It is necessary to be reasonable and flexible enough to avoid conflicts as much as possible and live in peace with others. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} If you have done all your best to avoid conflicts and you are still arguing, then read these effective tips on how to avoid conflicts.

● Don't get in the center of the conflict.

    Sometimes people can get in the center of conflicts due to their enthusiasm for offering help. Frankly speaking, it is very unwise, because it can make you the main figure of the conflict. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} You should focus on your own life issues.

● Be kind.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Life is full of conflicts and disagreements, that's why you should find more conservative ways of dealing with them. For example, kindness can lessen the conflict.

● Try to be a peacekeeper.

    Peacekeepers tend to cooperate with people without bad emotions which usually lead to arguments and even conflicts. “{#blank#}4{#/blank#}” This saying is the life motto of a natural-born peacekeeper. Don't worry if you are not a natural-born peacekeeper; you can gain this skill during life.

● Walk off.

    When the conflict is gathering pace and you can't manage to control yourself, you should choose to handle the situation in another way. By all means, try to keep yourself away from stress. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} You should get away from the situation for a while.

    Put a group of strangers in a room together, and they'll probably start a conversation. “Hot today, isn't it?” one might say. “You said it,” another replies.

    Why do we talk so much about the weather? When we meet new people, we don't begin by telling them our life story. We start with small talk, a polite conversation about something like traffic or weather.

    Research suggests that small talk can build new friendships. When we begin conversations with new people, we want to feel comfortable, and so do they. We use small talk to find common interests. Once we have a common interest, a friendship can begin.

    Small talk even helps people get a job. In order to impress at a job interview, you need to bond with the interviewer right away. Proper sma ll talk can make that first impression get you the job.

    So, how can you make small talk lead to a new friendship or job? First off, find common ground. Select something around you that you share with the other person.

    Next, keep the conversation going. Compliment (赞美) the other person to make him or her feel comfortable, and ask questions to show interest.

    Third, keep eye contact. When you loop people in the eye, they feel you appreciate what they are saying. It makes you appear honest and build trust.

Naturally, shy people might not have enough confidence to start up conversations with strangers. Talking to someone you don't know is not the easiest thing to do! Some experts say with more practice, small take does get easier.

    Some people avoid small talk because they dislike discussing things like traffic or weather. For them, they are just too small. However, when you think about it, small talk is anything but small. In fact, it is actually a very big deal!

    The back-to-school season is upon us, and once again, parents across the country have loaded their kids' backpacks up with snack packs and school supplies. It's a good moment to reflect on what else we should be giving our kids as they head off to school.

    American parents are feeling particularly anxious about that question this year. The educational process feels more than ever like a race, one that starts in pre-school and doesn't end until your child is admitted to the perfect college. Most parents are more worried than they need to be about their children's grades, test scores and IQ. And what we don't think about enough is how to help our children build their character—how to help them develop skills like perseverance, optimism, responsibility, and self-control, which together do more to determine success than S.A.T. scores or I.Q.

    There is growing evidence that our anxiety about our children's school performance may actually be holding them back from learning some of these valuable skills. If you're concerned only with a child's G.P.A., then you will likely choose to minimize the challenges the child faces in school. With real challenge comes the risk of real failure. And in a competitive academic environment, the idea of failure can be very scary, to students and parents alike.

    But experiencing failure is a critical part of building character.A recent research by a team of psychologists found that adults who had experienced little or no failure growing up were actually less happy and confident than those who had experienced a few significant setbacks in childhood. “Overcoming those obstacles,” the researchers assumed, “could teach effective coping skills, help engage social support networks, create a sense of mastery over past adversity, and foster beliefs in the ability to cope successfully in the future.”

    By contrast, when we protect our children from every possible failure—when we call their teachers to get an extension on a paper; when we urge them to choose only those subjects they're good at—we are denying them those same character-building experiences. As the psychologists Madeline Levine and Dan Kindlon have written, that can lead to difficulties in adolescence and young adulthood, when overprotected young people finally confront real problems on their own and don't know how to overcome them.

    In the classroom and outside of it, American parents need to encourage children to take chances, to challenge themselves, to risk failure. In the meantime, giving our kids room to fail may be one of the best ways we can help them succeed.

    Homework

    Do arithmetic problems 15 through 25. State the different forms of the verbs on page 50 of your French workbook. Read pages 12 through 20 of the Shakespeare play, and don't forget to fill in the missing chemical symbols on the worksheet.

    Sound like a list of your homework for the next few nights － or maybe even just for tonight? {#blank#}1{#/blank#}It's your teachers' way of evaluating how much you understand what's going on in class. And it helps strengthen important concepts.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} It's inviting to start with the easy things to get them out of the way. However, you'll have the most energy and focus when you begin, so it's best to use this mental power on the subjects that are most challenging. Later, when you're more tired, you can focus on the simpler things. If you get stuck on a problem, try to figure it out as well as you can － but don't spend too much time on it because this can mess up your homework schedule for the rest of the night.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}But don't pick someone whom you'll be up all night chatting with, or you'll never get it done!

    Most people's attention spans aren't very long, so take some breaks while doing your homework. Sitting for too long without relaxing will make you less productive than if you stop every so often. Taking a 15-minute break every hour is a good idea for most people.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    Once your homework is done, you can check over it if you have extra time. Be sure to put it safely away in your backpack － there's nothing worse than having a completed assignment that you can't find the next morning or that gets ruined by a careless brother or sister.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}Now you're free to hang out.

A. Homework is a major part of going to school.

B. Luckily, you can do a few things to do less homework.

C. When you start your homework, deal with the hardest tasks first.

D. But if you're really concentrating, wait until it's a good time to stop.

E. If you need to, ask an adult for help or call or email a classmate for advice.

F. And no teacher still believes that "chewed by the dog" line － even when it's true!

G. In conclusion, no one is expected to stay long, and people have very different learning styles.

                                                                                                      Ways to save time

    We all wish we had just a bit more time. Just think what you could do with an extra hour or two each day: you could finally stick to an exercise routine, or spring­clean the house, or write your novel, or learn the guitar and so on.

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#}But I can help you find more hours in your day for the things that really matter.

    Get Out of Bed Earlier

    If you normally get up at 7：30 am, try getting up at 7：00 am. That half­hour might not sound like much, but it could be time that you use to exercise, to read that book you've been meaning to finish.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    Do the Important Tasks First

    Once you get to work, get the important ones done first (not the easy ones, or even the urgent ones). You can afford to spend at least an hour working on big, important tasks rather than on all those little urgent ones.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}The urgent tasks will still get done, and you won't miss the important ones.

    Reduce Interruptions

    If colleagues have a habit of hanging around your desk to chat, or if the phone is constantly ringing, you might find that it takes you half the day to finish a simple task like writing a letter. Constant interruptions don't just eat up time, they also break your concentration.When you've got a big task to focus on, let your calls go to voicemail.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}  Wearing headphones makes it less likely that people will try to strike up a conversation.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

    A few minutes chatting, browsing the web, and so on, can easily turn into hours of wasted time over the course of a day.

    When you're working, work. If your concentration is slipping, take a proper break, go and get a glass of water, or stretch your legs a bit. And if you're facing a difficult task, try breaking it into small steps or stages so that it's easier to deal with.

A. Or simply to get your day off to a calm and organized start.

B. I can't magically make all your days 25 hours long.

C. Would you want me to make your day longer?

D. Take Breaks When Necessary

E. If you have an office door, close it.

F. If you work like this, you'll usually save time.

G. Stay Focused on Your Work

Who's Really Addicting You To Technology?

    “Nearly everyone I know is addicted in some measure to the Internet”, wrote Tony Schwartz in The New York Times. It's a common complaint these days. A steady stream of similar headlines accuses the Net and its offspring apps, social media sites and online games of addicting us to distraction.

    There's little doubt that nearly everyone who comes in contact with the Net has difficulty disconnecting. Then who's at fault for its overuse? To find solutions, it's important to understand what we're dealing with. There are four parties cooperating to keep you connected: the tech, your boss, your friends and you.

    The technologies themselves and their makers are the easiest suspects to blame for our distraction. Online services like Facebook, Google, twitter and the like rely on advertising revenue, so the more frequently you use them, the more money they make. No wonder these companies employ teams of people focused on improving their services to be as attractive as possible.

    Good as these services are, there are simple steps we can take to keep them from coming too close. However, less than 15 percent of smartphone users are willing to adjust their notification settings  meaning the remaining 85 percent of us default to (默认)the app makers' every preset devices.

    While companies like Facebook harvest attention to generate revenue from advertisers, other technologies have no such agenda. Take email, for example. We check email at all hours of the day we're obsessed, because that's what the boss wants. For almost all white-collar jobs, email is the primary tool of corporate communication. A slow response to a message could hurt not only your reputation but also your livelihood.

    Your friends are also responsible for the addiction. Think about this familiar scene. People gathered around a table, enjoying food and each others' company. Then, during an interval in the conversation, someone takes out their phone to check who knows what. Barely anyone notices and no one says a thing.

    The reality is taking one's phone out at the wrong time is more than an impolite behavior because, unlike other minor offense, checking tech is contagious (传染). Once one person looks at their phone, other people tend to do the same, starting a chain reaction.

    Hie technology, your boss, and your friends, all influence how often you find yourself using (or overusing) these gadgets. But there's still someone who deserves careful examination the person holding the phone.

    When people are doing something difficult they'd rather not do, the phone is used to transport them elsewhere. They can easily escape discomfort temporarily, by answering email or browsing the web under the excuse of so-called “research”. The truth is that we are working unproductively out of our bad habits.

    Personal technology is indeed more attractive than ever, which doesn't mean we shouldn't attempt to control our use of technology, instead, we should come to terms with the fact that it's more than the technology that's responsible for our habits. Our workplace culture, social norms and individual behaviors all play a part.