I grew up in a house where the TV was seldom turned on and with one wall in my bedroom entirely lined with bookshelves, most of my childhood was spent on books I could get hold of. In fact, I grew up thinking of reading as natural as breathing and books unbelievably powerful in shaping perspectives (观点) by creating worlds we could step into, take part in and live in.

    With this unshakable belief. I, at fourteen, decided to become a writer. Here too, reading became useful. Every with writer starts off knowing that he has something to say, but being unable to find the right ways to say it. He has to find his own voice by reading widely and discovering which parts of the writers he agrees or disagrees with, or agrees with so strongly that it reshapes his own world. He cannot write without loving to read, because only through reading other people's writing can one discover what works, what doesn't and, in the end, together with lots of practice, what voice he has.

    Now I am in college，and have come to realize how important it is to read fiction (文学作品). As a law student, my reading is in fact limited to subject matter — the volume (量) of what I have to read for classes every week means there is little time to read anything else. Such reading made it clearer to me that I live in a very small part in this great place called life. Reading fiction reminds me that there is life beyond my own. It allows me to travel across the high seas and along the Silk Road，all from the comfort of my own armchair, to experience, though secondhand, exciting experiences that I wouldn't necessarily be able to have in my lifetime.

    “The failure to play is now a serious issue and it calls for action for change,” says Sir Ken Robinson, a leading expert in education, creativity and human development. This is the driving force behind Outdoor Classroom Day—a global teacher-led campaign, supported by Dirt is Good, a company producing daily chemical products.

    Outdoor Classroom Day, taking place on 17th May and 1st November this year, will see schools around the world swap the inside for the outside and take learning into the playground and beyond to make playtime a key part of the school day. This might involve using natural objects like stones to do sums, or going on an insect hunt to encourage curiosity. By now, Outdoor Classroom Day has grown from a grassroots movement to a global campaign that is expected to benefit five million children and over 40,000 schools from all around the world in 2018.

    This is helping to change the trend that sees many schools selling up or building on their playgrounds and cutting back on playtime to make more room for academic studies, while at home children's lives are increasingly filled with organized activities intended to help them learn. Today globally 61% of parents surveyed in the Dirt is Good Qualitative Study said that children don't know how to play without using technology.

    Outdoor Classroom Day is making playing time happen, with 22% of participating schools having increased their playtime since joining the campaign. 93% of teachers surveyed saw improvements in children's creativity after playing outside, and 97% believe that time outdoors is necessary for children to reach their full potential.

    Scientific studies show that real play—the active, physical, self-directed play—is essential for children to develop key life skills that are not taught elsewhere. Few would question the value of developing creativity, leadership, resourcefulness, and curiosity.

    If you ask people to name the one person who had the greatest effect on the English language, you will get answers like "Shakespeare," "Samuel Johnson," and "Webster," but none of these men had any effect at all compared to a man who didn't even speak English-William the Conqueror.

    Before 1066, in the land we now call Great Britain lived peoples belonging to two major language groups. In the west-central region lived the Welsh, who spoke a Celtic language, and in the north lived the Scots, whose language, though not the same as Welsh, was also Celtic. In the rest of the country lived the Saxons, actually a mixture of Anglos, Saxons, and other Germanic and Nordic peoples, who spoke what we now call Anglo-Saxon (or Old English), a Germanic language. If this state of affairs had lasted, English today would be close to German.

    But this state of affairs did not last. In 1066 the Normans led by William defeated the Saxons and began their rule over England. For about a century, French became the official language of England while Old English became the language of peasants. As a result, English words of politics and the law come from French rather than German. In some cases, modem English even shows a distinction(区别)between upper-class French and lower-class Anglo-Saxon in its words. We even have different words for some foods, meat in particular, depending on whether it is still out in the fields or at home ready to be cooked, which shows the fact that the Saxon peasants were doing the farming, while the upper-class Normans were doing most of the eating.

    When Americans visit Europe for the first time, they usually find Germany more "foreign" than France because the German they see on signs and advertisements seems much more different from English than French does. Few realize that the English language is actually Germanic in its beginning and that the French influences are all the result of one man's ambition.

You might think people all over the United States have Wi-Fi—wireless Internet service—and mobile phones. But there is no such service in Green Bank, West Virginia, a tiny town four hours from the U.S. capital, Washington D.C. Fewer than 150 people live in Green Bank, which has two churches, an elementary school and a public library. It is also home to the largest radio telescope in the world.

    There is a ban on Wi-Fi in Green Bank, along with anything else that can create electromagnetic(电磁的)waves. Officials say the waves could disturb the signals the telescope receives.

For many Americans, a visit to Green Bank is a little like returning to the 1950s. To get there, you must read road signs—because there is no GPS service in the town. People can connect with the Internet through telephones, but wireless service is not allowed.

    The observatory(天文台)is one of the largest employers in the area. The federal National Science Foundation(NSF) spends about ＄8.2 million a year to operate the observatory, telescope and educational center.

    Jonah Bauserman is a technician. If he supposes there is signal that is not allowed in the zone, he drives to the house where the signal is coming from and checks it. But once a week, when the device is cleaned, some banned devices are allowed near it.

    People in the town respect the work of the scientists. And they say they are happy to live without Wi-Fi and mobile phones. "You know, instead of sitting here on our phones and other devices we're out fishing and hunting and going to each other's houses." Everyone knows each other and communication is almost always face-to-face.

    Darwin noted that some human emotional expressions might have started as part of a physiological function: for example, exposing the teeth to bite food. The function, however, took on meaning and became a form of communication which signals anger.

    The same may be true for the animals. Baby monkeys cry for attention. They also cry to signal to an adult that they want to be carried.

    "Chimpanzees do make upset voice when they are being weaned (断奶) by their mothers or have lost their mothers or another individual, " says Anne Pusey, a professor at the University of Minnesota. "They whimper (呜咽) and cry and scream. When we hear these calls, the emotion involved seems obvious. However, they do not weep in the sense of producing tears. "

    The Iowan researchers can cause the same crying sounds by producing large decreases and then increases in blood flow. The blood flow also goes down when baby rats get cold. Thus, they conclude baby rats cry in the same way that we sneeze. Of course the rat baby could be crying because he's cold and wants his mother to know.

    People think of cats as cute. But research published in a psychology journal calls them neurotic (神经质的) and unstable. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and the Bronx Zoo in New York compared the personalities of domestic house cats with those of four different types of wildcats.

    To better understand their personalities, the researchers rated a number of animals behaviors on what psychologists call the Big Five human personality traits (特征).

    Domestic house cats have similar personality structures to African lions. "It's what cats do pretty much on a daily basis, things like being anxious, being timid, being excitable, being aggressive toward humans, being aggressive toward each other, "said Max Wachtel, a Denver psychologist who didn't participate in the study. "All of those are characteristics you see in those cute little house cats, and you also see them in lions."

    If you ever thought your cat was anxious, insecure, tense, suspicious or aggressive toward you, you aren't making it up, he said. If they were bigger, they probably would consider killing you.

    But the news isn't all bad: Just like lions, house cats are also playful, excitable and impulsively funny. They just aren't very predictable. One moment cats will be enjoying bell scratches, and the next they will be biting you to make you stop.

    "It is good to understand the personality characteristics of our pets," Wachtel said "Different cats have different personalities, but as a species, there are a lot of commonalities."

    The researchers also studied personality traits of Scottish wildcats and some other animals “Across the five species we assessed, personality structure was strikingly similar and also seemed to be related to other studies' findings, such as in tigers, "the researchers wrote in their study in the November 2014 issue of the Journal of Comparative Psychology. But house cats were most like lions, potentially because they live in semi-social surroundings and lions are the most social of cats.

    “They're cute and furry, but we need to remember when we have cats as pets, we are inviting little predators into our house," Wachtel said. "Cats can be fantastic, sweet companions -until they turn on you.”