get involved because "children with good academic success do have involved parents", admitted Robinson. But he argued that this did not prove parental involvement was the root cause of that success. "A big surprise was that Asian-American parents whose kids are doing so well in school hardly involved. They took a more reasonable approach, conveying to their children how success at school could improve their lives."

    The ability to stay positive is one of the most important skills for us. Why is this? The reason is that we will spend most of our lives setting and trying to achieve goals. Everyone has dreams. Everyone wants to know deep down inside that they were put here to do something great. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} The second you set a goal, difficulties will begin to appear to stand in your way. Most people let these challenges rob them of the life they really want.

    If you want to achieve greatness, if you want to experience the best life possible, then be prepared to get knocked down over and over. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} This explains why there are so many people who have stopped trying to reach their dreams.

    So how do you remain positive regardless of what type of challenge you are facing? It all comes down to how you choose to respond to any situation as well as what you decide to focus on. No matter how bad your situation is, you can always find something good in it.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    If you keep focusing on how bad you have it, how are things supposed to get any better? {#blank#}4{#/blank#}Of course it is. If this is true, why even bother thinking positively? That is because if you do, you have a chance to make things better. If you don't, things will usually get a lot worse.

    Realize that challenges are a part of life.{#blank#}5{#/blank#} It's what makes reaching a goal worth it. If you were able to get everything you wanted without even trying, the victory wouldn't taste as sweet.

A.Everyone will have to go through them.

B.Staying positive can be beneficial in many ways.

C.Staying positive during situations like this is not easy.

D.You can do things like reading positive books or listening to positive songs.

E.Is it possible to be positive and still have your circumstances get even worse?

F.However, the problem is that life is tough.

G.So what you can do is start focusing on what is good.

    The United States is full of cars. There are still many families without cars, but some families have two or more. However, cars are used for more than pleasure. They are a necessary part of life.

    Cars are used for business. They are driven to offices and factories by workers who have no other way to get to their jobs. When salesmen are sent to different parts of the city, they have to drive in order to carry their products. Farmers have to drive into the city in order to get supplies.

    Sometimes small children must be driven to school. In some cities school buses are used only when children live more than a mile away from the school. When the children are too young to walk too far, their mothers take turns driving them to school. One mother drives on Mondays taking her own children and the neighbors' as well. Another mother drives on Tuesdays, another on Wednesday, and so on. This is called forming a car pool. Men also form car pools, with three or four men taking turns driving to the place where they all work.

    More car pools should be formed in order to put fewer cars on the road and use less gas. Too many cars are being driven. Something will have to be done about the use of cars.

    Do you know the difference between a food chain anda food web? Food chains show how a living thing such as a plant or an animal gets its energy. A food web consists of multiple food chains and includes many more plants and animals than a food chain includes. This diagram shows a food chain within a food web of the African savanna.

    Humans are social animals. They live in groups all over the world. As these groups of people live apart from other groups, over the years and centuries they develop their own habits and ideas, which are different from other cultures. One important particular side of every culture is how its people deal with time.

    Time is not very important in nonindustrial societies. The Nuer people of East Africa, for example, do not even have a word TIME that is in agreement with the abstract thing we call time. The daily lives of the people of such nonindustrial societies are likely to be patterned around their physical needs and natural events rather than around a time schedule(时间表)based on the clock. They cook and eat when they are hungry and sleep when the sun goes down. They plant crops during the growing seasons and harvest them when the crops are ripe. They measure time not by a clock or calendar(日历),but by saying that an event takes place before or after some other event Frequently such a society measures days in terms of "sleeps" or longer periods in terms of "moons." Some cultures, such as the Eskimos of Greenland measure seasons according to the migration of certain animals.

    Some cultures which do not have a written language or keep written records have developed interesting ways of "telling time". For example, when several Australian aborigines want to plan an event for a future time, one of them places a stone on a cliff or in a tree. Each day the angle of the sun changes slightly. In a few days, the rays of the sun strike the stone in a certain way. When this happens, the people see that the agreed-upon time has arrived and the event can take place.

    In contrast(成对比), exactly correct measurement of time is very important in modern, industrialized societies. This is because industrialized societies require the helpful efforts of many people in order to work. For a factory to work efficiently (well, quickly and without waste), for example, all of the workers must work at the same time. Therefore, they must know what time to start work in the morning and what time they may go home in the afternoon. Passengers must know the exact time that an airplane will arrive or depart. Students and teachers need to know when a class starts and ends. Stores must open on time in order to serve their customers. Complicated(复杂的)societies need clocks and calendars. Thus, we can see that if each person worked according to his or her own schedule, a complicated society could hardly work at all.

Jiyou village in Jianhe county, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong autonomous prefecture, is known by many {#blank#}1{#/blank#} its ancient trees and Miao love songs. With simple folk customs and a forest coverage rate of more than 90 percent, the village is rich in Miao culture, {#blank#}2{#/blank#} was officially listed in the second group of Chinese {#blank#}3{#/blank#}（tradition）villages in August 2013. A grand festival {#blank#}4{#/blank#}（hold）on the second day of the second lunar month—the Bridge Worship Festival. At this time, the ethnic Miao prepare food and wine and perform songs and dances. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}（walk）into Jiyou village during the festival, one can see villagers {#blank#}6{#/blank#}（dress）in Miao costumes. Men hold Lusheng and flags, women carry baskets of wine and food and children are wearing new clothes. All converge（汇集）for the "bridge sacrifice" ceremony and celebrate under the leadership of village {#blank#}7{#/blank#}（elder）. During the day, along with the lilting rhythm of the Lusheng, residents dance {#blank#}8{#/blank#}（joyful）in the square, while tourists take photos and broadcast live {#blank#}9{#/blank#}（record）the moment. At nightfall, villagers and tourists light a bonfire in the center of the square. By {#blank#}10{#/blank#} light of the fire, they savor food and wine and enjoy the general atmosphere of friendship.