I still remember my first day at school in London and I was half-excited and half-frightened. On my way to school I wondered what sort of questions the other boys would ask me and practiced all the answers: “I am nine years old. I was born here but I haven't lived here since I was two. I was living in Farley. It's about thirty miles away. I came back to London two months ago.” I also wondered if it was the custom for boys to fight strangers like me, but I was tall for my age. I hoped they would decide not to risk it.

    No one took any notice of me before school. I stood in the center of the playground, expecting someone to say “hello”, but no one spoke to me. When a teacher called my name and told me where my classroom was, one or two boys looked at me but that was all.

    My teacher was called Mr. Jones. There were 42 boys in the class, so I didn't stand out there, either, until the first lesson of the afternoon. Mr. Jones was very fond of Charles Dickens and he had decided to read aloud to us from David Copperfield, but first he asked several boys if they knew Dickens' birthplace, but no one guessed right. A boy called Brian, the biggest in the class, said: “Timbuktu”, and Mr. Jones went red in the face. Then he asked me. I said: “Portsmouth”, and everyone stared at me because Mr. Jones said I was right. This didn't make me very popular, of course.

    “He thinks he's clever,” I heard Brian say.

    After that, we went out to the playground to play football. I was in Brian's team, and he obviously had Dickens in mind because he told me to go in goal. No one ever wanted to be the goalkeeper.

    “He's big enough and useless enough.” Brian said when someone asked him why he had chosen me.

    I suppose Mr. Jones, who served as the judge, remembered Dickens, too, because when the game was nearly over, Brian pushed one of the players on the other team, and he gave them a penalty (惩罚). As the boy kicked the ball to my right, I threw myself down instinctively (本能地) and saved it. All my team crowded round me. My bare knees were injured and bleeding. Brian took out a handkerchief and offered it to me.

    “Do you want to join my gang (帮派)?” he said. At the end of the day, I was no longer a stranger.

    Years ago, I lived in a building in a large city. The next building was only a few feet away from mine. There was a woman who lived there, whom I had never met, yet I could see her seated by her window each afternoon, sewing or reading.

    After several months had gone by, I began to notice that her window was dirty. Everything was unclear through the dirty window. I would say to myself, “I wonder why that woman doesn't wash her window. It really looks terrible.”

    One bright morning I decided to clean my flat, including washing the window on the inside.Late in the afternoon when I finished the cleaning, I sat down by the window with a cup of coffee for a rest. What a surprise! Across the way, the woman sitting by her window was clearly visible. Her window was clean!

    Then it dawned on me. I had been criticizing her dirty window, but all the time I was watching hers through my own dirty window.That was quite an important lesson for me. How often had I looked at and criticized others through the dirty window of my heart, through my own shortcomings?

    Since then, whenever I wanted to judge someone, I asked myself first, “Am I looking at him through my own dirty window?” I try to clean the window of my own world so that I may see the world about me more clearly.

    Mr. and Mrs. Gordon were sitting on the sand, reading their magazines. Mr. Gordon was too stingy (吝啬的) to rent (租) a chair. Their twelve-year-old daughter, Sandra, was playing at the water's edge. Suddenly a huge wave lifted Sandra up and carried her out to sea. Fortunately, a lifeguard (救生员) was on duty and he saw the wave carry Sandra away. He ran along the beach and dived into the sea. He swam quickly to where the girl was, with her head only just above the water, was shouting for help. She was very frightened. When the lifeguard reached her, she struggled with him, as drowning people often did. However, he was a skillful lifeguard and quickly took hold of her and swam with her back to the beach. By the time he reached it, Mr. and Mrs. Gordon had realized what had happened. They had run down to the water's edge. Neither of them could swim. They just stood in the shallow water, and worried about their daughter. Had the lifeguard reached her in time? Fortunately, he had. “That was quick work, young man,” Mr. Gordon said. He turned to his wife, “Give the lifeguard a dollar.” “A dollar!” Sandra cried. “Dad, how can you give him a dollar! He saved my life. I was half dead.” “Quite right, girl,”Mr. Gordon said, pleased by his daughter's awareness of the value of money. He turned to his wife again and said, “She's right. She was only half dead. Give him fifty cents.”

    George Bernard Shaw, the greatest and funniest British dramatist of the first half of the 20^th century, was born in Dublin, Ireland on July 26^th, 1856. His early life was not happy. His father was a selfish man who drank too much and could not support his family properly. His mother was a disappointed, unhappy woman who found more pleasure in studying music than in her children. Shaw and his two sisters received little love and attention from their mother while they were young. At the age of ten Shaw entered school. At first he was the best student, but soon he was at or near the bottom of his class.

    Although he did not like school, Shaw was a good, bright, curious student. His lifelong interest in everything from music and art to machines and medicine began at school. The interests of this tireless schoolboy were literature and music. He often entertained his classmates with stories he read.

    Early at the age of fifteen, he went to work in an office. He did well as an office clerk, but after five years he decided that he wanted to be a writer. He left Ireland and went to London, where he began to write seriously. Seventy-four years later the great dramatist died.

    You are going to read three competitions which offer holidays as prizes.

    Competition One

    Competition Two

    Competition Three

    From ancient stories to modern researches, the label（标签）attached to being left-handed is undeniable. Left-handed people, or "lefties" as they are often called, are generally believed to be good at art — Leonardo da Vinci, Picasso and Michelangelo are all left-handed.

    Our brain is divided into two parts: the left hemisphere(大脑半球)and the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere, linked to logic and analysis, is responsible for the right side of the body. The right hemisphere, linked to creativity and imagination, controls the left side of the body. So, people tend to believe lefties are controlled by the right side of the brain, and are more creative than right-handers. Some also think that lefties may not be as good as right-handers in mathematics and problem-solving skills.

    However; a recent study carried out by scientists from the University of Liverpool in the UK and the University of Milan in Italy proved this theory wrong. The study involved(涉及)more than 2,300 students in Italy aged between 6 and 17 years old. They were asked to complete several mathematical tasks of different levels. It turned out the left-handers outperformed the others when the tasks involved difficult problem-solving. This pattern was particularly clear in male adolescents. However; when it came to simple arithmetic, there was no difference between left-handers and right-handers.

    It was also discovered that those who are "severely" right-handed performed less well in all the experiments compared to "medium" right-handers and left-handers.

    "Taken together, these findings show that handedness does influence abilities to some degree," the study's authors wrote. However, "handedness is just an indirect expression of brain function," wrote psychology professor Giovanni Sala from the University of Liverpool in the UK, the lead author of the study. Sala also noted that only one third of people with a highly-developed right side of the brain are left-handed. It means that there are lots of right-handed people with a similar brain function as left-handers.