The 2016 Rio Olympic Games have come to an end. Without doubt, many Chinese sports fans sat in front of the TV and cheered our athletes on, hoping that they would get as many gold medals as possible.

    But sometimes our desire for gold medals can result in the sadness of failure. When Liu Xiang, China's track hero, pulled out of the Beijing Olympics due to injury, he greatly disappointed many Chinese sports fans.

    But things are different now. In the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, we saw a healthier and more lenient Chinese attitude toward the sports people, fully in line with the Olympic spirit.

    China didn't win any gold medals on the first day. But, instead of criticizing the athletes who failed to finish on top of the podium(领奖台), the majority of fans were happy with their efforts. “Reacting in the right way when an athlete misses out on gold shows the maturity of a person, and is also a challenge for a country to face up to in the process of development,” commented CRI.

    Swimmer Fu Yuanhui won fans' hearts, even if she only won a bronze medal in the 100m backstroke final. Her fans on her Sina Weibo micro blog have increased 100,000 to over 6 million. Many sports fans appreciated her straightforward character and attitude toward competition.

    “The warm support from Internet users shows that public attitude toward competitive sport and the Olympics have gotten to a higher level,” said an article in the People's Daily.

    If you want to become a fluent English speaker, you should take some advice: there are four skills in learning English. They are listening, speaking, reading and writing. The most important thing you must remember is that if you want to improve your speaking and writing skills you should first master the skills of reading and listening.

    Read as much as you can. But your reading must be active. It means that you must think about the meaning of the sentences, the meaning of the unfamiliar words, etc.

    There is no need for you to pay much attention to grammar—or try to understand all the unfamiliar words you come across, but the fact you see them for the first time and recognize them whenever you see them, for example in other passages or books, is enough. It would be better to prepare yourself a notebook so you can write down the important words or sentences in it.

    As for listening, there are two choices: besides reading, you can listen every day for about 30 minutes. You can only pay attention to your reading and become skillful at your reading, then you can catch up on your listening. Since you have lots of inputs(输入) in your mind, you can easily guess what the speaker is going to say. This never means that you should not practice listening.

    For listening you can listen to cartoons or some movies that are specially made for children. Their languages are easy. Or if you are good at listening, you can listen to VOA or BBC programs every day. Again the thing to remember is being active in listening and preferably(更好地) taking some notes.

    If you follow these pieces of advice, your speaking and writing will improve automatically(自动地)，and you can be sure that with a little effort they will become perfect.

    Scientists have found living organisms trapped in crystals (晶体) that could be 50,000 years old.

    The organisms were found in a hot, but beautiful cave system in Naica, Mexico. These ancient life forms can be seen only with a microscope. Penelope Boston, who leads the Astrobiology Institute at NASA, the space agency of the United States, says the ancient microbes were able to live by eating minerals such as iron.

    She spoke about the discovery recently at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. If the findings are confirmed, they will show how microbes can survive in extreme conditions. Forty different kinds of microbes and some viruses were found in the underground area. The genetic structures of these organisms are 10 percent different from those of their nearest relatives.

    The caves in Naica are 800 kilometers deep. They were once used for mining lead. Before the miners began working in the caves, the area was separated from the surface and the outside world. Some of the caves are as big as the large religious centers built during Europe's Middle Ages. There are crystals covering the walls. The caves are so hot that scientists must wear special clothing to keep cool. The clothing keeps the crystals safe from human germs (病菌) or other damage. Boston said the researchers could only work for about 20 minutes at a time before they had to go to a room that was 38 degrees Celsius to cool down.

    NASA officials would not let Boston share her findings with scientific experts before last week's announcement. So scientists could not say much about the findings. But Norine Noonan, a biologist with the University of South Florida, said she believed them. “Why are we surprised?”Noonan asked. “ As a biologist, I would say life on Earth is extremely tough and extremely colorful.”

    Boston is also studying microbes commonly found inside caves in other countries, such as Ukraine and the United States. These microbes appear to be impossible to kill. Boston said they show how difficult life on Earth can be.

    “Can't hold a candle to” is a popular expression. When there wasn't electricity, someone would have a servant light his way by holding a candle. The expression meant that the person who cannot hold a candle to you is not fit even to be your servant. Now, it means such a person cannot compare or compete.

    Another expression is “hold your tongue.” It means to be still and not talk. “Hold your tongue” is not something you would tell a friend. But a parent or teacher might use the expression to quiet a noisy child.

    “Hold out” is an expression one hears often in sports reports and labor news. It means to refuse to play or work. Professional football and baseball players ''hold out” if their team refuses to pay them what they think they are worth.

    The expression “hold up” has several different meanings. One is a robbery. A man with a gun may say, “This is a hold-up. Give me your money.” Another meaning is to delay. A driver who was held up by heavy traffic might be late for work. Another meaning is for a story to be considered true after an investigation. A story can hold up if it is proved true.

    “Hold on” is another expression, which means waiting or stopping. As you leave for school, your brother may say, “Hold on, you forgot your book.” It is used to ask a telephone caller to wait and not hang up his telephone.

    Our final expression is “hold the line”. That means to keep a problem or situation from getting worse—to hold steady. For example, the president may say he will “hold the line on taxes”. He means there will be no increase in taxes.

    An old farmer lived on a farm with his young grandson. Each morning Grandpa was up early to read his holy. His grandson wanted to be just like him and tried to imitate him in every way he could.

    One day the grandson asked, "Grandpa! I try to read holy（圣书） just like you but I don't understand it, What good does reading the holy do?"

    The Grandfather quietly turned from putting coal in the stove and replied, "Take this coal basket down to the river and bring me back a basket of water." The boy did as he was told, but all the water leaked out (漏出) before he got back to the house. The grandfather laughed and said, "You'll have to move a little faster next time," and sent him back to the river with the basket to try again. This time the boy ran faster, but again the same took place. He told his grandfather that it was impossible to carry water with a basket.

    The old man said, "You're just not trying hard enough," So the boy again dipped the basket into the river and ran hard, but when he reached his grandfather the basket was again empty, he said, "See Grandpa, it's useless!", "So you think it is useless?" The old man said, "Look at the basket."

    The boy looked at the basket and for the first time realized that the basket was different. It had been changed from a dirty old coal basket into a clean one inside and outside.

    "You might not understand or remember everything, but when you read it, you will be changed, inside and out. That is the work of Krishna in our lives."

    For all the pressures and rewards of regionalization (地区化) and globalization, local identities remain the most deeply impressed. Even if the end result of globalization is to make the world smaller, its scope seems to foster the need for more private local connections among many individuals. As Bernard Poignant, mayor of the town of Quimper in Brittany, told the Washington Post, "Man is a fragile animal and he needs his close attachments. The more open the world becomes, the more ties there will be to one's roots and one's land."

    In most communities, local languages such as Poignant's Breton serve a strong symbolic function as a clear mark of "authenticity (原真性)". The sum total of a community's shared historical experience, authenticity reflects a noticeable line from a culturally idealized past to the present, carried by the language and traditions associated with the community's origins. A concern for authenticity leads most secular (世俗的) Israelis to defend Hebrew among themselves while also acquiring English and even Arabic. The same obsession with authenticity drives Hasidic Jews in Israel or the Diaspora to champion Yiddish while also learning Hebrew and English. In each case, authenticity amounts to a central core of cultural beliefs and interpretations that are not only resistant to globalization but also are actually reinforced by the "threat" that globalization seems to present to these historical values. Scholars may argue that cultural identities change over time in response to specific reward systems. But locals often resist such explanation and defend authenticity and local mother tongues against the perceived threat of globalization with near religious eagerness.

    As a result, never before in history have there been as many standardized languages as there are today: roughly 1,200. Many smaller languages, even those with far fewer than one million speakers, have benefited from state-sponsored or voluntary preservation movements. On the most informal level, communities in Alaska and the American northwest have formed Internet discussion groups in an attempt to pass on Native American languages to younger generations. In the Basque, Catalan, and Galician regions of Spain, such movements are fiercely political and frequently involved loyal resistance to the Spanish government over political and linguistic rights. Projects have ranged from a campaign to print Spanish money in the four official languages of the state to the creation of language immersion nursery and primary schools. Zapatistas in Mexico are championing the revival of Mayan languages in an equally political campaign for local autonomy.

    In addition to causing the feeling of the subjective importance of local roots, supporters of local languages defend their continued use on practical grounds. Local tongues foster higher levels of school success, higher degrees of participation in local government, more informed citizenship, and better knowledge of one's own culture, history, and faith. Government and relief agencies can also use local languages to spread information about industrial and agricultural techniques as well as modern health care to diverse audiences. Development workers in West Africa, for example, have found that the best way to teach the vast number of farmers with little or no formal education how to sow and rotate crops for higher yields is in these local tongues. Nevertheless, both regionalization and globalization require that more and more speakers of local languages be multi-literate.