Learning to set goals plays an important role as your child starts to gain independence. However, setting goals doesn't come naturally to your child, so helping him to learn the process should probably be one of your goals.

    Explain the word “goal”. Your child may know what a goal is when it comes to soccer, but he may not understand what it means in everyday life. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    Listen to your child. Ideally, you want your child to be able to decide for himself what his goals are. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Let him talk about what he thinks he does well and what he thinks needs to improve. If he's stuck, you can provide some examples of your own personal goals.

    Help keep goals achievable. Don't throw cold water on your child. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} For example, if your child wants to be a champion swimmer, but can't swim an entire lap of the pool yet, you can suggest he start by making that his first goal.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Help your child write down his goals in an easy-to-follow form. Being able to see and check off the steps on the way to his goal is the key in keeping him motivated. A really simple way is to have your child draw a ladder on a piece of paper, writing his goal at the top and each step to that goal on the rungs (横木). {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A. Change goals every so often.

B. Make a visual goal reminder.

C. Don't always tell him what you think.

D. He's climbing to the top as he gets closer to his goal.

E. You can take sports as example to help explain it to him.

F. Once he has set up a goal, he may find it very difficult to achieve it.

G. When a goal is beyond his reach, help him break it down into smaller pieces.

    Our planet is home to about seven billion people. Since the 1990s, population experts have predicted the number would grow to nine billion before it begins to slow down and possibly decrease.

    But a new report predicts the world's population is likely to increase to almost 11 billion by 2100. Based on the most modem statistical tools, the new report makes use of government records and considers expert predictions, including death rates, birthrates and international migration, or people moving across borders. The report says during the rest of this century, Africa's population will grow from about 3.5 billion to 5.1 billion over the next 85 years.

    John is director of the United Nations Population Division. He says that in the past, researchers thought population growth in Africa would be similar to that of other areas. They expected slower growth rates as birth control use became more widespread. But he says those ideas were wrong.

    “The level of contraception use has continued to increase but slowly — more slowly than expected, and birthrate therefore has been falling less rapidly than expected, and the population therefore continues to grow somewhat more rapidly than we expected.

    The new findings are based on a joint research project of the United Nations and the University of Washington,

    The researchers believe the population of Asia will reach five billion by 2050. That is up from the current 4.4 billion. And then begin decline. The researchers also believe that North America, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean area will have a total population of below one billion.

    John says the pressure of feeding the rising population is likely to be less than that might be expected.

    “The relatively good news is that the world has been winning the race between population growth and food production. If you look back historically over the last 50 years, certainly for the world as a whole and for many, most individual countries and regions, the increase in food production has outpaced the increase of population.”

    Henry had been a journalist for many years. He had worked on many international newspapers and magazines and traveled all over the world.

    Henry had witnessed wars and natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes and erupting volcanos(火山爆发). He had reported on serious accidents such as major fires and airline crashes. He had seen every kind of terrible crime and strange event there was. He had met and written about some of the most unusual people in the world. In fact, there wasn't much that Henry had not seen or done.

    Now he was retired from journalism. He owned a very expensive restaurant and spent his days talking to his wealthy and important customers. He liked to say that nothing surprised him.

    One day he was sitting at the bar in his restaurant when a big gorilla walked in and asked for a table. Henry showed no surprise. He took the gorilla to a table and handed him a menu. He treated him politely and pretended there was nothing at all strange about having a gorilla in his restaurant.

    The gorilla looked through the menu and ordered a salad. Henry served the gorilla his salad personally, knowing that his waiters and waitresses would be too frightened. At last the gorilla finished his salad and asked for the bill. Henry wrote out the bill and handed it to the big animal. The gorilla studied it, shook his head sadly, then gave Henry fifty dollars.

    "Thank you", Henry said, and then to make conversation he added, "We don't get many gorillas in this restaurant."

    "At fifty dollars for a salad," the gorilla said, "I'm not surprised."

    Digital technology-email and smart phones especially-have vastly improved workers' ability to be productive outside of a traditional office. Even so, most white-collar work still happens in an office. One reason is that, according to findings of a new survey of office workers conducted by Wakefield Research for the IT company Citrix, most bosses arc doubtful about remote working. Half of the workers say their boss doesn't accept it, and only 35 percent say it's tolerated.

    Skeptical bosses will likely have their doubts reinforced (加深) by the same survey, which shows that 43 percent of workers say they've watched TV or a movie while “working” remotely, while 35 percent have done housework, and 28 percent have cooked dinner.

    It is true, however, that working at home makes people much more efficient (高效的), because it allows workers to take care of annoying housework while still getting their jobs done. It's much faster, for example, to shop for groceries at a quarter to three than to stand in line during the after-work rush.

    The fact that such practices remain officially unaccepted reflects how far we haven't come as a society from the days when we expected every full-time worker to be supported by a full-time homemaker.

    More broadly the Wakefield survey suggests that employers may be missing a low-cost way to give workers something of value. Sixty-four percent of those survey participants who haven't worked remotely would rather give up some bonus in order to get even one day a week working from home. Under such circumstances, smart firms need to find ways to let their employees have enough flexibility (灵活性) to manage their time efficiently.

    Linda Eveans was my best friend—like the sister I never had. We did everything together: piano lesson, movies, swimming, and horseback riding.

    When I was 13, my family moved away, Linda and I kept in touch through letters， and we saw each other on special times, like my wedding and Linda's. Soon we were busy with children and moving to new homes, and we wrote less often. One day a card that I sent came back, stamped "Address Unknown". I had no idea about how to find Linda.

    Over the years, I missed Linda very much, I wanted to share happiness of my children and then grandchildren, And I needed to share my sadness when my brother and then mother died, There was an empty place in my heart that only a friend like Linda could fill.

    One day, I was reading a newspaper when I noticed a photo of a young woman who looked very much like Linda and whose last name was Wagman—Linda's married name. "There must be thousands of Wagmans." I thought, but I still wrote to her.

    She called as soon as she got my letter, "Mrs, Tobin!" she said excitedly, "Linda Evans Wagman is my mother." Minutes later I heard a voice that I recognized at once, even after 40 years. We laughed and cried and caught up on each other's lives. Now the empty place in my heart is filled. And there's one thing that Linda and I know for sure: we won't lose each other again!

    Are you a social media addict? Are you always checking your smart phone to see how many "likes" you've received for your latest post? Maybe you feel comforted by the sound that someone has sent you a message?

    Don't worry, you're not alone. We check our phones an average of 150 times a day, and around 30% of the total time spent online is devoted to social media. Some experts now fear this habit could be damaging our mental health.

    This is something particularly bothering young adults, according to a study from the University of Pittsburgh. It found the more they used social media, the more likely they were to be depressed. In tests, those people who checked social media frequently were 2.7 times more likely to be depressed compared to those who spent most of their time generally surfing the Internet, who had just 1.7 times the risk.

    Some of us certainly feel sad when we're ignored on social media sites, or when we see someone else having a better time than us. But depression is a more serious condition and clinical psychologist, Abigael San, recently told the BBC that ,"It's a real issue, and it's been getting significantly worse over the last 5﹣6 years. You can get so hooked that it takes you away from your real relationships. "However, Abigael does admit that social media is more likely to worsen pre﹣existing issues than directly cause them.

    Other research by the University of Glasgow found that teenagers are affected by the 24﹣hour demands of their social media accounts. It found that those with higher levels of emotional investment in social media, and who use it at night, were more likely to feel depressed and anxious.

    Despite these warning signs, why do some of us continue to keep clicking? Well, I suppose we all want to be liked and we don't want to miss out on a conversation that's taking place online. But we need to know when to switch off our virtual online world and connect with the real world instead.