You probably don't think about soil often, but the following report may help you learn about science of soil.

What is soil made of?

Soil is made of sediments (沉积物) and humus(腐殖质). Sediment is small pieces of rock broken down over time by rain, ice, and wind. Sediment is often found in water. Humus comes from decayed(腐烂的) plants and animals. It helps give plants a lot of the food they need to grow.

How does soil form?

Over centuries, rock breaks down into very small pieces.

The rock pieces mix with humus.

The humus gets thicker and thicker over time. Soil is formed(形成)l

How are soils different?

Soils can be different colors and have different textures(质感). Texture is how the surface of an object feels. Color and texture are two features(特征) of soil.

Plants and soil

Plants do not grow well in some soils. Sandy soi1 is too dry. It does not hold water. Soil with too much clay is too thick. Most plants grow well in dark, rich garden soil that has different sediments and a lot of humus in it.

As teenagers, you have many dreams. These dreams can be very big. Such as winning the Nobel Prize, or they can be small, you may just want to become the best student in your class. Once you find a dream, what do you do with it? Do you try to make your dream ①real?

Andrew Matthews, an Australian writer tells us that making our dreams real is life's biggest ②challenge. You may think you're not very good at some school subjects or ③___________ is impossible for you to become a writer. These kinds of thoughts stop you from getting your dream. In fact, everyone can make his dream come true. The first thing you must do is to remember what your dream is.  Don't let it leave your heart. Keep telling yourself what you want. Do this step by step and your dream will come true faster because a big dream is made up of many small dreams.

You must never give up your dream. There will be difficulties on the road to your dreams. But the biggest difficulty ④comes from yourself. You need to decide what is the most important.

⑤Without dreams, you won't make up your mind to learn more skills and find new interests.

    Tara and Beth met in a dancing class and became close friends very quickly. Soon Beth felt comfortable talking to Tara about her own problems, and Tara was always happy to listen to her. One day, Beth heard some other girls talking about the things that only she and Tara knew. Later, Beth found out that Tara was talking behind her back. Beth didn't understand how Tara could be so nice when she was with her, but be a different person when they were not together. The next day at school, Beth started saying bad words about Tara. From then on, when they met, they both said bad words about each other.

    It was clear that Tara was not a very good friend to Beth when she talked behind Beth's back. Why did Tara start doing this? Was she not a nice person? Maybe not. There might be something else going on.

    At last, Beth found out that Tara's problem came from jealousy(嫉妒), because Tara didn't have nice clothes or expensive things like Beth's.

根据短文内容，完成下列表格。

    Have you ever counted the number of digits (数字) in your mobile phone number? Your number has 11 digits. You may sometimes find it hard to remember your number. That's because China has the longest mobile phone numbers in the world. Why is that?

    The 11 digits can be divided into three parts. Each part has a different meaning. The first three numbers tell you which mobile phone service company it is. For example, 135 is for China Mobile Communications

    Corporation and 188 is for China Unicom. The fourth to the seventh digits tell you where the number is registered (注册). And the last four digits are random (随机的).

    The main reason for using 11 digits is that we have the largest population in the world. We once had 10 numbers. But as our population grew, there were not enough numbers for us to use. So we began to use 11 digits starting from 1999. Eleven digits can be used to make tens of billions of mobile phone numbers. That's enough for each person to have seven or eight phone numbers to use in China.

    And mobile phone numbers can be recycled. Usually, the service company will reuse a canceled number after three to six months. If you call a number that you haven't contacted for a long time, you may find that its owner has changed.

    Besides China, Britain and Japan also use 11-digit mobile phone numbers. But their numbers always start with 0. So they cannot create as many numbers as we can. Countries like the United States, Australia and India use phone numbers with 10 digits. Canada's mobile phone numbers are perhaps the shortest in the world: they use seven digits.