"The grass looks greener on the other side of the fence. "That's an old saying in English. It means other places often look better, more interesting than the place where you live. Some people worry that young Chinese are beginning to feel that way. They see young Chinese ignoring Chinese culture and, instead, buying Japanese cartoon books, watching Korean soap operas and even celebrating Western holidays.

 Foreign books and soap operas are good, but Chinese writers and actors are just as good. As for holidays, Christmas is nice, but it can never have the meaning for Chinese that Spring Festival has, and the West has nothing to compare with Mid-Autumn Festival. And let's not forget the part of Chinese culture I like best: its friendliness. Not all countries are as warm as China.

 It's good to enjoy other cultures and to learn from them, but they cannot replace your own culture. It's good to look on the other side of the fence, but make sure you take a good long look. You will find that the grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence.

 Judge the following sentences true (T) or false (F) according to the passage.

   There are two kinds of robots. The first type is the industrial robot. The second type of robots help us in our everyday lives. Robots of the later type are being used widely in Japan these days, helping people out in many areas—in hospitals, at homes and in schools.

Recently professor Tomomasa Sato and others developed a “robotic room”. This room is a robot itself, and they let the robot help the people inside. It has ten video cameras on the top of the room and walls. The robot can help the doctors and nurses do a lot of work with the help of its arms and nine computers. The robot's arms can lift and carry things needed by sick persons and nurses, and can throw waste things away.

   In the future, we may have robots at home to help out with the chores. Many people think these robots should look and move like humans. At Honda Motor Company, people made a robot that has two arms and two legs and can walk by itself, just like a person. This robot can walk freely by checking the road it walks on, and use its arms to do different things. The robot is 180 centimeters tall and weighs 210 kilograms. It can not only walk around flat places but go up and down stairs as well. It can also do such things as moving a bag. Not too far in the future, robots that look like movie characters may lend us a hand in our everyday jobs.

A History of English…in Five Words

    In 1582, Richard Mulcaster, headmaster of a British school, wrote that the English would not go beyond their island. However, it didn't stay that way. Today, English is spoken all over the world.

    English is a colorful and diverse (多样的) language that long has picked up words from many other languages. Here are five words that show the English language's interesting history.

English

    English began in the language spoken by the early Germanic people in the fifth century AD. It is from them that the word “English” comes. First it is the Latin word Angli which means the people of Angul, where the Germanic people were from.

Beef

    Although roast beef is seen as a traditional English dish, the word “beef” was introduced from the French boeuf during the Middle Ages. It was one of a group of words, including pork and mutton, that were taken from the speech of the French who moved in Britain following the Norman Conquest (诺曼底登陆) of 1066. However, the farmers who kept these living things continued to call them by their old English names: cow, pig and sheep. This difference passes on till today.

Dictionary

    Dictionary is a borrowing from Latin dictornarius liber, “book of words”. It first appeared in English in the 6th century, along with a huge number of other words from Latin and Greek. The first English dictionary was written by Robert Cawdrey in 1604. Cawdrey focused only on the difficult words whose meanings would have caused problems for those not educated in Latin and Greek.

Tea

    Tea was brought into Britain early in the 17th century, becoming very popular by the 1650s. By the 18th century it had become a symbol（标志） of fashionable society and a best-selling of the coffee house culture.

    The word tea rises from the Chinese word cha. A love of tea is so ingrained (根深蒂固的) in British life that the expression “cup of tea” has come to stand for anything viewed positively. The saying “It's not my cup of tea.” means: I don't like it.

Emoji

    Emoji began developing in Japan in the 1990s for use by teenagers: the word “emoji” comes from the Japanese e “picture” + moji “letter”. Its successful acceptance in English has been helped by its similarity to words with the e-prefix (前缀) like e-mail. The Unicode Consortium's (统一码 联盟的) official lists emojis and their meanings, but users keep finding creative new ways to employ them. Emojis are just another example of the development and diversity of English.

    Lucy's aunt lives in San Francisco. She knows something about China on television. But she wants to know more. 因此她正期待着参观中国。She is going to have a holiday next week. She is going to visit Beijing because she likes Chinese culture by plane and she will live in a hotel. In Beijing she is going to do some sightseeing, visit the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace and walk up the Great Wall.

    Lucy's aunt likes animals. She likes pandas very much. So she is going to visit Beijing Zoo to see the pandas there and take some photos of them. On the last day in Beijing she is going shopping.

    She wants to buy Lucy a present. She knows Lucy likes Chinese paintings and silk.

    Hello, my name is Bill. I'm an English boy. My last name is Green. My phone number is 222-7854.This is Grace. Her last name is Miller. Her telephone number is 235-9076. Look! This is her jacket. It's yellow. My jacket is green.

    I am a girl. My name is Gina Green. I'm twelve years old. I'm in Class Two Grade Seven. My father is Mr Green. He is forty years old. He is an English teacher. My mother is Mrs Green. She is thirty-eight years old. She is a math teacher. My father and mother are in the same school, in No. One Middle School. My telephone number is 863—2975.