BEIJING — China's education authority will tighten the widely criticized policy of “extra credits” for the national college entrance examination to ensure a fairer chance for all exam-takers.

    Under the policy, high school students who win awards in national Olympic competitions could get "extra credits', up to 20 points for the national college entrance exam. Students with talent in sports and students who are from ethnic groups can also benefit from this policy. The extra credits have increased these students' chances of being admitted by famous universities. Some parents were found to have helped their children fabricate(伪造)award experiences or falsify qualifications to get extra credits.

    “It has harmed education equality，” the ministry said.

    Xiong Bingqi, vice-chief of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said the policy is designed to help students who have special talents but may be weak in academic performance to have a chance to receive higher education. It will still be needed but it is time to make the rules fairer," he said.

    The ministry said it will reduce the range of competitions whose winners can get extra credits, and limit the winners, privileges.

    The new policy will apply to students who begin high school in 2011, it said.

    Chen Lei, a mother of a 10-year-old girl, said she welcomed the ministry's policy adjustment as she does not want her daughter to become an Olympic competition geek.

    But not all the Chinese parents welcomed the new policy. “It is like a thunderbolt for me. My 13-year-old son has spent so much time studying Olympic math, and participated in so many technological competitions during vacations. It is useless now,” said Dong Wen, a 43-year-old mother.

    A student said, “Many students have changed the current study plan, and they can abandon the competition. I will be interested in learning the courses which can improve my abilities.”

    Yuan Guiren, minister of education, told China Daily that the reform is an attempt to consider the overall quality of an applicant. “But the country will not stop the national college entrance  examination as it is still the most objective way to evaluate talent in China,” he said.

    Yosemite is a national park in California. It is very beautiful and big. The park includes more than 760,000 acres (英亩) in the California Mountains. Most of the park is wild (荒凉的).

    The part of Yosemite that everyone likes is Yosemite Valley. It is a small valley that is 7 miles long and less than 1 mile wide. It has tall rock walls and streams that flow down in waterfalls. More than two million visitors come to the valley each year.

    It's said that the number of visitors is more than the land can hold. The valley has 4,500 camping places. It has a hotel that can hold 4,000 families. This is still not enough to serve all of the visitors. The valley has grown so big that it has a lot of traffic.

    A worker says the park is trying to keep the beauty of the park and let everyone visit. Some areas have been rounded up (圈起来) to keep people away and planted with seeds to try to keep them beautiful.

    A former worker thinks Yosemite should get more money to take better care of the park. He would also like to teach people what the park service is trying to do.

    Some people are trying to save Yosemite Valley. A plan has been made to remove some buildings. There will be fewer cars allowed inside the park. More buses will help get people around.

    I travel a lot, and I find out different "styles" of directions every time I ask "How can I get to the post office?"

    Foreign tourists are often confused in Japan because most streets there don't have names; in Japan, people use landmarks in their directions instead of street names. For example, the Japanese will say to travelers, "Go straight down to the corner. Turn left at the big hotel and go past a fruit market. The post office is across from the bus stop."

    In the countryside of the American Midwest, there are not usually many landmarks. There are no mountains, so the land is very flat; in many places there are no towns or buildings within miles. Instead of landmarks, people will tell you directions and distances. In Kansas or Iowa, for example, people will say, "Go north two miles. Turn east, and then go another mile."

    People in Los Angeles, California, have no idea of distance on the map; they measure distance in time, not miles. "How far away is the post office?" you ask. "Oh," they answer, "it's about five minutes from here." You say, "Yes, but how many miles away is it?" They don't know.

    It's true that a person doesn't know the answer to your question sometimes. What happens in such a situation? A New Yorker might say, 'Sorry, I have no idea." But in Yucatan, Mexico, no one answers "I don't know." People in Yucatan believe that "I don't know" is impolite, they usually give an answer, often a wrong one. A tourist can get very, very lost in Yucatan!

    As my dad unwrapped（打开）the new bicycle helmet（头盔）that I got him for his birthday, I realized that a number of people ride their bicycles every day without the protection of a helmet.

      Due to cold winters across the country, riding has become increasingly dangerous as many roads have holes and are torn-up（磨损的）. Not everyone realizes that there are laws requiring the wearing of helmets in many places.

    Where I live, there has been a law in place since October 1, 1992 stating that cyclists of all ages are required to wear helmets. Unfortunately, accidents can happen to the best of riders. My dad has been a cyclist for many years, and he often rides around my county and to Rockland Lake State Park.

    One afternoon, as he was just entering the park, he lost control of his bicycle and flew off and landed on a nearby patch of grass, breaking his helmet into pieces and losing consciousness（知觉）. When he was just awakening, a lovely couple found him and brought him back to our house, where he attempted to recall the events leading up to his fall. Later that day, a CAT scan showed that he had a concussion (脑震荡). That evening, while my dad was showing me the pieces of his broken helmet, we both came to a shocking realization.

    If he had not worn his helmet, he probably would have cracked his skull and perhaps died. Today, when my dad and I go out cycling, the wearing of our helmets is not even a question. Regardless of age, everyone should wear a helmet whenever they get on a bicycle.

    It was a cold winter day. A woman drove up to the Rainbow Bridge tollbooth (收费站). “I'm paying for myself, and for the six cars behind me,” she said with a smile, handing over seven tickets. One after another, the next six drivers arriving at the tollbooth were informed, “Some lady up ahead already paid your fare.”

    It turned out that the woman, Natalie Smith, had read something on a friend's refrigerator: “Practice random(随意的，随机的) kindness and aimless acts of beauty.” The phrase impressed her so much that she copied it down.

    Judy Foreman spotted the same phrase on a warehouse wall far away from home. When it stayed on her mind for days, she gave up and drove all the way back to copy it down. “I thought it was beautiful,” she said, explaining why she'd taken to writing it at the bottom of all her letters, “like a message from above.” Her husband, Frank, liked the phrase so much that he put it up on the classroom wall for his students, one of whom was the daughter of Alice Johnson, a local news reporter. Alice put it in the newspaper, admitting that though she liked it, she didn't know where it came from or what it really meant.

    Two days later, Alice got a call from Anne Herbert, a woman living in Marin. It was in a restaurant that Anne wrote the phrase down on a piece of paper, after turning it around in her mind for days.

    “Here's the idea,” Anne says. “Anything you think there should be more of, do it randomly.” Her fantasies (imagination) include painting the classrooms of poor schools, leaving hot meals on kitchen tables in the poor part of town, and giving money secretly to a proud old lady. Anne says, “Kindness can build on itself as much as violence can.”

    The acts of random kindness spread. If you were one of those drivers who found your fare paid, who knows what you might have been inspired to do for someone else later. Like all great events, kindness begins slowly, with every single act. Let it be yours!

    When you were at school, the last thing you probably wanted to do was spend your weekends going to work. There was homework to do, sport to play and fun to have. But our parents probably persuaded us to find a job to earn some money and get some life experience. When I was a teenager I had a paper round: delivering newspapers to people's homes. I then progressed to a Saturday job in a supermarket: stacking shelves and working at the checkout.

    Today in the UK you are allowed to work from the age of 13, and many children do take up part-time jobs. It's one of those things that are seen almost as a rite of passage(成人仪式).It's a taste of independence and sometimes a useful thing to put on your CV(简历).Teenagers agree that it teaches valuable lessons about working with adults and also about managing their money.

    Some research has shown that not taking up a Saturday or holiday job could be deleterious to a person later on. A 2015 study by the UK Commission on Employment and Skills found that not participating in part-time work at school age had been blamed by employer's organizations for young adults being ill-prepared for full-time employment, but despite this, recent statistics have shown that the number of schoolchildren in the UK with a part-time job has fallen by a fifth in the past five years.

    So, does this mean that British teenagers are now afraid of hard work? Probably not. Some experts feel that young people feel going out to work will affect their performance at school, and they are under more pressure now to study hard and get good exam results-and a good job in the long term. However, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, told BBC News that "Properly regulated(控制的)part-time work is a good way of helping young people learn skills that they will need in their working lives." In reality, it's all about getting the right balance between doing part-time work and having enough time to study and rest.