The Winners Club is a bank account specially designed for teenagers. It has been made to help you better manage your money. The Winners Club is a transaction account (交易账户) where you receive a key­card so you can get to your money 24/7—that's 24 hours a day,7 days a week!

    It's a club with impressive features forteenagers：

● No account keeping fees!

    You're no millionaire so we don't expect you to pay large fees. In fact, there are no account keeping or transaction fees!

● Excellent interest rates!

    You want your money to grow. The Winners Club has a good rate of interest which gets even better if you make at least two deposits (存款) without taking them out in a month.

● Convenient

    Teenagers are busy — we get that. You may never need to come to a bank at all. With the Winners Club you can choose to use handy tellers and to bank from home using the phone and the Internet...You can have money directly deposited into your Winners Clubaccount. This could be your pocket money or your pay from your part-time job!

● Mega magazine included

    Along with your regular report, you will receive a FREE magazine full of good ideas to make even more of your money. There are also fantastic offers and competitions only for Winners Club members.

    The Winners Club is a great choice for teenagers. And it is so easy to join. Simply fill in an application form. You will have to get permission from your parent or guardian (so we can organize that cool key­card) but it is easy. We can't wait to hear from you. It's the best way to choose to be a winner!

What brings a nation together? Of the four choices — shared values, language, history, and religion, it's shared values. In our latest poll (民意调査), seven out of 16 countries chose values as the greatest factor (因素）bringing a nation together, and six preferred language. Both choices scored high in the poll, suggesting that our values and how we express them are closely linked Still, history was not forgotten in some countries, particularly in Mexico and Russia. Even Canada and the United States chose national histories as the second-most important factor uniting their people. The biggest surprise? Not one country picked religion as its top choice.

    Chinese students always complain that they're under great pressure and don't get enough sleep. But they may be surprised to learn that they're much luckier than their peers (同龄人) in South Korea and Japan, according to a recently published report, conducted by Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences on the physical and mental health of senior high school students in the three Asian countries.

    According to the study among nearly 6,000 high school students in the three countries, Chinese students are the tallest but poorest in physical fitness. Chinese students are on average 168.17cm, compared with 167.61cm for South Korean students and 164.70cm for Japanese students. Chinese students asked for sick leave more than students in other countries. About 72 percent of Korean students never asked for sick and injury leave during high school, compared to 53 percent for Japanese students and 45 percent for Chinese students. Moreover, Chinese students drink alcohol and smoke earlier than Korean and Japanese students. Around 70 percent of Chinese students have drunk alcohol, compared to 50 percent for Korean and Japanese students.

    According to the survey, Japanese and South Korean students suffer more pressure than their Chinese peers. Statistics (统计) show 16 percent of students in China said they experienced mental pressure often over the past year, while the numbers in Japan and South Korea were 33 percent and 47 percent respectively. Their worries come from “study”, “future after graduation”, “friendships” and “relationship with their parents”. To go with stress, 57.9 percent of Korean students sleep the least, less than six hours a day, compared with 46.6 percent of Japanese students and 30 percent of Chinese students.

    More Chinese students were satisfied with their physical appearance, double that of students in the survey from Japan and South Korea. The report said that over half of students in South Korea had tried to lose weight in the past year, while in China the figure was only 22 percent.

    In measures of self-worth, such as “I think I am valuable” and “I think I am successful”, “I can complete many things”, “I won't give up to failure,” Chinese students showed greater self-confidence than students in Japan and South Korea.

    To us, it seems so natural to put up an umbrella to keep the water off when it rains. But in fact the umbrella was not invented as protection against the rain. Its first use was as a shade against the sun.

    Nobody knows who first invented it, but the umbrella was used in very ancient times. Probably the first to use it were the Chinese, way back in the eleventh century B.C..

    We know that the umbrella was also used in ancient Egypt and Babylon as a sunshade. And there was a strange thing connected with its use: it became a symbol of honor and power. In the Far East in ancient times, the umbrella was allowed to be used only by those in high office or by royal people such as the kings or queens.

    In Europe, the Greeks were the first to use the umbrella as a sunshade. And the umbrella was in common use in ancient Greece. But it is believed that the first persons in Europe to use the umbrellas as protection against the rain were the ancient Romans. During the middle ages in Europe, the use of the umbrella most disappeared. Then it appeared again in Italy in the late sixteenth century. And again it became a symbol of power.

    Umbrellas have not changed much in style during all this time, though they have become much lighter in weight. It wasn't until the twentieth century that the umbrellas for women began to be made in all kinds of colors.

    There are several ways you can find out about the countries and places you wish to visit. You can talk to friends who have traveled to the places, you can go and see a colour film about them, or you can read a travel book.

    It seems that there are three kinds of travel books. The first are those that give a person al, subjective(主观的) idea of travels which their writer has got himself. These books can be useful if the writers share their traveling experiences with others. The second kind are those books which give objective(客观的) information of things to be done and seen. If a cultured person has written such a book about the facts of a place, then it is more useful. The third kind are those books which are called “a guide” to some place or other. If they are good, they will describe and explain the place in detail. Like the first kind, they can be interesting and exciting, but their main purpose is to help the reader plan his travel in the most practical way. Whatever kind of travel book you choose, you must make sure that the book does not describe everything as interesting, exciting or fantastic. You must also keep an open eyes on its date of publication(出版) because travel is very practical matter and many things change quickly in the 21st century. Finally, you should make sure that it's easy to find the useful information for you travel.

    I've written this article and you're reading it. So we are members of the same club. We're both literate—we can read and write. And we both probably feel that literacy is essential to our lives. But millions of people all over the world are illiterate. Even in industrialized Western countries, such as the UK and the USA, approximately 20% of the population have "low literacy levels". But what exactly does that mean?

    My parents both left school at 14. They could read and write, but except for a quick look at the daily newspaper, reading and writing didn't play a big part in their lives. There were very few books in the house. My mother was amazed because the woman who lived next door always wrote a list of what she needed before she went to the supermarket. Why couldn't she remember? We laughed about that for weeks. Our family didn't write lists! And when I was only 14 years old my father gave me an important letter that he'd written to the bank and asked me to check it for grammar and spelling mistakes. And there were quite a lot. He never usually wrote letters or postcards or even Christmas cards. So when he had to write he wasn't comfortable or confident. Does that mean that my father had a "low level of literacy"? I don't think so.

    There are lots of different definitions of literacy. Some experts define it as having the reading and writing skills that you need to be independent in your everyday life. So, for example, if you can read instructions, write a cheque, fill in a form, —anything that you need to do in everyday life—then you are "functionally literate".

    Other people say that you are illiterate if you think that you are illiterate. In other words, if you feel that you can't read or write as well as you would like to.

    If you live in a society where most people are literate then you will feel ashamed or embarrassed and avoid situations in which you have to read or write. The father of a friend of mine finally admitted to his family that he couldn't read when he was 45 years old. He bought the newspaper every day and pretended to read it—and believe it or not, his family had no idea.

    We often forget that writing is a recent invention. Many years ago, the word "literate" meant being able to communicate well in speaking, in other words what we now call "articulate". Story telling was an important activity in the past and still is today in some societies. Reading was often a cooperative activity—someone would read aloud to a group, often from a religious text such as the Koran or the Bible.

    Only a hundred years ago, in the United States, you were considered to be literate if you could sign your name to a piece of paper. It was an important skill. You were not allowed to vote if you couldn't sign the voting register, so literacy was connected with political rights, and many people were excluded from the democratic process.

    Nowadays we see reading and writing as being connected, but that wasn't so in the past. Many people could read, but not write. Writing was a skilled profession. If you needed something written then you paid an expert to write it for you.

    And of course, rich and important people have always employed people to write things for them. Important company bosses dictated letters to their secretaries or personal assistants. And now with new computer software you can dictate directly to your computer.

    Being illiterate can have a big effect on people's lives. For example, a study in the UK showed that people who write and spell badly are seen as careless, immature and unreliable, and often unintelligent. So it is more difficult for them to find jobs, even when reading and writing are not necessary for the work.

    World-wide statistics show that literacy problems are associated with poverty and a lack of political power. More women than men are illiterate. Illiterate people have worse health, bigger families and are more likely to go to prison. So literacy campaigns must be a good thing. But don't forget that an illiterate person, or someone with a low level of literacy, isn't necessarily stupid or ignorant—and may not be unhappy at all. Knowledge and wisdom isn't only found in writing.