Michael' s birthday was coming soon, so he asked his dad for a bicycle so that he wouldn't have to walk to school anymore. {#blank#}1{#/blank#} Michael got a book instead but he did not complain ( 抱怨 ).

    One bright and sunny day while Michael was walking past a bookstore on his way to school, he saw a big boy on a bike . The bike was too small for the boy. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}

    The boy was a student in Michael' s school . Michael recognized him. The boy's name was William. His leg seemed to have broken. Michael picked up William' s bike which was not damaged and rode to the nearby hospital to get help. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Michael rode William' s bike to school so he would not be late for class.

    After school , Michael quickly rode the bicycle to William' s house with a book for him. {#blank#}4{#/blank#} But he had to put some medicine on his leg and stay in bed for some time.

    To Michael' s surprise, William was getting a new bike for his birthday in two months so he let Michael have his old bike . Michael was overjoyed（喜出望外).

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}. Michael visited William every day until Williams 's leg was better.

A.  Luckily, William was not seriously hurt.

B.  Michael found it interesting and couldn't help laughing.

C.  From then on, Michael and William became good friends

D.  William gave his new bike to Michael to show his thanks.

E.  However, Michael' s dad had lost his job and did not have much money.

F.  As the boy was turning around a corner , the bike crashed into a tree.

G. A few minutes later, an ambulance (救护车)came and took William to the hospital .

    Why do we go to zoos? Millions of people around the world visit zoos each year, but the reason is hard to explain .{#blank#}1{#/blank#} But the animals they see in zoos are little like the toys, cartoons, and decorations that fill their homes. For such children, meeting with real animals can be confusing, even upsetting.

    The great interest that children have in animals today might lead one to suppose that this has always been the case. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}That was also when zoos became an important part of middle-class life.

    {#blank#}3{#/blank#}They lived together with our ancestors in a shared natural environment. In the Industrial Era, the human domination (支配)of animals could be seen in the popularity of real-looking animal toys. Children rode rocking-horses that had realistic features, and they slept with bears, tigers, and rabbits that looked and felt almost real. The Twentieth Century marked a further development--the change of animals into people.

    This was the age of Babar the Elephant, Hello Kitty, and the Lion King. Parents and children had previously wanted animals that looked like animals.{#blank#}4{#/blank#}.

    In a zoo they hope to see the living breathing versions of their character friends. They find instead unfamiliar creatures who cannot speak, smile, or interact with them. For this reason, a visit to the zoo can be disappointing for children today.{#blank#}5{#/blank#} Meeting real animals reminds us forcefully of the boundary between imagination and reality.

    When we visit animals in a zoo, perhaps we will recall our true relationship not only to animals but to the entire world.

A. Animals are the best friends of the human beings.

B. Most of children are looking forward to visiting zoos.

C. Perhaps that disappointment is the best gift a zoo can offer.

D. But now they want animals that look and act like humans

E. Yet, it was not until the Industrial Era that animals became part of childhood.

F. In prehistoric times, there had been no zoos, as animals were a real part of the human world.

G. Many of those visitors are children, whose lives are already surrounded by animals' images.

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When a thought has found words

    Poetry is the forgotten child of literature. Few people read it for pleasure and modern poets are looked upon as odd creatures from a strange universe. In Western high schools, poetry is seldom taught because it is considered old-fashioned and not relevant to the needs of today's students.

    In China, however, poetry is still an important part of the curriculum and, with recent changes announced by the Ministry of Education, the number of poems students will have to memorize and recite is being increased from fourteen to seventy-two. Now, before you gasp in horror, let's think about the reasons why studying so many poems, especially ancient poems, is important.

    First of all, poetry is an essential part of traditional Chinese culture. It is a pathway to understanding your history and your society. It is also the key to understanding the thoughts and emotions that are common to everyone but which we may be unable to express—the joy of Li Bai dancing with the moon, for example. Everyone has feelings of joy, love, loneliness, sadness and even anger, and a good poem can put those emotions into words and bring us self-understanding.

    Poems can also express beauty. In a few short lines, even something commonplace can become beautiful. Here is a poem called "Fog" by Carl Sandberg: The fog comes / on silent haunches (弓腰蹲着) / and then moves on. Yes, fog does move smoothly, silently and mysteriously like a cat, and Sandberg captures that feeling and image, and makes it beautiful.

    Of course, to really appreciate poetry, it has to be really aloud. After all, a poem is really just a song without music. Most ancient poetry, especially Western poetry, was actually spoken before it was written. Take Homer's Iliad (伊利亚德), the story of the Trojan War (特洛伊战争), for example. That epic saga (史诗般的故事) of Helen's kidnapping and the war that followed was apparently told for hundreds of years in palaces, taverns (客栈) and on street corners before Homer wrote it down and was given credit for it.

    The American poet Robert Frost said, "Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words." And poems are very concise—there is not a wasted word. You are lucky that you now have seventy-two poems to learn!

    At a special ceremony(仪式), a special award was offered to a group of students from Changjiang University on February 11, 2010. They were brave enough to help save two boys from Changjiang River. All the students were there except three, who lost their lives when they tried to save the boys.

    On the afternoon of October 24, 2009, some students were taking a trip to Changjiang River. Suddenly two boys fell into the river. Some of them quickly jumped into the water and saved one boy. However, things didn't go so well when they tried to save the other one. More students joined in, and, hand in hand, they formed a human wall. Finally the other boy was saved.

    However, the human wall broke down and many students were swept away by the rushing water. At that moment several members of a winter swimming team nearby came to help and succeeded in saving many of the students. But the three of them, who were only 19, were nowhere to be found.

    Do you know the look of wonder and joy that children get on their face when they listen to someone reading them a story？Schools across the nation are bringing in volunteers to guide children in this very way. If you simply enjoy spending time with children, being a reading volunteer can be a great way to help support the upcoming generation of readers.

    Reading volunteers work with elementary school age children to promote reading. They may read books to children, listen to children read aloud, or distribute books to school children. Reading volunteers promote the activity of reading, rather than focusing on teaching reading skills. They may read to a whole class of children, to a small group, or be assigned a child to read to one-on-one. During the time they spend with new readers, reading volunteers encourage them to learn to read.

    Almost anyone who knows how to read can be a reading volunteer. High school students, college students, parents, grandparents, and police officers are just an example of the kinds of people who become reading volunteers. Being able to read and wanting to spend time inspiring children to read are the only skills needed to be a successful reading volunteer.

    Several educational research studies show that children who are involved in programs with adult reading volunteers improve their school performance levels. For example, in 1998, researcher Sara Rimm-Kaufmann found that first graders involved in a program with an adult reading volunteer three times a week had better letter recognition and reading skills than similar first graders who hadn't been involved in such groups. In 2000, the Eugene Research Institute found that fifth graders who had been in "SMART", an adult volunteer literacy program, were 60% more likely to have grade-level scores in standardized reading tests. Moreover, a 2006 study by Brian Volkmann showed that children who were read to by adult volunteers had improved school attendance, which is a major predictor of high school graduation rates.

    In addition, reading volunteers themselves can gain a lot of benefits that range from expanding their personal networks to adding valuable skills to their resumes. They also enjoy the special time they get to spend with young children. Many volunteers have heart-warming stories to share with the children they read to. The volunteers know that they are inspiring young children with a proved educational strategy. So, if you have time, energy, and skill to support children's literacy, it is a good idea to sign up to be a reading volunteer.

Who's in control of your life? Who's pulling your strings? {#blank#}1{#/blank#}We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. As Oscar Wilde puts it, most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry (模仿), their passions a quotation.”

So when people tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We long for this good feeling like a drug一we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live worsened lives to keep getting their fix (成瘾物), we worsen our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.

But just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom-the freedom to be ourselves. The truth is that we cannot control what other people think. People have their own schedule and they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they're more interested in themselves than in you. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}Everyone has different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting exhausted and probably pleasing no one in the process.

So how can we take back control? {#blank#}4{#/blank#}We should guide ourselves by means of a set of values-not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective, purposeful and happy life.

A. I's the inner self born in our mind that is keeping us under control.

B. Furthermore, if we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand.

C. As a matter of fact, people sometimes fail to understand who they are and where they are going.

D. For the most of us, it's other people-society, colleagues, friends, family or our community.

E.I think there's only one way-make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think.

F. Therefore, we are so eager for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, failing to do the things we really want to.