Most of us have gone away from “mad men” in the street, only to realize that they are in fact using a Bluetooth headset. Now a new University of Pennsylvania study shows that muttering can actually help people find lost objects—in other words, saying the name of an object helps you find it more quickly.

    Previous work has suggested that speaking aloud while performing step-by-step tasks, like tying shoelaces (鞋带), can help kids guide their behavior and let them focus on the job in hand. However, scientists were not sure if speaking aloud when performing tasks could help adults in the same way, especially when looking for particular objects. Professor Gary Lupan and Daniel Swingley, writing for the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, carried out some experiments. They hoped to give the fact that next time you lose your keys, muttering “keys, keys, keys” can in fact help you find them.

    Inspired by viewing people muttering to themselves as they try to find things like peanut butter in a supermarket, the researchers conducted two experiments to see if this actually worked. In the first, participants were shown 20 pictures of various objects and were asked to find a certain one, with some seeing a text label (标签) telling them what they were looking for. These participants were then asked to search for the object again while saying the word to themselves, with results showing that saying it aloud helped people find the object more quickly.

    The second experiment saw participants performing a shopping task, where they were shown photographs of items (物品) commonly found on supermarket shelves. They were asked to find all examples of a particular item, so if they were asked for apples they had to find all the bags of apples, as quickly as possible. The researchers found that there was also an advantage in saying the name of the product aloud when they were searching for something familiar.

    The University of Pennsylvania study shows that muttering can actually help people reach the target object—in other words, muttering to oneself helps to focus the mind on something. It works more effectively than seeing a written description. Repeating the word over and over again helps even more.

    Do you know what a big dream is? {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Or, is a big dream something that provides only entertainment? Children dream big dreams, but there are three barriers to realizing dreams. They often kill them before they ever have a chance to grow.

The Self

    Immediately following the birth of a big dream, a negative self-talk takes over and gives all the reasons why it cannot happen. This inside voice is the ego（自我）. It's there for protecting and should be listened to. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Most people are influenced by the inside voice. That's why only a handful of people make their dream come true.

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    Family and friends are a lot like the ego. They want to protect those they love, so they will often list all the reasons why the big dreams won't come true. Sometimes, family and friend destroy dreams of those they love most, out of their own fear of being left behind.

The World

    If one gets past the first two barriers, one has to face the world. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} In the past, big dreamers were locked up and sometimes even killed when they were shown to the world. Fortunately, in most of the world today, big dreamers just get laughed at.

    The way to realize a big dream is with confidence and action. When children have confidence and then take action, they will be ready to accept any failure. The truth is that every great dreamer whose dreams have never seen the light of success knows failure well. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} 

A. Does a big dream show one's future ?

B. They simply fail until they succeed.

C. How Big Dreams Die

D. It is the last and the most terrible barrier.

E. Family and Friends 

F. Sometimes it is right, but more often it is wrong

G. And their big dream is to be a rock star or a famous artist.

    Many people have long dreamed of being able to fly around as simply as riding a bicycle. Yet the safety and strength of a flying bike was always a big problem. Over the past 10 years, developments in technology have moved the dream of personal flying vehicles closer to reality. Now, two groups of inventors say such vehicles may be available soon.

    The British company Malloy Aeronautics has developed a prototype (原型) of its flying bicycle. Grant Stapleton, marketing sales director of Malloy Aeronautics, says the Hoverbike is able to get in and out of small spaces very quickly. It can be moved across continents very quickly because it can be folded and packed, he adds.

    Mr. Stapleton says safety was the company's main concern. He says the designers solved the safety issue by using overlapping rotors ( 交叠式旋翼 )to power the vehicle.

    The company is testing a full-size prototype of the Hoverbike, which will most likely be used first by the police and emergency rescue teams.

    In New Zealand, the Martin Aircraft Company is also testing a full-size prototype of its personal flying device, called the Jetpack. It can fly for more than 30 minutes, up to 1,000 meters high and reach a speed of 74 kilometers per hour.

    Peter Coker is the CEO of Martin Aircraft Company. He said the Jetpack “is built around safety from the start. In his words, reliability is the most important element of it. We have safety built into the actual structure itself, very similar to a Formula One racing car.”

    The Jetpack uses a gasoline-powered engine that produces two powerful jet streams. Mr. Coker says it also has a parachute (降落伞) that can be used should there be an emergency. “It starts to work at very low altitude and actually saves both the aircraft and the pilot,” he adds. Mr. Coker says the Jetpack will be ready for sale soon.

    As computers become more popular in China, Chinese people are more and more depending on computer keyboards to input Chinese characters(汉字). But if they use the computer too much, they may end up forgetting the exact strokes(笔画) of each Chinese character when writing on paper. Experts suggest people, especially students, write by hand more.

    Do you write by hand more or type more? In Beijing, students start using a computer as early as primary school. And computer dependence is more widely spread among university students. Almost all their homework and essays are typed on a computer.

    All the students interviewed say they usually use a computer.

    It's faster and easier to correct if using a computer. And that's why computers are being used more and more often to modern education. But when people are taking stock in computers increasingly, problems appear.

    'When I'm writing with a pen, I find I often can't remember how to write a character, though I feel I'm familiar with it.'

    'I'm not in the mood to write when faced with a pen and paper.'

    Many students don't feel this is something to worry about. Now that it's more convenient and efficient to write on a computer, why bother to handwrite?

    Many educators think differently. Shi Liwei, headmaster of a famous primary school in the capital said, 'Chinese characters enjoy both practical and aesthetic (审美的)value. But those characters typed with computer keyboards only keep their practical value. All the artistic beauty of the characters is lost. And handwriting contains the writer's feelings. Through one's handwriting, people can get to know one's thinking and personality. Beautiful writing will give people a better first impression of them.'

    To encourage students to handwrite more, many primary schools in Beijing have made writing classes compulsory（必修的）and in universities, some professors are asking students to turn in their homework and essays written by hand.

How to Solve Worry Problems

    The Great Nobel Prize winner in medicine, Dr. Alexis Carrel, once said, "Businessmen who do not know how to fight worry die young." {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Then how can we find a quick, surefire (万全的) recipe for handling worry situations? Here are a few basic steps to deal with different kinds of worries.

Get the facts

    Why is it so important to get the facts? Because unless we have the facts, we can't possibly even attempt to solve our problems intelligently. Without the facts, we will be left in confusion. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision. If a man will devote his time to securing facts in an objective way, his worries usually disappear in the light of knowledge.

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    However, getting all the facts in the world won't do any good until we figure out what these facts mean and interpret them. It is much easier to achieve this after writing them down. In fact, merely writing the facts on a piece of paper and stating our problem clearly goes a long way toward helping us to reach a sensible decision. Therefore, when we are worried, sit down and write down two questions – and the answers to these questions, "What am I worrying about?" and "What can I do about it?"

    Arrive at a decision

    Worry is killing. So we will probably save our life by sitting down and writing out all the various steps we could take and then writing down the probable consequences of each step and calmly coming to a decision. Experience has proved the enormous value of arriving at a fixed decision. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    Act on that decision

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Don't stop to reconsider. Don't begin to hesitate and retrace (折返) our steps. Don't lose ourselves in self-doubting which causes other doubts. Don't look back our shoulders.

A. Analyze the facts.

B. Write down our worries.

C. This is the chief cause of worry.

D. There comes a time when we must decide.

E. Once we have made a decision, go into action.

F. And so do housewives, horse doctors and bricklayers.

G. It is the failure to reach a definite decision that drives men mad.

Many people who are learning English want to know how to improve their reading skills. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} The effective way to improve your reading skills is to love reading and practice more.

Reading is one of the most important language skills because we use it to expand our vocabulary and improve the way we speak, write and listen. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Seeing new ways to say things can help your understanding of English and improve not only your reading, but also your other language skills.

{#blank#}3{#/blank#} If we do not understand something, we can go over it again and even look up the words we do not know the meanings of. This means that we have a much greater chance of understanding information that we read than information that we hear.

So how do we practice reading so that our skill level improves? When we read a passage, we need to understand it. We must understand what the important words mean in each sentence. This does not mean that we need to know the meaning of every word. In many cases, we can find out what words mean from the words around them. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} To do this, we must understand how words work together. In many cases, we must "see" part of the message that has not been written, or we must form an opinion ourselves.

Reading is an essential part of your study of the English language. It can help you understand and learn more. It can also become a satisfying hobby.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A．Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this.

B．Unlike listening, reading allows us to take our time.

C．Among the four skills, listening is the most important one.

D．It is hoped that you will love reading and improve your reading skills.

E．When we read, we can see how things are said, from sentence structure to expression.

F．If we do not, we will not be able to understand what the entire article or story is about.

G．Once we understand what the words mean, we need to figure out what the message is.