George Stephenson was born in 1781 in a poor family. He had to start work when he was only eight. When George was fourteen, he became his father's helper. He spent a lot of time learning about engines. On holidays, he often took one engine into pieces and studied each piece carefully. Soon he became a very good worker though he could not read or write.

      He began to learn the English letters when he was seventeen years old. Every day after he did twelve hours of hard work, he walked a long way to have lessons from a young teacher.

      On his eighteenth birthday, he wrote his own name for the first time in his life. George invented many things in his life. The train was the greatest one among them. Today when we watch or take trains from one place to another, we will think of this great man—George Stephenson.

While watching the Olympics the other night, I came across an unbelievable sight. It was not a gold medal, nor a world record broken, but a show of someone's strong determination to win.

The event was a swimming and started with only three men on the blocks. For one reason or another, two of them made mistake when they started, so they were kicked out. That would have been difficult enough, not having anyone to race against, even though the time on the clock is what's important.

I watch the man jump into the water and knew right away that something was wrong. Now I'm not an expert swimmer but I do know a good jump from a poor one, and this was not exactly medal quality. When he was swimming, the crowd started to laugh. Clearly this man was not a medal competitor.

      I listened to the crowd begin to laugh at this poor man that was clearly having a hard time. Finally he made his turn to start back. He tried his best, but clearly he was exhausted.

       But when they saw the man keeping on trying , they stopped laughing and beginning to cheer. Some even to stand and say: “Come , you can do it!” and “ Go for it！”

       A few minutes later ,this young man finally finished his race. The crowd went wild. You would have thought that he had won the gold, and he should have. Even though he recorded one of the slowest times in Olympic history, this man gave more heart than any of the other competitors.

       Just a short year ago, he had never swam, let alone raced. His country had been asked to Sydney as manners.

       In a competition where players remove their silver medals feeling they have somehow been cheated out of gold, or when they act so proudly in front of their competitors, it is nice to watch this game.

       A man that gave his all-knowing that he had no chance, but competed because of the spirit of the games.

A better town for teenagers

    I believe there are many things that we can do to make life in our town a lot better for teenagers.

    First of all, I think more bike lanes should{#blank#}1{#/blank#}(build). A lot of teenagers in my town ride bikes everywhere, but it's very{#blank#}2{#/blank#}(danger) because there is a lot of traffic. If there are more bike lanes in the future, it will be much {#blank#}3{#/blank#}(safe) for us.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}(two), I believe that we need more places for teenagers to go to.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}my opinion, teenagers won't cause problems in the street if there are more places for us to go to. So we need more{#blank#}6{#/blank#}(club) and other places where we can meet.

    Thirdly, teenagers here need more sports facilities. There{#blank#}7{#/blank#}(be) places to play ball games so far like tennis and basketball, but what about other sports,{#blank#}8{#/blank#}skating and rollerblading?

    Finally, I'm sure we'll make the town better{#blank#}9{#/blank#}we don't drop litter. If we all do something{#blank#}10{#/blank#}(help) now, our town will be much better for everyone in the future.

 Cindy is a middle school student. She likes shopping very much.

 It is New Year's Day today. Many stores are at a great sale. So Cindy's mother and Cindy go shopping after lunch.

 They are in a store now. Cindy sees a note that says"BOGOF!". She asks a saleswoman what that is. The saleswoman says to her," It is‘ buy one, get one free(免费)'."

 That sounds good! Cindy finds a shirt for 30 yuan. Cindy's mother wants to buy a skirt . It is 30 yuan, too. So Cindy buys a yellow shirt and her mother buys a white skirt.

 Cindy and her mother are very happy.

①Do you remember the name of your kindergarten teacher? I do, Her name was Mrs. White. 

②I don't remember much about what we learned in her class, but my mother once told me that we used to write a lot. And I would bring back what I wrote and she would look at it and see there were so many mistakes. But no red corrections. And always a star. Sometimes even a Good! That worried my mother a lot, so one day she asked Mrs. White why she never corrected my mis- takes; in spellings of words or pointed out grammatical errors. 

③Mrs. White said, "The children are just beginning to get excited about using words, about forming sentences. I don't want to dampen that interest with red ink. Spelling and grammar can wait. . . "

④She is right! I did grow up learning to use words with loving confidence just like that. I look back now and think she must have been a rather extraordinary teacher— to restrain(限制) her red pen— to allow the joy, wonder and excitement of expression. 

⑤I used to misspell"beautiful" a lot. I never could quite remember that the"e" went before the"a". It annoyed my teacher in high school endlessly. Eventually the"e" and"a" settled into their right places. I am glad I didn't wait on them though. "Pretty" is easier to spell but it doesn't hold as much as you mean sometimes. 

⑥And thanks to Mrs. White I had no concerns about writing what I meant, even if I couldn't quite spell it out. After all, life isn't pretty. It's beautiful.