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    Learning to read early has become one of those indicators — in parents' minds at least – that their child is smart. In fact, reading early has very little to do with whether a child is successful academically. Research has shown that difficulty with reading is often due not to inferior intelligence but to differences in the developmental wiring of each individual child. In some cases, there are neurological problems and developmental lags that can be overcome with proper training.

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    Traditionally, American schools teach children at age six, but many schools begin teaching informally in kindergarten and pre-kindergarten. If parents start too early to encourage reading, and a child does not immediately succeed, the parent has a hard time relaxing and letting the child go at his or her own pace.

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    Over the years, research has proved that the use of both the “whole language" method and the "phonic" method works best for a child to master reading. While the whole language approach, which includes reading to children and getting them interested in both the activity of reading and the story they are reading, is helpful, phonics must be taught. Children must be taught that one of the squiggles they see is a "p" and another a "b". Getting the print off the page requires a different ability than being able to understand the meaning of what is written.

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    You can start developing the skills needed in reading at a very young age without putting any pressure on children. Besides reading to them, parents can start "ear training" their child by playing thyme games. This develops the child's ability to recognize different sounds. In reading to children, parents also can point to words as they go, teaching the child that the funny lines on the page are the words you are saying. All this should be a fun activity.

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    Once a child is in school, the learning of reading is inevitably more serious. For children who have some kind of reading difficulty, you must get a professional diagnosis. While the teacher might say the child is merely disinterested but will get over it, disinterest or poor performance in reading can stem from a number of things, some being very specific learning disabilities that can be identified and worked on. But it is very tricky for parents to deal with their own child's learning disabilities.

    There are countless short videos on YouTube. It's a website for people to post video made by themselves. Many people make a lot of money through doing so. Then, who made the most over the past year?

    YouTube's top-earning celebrity is a 25-year-old video-game-playing young man who shows a strong sense of humor in his videos. He earned $12 million over the past year. Forbes magazine says Sweden's Felix Kjellberg, better known by his handle "PewDiePie", tops its first list of people who have turned short videos into huge piles of cash.

    YouTube stars make money mainly by getting paid to interact with products on their channels and sharing ad revenue(收入) with YouTube. Some also star in movies, write books, go on tour, or sell music. They're a hit with younger audiences and brands trying to reach the next generation of consumers.

    Two acts tied for the second place on Forbes' list, both earning $8.5 million: comedy prankster(搞恶作剧的人) duo Smosh(Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla) and the Fine Brothers(Benny and Rafi Fine). Dancing violinist Lindsey Stirling ranked fourth with $6 million. Tied for fifth were comedians Rhett and Link(made of Rhett McLaughlin and Charles Lincoln III) and video game commentators(解说员) Olajide Olatunji, known as "KSI," with $4.5 million. Make-up artist Michelle Phan was seventh at $3 million. The No. 8 place was a three-way tie at $2.5 million shared by comedian Lilly Singh, or "Superwoman;" prankster Roman Atwood; and chef Rosanna Pansino.

    Forbes is best known for its list of billionaires and this list marks its first attempt at ranking YouTube stars. It says it measured earnings before management fees and taxes and came up with the figures based on data from online sources such as Nielsen, IMDb and interviews with managers, lawyers, industry insiders and the stars themselves.

    Reading can be a social activity. Think of the people who belong to book groups. They choose books to read and then meet to discuss them. Now, the website BookCrossing.com turns the page on the traditional idea of a book group.

    Members go on the site and register the books they own and would like to share. BookCrossing provides an identification number to stick inside the book. Then the person leaves it in a public place, hoping that the book will have an adventure, traveling far and wide with each new reader who finds it.

    Bruce Pederson, the managing director of BookCrossing, says, “The two things that change your life are the people you meet and books you read. BookCrossing combines both.”

    Members leave books on park benches and buses, in train stations and coffee shops. Whoever finds their book will go to the site and record where they have found it.

    People who find a book can also leave a journal entry describing what they thought of it. E-mails are then sent to the BookCrossing to keep them updated about where their books have been found. Bruce Peterson says the idea is for people not to be selfish by keeping a book to gather dust on a shelf at home.

    BookCrossing is part of a trend among people who want to get back to the “real” and not the virtual(虚拟). The site now has more than one million members in more than one hundred thirty-five countries.

    Everyone should be so lucky as to have a friend like Francia Raisa. On Thursday, singer and actress Selena Gomez, 25, used Instagram to explain why she was “laying low” this summer. She posted a photo of herself in a hospital bed with her friend Francia Raisa holding hands. She said she recently received a kidney transplant from her best friend because of complications（并发症）from lupus（狼疮）, an autoimmune disease, which means it is the result of the immune system attacking normal tissue, including the kidneys, brain, heart and lungs.

    People with lupus may first experience tiredness, joint pain or a little bit of rash（皮疹）on their bodies and can go for a long time before their doctors realize it is more serious. Many people see two or four doctors before the real problem is picked up. According to Dr. Kyriakos Kirou, roughly a third to one-half of people with lupus develop kidney disease, and up to one in five of them will eventually need a transplant, sometimes because they weren't treated with effective drugs to prevent the immune system from attacking the kidneys. Though Gomez said that she was “very well now,” she warned about the dangers of not taking medical diagnoses seriously, like she initially did.

    Her Instagram post also called attention to two major health topics: the need for living organ donators and the fact that Gomez represents three groups more likely to be diagnosed with lupus and lupus-related kidney disease. Nine out of 10 people diagnosed with lupus are women, and most develop the disease between the ages of 15 to 44. And lupus is two to three times more common among women of color, including Hispanic women, according to the Lupus Foundation.

    Raisa is Latina, and Gomez's father is of Mexican origin. While it's not essential that the organ donator and receiver be of the sane ethnicity, people who share a similar background sometimes are better matched, according to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing.

    Around this time a few years ago, it was common to see videos of friends on social media having a bucket of icy water thrown on them. Known as the “ice bucket challenge”, it was created as a way to raise money for the medical condition ALS. But now, there's a new challenge and this time, no water is involved.

    What is it? Well, think of a fruit that you'd never normally sink your teeth into. Perhaps you've got it: a lemon. While we enjoy using lemons to add flavor to dishes, very few of us would actually eat one as we'd eat an apple or an orange.

    But the horrible taste is the precise reason why the “lemon face challenge” is taking off. Participants bite into a lemon, taking a selfie as they do it before posting the photo online. The fun is all about expression people make as all that citric acid (柠檬酸) hits their taste buds (味蕾). Every expression seems to say, “This is worse than freezing water.”

    The serious side to this trend is the good cause it's all in aid of. The challenge aims to raise awareness of a rare brain cancer that affects young children. It was started by Aubregh Nicholas, an 11-year-old US kid. She was diagnosed with this rare brain cancer herself in September 2017, but has since raised almost $50000 to cover her medical expenses thanks to the challenge.

    If a challenge is going to raise publicity and contributions from people, it has to be something interesting and original. That way the ice bucket challenge took off in 2014 and it explains why so many people are now sharing their lemon faces. There are a lot of stories about the downside of social media these days. The charity challenges, however, show how online culture can unite the world and bring help to the people who most need it.

    Identical twins are born when an egg divides into two, resulting in the birth of two children with identical genes. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Some believe, however, that there is also a close connection between twins in the way they think, not just in the way they look. Twins finish each other's sentences, and share the same tastes in clothes or music. Some have argued that identical twins have mysterious, even psychic, powers.

    Although many identical twins claim to know what the other is thinking, there is no evidence to suggest that this is because of special powers. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Most of us have met up with a brother or sister, or close friend, and immediately asked, “What's wrong?” because we have unconsciously recognized, in their facial expression, that they are upset in some way. Signs we would miss in a stranger's behavior are instantly obvious in the way those close to us act. It is hardly surprising that twins notice the way their brother or sister's facial expressions or body language gives away how they feel. Indeed, the closeness of their bond is likely to improve this ability over the years.

    The media is full of stories in which a twin senses her brother or sister to be in trouble. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Damien Croft developed a bad headache one evening and, concerned, felt the need to phone his brother to check if everything was OK. When there was no reply, he drove to his brother's home, only to find him unconscious, having had an epileptic fit (癫痫症) and fallen from a ladder while decorating. On the face of it, his sixth sense had saved the day. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Damien knew his brother was decorating, and knew that he was prone to epileptic fits. Subconsciously concerned, he had just imagined the worst-case situation. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A. We all know such twins are often very similar in appearance.

B. The fact that something awful had happened was only a coincidence.

C. In contrast, there are many other stories which can be more easily explained.

D. In truth, of course, the events might also be explained in more ordinary terms.

E. Recent studies show the reasons of all those cases of mysterious happenings between identical twins.

F. In a recent, widely-reported case, for example, a young man survived a horrific fall thanks to a feeling his twin is supposed to have had.

G. A more believable explanation is that, like any pair of people who have grown up together, they are just good at understanding the thought processes behind what their twin does.