One day, some tourists came to a hotel but there were only two rooms left. One was on the fourth floor and the other was on the seventh floor.

    "We Chinese like the number 8. 8 means we will get rich. We also like 9 because it means we can live long. But we don't like the number 4 because it sounds like 'death' in Chinese. I think if we sleep on the fourth floor, we may die?

    The Greeks said,"We want the room on the fourth floor." In Greece, 4 is a lucky number.

    The South Korean said, "We don't like number 4 or 13. 4 sounds like 'death', and 13 is an unlucky number in the west." The tourists from the west said, "Oh, we love number 7. There are seven days in the world as it says in the Bible(圣经).We don't like the number 13. It is an unlucky number. If we sleep on the 13th floor, oh…"

    "In Japan, 4 sounds like 'death', so we don't like it. And 6 is also not welcome. There isn't the fourth floor or the sixth floor in the tall buildings in our country. However, we like 7 very much", said the Japanese.

    At last, only the Greeks lived on the 4th floor, and the rest slept on the 7th floor.

    Many years ago, there was an old man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn not to judge(判断) things too quickly. So he told them to go and look at a pear tree. It was far away from his home.  The first, son went in winter, the second in spring, the third in summer, and the youngest son in autumn.

    When the sons came back, the old man asked them to say what they had seen.

    The first son complained the tree was ugly. The second son said the tree was covered with buds and full of hope. The third son said the tree was full of green leaves. The youngest son said that the tree, bent down with heavy fruits.

    The old man explained that all of his sons were right, but each of them had seen just one season of the tree, He told them that they couldn't judge a tree or a person by only one season. "If you give up when it's winter, you will miss the hope of your spring, the beauty of your summer, and the harvest of your autumn." said the old man.

    It is true that we shouldn't let the hard season break the happiness of other seasons. Never give up during the difficult days and better times are sure to come some day.

 Carol is a middle school student. She does 1 in only one subject. That is 2 . Carol always does her history homework well and 3 good grades(分数) in history tests. She likes her history teacher Mr. Aragon very 4 . She feels that he is like her 5 .

 At 6 parent- teacher meeting, Carol's mother has a7 with Mr. Aragon.8 says that Carol doesn't do well in 9 subjects. She hopes Mr. Aragon can 10 her." Oh, I didn't know that. She is 11 . I' ll try to talk to her," says Mr. Aragon.

 When Mr. Aragon talks with Carol 12 her problems(问题), Carol doesn't feel good, 13 she is grateful(感激的). She knows that Mr. Aragon is 14 trying to help. Carol 15 his ideas and tries to do well in those subjects.

Do you know why you get angry so easily, but your friend smiles all the time? It's because you have different personalities. Then what is personality? It's about how people think, behave(举止) and react(反应) to everything around them.

So what makes people think and behave in certain ways? Part of the reason is that people are born like this. A baby gets its genes and blood type(血型) when it is still inside its mother. These may help decide what the baby will be like.

But one's personality doesn't stop here. Family life, school learning and life experiences can also make you the person you are. But this doesn't mean you can't change your personality. You can al- ways try to make yourself better. Don't get too worried if you don't have a good personality. Just face it. This is a good way to start making changes.

For example, if you don't know how to make friends, find out why. Is it because you' re too shy? If so, tell yourself to smile at people. Start talking to people kindly. But don't give yourself a hard time about it all. After all, it's not easy to change lifelong habits in one night. Just keep trying. One day you can see that you can be a new you!

A novel is a long story, usually a fictional book, which describes human experiences and interactions. It is in the form of prose(written or spoken language in its ordinary form), rather than poetry. The English-language novel, as we know it today, mainly began its development in the 1700s. Realism became important in literature at this point. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} It was in this time period and mode of literature that women writers truly came into their own. Two famous women authors who influenced the history of literature were Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf.

Jane Austen(1775-1817) was an English author. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}

Jane's father was a priest. They were middle class, thought not rich. In the polite society of that time, which they were part of, the lives of girls and women were very much ruled by the social rules and morals of the day. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} The writer Walter Scott said of her novels, "That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I have ever met with."

She was concerned with how women came to marry as it was not a simple matter of falling in love with someone in those days. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}The other problem was money; parents needed to provide women with some money to take into a marriage. Parents often tried to find their daughters the right partners. That's why Jane herself never married and died aged only{#blank#}5{#/blank#}.

A．Parents had to be of a similar social place.

B．This means that authors tried to have their novels reflect real life.

C．Jane saw the ambition(野心) of parents in many of these situations.

D．Jane's stories focused on middle to upper class society which she knew, and the place of women in it.

E．Among her most famous novels are Sense and Sensibility(1811), Pride and Prejudice(1813) and Emma(1815).

Many students do an IQ test in their school. Even if they never see their results, they feel that their  IQ is what determines how well they are going to do in life. When they see other students doing better than them, they usually believe that those students have a higher IQ and that they can't change this fact. However, new research suggests that success is not simply the result of a high IQ.

While your IQ tells you how intelligent you are, your EQ tells you how well you use your intelligence. Professor Salovey says that when predicting someone's future success, their EQ might actually matter more than their IQ. For example, you may wonder why some of the smartest students in your class sometimes fail exams. Perhaps their failure is because of their low EQ.

It is believed that people with high EQs are open to new idea s and have positive altitudes(态度) towards life. They are seldom troubled by problems. As for people with low EQs, they often have trouble getting on with others and dealing with difficult situations. As a result, they have a harder time surviving in life.

The good news is that EQ has a lot to do with education. Compared with IQ that seems to be fixed(固定的) the moment you were born, EQ could be improved with right methods. For example, learning more skills in communication and understanding can be helpful.

To live a happy successful life, you need a high EQ— the higher, the better.