Since his students began using Quizlet, English teacher Tristan Thorne has noticed an improvement in their ability to learn and use new words. Quizlet is a learning App, a computer program you use on your mobile phone. It can help users build and test their knowledge of English words. Quizlet has word sets for millions of subjects. And, it is quickly becoming a useful mobile tool for language learners.

    Thorne teachers at Columbia University in New York City. Thanks to learning Apps, Jeff Strack, another English teacher, has also notice improvement in his students' ability to remember information. He teaches at Hostos Community College, also in New York. He and Thorne are part of a growing number of language educators adding mobile Apps to their classes.

    Strack and Thorne seem to agree that the days when teachers would not permit the use of mobile phones are gone. When they use Apps, language learners communicate more differently than in a traditional classroom. Users act on or respond to something, instead of just listening to new information.

    Thorne believes that Apps can help learners become more active in learning. For example, each week, his students are required to add vocabulary words into Quizlet for others to use. He says some Apps also make it easy for students to know their language strengths and weaknesses.

    The biggest improvement Strack has seen in his students is that they are much more active in whole-class or small-group discussions. “Apps let all students take part in the activity, whether it's a game, quiz or practice activity.” he says.

    Many existing learning Apps are designed for students of all ages and levels. Some are designed for group activities. some support independent learning. Still some are good for homework. Thorne says he especially likes Quizlet and three other Apps: QR Codes, Socrative and Evernote.

    Skateboarding is an action sport which includes riding and performing tricks using a skateboard, as well as an activity for fun, an art form, an entertainment industry job, and a method of transportation. In 2016, it was announced that skateboarding will be represented at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.

    There are various theories about the origins of Skateboarding, but it is generally held that the sport began in the 1940s on the west coast of the USA when metal wheels were attached to a narrow wooden board. In the 1950s, plastic replaced metal as the material of choice for the wheels, and the first "Roller Surfboard" become commercially available, which in turn developed into the skateboard that we know today. The sport was a big hit with the younger generation and grew in global popularity in the 1980s and 1990s. Since the late 1990s, skateboarding has become an important part of street culture.

    However, skateboarding has raised heated discussions in areas where the activity, although legal (合法的), has damaged stone works, steps, benches, and parks. Certain cities oppose the building of skate parks in their neighborhoods, for fear of increased crime (犯罪) and drugs in the area. The disagreement between the old image of skateboarding and a newer one is quite obvious: magazines such as Thrasher describe skateboarding as dirty, and still firmly tied to punk (朋克), while other publications, Transworld Skateboarding as an example, paint a more different and controlled picture of skateboarding. As more professional skaters use hip hop, or hard rock music in their videos, many urban youths, hip-hop fans and hard rock fans are also drawn to skateboarding, weakening the sport's punk image. Besides, group spirit influences the members of this community. In presentations of skateboarding, the evidence of crime is absent, and no attempt is made to tie extreme sports to any kind of illegal activity.

    The good news is that efforts have been made to improve recognition of the cultural heritage as well as positive effects of skateboarding in cities. By raising £790,000, the Long Live Southbank initiative managed to stop the destruction of a forty years old spot in London due to urban planning, a rescuing operation whose effect extends beyond skateboarding. The presence of skateboarders on this public space keeps the area under nearly constant watch and drives homeless people away, increasing the feeling of safety in the area. The activity attracts artists such as photographers and film makers, as well as a significant number of tourists, which in turn drives economic activity in the neighborhood.

    Sports shoes that work out whether their owner has done enough exercise to warrant(保证；授权)time in front of the television have been invented in the UK.

    The shoes — named Square Eyes — contain an electronic pressure sensor and a tiny computer chip to record how many steps the wearer has taken in a day. A wireless transmitter(传话器) passes the information to a receiver connected to a television, and this decides how much evening viewing time the wearer deserves, based on the day's efforts.

    The design was inspired by a desire to fight against the rapidly ballooning waistlines among British teenagers, says Gillian Swan, who developed Square Eyes as a final year design project at Brunel University in London, UK. "We looked at current issues and childhood overweight really stood out," she says. "And I wanted to deal with that with my design."

    Once a child has used up their daily allowance gained through exercise, the television automatically switches off. And further time in front of the TV can only be earned through more steps.

    Swan calculated how exercise should translate to television time using the recommended daily amounts of both. Health experts suggest that a child take 12,000 steps each day and watch no more than two hours of television. So, every 100 steps recorded by the Square Eyes shoes equals exactly one minute of TV time.

    Existing pedometers(计步器) normally clip(夹在) onto a belt or slip into a pocket and keep count of steps by measuring sudden movement. Swan says these can be easily tricked into recording steps through shaking. But her shoe has been built to be harder for lazy teenagers to cheat. "It is possible, but it would be a lot of effort," she says. "That was one of my main design considerations."

    Two hundred years ago the English poet William Wordsworth wrote "I wander'd Lonely as a Cloud", a poem that expresses a basic spirit of early English Romanticism.

    What makes this poem an example of Romantic thinking? It isn't just that Wordsworth chooses to write about natural scene：it is the way he describes the scene as if it had human emotions. For him, nature is not only a neutral (无感情色彩的) mixture of scenery, colours, plants, rocks, soil, water and air. It is a living force that feels joy and sadness, shares human pain and even tries to educate us human beings by showing us the beauty of life.

    Wordsworth's home, Dove Cottage, is now one of the most popular destinations in the Lake District. You can go on a tour of the garden which William planted with wild flowers and which survived in his backyard even after they disappeared from the area "He always said that if he hadn't been a poet, he would have been a wonderful scenery gardener," says Allan King of the Wordsworth Trust.

    The place near Ullswater, where Wordsworth saw the daffodils(水仙花), is at the southernmost end of the lake. The lake is wide and calm at this turning point. There's a bay where the trees have had their soil eroded(侵蚀)by lake water so that their roots are shockingly exposed. You walk along from tree to tree, hardly daring to breathe, because you are walking in the footprints of William from two centuries ago. The first group of daffodils appear, but they aren't tall yellow trumpets(小号状的花)proudly swinging in the gentle wind. They're tiny wild daffodils, most of them still green and unopened, in groups of six or seven. They're grouped around individual trees rather than collecting together.

    But as you look north, from beside a huge ancient oak, you realize this is what delighted Wordsworth: group after group of the things, spread out to left and right but coming together in your sight so that they form a beautiful, pale-yellow carpet. What you're seeing at last is nature transformed by human sight and imagination.

     A lot of parents help their kids do homework and study for school.{#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    A photographer in India's Bihar state took a photo of dozens of parents risking their lives to help their 10th-graders cheat on tests. The parents climbed the walls of a four-story school to throw cheat sheets through the window for their children.

    {#blank#}2{#/blank#} About 600 students were expelled(开除) from the school. And police have detained(拘留) more than 1,000 people connected with the scandal(丑闻).

    The tests the Bihar students were taking are called board exams. These exams help determine who will be considered the top students in each class. India's best university will take only students with a 95 percent score or better.{#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    Students who make it into India's top universities have a much better chance of getting well-paid jobs. They can help their families by becoming doctors or engineers. Many of the students who don't pursue(追求) these kinds of careers have a much more difficult time making money.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}About 30 percent of its citizens are considered poor. In many parts of the country, a family of five might struggle to survive on as little as $80 a month. For students who do well, the exams can be a life-changing event for their families.

    Few believe the Bihar incident will stop people from cheating on exams. Many students think that because others are cheating, they also have to cheat to keep up.{#blank#}5{#/blank#}

    Officials believe that new laws and policies will help only so much. To stop cheating, they say, people need to change their attitudes toward it.

A. India has a high poverty rate.

B. This cycle has proved very difficult to break.

C. The exam season can be called cheating season.

D. The government cannot stop cheating in exams.

E. The serious cheating outbreak did not go unpunished.

F. But the parents of some students in India have taken helping their kids to a new level.

G. As a result, students throughout the country are under great pressure to do well on the tests.

    For college graduates, it is of vital importance to write application letters well. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}. It should state clearly the job you want, and should tell what you have done. It should be simple, human, personal and brief without leaving out any necessary facts. In writing a letter of application, keep in mind that the things a possible employer is most likely to want to know about are your qualifications, your achievements and your aims.{#blank#}2{#/blank#} If the first few sentences fail to win the reader's attention, the rest of the letter may not be continued at all. Try to key your opening remarks to the needs or interests of the employer not to your own needs or desires. For example, instead of beginning with "I saw your advertisement in today's newspaper", you might say "I have made a careful study of your advertising during the past six months "or" I have made a survey in my neighborhood to find out how many housewives use your product and why they like it."

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#}. Be clear about the kind of job for which you are now applying. College graduates looking for their first positions often ask what they can provide in a letter and what if employers want experience  which, naturally, no beginner has.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    It is important to write a good strong closing for your letter, Make a specific request for an interview or give the possible employer something definite to do or expect. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} That makes it easier for a possible employer to get in touch with you.

A. Try to avoid writing in general

B. Don't be afraid of being a new hand

C. Here are a few suggestions for you to prepare yourself better for your interview

D. An excellent idea is to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope with your letter

E. The purpose of a letter of application is to help you to"sell"yourself

F. The answer is that everything you have ever done is experience

G. The opening paragraph is perhaps the most important