A life coach is somebody who helps you reach all kinds of personal and professional goals （目标） ．Each of us has the ability to be our own life coach．Here are some tips for you:

♦ Pay attention to your relationships with others

    Ask yourself the following questions: How do you deal with disagreements? When was the last time you showed your family members that you care for them? Your relationships with friends, family members and teachers show a lot about the kind of person you are.

♦ Face the fears about the future

    Now, imagine that one of your good friends told you that he or she was not strong enough to go back to school． We often give better advice than we are willing to take ourselves．Remember that even the most successful people were probably told that what they wanted to do was impossible, but they followed their dreams and succeed.

♦ Develop your talents

    If you want to reach your goals, you will have to spend more time developing the talents you already have, and uncovering any hidden talents that you haven't discovered yet．So you can take classes in subjects that you are interested in, even if you have no experience.

♦ Be thankful

    Take some time to be thankful for the things you do have．Remember positive memories. Think of the best day（s） you have had in the past month or year．Remember special parties, vacations and holidays．Appreciate the wonderful people you have in your life.

    With global warming and melting ice, it isn't easy being a polar bear anymore. Some studies have predicted that polar bears could die out by the end of the century. The good news is not all researchers think the bears are absolutely disappearing. Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History(AMNH) have published a new paper indicating that things might not be as bad for polar bears as some scientists expect.

To understand the reason for the researchers' cautious optimism, we must first understand the factors that are threatening the polar bear's existence. Polar bears consume a diet of mainly young seals. In order to hunt these seals, polar bears need to rest at the top of sea ice—the same ice that is increasingly melting for most of the year thanks to climate change. In another 50 years, experts expect that the Arctic will be too warm for sea ice to form for half of the year, leaving polar bears without a reliable food source and in serious danger of starvation.

As it turns out, alternative food sources for the polar bears aren't completely out of the question. For as long as biologists have tailed after the animals, they've seen polar bears eating animals found on land like caribou(驯鹿) and snow geese—as well as the snow geese's eggs.

    Can polar bears actually survive off these alternative food sources for long periods of time? To figure this out, researchers calculated the nutrients that a caribou and snow geese diet would provide. They found that even adult male polar bears would be able to obtain more calories than would burn in hunting these meals. Moreover, the food would provide the food lecessary to avoid starvation during the summer months.

    Unfortunately, not all polar bears have tended to seek food on land. That said, the researchers expect that necessity would push more polar bears to hunt on land to avoid starvation. They also expect that the bears could learn from their fellow bears how to hunt on land until the practice becomes second nature.

    Middle and high school days are both fun and busy. Students spend their days in class, listening to the interesting and sometimes boring words of the teacher. They spend the short breaks running, playing, and shouting happily before going back to the classroom again. But how should students spend their free time outside school?

In Western countries, it is common for students to have a part-time job after school and at weekends. Students can earn their own money and learn more about the "real world". They enjoy the extra independence and money, and parents enjoy the quiet house. However, it seems that, in China, parents worry so much about their children' studies that they would prefer to see their children spending most of their free time studying and preparing for all those exams.

    It is natural for parents to feel that way, but I believe the answer lies in balance. Sometimes, Western school children work long hours after school to make money, and so they become too tired to listen in class or have no time for homework. But Chinese students spend so much time on their studies that all else becomes less important until they want that new MP4 player.

    So, find a good and healthy balance! If you have a part-time job, you'll be happy, and your parents will also be happy because you're spending your hard-earned money and not theirs!

【写作内容】1） 概括短文的内容要点，该部分的字数大约30词左右；2） 就"如何利用课余时间"这个主题发表你的看法，至少包含以下的内容要点，该部分的字数大约120词左右:

a. 以自身为例，简述你平时是怎样打发课余时间的；

b. 你如何看待自己利用课余时间的方式；

c. 你的父母对你利用课余时间的态度及你的看法。

【写作要求】你可以使用实例或其它论述方法支持你的论点，也可以参照阅读材料的内容，但不要抄袭阅读材料中的句子。

    There was once a farmer who had a fine olive orchard. He was very hardworking, and the farm always prospered(蒸蒸日上) under his care. But he knew that his three sons did not like the farm work, and were eager to reach the goal at a single leap.

    When the farmer felt that his time had come to die, he called the three sons to him and said, “My sons, there is a pot of gold hidden in the olive orchard. Dig for it, if you wish it.” After the farmer was dead, the sons went to work to find the pot of gold.” Since they did not know where the hiding-place was, they agreed to begin in a line, at one end of the orchard, and to dig until one of them should find the money.

    They dug until they had turned up the soil from one end of the orchard to the other, round the tree-roots and between them. But no pot of gold was to be found. It seemed as if someone must have stolen it, or as if the farmer had been wandering in his wits. The three sons were bitterly disappointed to have all their work for nothing. The next olive season, the olive trees in the orchard bore more fruit than they had ever given; when it was sold, it gave the sons a whole pot of gold.

    And when they saw how much money had come from the orchard, they suddenly understood what the wise father had meant when he said, “There is gold hidden in the orchard. Dig for it, if you wish.”

写作内容:1. 以30个词概括上文的主要内容。2. 以约120个词就“Dig for it, if you wish it.”的话题谈谈你的想法，内容包括：①你对这句话的理解。②试举例说明。③这个故事给你的启发。

    When my father was celebrating a milestone (里程碑) birthday, I pulled together a surprise gift that he would never forget.

    As he was approaching 60,1 had a firm idea: What if I could get the memories people had of him, put each one into an envelope - 60 in total - and have him open them, one by one, on his birthday? So I wrote an e-mail to family and friends, explaining my idea.

    I sent the e-mail and waited. And then the replies started coming in and I was very, very surprised. There were so many memories, and they were all so lovely. They came from the '50s, '60s, '70s, from every decade（十年） between now and the day my dad was born. They came from my mother, my siblings, my grandma, my dad's friends from high school, his sister, my dad's first boss, a colleague at his first job, from people who hadn't seen my dad in 40 years, from people I myself hadn't even informed. They typed them and handwrote them. They mailed them and e-mailed them.

    The night before Dad's birthday, my sister and 1 stayed up late, putting everything together with some

    The next morning, after breakfast and presents and cake, we gave the pile of envelopes to him. "Just one more thing for you," we said.

It took him a long time to open them and read. Each one was a brief ticket to another time, a leap (跳跃) backward over years and decades. There was a lot of laughter and a few tears, too.

    I was kind of sad when the project was over because it was great fun to collect these memories. It gave me a different picture of my dad.

    The 82-year-old Frances Wood entered the Nazarene University two years ago. At that time, her husband of 59 years died, which left her a little lonely and sad. As a result, she started to study at university.

    Ms Wood said that she was the oldest student on campus, and was known as “Granny Franny”. The lady is just like a grandma away from home. The students wanted to vote Ms Wood as the homecoming queen, but the granny refused to accept the honor. So instead, the school honored her during half time at a football game by making her become the homecoming granny queen, the first award of its kindness ever given by the school. Ms Wood got a standing ovation(鼓掌) and was presented with flowers. To prove her popularity further, she had three male youths holding on her arm for the evening ceremony.

    Ms Wood took classes in finance, history and literature at university. She said after being widowed two years before, she needed something different to do. When she got to college, she said it was a little surreal being surrounded by the young ones. “I think this is unbelievable and dreamlike to do this,” she said.

    Eager to get into her little classmate circle, she handed out homemade business cards with her phone number and e-mail address, so that the students could reach out to her. The cards also featured a photo of her, saying “about 10 years ago”.