Young Scottish brothers take on a list of 500 adventures
For Ollie and Harry Ferguson, life is an adventure. For the past four years, the brothers have been working to1a list of 500 challenges and experiences.
"The idea came about actually from the boys," their father, MacNeill Ferguson, said. "The boys were just asked one day if they could2 some cool things for us to do as a family. They put forward some impossible ideas firstly, like going on a trip to Mars, International Sausage Day and all kinds of3 kids requests. They built the list to a hundred, then kept finding new things we wanted to go and try ... until it got up to 500." They're all listed on the brothers' Facebook page.
So far they have built an igloo, explored the wilderness, and sent their Lego men to the depths of the ocean and into outer space. Perhaps their biggest 4is playing out right now on the high seas. Last year, Ollie and Harry launched(使下水) a toy ship from the Scottish coast. The ship named "Adventure" sailed across the North Sea to Scandinavia. It then began a ride on a Norwegian boat and was launched 5, this time off the coast of west Africa. It's equipped with a tracking device(跟踪器), allowing the brothers to6every step of the sailing. But the battery(电池) on the tracking device is becoming weak, so Harry and Ollie hope a passing ship 7 their boat and is able to recharge(充电) its battery, allowing the adventure to continue.
"Harry, where would you like the boat to go?" Ferguson asked. "Without (a) 8 , that would be China because we all love China." Harry answered. He thought that even there are so many difficulties, the boat will reach China.
|
Your Complete Guide The Palace Museum |
| Facts about the Palace Museum Most outstanding feature: It's the largest imperial palace in the world. Things to see: imperial living and governing quarters, valuable artworks, and traditional gardens Time needed: at least 2~3 hours Location: the center of Beijing, north of Tian'anmen Square Open: 8:30 am – 5 pm April – October or 8:30 am – 4:30 pm November – March; closed on Mondays Entry: An adult: 60 yuan April – October; 40 yuan November – March Students: 20 yuan For free: Disabled visitors and children under the age of 6 |
| Numbers to Describe the Palace Museum ⒈ The Forbidden City took 14 years to build (from 1406 to 1420). ⒉ It was built by over 1,000,000 workers, including more than 100,000 craftsmen. ⒊ It was the home of 24 emperors (皇帝) —14 of the Ming dynasty and 10 of the Qing dynasty ⒋ It has 980 buildings in over 70 palace compounds, with over 8,700 rooms. ⒌ It is surrounded by a 10-meter-high wall, which is 3.4 km (2 miles) long. ⒍ It hosts 14 million visitors per year, a maximum of 80,000 visitors per day. |
"I'm going to make a time capsule(胶囊)," Anna told her parents at the breakfast table.
Dad looked up from his coffee cup and smiled. "Sounds interesting."
"Dad, I'm building a time capsule – it's like a memory box. I watched my teacher dig one up from our school yard yesterday. Some students buried(埋) the capsule thirty years ago. It had a lot of old things in it, so we could see what life was like back then."
After breakfast, Anna looked around in the garden and found an old coffee can. What should she put in the can?
With her cat Kitty following close behind, Anna looked through her things. She grabbed her favorite book, her yo-yo and some photos. She put them in the can. She pulled off her watch and placed it in the can too.
"What else should I put into it?" she asked Kitty.
"Meow." Kitty pushed a ball toward the can.
"Sure, Kitty, I'll include your ball." Anna put Kitty's ball in the can.
Anna put the top on and closed the can. On the front, she wrote ANNA AND KITTY'S TIME CAPSULE and then buried it in the garden. "All done," she told Kitty.
After a few minutes, Anna sighed. What should she do next? She couldn't yo-yo. Or read her favorite book. She'd buried those. Now, she missed them.
"Meow." Kitty looked at her.
"Do you miss your ball?" Anna asked. "Don't worry. I'll get it for you." So Anna dug up their time capsule.
Kitty pounced on the ball. And Anna pulled on her watch and read her book while yo-yoing under a tree in the garden.
The biggest influence that technology has on family time is the change of it. People used to spend more time with their family members before. Nowadays, with children (and the parents, too) spending more time texting, watching movies and television, playing video games, and listening to music, when will the family find time to bond (培养感情) and create lasting memories together?
Far too often we don't pay more attention to making time for members of our own family. By the end of a long day at work or school, members of the family want to relax. And now that technology use is widespread across the country, normally our "relaxing" is also known as spending time on smart phones.
Not only is the amount of family time affected (影响) by technology, but also the quality. Technology can affect the quality in different ways. For example, family members can be distracted (使分心) by their phones while trying to play a board game together, which wouldn't have happened if the phone didn't exist in the first place.
If "family time" means everyone sitting in the same room while playing online, what value is there? Personal interaction is key to time well spent with loved ones. Families don't even need to have something to do while together. If they simply ask each other how their day is and play a simple game together, family bonds will get better.
When technology becomes a focus, quality(有质量的) time for families goes down, which in turn affects everyone's life. Lack of family interaction causes the family's unity to weaken, and each of the family will be influenced in different ways. Children are more likely to develop unhealthy habits when they fail to interact with their parents. Meanwhile, parents who put work before family or pay less attention to their children's growth are more likely to face bad parent-child relationship. 67 percent of American teens say they want to spend more time with their parents, which is rather sad. Therefore, this passage is meant to show how technology has negatively influenced families.
When I was in school, our classes were always divided into smaller groups for reading guidance. These reading groups were named after animals. The high-achieving readers were known as the birds, and the kids with the most difficulty were the mice.
I was a bird, and my best friend Bobby was a mouse. I can still remember how uncomfortable it was to hear Bobby read sentences out and he could only read several words in the sentence.
This is how we usually think of a reading "problem"—the inability to decode symbols(解码) and change them into spoken language. Kids with this problem are hard to miss. But there may be many other kids in the classroom who are also poor readers, but in a very different way that's often invisible. These kids read correctly and fluently from the page —they might even be birds —but they don't understand most words from their mouths.
Charles Hulme and his team of York University have been exploring this hidden reading problem, and they've come to believe that it may be at its heart a spoken language problem.
In one study, they found 8 and 9-year-old children who had reading comprehension(理解) problems. Then, some got help in reading and understanding written text, and others got only help with spoken language and still others got a mix of both. They all got 90 minutes of help every week for 20 weeks, after which their skills were tested. They were also tested again almost a year later, to see if any improvements existed.
All three groups showed improvements in comprehension soon after the training, but those trained only in spoken language showed great improvements into the following year—much more than the others. What's more, the improvements from the spoken language training and the less improvements from a combined (融合的) way appeared to come from improvements in vocabulary. In other words, the spoken language training seems to have resulted in a generalized improvement in the kids' ability to understand language.
Reading comprehension is important for success in life, more than ever in history. Reading difficulties create educational difficulties, which in turn lead to social and economic disadvantage, including joblessness. Kids won't be asked to read out loud in the real world, but they will be expected to know what they've read.
Englishmen are well known for the amount of tea that they drink. The average person in the UK drink around 1.9 kg of tea every year. That's around 876 cups of tea. Tea is drunk by the whole society. But tea is not native(本土的) to Britain. Most tea is grown in India and China. So, how did it become an important part of British culture?
Tea arrived in London in the 1600s. At this time, British ships were exploring the world and came across(偶然发现) the drink in China. It was not long before green tea could be bought. However, this could be only bought by the richer people in the UK.
At the beginning of the 1700s, the amount of tea arriving in Britain increased gradually. Black tea arrived at this time. At first people drank this tea exactly as it was in China. They soon discovered that tea tasted good with a little milk and sugar in it. That's just the special British characteristic(特征) about it.
In the 1800s, tea was still a product enjoyed only by people with money. At this time they began to have "afternoon tea". This means drinking tea with snacks (零食) around 4 pm. Because it can help people to avoid feeling hungry between lunch and dinner. It is a tradition that is still going today but has become less popular in recent times.
In the late 1800s, the price of tea went down sharply as more tea began to arrive on ships from India and China. It was no longer a drink just for rich people and everyone could enjoy it. Tearooms—shops where you could buy and drink tea—started to appear across the country. People enjoyed drinking tea and socializing(社交) in these places. At the start of the 20th century, Englishmen began to make tea in their homes whenever they felt like it. Teapots became necessary in every kitchen.
题目一：
假如你是李华，六一儿童节即将到来，你们班准备去儿童福利院开展志愿服务活动，想邀请外教Mr. Green参加活动。请你给他写一封邮件，告诉他集合的时间地点，活动的内容，以及该做哪些准备。
提示词语：Children's Home, clean, gift, volunteer work, outdoor game
提示问题： ● When and where will you meet?
● What are you going to do?
● What do you advise Mr. Green to prepare for it?
Dear Mr. Green,
I am happy to invite you to take part in our activity.
Looking forward to seeing you.
Yours,
Li Hua
题目二：
人类正在经历信息革命，网络已走入我国千家万户。新时代，我们倡导开放、平等、协作、快速、分享的互联网精神。为更好地指导学生使用网络，学校正在举办"我与互联网"的征文活动。请用英文写一篇短文投稿，你经常用互联网做哪些事？关于使用网络，你有哪些建议？
提示词语：Internet, convenient, helpful, chat, knowledge
提示问题：● What do you often do on the Internet?
● What are your suggestions for using the Internet?
