When I lived in Spain, some Spanish friends of mine decided to visit England by car. Before they left, they asked me for advice about how to find accommodation (住所). I suggested that they should stay at ‘bed and breakfast' houses, because this kind of accommodation gives a foreign visitor a good chance to speak English with the family. My friends listened to my advice, but they came back with some funny stories.

"We didn't stay at bed and breakfast houses," they said, "because we found that most families were away on holiday."

I thought this was strange. Finally I understood what had happened. My friends spoke little English, and they thought ‘VACANCIES' meant ‘holidays', because the Spanish word for ‘holidays" is ‘vacaciones'. So they did not go to house where the sign outside said ‘VACANCLES', which in English means there are free rooms. Then my friends went to house where the sign said ‘NO VACANCLES', because they thought this meant the people who owned the house were not away on holiday. But they found that these houses were all full. As a result, they stayed at hotels!

We laughed about this and about mistakes my friends made in reading other signs. In Spanish, the word ‘DIVERSION' means fun. In English, it means that workmen are repairing the road, and that you must take a different road. When my friends saw the word ‘DIVERSION' on a road sign, they thought they were going to have fun. Instead, the road ended in a large hold.

English people have problems too when they learn foreign languages. Once in Paris. when someone offered me some more. coffee, I said ‘Thank you' in French. I meant that I would like some more, However, to my surprise the coffee pot was taken away! Later I found out that ‘Thank you' in French means ‘Mo, thank you.'

In the USA, students take the school bus to 1 . 

In other country(国家), things are 2 . In Japan, many students go to school 3 foot. Other students ride 4 bikes. In China, in Beijing and Shanghai, students usually 5   the subway to school. 6 rivers(河流)are in the country, students usually take a 7 to school. Some children in Jiangxi, China, take a boat to school every day. Some students love to go to school in this way, but some 8 don't like it. Some students don't go to school. They 9 at home. Sometimes they 10 want to go to school with their classmates. 

Volunteer Day

The Youth Team of Shougang Winter Olympics(奥运会) Service is one of the volunteer groups that worked at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. The 192young volunteers worked for more than two months and provided more than 15, 000 hours of service. 

It is not an easy job to work as a volunteer. Liu Junyu, 28, from the team, found the ways to help people get in and out more easily. Other volunteers helped clean snow each day. This made sure that everything worked well for the games. 

Also, a volunteer needs to learn a lot. Volunteers needed to know all about the games. They also kept in mind the history and stories behind them. "People say volunteering is about giving, but I got a lot from helping others, "said a volunteer. 

Everywhere you look you'll find surveys and questionnaires （问卷） in magazines, newspaper articles, best-selling books, TV shows. . . all giving one clear message: women and men are different.

Clearly, we can't get along because we communicate too differently. We don't understand each other. Women think one thing, but men think another. A woman is willing to work together, but a man is competitive. Women are good communicators, and can relate to people well, while men are more driven by results. A woman can do several things at once, but a man prefers to do one task at a time. If you believe everything you read, women even have a stronger sense of smell and of touch. The list of differences goes on and on.

However, Dr. Janet S. Hyde claims （声称） that the differences between men and women are overstated. She reviewed 46 studies of gender （性别） differences, going back 20 years, and found that there are far more similarities than differences between men and women. In fact, Dr. Hyde's results show that there are very few differences in the way we think, act and communicate. What's more, she warns that claims of gender differences actually have a negative effect on women, both in the workplace and in their relationships with their husbands or boyfriends.

Girls also suffer the results of these claims. For example, girls studying in school are not always encouraged to think that they can succeed in math the same way that many boys are. This is because people often believe media claims that girls aren't as good at math as boys. Perhaps it's time to celebrate what brings us together, rather than focus on what divides us.

People try to make predictions about the future. But what surprises does technology have in store for us? The answer is nanotechnology （纳米技术）. 

Nanotechnology is the science of building tiny machines, so small that they areinvisible. To give you an idea of the size of these machines, the difference between a nanometer and a meter two units of length, is the same as the difference between a rock and the planet Earth! Most scientists agree that nanotechnology will change our lives in the future—but how? At the moment it's difficult to predict whether this new technology will be like a wonderful dream, or a terrifying nightmare （噩梦）.

In the 1966 the film Fantastic Voyage, an inventor develops an amazing new way to treat diseases. He narrows a group of scientists and their machines and injects （注射） them all into a patient. They then travel around the patient's body, visiting the different parts of the body and repairing them. Of course, this is just a film—but the reality of nanotechnology is not very different. Scientists are already making nanobots, tiny robots that are very small. In the future, doctors might be able to inject these into a patient, and the nanobots will travel around the body and repair the diseased parts.

Some people are worried that nanotechnology could be difficult to control. Nanobots might come into the environment and damage people, plants and animals. Others have even more serious worries. Eric Drexler is a futurist, a scientist who makes predictions about the future. In his bookEngines of Creation he predicted the invention of nanobots. He also described a special kind of nanobot that can make a copy of itself using the materials around it—and this is where the nightmare begins. In Michael Crichton's book Prey, nanobots reproduce themselves so quickly that they use all the materials around them and then look for more and more, and more, eventually "eating" the world. Some people are worried that this might really happen. The most serious predictions (that very few scientists believe) say that nanobots could destroy the whole planet in about three hours!

Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring Festival, is the most celebrated traditional festival in China. Preparations for Chinese New Year begin well ahead of time. Families clean their homes to away bad luck and make way for good luck. People new clothes, share festive meals, and exchange Hongbao containing money for good luck. The highlight of the celebrations is the dinner on New Year's Eve, where family members to enjoy a big dinner. As midnight comes, fireworks light up the sky, and the atmosphere is with excitement. Chinese New Year is not only a time-honored tradition but also a reflection of the rich cultural heritage （遗产）, which it a truly special and pleasant time for people across the country.

What do you imagine cities will be like in the future? Will we have smart buildings and flying cars? Or robots that will 1 our rubbish? What about schools? Will we still go to 2 or will we study online from home?

Maybe… or maybe not, but what we do know is that in the future, 3 are going to have more and more people living in them. More than half the world's people have 4 lived in cities, and by 2050, cities will become home to about 6.5 billion people. That's a lot of people but 5 space! More people means that we're going to have more 6 , traffic and noise. It also means that we'll 7 more resources (资源), like water and energy.

Many cities have 8 for the future. For example, Bristol is a cycling city in England. You don't need to take a car or bus. 9 , you can ride a bike in bike lanes (车道). They are 10 from the traffic, so it's quite safe for you.

What do you think city life will be like in the future?

Have you ever read Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone? It is one of the most  books for almost all the children in the world.

The idea for the book came to J.K. Rowling in 1990. It  her seven years to finish writing it. During those seven years she had a number of jobs, for , being an English teacher in Portugal. Rowling sent the book to four publishers (出版商) before one of them  it. She was very  to sell her book because it was her dream to be a writer.

Rowling was living in a small flat (公寓) with her daughter and was very poor  she sold her book. She didn't have enough money to  for heat in winter. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone became a favorite with children and adults in England and then around the world. It was translated (被译成) more than thirty-five . After her second and third books were published, the three Harry Potter books filled the top three  on many newspapers' lists of the most popular books.

Without any question, Rowling's life  changed. And she became one of the most famous women writers in the world.

Mails, games, music, news, chat rooms and shopping! The Internet is part of the way we live today. It's easy to get onto the Internet. The only thing we need to do is to use a modem which is used for connecting a computer to a telephone line. The Internet is changing and growing all the time. More and more people have computers and use the Internet. Using the Internet means surfing the World Wide Web (That's the "www" you always hear about). The Web has large numbers of websites. In it, they are the places you go to get information and do things.

Where do these websites come from? They are made by web designers. What happens when you click on a word or a picture? You are sent to another page. It's all because of the web designer. Web designers do a lot of work by using a computer programming language.

Is Web design all about computer programming? No. It's about making something new. Web designers must imagine a lot when they are making a website. It must look good and be fun to use. A big part of Web design is art. They choose the best pictures and colors to make the website look good. They also write the things that you see on the website. An important part of their job is to share ideas with the website manager about how to design the website well.