Let me tell you something about sharks. Sharks are among the oldest animals in the world. There are over three hundred and fifty different kinds of sharks in the world. Most sharks are about two meters long and live in the oceans.

    A shark can smell something in the water, for example, the blood of animals. That helps them find their food. Sharks mainly eat fish, other sharks and plants in the ocean.

    Most sharks bite (咬)people by mistake. They think a person is a large sea animal. When the sun goes down or comes up, sharks are looking for food. So at these times people shouldn't go swimming in the ocean. Today people kill sharks for food and their skin. The number of sharks in the world is dropping fast.

    The summer holiday is coming. Try to take some time off from school and have fun. Here are some ideas for planning your summer holiday.

    First of all, joining a club is a good idea! You can join a music club, a sports club or an art club, it's good for your future and the teachers in the club can give you some good advice (建议). You can also make some new friends.

    Doing something good for society (社会) is also great. There are many volunteer programs(志愿者项目) for you to choose, such as looking after the____①___or the young, cleaning the streets, planting trees or keeping the traffic(交通) in order. You know that students can also make the world better.

    Did you ever live with another family? You can join in a program___②____"Meeting a New Family" .Two families exchange their children for some time so that they can learn how to get on well with others.

Summer camps are still popular today. An English summer camp can be a good one. You can not only make friends but also learn English.

A Bite of China

Are you an eating-lover? Do you want to eat every delicious food in the world? Then do you watch the popular program A Bite of China? It's a TV program on Chinese delicious food which has been produced by CCTV. Is there any holiday that isn't celebrated with special festival food? Here are several traditional Chinese foods:

Noodles are a symbol of long life in Chinese culture. They are as much a part of Chinese birthday celebration as a birthday cake with its candles lit in many western countries. Since noodles mean long life, it is considered very unlucky to cut it off.

Although westerners sometimes may be very sorry to see fish lying on the plate, in China a whole fish is a symbol of richness. In fact, at a party it is a tradition to serve the whole fish last, pointed towards the most valued guest. Fish also has a special meaning because the Chinese word for fish, yu, sounds like the word for richness or plenty, and it is believed that eating fish will help your wishes come true in the year to come.

A very popular dish during the Dragon Boat Festival is Zongzi. This tasty dish is made of rice dumplings with meat, peanuts or other delicious food in bamboo leaves. The tradition of Zongzi is meant to remind us of a great man, Qu Yuan in Chinese history.

    Beauty sleep is a real thing, researches have shown that people who have enough sleep look more attractive (有魅力的) to others.

    A few bad nights are enough to make a person look especially "more ugly", their sleep experiments show.

    The researchers asked 25 university students to join in their sleep experiment. They were asked to get a good night's sleep for two nights.

    A week later, they were asked to sleep for only four hour every night for two nights in a row. The researchers took make—up free (素颜) photos of the volunteers after both the good and the bad sleep.

    Next, they asked 122 strangers to have a look at the photos and judge (评价) them on attractiveness, health, and sleepiness, as well as asking them: "How much would you like to make friends with this person in the picture?"

    The strangers were good at judging whether the person they were looking at was tired, and if he was sleepy, his attractiveness score would be low.

    The strangers also said they wouldn't want to socialize with the tired students. The researchers say this is natural for people. An unhealthy-looking face makes people run away. In other words, people don't want to hang around with people who might be ill.

    Dr Brewer, an expert at the University of Liverpool said: "Judgment of attractiveness is often unconscious (无意识的), but we all do it, and we are able to judge on even something small like whether someone looks tired or unhealthy. This study is a good reminder of how important sleep is to us."

    Horses are beautiful animals. They can be in different colors, and can run quickly. People like to watch horses because they are strong and beautiful.

    Horses are mammals (哺乳动物). The mother horse usually has one baby in spring, and feeds the baby milk. Horses have long legs and big eyes, so they can see almost all the way around them. They can walk and jump.

    Horses can live up to 20 or 25 years. Sometimes people can tell how old a horse is by looking at its teeth! They usually sleep by standing up. Horses only need about three hours of sleep per day!

    People need to take care of the horses "hooves". If a horse is doing a lot of walking on hard ground, people put horseshoes on them. When the hooves need trimming (修剪), people take off the horseshoes, and then give them new ones.

    For food, horses eat food such as grass, corn, apples and carrots. They don't eat other animals. Their stomachs are small, so they eat a little at one time, but they eat many times.

    Some horses are very famous. For example, Bucephalus, the famous horse of Alexander the Great. When Alexander was a boy, he got a horse. Nobody else could ride on it. Alexander named the horse Bucephalus and the horse carried him in many battles (战役). Here is another example. Napoleon had many horses, and Marengo became famous after Battle of Waterloo.