When I was a little girl, my mom would say, “Half the fun of doing anything is sharing it with others.” {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Friends and mates allow us to enjoy our successes and our joys, comfort us in our hard moments, and provide a mirror for us to learn more about ourselves. I've always looked at friends as the family we choose. They enrich our lives. As Robert Louis Steven once said, “{#blank#}2{#/blank#}”.

    To be a good friend or partner, it's important to be a good listener. Hear what your friend or mate has to say first rather than jump to conclusions or get defensive. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} When they hear their words repeated back to them, it can help them to realize what they said was not exactly what they meant to say.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} You know the old golden rule, “Care for others the way you would like them to care for you.” The support of a friend during a tough time could make the difference between success and failure. Encouragement and confidence are the gifts that can help change a person's life.

    Take care, though, with whom you choose to have close relationship, for they can have a great effect on yourself – respect and life path. As someone once told me “{#blank#}5{#/blank#} They will either take you up or down.”

A. I am afraid so.

B. It is quite true

C. Friendship is the most important factor.

D. Sometimes it is useful to be their mirror.

E. A friend is a present which you give yourself.

F. The attitudes of your friends are like the buttons on a lift.

G. Patience, sympathy and understanding are also important qualities.

    If you've ever had a nightmare (噩梦), you're not alone. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} A nightmare is a bad dream. It can make you feel scared, anxious or upset.

    Why do I get nightmares?

    Stressful things that happen during the day can turn dreams into nightmares. Nightmares may be a way to reduce the pressures of the day. Sometimes major changes can cause stress that leads to nightmares. Another thing that may cause nightmares is watching scary movies or reading scary books, especially before you go to bed.{#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    How can I prevent nightmares?

    Although it is normal to have a nightmare once in a while, there are some methods you can try to get nightmares under control.

    Get into a healthy sleep routine (习惯).{#blank#}3{#/blank#} Avoid eating or exercising just before bedtime. Avoid scary books or movies before bedtime.

    Use a nightlight. With a nightlight, if you awake from a nightmare, you'll be able to see familiar things and remember where you are.

    Keep your door open. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} If you are scared, get up and find someone for reassurance (安心). You're never too old for a hug!

    What if the nightmares don't go away?

    Most of the time, nightmares are not a big problem. It often helps to tell a trusted adult about your bad dreams. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Sometimes it helps to keep a dream journal, a notebook in which you describe the dreams you can remember. If you have frequent nightmares, you and your parents might want to see a doctor to help you deal with your bad dreams.

A. You can go to bed about the same time and wake up at the same time every day.

B. Nightmares are not real and they cannot hurt you.

C. But sometimes you might have a nightmare for no reason at all.

D. This will help you remember that your family is close by.

E. The amount of sleep a person needs depends a lot on his or her age.

F. Just talking about what happened might make you feel better.

G. Almost everyone gets them once in a while --adults, as well as kids.

    Every minute, every single day, about a truckload of plastic enters our oceans. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} And to date, only 9％of that has been recycled.

    We buy a bottle of water, drink it for a few minutes, and toss its permanent packaging "away". We eat potato chips, finish them, then throw their permanent packaging "away". We buy produce, take it out of the unnecessary plastic wrap, then throw its permanent packaging "away".

    The cycle is endless, and it happens countless times every single day. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} As far as we try to toss a piece of plastic—whether it's into a recycling bin or not——it does not disappear. Chances are, it ends up polluting our communities, oceans or waterways in some form.

    For years, we've been told the problem of plastic packaging can be solved through batter individual action. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} But the truth is that we cannot recycle our way out of this mess.

    Recycling alone will never stop the flow of plastics into our oceans；we have to get to the source of the problem and slow down the production of all this plastic waste. Think about it: if your home was flooding because you had left the tap on, your first step wouldn't be to start mopping. You'd first cut the flooding off at its source—the tap. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

    We need corporations—those like Coca-Cola, Unilever, Starbucks and Neatlé that continue to produce throwaway plastic bottles—to step up and take their responsibility for the mess they've created. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} We will continue to do our part, but it's time for the world's largest corporations to do theirs.

A. This is their problem to deal with.

B. Plastic pollution is becoming very serious.

C. But here is the problem—there is no "away".

D. In many ways, our plastic problem is no different.

E. We think that if we simply recycle we're doing our part.

F. It's impossible for us to get rid of plastic pollution completely.

G. Since the 1950s, some 8. 3bn tons of plastic have been produced worldwide.

How to Write a Story

    Writing a detailed story takes patience and practice. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}, though, you can handle the challenge.

    Keep the outline short

    Avoid complete sentences. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}. Long outlines with complete sentences end up being unnecessarily wordy. Sometimes they look like full paragraphs rather than brief outlines. Spending too much time and putting too much detail into your outline is effort you could be putting into writing the story itself.

    Choose a point of view

    Once you've written your outline and thought about the story you want to tell, decide at what point the reader enters the story. For you, and especially for the reader, the experience is a more intriguing one if the reader begins the story in the middle of the action. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}. It will get your reader's attention immediately. He wants to continue reading surely. A boring opening means a bored reader who has no interest in moving on.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#}.

    Avoid giving everything away about the character in the first few paragraphs. Instead, consider different ways you can reveal different facets of the characters to your readers without stating them in an obvious way. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}. If you take on too many, you'll find you won't be able to develop each of them fully in only a few pages.

A. Develop the characters

B. Instead, use short phrases or terms

C. Begin your story in an interesting way

D. If you're motivated and truly love to write

E. Before you write anything, you need an idea for a great story

F. Limit the number of main characters you include in your story

G. Once you've written your outline about the story that you want to tell

    Building the thinking habit is important because it helps you live with a purpose. How can we build the thinking habit? Here are some tips.

    Be curious

    Curiosity is powerful. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} It also helps you recognize the ideas when they come. Curiosity is an important attitude to have in building the thinking habit.

    Read widely

    If you want to come up with good ideas, you need to feed your mind with good ideas. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}This will give you fresh, new ideas. Don't just read from the fields you are familiar with. Read from other fields as well.

    Read actively

    Not only should you read widely, but also you should read actively. Find some ideas and think about how you can use them. My favorite way to do this is by highlighting the book I read. I will then put the actionable ideas in my idea journal (笔记). {#blank#}3{#/blank#}

    Keep an idea journal

    When you find a good idea, don't just keep it in your mind. Instead, write it down to catch the idea. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Keeping an idea journal makes you more sensitive to new ideas. You will quickly recognize them because you already have the habit of catching ideas.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

    Of course, it doesn't do you much good if you just write down ideas. Take time to read these ideas every now and then. In my case, I mark the ideas that I consider important and review them regularly. This often opens the way to new ideas.

A. Design your own ideas

B. Go over your ideas

C. In this way, others can also benefit from your ideas.

D. One way to do that is to read.

E. Otherwise, the idea might be gone forever.

F. It makes you like finding new ideas.

G. This helps me get the most out of the book.

    "The calm before the storm" is a very familiar expression. It is usually used to describe a peaceful period just before a very stressful situation or a tense argument. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} They noted that before certain storms the seas would seem to become calm and the winds would drop.

    But why is it often so calm before a storm? {#blank#}2{#/blank#} According to US website HowStuffWorks a calm period occurs because many storms, tornadoes and hurricanes draw in all the warm and damp air from the surrounding area. As this air rises into the storm clouds, it cools and acts as "fuel for the storm, like petrol in a car."

    Once the storm has taken all the energy it can from the air, it is pushed out from the top of the storm clouds and falls back down to ground level. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} So once it covers an area, it causes a calm period before the storm.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} First count how many seconds there are between a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder, roughly three seconds equal one kilometer. A good judgement is that if your count is below 30 seconds, you should seek shelter straight away.

    However, due to the complexity of storm system, calm doesn't always go first. So, your best bet is to keep yourself updated with weather reports for any predictions regarding a coming storm in your area. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}