Musical for the new era

    Some of the world's most famous movies, like The Sound of Music（《音乐之声》）and Singin' in the Rain(《雨中曲》), are musicals. These are both very old movies, though. It seemed as if musicals had gone out of fashion.

    But La La Land, a new musical by US director Damien Chazelle, 32, had made the genre(类型) popular again. “Brilliantly written and directed, La La Land gives movie musicals life in the 21^st century,” Peter Travers wrote for Rolling Stone.

    Starring US actor Ryan Gosling, 36, and actress Emma Stone, 28, the movie was released in Chinese mainland on Feb14. Set in the colorful world of Hollywood's film and music scene, the two characters-a jazz musician and an actress-sing and dance their way to love.

    It has made history as the first film to win seven Golden Globe(金球奖) awards. It has also been nominated(提名) for a record-equaling 14 Oscars.

    Other popular movies of today are often about violence(暴力),war, drugs(毒品) or politics. Thanks to Chazelle's creative style, original music and wonderful location(地点), La La Land has a light feel that will put you in a good mood.

    The opening scene, when hundreds of people in a traffic jam start singing , “will be studied and swooned(着迷) over for years to come,” according to Travers. “The very fact that it doesn't have a strong political message, but is still good enough to win awards, is what makes La La Land so unusual,” Nicholas Barber, wrote for the BBC. “It is intimate(亲切的) and personal and magical.”

    In many English homes people eat four meals a day: breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. People have breakfast at any time from seven to nine in the morning. They eat porridge，eggs or bread. English people drink tea or coffee at breakfast. Lunch comes at one o'clock. Afternoon tea is from four to five in the afternoon and dinner is about half past seven. First they have soups, and then they have meat or fish with vegetables. After that they eat some other things, like bananas，apples or oranges. But not all English people eat like that. Some of them have their dinner in the middle of the day. Their meals are breakfast, dinner, tea and supper and all these meals are very necessary.

    When you write a text message or an email, you might put a smiling face or other pictures at the end to make the message more fun. These pictures are emojis. The first emojis were on Japanese mobile phones in the 1990s. Later, they were used on Apple's iPhone and Android phones. Now they are everywhere!

Before emojis, there were emoticons. The word is a mixture(混合) of emotion(感情) and icon(图标). Emoticons are made of the signs you can find on your keyboard, for example:) for a smiley or @};—for a rose. The first use of :-)was in 1982 and it was called "joke marker". Emoji is a Japanese word which means pictograph: e(picture) +moji (character). Emojis are real pictures, for example ，or . There are 1851emojis that can be used on mobile phones and other devices. There are all kinds of emojis, from faces and weather to things in the kitchen and animal.

    In England, we have a saying: A picture paints a thousand words. For many people, an emoji is like a punctuation mark(标点). It's like the tone of voice when we speak on the phone, or hand movements(gestures) used in conversation. Emojis are also changing the way we write. The more we use emojis, the less we use slang(俚语), such as LOL or OMG.

    When someone speaks and looks serious, we try to look serious, too, and when someone smiles, we smile as well. This is how we show empathy(同感) and make friends(and enemies!). But when we're online, we can't see the person's face and there's no emotion. The invention of emojis changed that! Scientists in Australia have discovered that when we look at a smiley face online, the same parts of the brain start working as when we look at a real smiley face. Our mood changes, and we try to change our face to match the emoji. This is something we learn as we get older. Our brains have developed this ability over the last two or three years. This means that emojis have created a new brain pattern(模式)in us!

    Peter and Mike are very good friends. They are in the same class at school. They often go to school and play t{#blank#}1{#/blank#}, and they often visit each other's home at weekends, too.

    Now they are b{#blank#}2{#/blank#} eight years old. Peter's mother has got a new baby. Peter is very glad to have a little brother, so he is always talking about his younger brother to Mike.

    At first Mike is very interested in the new baby because he doesn't have any sisters or brothers. But after some time he begins to get tired of Peter's endless talking about it. He also feels a little jealous (嫉妒) of his friend.

    One morning before class, when the two boys m{#blank#}3{#/blank#} at the school gate, Peter says to Mike cheerfully, "Do you know, Mike, my little brother, has put on nearly half a pound in weight this week."

    "That's not much at all," answers Mike. "I know a baby who can put on more than ten pounds a day."

    "Oh, that can't be t{#blank#}4{#/blank#}," answers Peter. "W{#blank#}5{#/blank#} baby is it?"

    "An elephant's," says Mike.