How old are the apps on your smartphone? Is it time for an update? Here are three apps for you. Try them out and have fun.
DuoLingo
Learning a foreign language doesn't always mean you have to sit in a class and take endless exams. An app called Duolingo has been designed to help you memorize(记住) new words and grammar in creative ways, such as online lessons, games and interesting exercises. For example, one exercise asks you to put words in the right order to make the correct sentence. You can also try translation practice.
Douban FM
A music app is necessity for almost every smartphone now. Douban FM might be the right thing for you.
There is no playlist on Douban FM—songs just keep streaming(播放) one by one. You can use the "heart", "trash" and "skip" buttons to mark the songs you like, don't like and want to cut short, respectively(分別地). Those marked with a heart will be stored in another list as your favorites for you to listen to anytime you want. Douban FM also has different channels(道频). There are many types of music, such as blues, jazz, and pop. You can choose the music for outdoor activities work or studying depending on your mood.
It is one of the hottest news apps right now. With Flipboard, you can make everything personal to you. All you have to do is open up the app, "flip through" to select whatever interests you, and click the button. At the end you'll have your own magazine, complete with a front page, new articles, and information.
Hey, mom,
I want you to stop dropping me off at the airport for some trip that I am about to take and start becoming my seatmate. I want to travel with you — just you.
I want to explore a new place with a woman who raised me, who put up with my teenager anxiety and my rebellious (叛逆的) college years. I want to see my favorite cities with the lady who taught me basic life lessons, such as looking both ways before crossing the street, how to use a glue gun, and that the most important thing in the world is to help others.
I always appreciated the vacations you planned for our family. I also remember how you watched me as I read The Great Gatsby on the balcony at midday. I wonder if you felt proud of me. These days, I am sick of traveling to places with wishy-washy (无主见的) friends. I want to travel with a strong woman who can see how capable I am of learning to speak French or hiking on a glacier or eating something as unpleasant-smelling fruit.
Now I want you to see how much I grow up while abroad — I'm a different person, Mom. And I know you'd be different too. I know that someone has shared a similar burst of emotion while diving into Australia's Great Barrier Reef for the first time.
So what do you say, Mom? Will you throw responsibility to the wind? I want to travel with you. Let's just go — we can go anywhere in the world, just you and I. You can pick the place, and I will do the rest.
Love,
Katka
A KFC in North Platte, Nebraska received a letter like on other in their mailbox last week. Owner Rocky said he was shocked to see someone had written his store to apologize for stealing chicken! Along with the note were two $1 bills in order to repay for the chicken this "thief" took from the buffet(自助餐) line! Wow! Talk about an honest cheat!
There was no return address on the envelop and Rocky says he wishes he knew who this fried chicken snatcher (小偷) was! Not so he could catch her and bring her to justice but rather because he'd like to give her some free food! Rocky said, "It seems as if her conscience got the best of her. I really wish I knew who it was. I would buy her a few meals."
The unknown moral letter writer explained just what went down while she was visiting the fast food restaurant, admitting, "This $2 is for the piece of chicken I brought home with me on Tuesday. That's stealing. Sorry! I took more on my plate than I could eat and I knew it would get thrown away there because it couldn't get put back on the buffet, so I put it in my purse and brought it home. I do love your chicken!"
She then asked for the restaurant's forgiveness, since she felt someone else had already forgiven her. She said, "Anyway, God has forgiven me and I hope you will too. I will not be so quick to take so much next time." Lady, you are MORE than forgiven! You are on your way to being great!
Imagine a mass of floating waste is two times the size of the state of Texas. Texas has a land area of more than 678,000 square kilometers. So it might be difficult to imagine anything twice as big. All together, this mass of waste flowing in the North Pacific Ocean is known as the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch（太平洋垃圾带）. It weighs about 3,500,000 tons. The waste includes bags, bottles and containers-plastic products of all kinds.
The eastern part of the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch is about 1,600 kilometers west of California. The western part is west of the Hawaiian Islands and east of Japan. The area has been described as a kind of oceanic desert, with light winds and slow moving water currents（流，流动）. The water moves so slow that garbage from all over the world collects there.
In recent years, there have been growing concerns about the floating garbage and its effect on sea creatures and human health. Scientists say thousands of animals get trapped in the floating waste, resulting in death or injury. Even more die from a lack of food or water after swallowing pieces of plastic. The trash can also make animals feel full, diminishing their desire to eat or drink.
The floating garbage also can have harmful effects on people. There is an increased threat of infection（感染）of disease from polluted waste, and from eating fish that swallowed waste. Divers can also get trapped in the plastic.
Its existence first gained public attention in 1997. That was when racing boat captain and oceanographer Charles Moore and his crew sailed into the garbage while returning from a racing event. Five years earlier, another oceanographer learnt of the trash after a shipment of rubber duckies got lost at sea. Many of those toys are now part of the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.
In August,2017, a team from the University of California, San Diego became the latest group to travel to it. They were shocked by the amount of waste they saw. They gathered hundreds of sea creatures and water samples to measure the garbage patch's effect on ocean environment.
How to Focus
Improving your focus can make you a better student or employee as well as a happier and more organized person. If you want to improve your focus, you need to learn to avoid distractions and to be prepared with a focus-filled game plan before you set out to accomplish a task.
⒈ Build up your focus stamina (耐力). Each person may start off with a certain amount of "focus stamina" but this is something that can be improved over time. To build your focus stamina, just give yourself a certain amount of time to do nothing but work on a certain task. It may be just another five minutes or another half hour.
⒉ Meditate(沉思). Meditating is more than a great way to relax. When you meditate, you'll be focusing on clearing your head and concentrating on your body and breath. You can easily transfer these skills to clearing your head and focusing on the work ahead of you.
⒊ Read more. Try reading something without stopping for just thirty minutes, and slowly build your stamina to reading for an hour or even two hours with only short breaks. Being able to focus on the material in front of you will help you learn to focus on your work.
⒋ Multi-task less. However, it is actually harmful to your concentration. When you multi-task, you're not putting all of your focus and energy into any one task, which actually harms your concentration. Work on getting just one thing done at a time and you will see that you get this done more quickly. Chatting with your friends online while, getting work done is one of the worst forms of multi-tasking. Chatting with a friend can slow your productivity down by half.
A. Reading is a great way to build up your focus.
B. If you want to know how to focus like a laser, just follow these steps!
C. Keep going until you feel you need to stop, and try to focus for longer the next day.
D. When that time passes, see how long you can keep going before actually stopping.
E. Many people think getting two or three things done at once is a great way to accomplish goals more quickly.
F. Did you waste your whole day reading random articles that people posted on Facebook?
G. If you meditate for just 10 to 20 minutes every day, you will slowly improve your focus.
In the clinic, I asked if Michael could be retested, so the specialist tested him again. To my 1, it was the same score.
Later that evening, I 2 told Frank what I had learned that day. After talking it over, we agree that we knew our 3much better than an IQ test. We 4that Michael's score must have been a 5 and we should treat him 6as usual.
We moved to Indiana in 1962, and Michael studied at Concordia High School in the same year. He got 7 grades in the school, especially 8 biology and chemistry, which was a great comfort.
Michael 9 Indiana University in 1965 as a pre-medical student, soon afterwards, his teachers permitted him to take more courses than 10. In 1968, he was accepted by the School of Medicine, Yale University.
On graduation day in 1972, Frank and I 11 the ceremony at Yale. After the ceremony, we told Michael about the 12 IQ score he got when he was six. Since that day, Michael sometimes would look at us and say 13, "My dear mom and dad never told me that I couldn't be a doctor, not until after I graduated from medical school!" It is his special way of thanking us for the 14 we had in him.
Interestingly, Michael then 15another IQ test. We went to the same clinic where he had 16 the test eighteen years before. This time Michael scored 126, an increase of 36 points. A result like that was supposed to be 17.
Children often do as 18 as what adults, particularly parents and teachers,19 of them. That is, tell a child he is " 20", and he may play the role of a foolish child.
Are you facing a situation that looks impossible to fix?
In 1969, the pollution was terrible along the Cuyahoga River Cleveland, Ohio. It (be) unimaginable that it could ever be cleaned up. The river was so polluted that it (actual) caught fire and burned. Now, years later, this river is one of most outstanding examples of environmental cleanup.
But the river wasn't changed in a few days even a few months. It took years of work(reduce) the industrial pollution and clean the water. Finally, that hard work paid off and now the water in the river is(clean) than ever.
Maybe you are facing an impossible situation. Maybe you leave a habit is driving your family crazy. Possibly you drink too much or don't know how to control your credit card use. When you face such an impossible situation, don't you want a quick fix and something to change immediately?
While there are (amaze) stories of instant transformation, for most of us the(change) are gradual and require a lot of effort and work, like cleaning up a polluted river. Just be (patience).
增加：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（∧），并在其下面写出该加的词。
删除：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。
修改：在错词下划一横线，并在该词下面写出修改后的词。
注意：1．每处错误及其修改均仅限一词；
2．只允许修改10处，多者（从第11处起）不计分。
Drive is a basic skill. My brother started learning to drive when she was eighteen. At the first, Dad taught him what to drive. Dad was not patient for him, and he always shouted at my brother when he made mistakes. He decides to go to a driving school. Learning to drive wasn't especially easy or difficult, but he enjoyed it. Unfortunate, he failed his test for the first time, but he passed it late. He told me that he didn't feel proud and excited. He said he was just happy when it finished.
