Sophie Chen is a 14-year-old girl from Taiwan. When she was 6 years old, she did something amazing.
She finished a 2,100-kilometer bike 1 from Xi'an to Turpan (吐鲁番)with her parents. Sophie became the youngest child in the world to have 2 the Silk Road. What's more, Sophie 3 a book about the long journey with her father.
Now Sophie studies at Ta Hwa High School. She sees the journey as a 4 experience in her life. She became more hardworking and learned history and geography 5 because of it.
On the way, she met many 6 local people. They helped her a lot. She even picked some grapes! "The grapes in Xinjiang were so sweet. I have never 7 them in Taiwan," she said. "The biggest challenge was the bad 8," she said. She wrote in the book, "It was very hot in the Gobi Desert. I was thirsty but I could never have enough to 9."
Sophie has biked in other 10, such as the United States and Turkey. This summer holiday, she plans to ride a bike from Greece to Portugal in Europe.
A
| Yu Dabao was born in 1988 in Qingdao. He loved playing soccer when he was a kid. When he was young, his father took him for training. People called Yu "China's lucky star" because he saved his team many times in important games. |
| Zhang Dasheng is from Shanxi. When he was 5 years old, he fell in love in driving. Now, he is 24 years old and he becomes the first Chinese to be chosen in Porsche's young driver development program. |
| Emma Watson was born in 1991. She is a British actress. She played the beautiful princess in Disney's new movie. She also sang for the movie. It was the first time for her to do so in her career. The movie has been shown in China. |
| On January 27, Emma Stone won the Best Actress Oscar. She is only 28 years now! Stone loved acting as a child. At the age of 14, she left high school. Then she moved to Los Angeles with her family in order to build an acting career. |
B
Everyone knows that fish is good for health. The fats in fish can help prevent heart disease. But many people don't cook fish at home. Some people don't know how to buy fresh fish, others don't know how to cook fish after buying it. In fact, it just needs a little knowledge. This text is about how to buy and cook fish in an easy way.
When you buy fish, you should first smell it. Fresh fish should smell sweet. Strong smell means the fish isn't fresh. Do not buy it. When you have bought a fish and arrive home, you'd better put the fish in the fridge in order to keep it fresh.
There are many common ways to cook fish. The easiest way is to steam it. First, clean it and season(调味) it with your choice of spices (调料). Put the whole fish on a plate and steam it in a steam pot for 8 to 10 minutes if it weighs about one pound. (A larger one will take more time.)
C
I'm a 34-year-old man. I lived in a nice house and have a successful career. But my life was not always so great. I had trouble learning from an early age. The school life was difficult for me.
My life improved quickly when I discovered art. The art world gave me a chance to express myself without words. I went to an art school and became good at making things with dough. Here I learned my first important lesson: although I had trouble learning, I could still be smart and well express myself with dough. And I became confident from then on.
I got my next lesson from rock climbing. It was a fun thing but I was frightened from the start. After about five years of climbing, I learned that if you fall in love with something and do it all the time, you will get better at it.
Later I decided to learn how to read. Every day I practiced reading. After two hard years, I did well in it. And reading changed my life a lot.
After learning art, rock climbing, and reading, now I've learnt that when we face difficulties, we should not give up. God closes a door for you, and will open another window for you.
D
On April 26, China's first homemade aircraft carrier(航空母舰) hit the water in Dalian, Liaoning. It is China's second aircraft carrier and it has no name yet. It was designed in China.
It is about 315 meters long and 75 meters wide. It is a bit larger than three soccer fields. It can carry 40 to 50 planes.It is the largest and best ship China has ever built.
An aircraft carrier is like an airport on the sea. It can carry hundreds of planes. Planes fly from and land back on it, and soldiers work and live on it. It is expensive to build an aircraft carrier. It costs a lot of money and uses a lot of steel. It also uses technologies. Finally, it takes years to build.
Today, not many countries own an aircraft carrier or have the ability to build one. When the new carrier is finished, China will become the seventh country in the world that can build an aircraft carrier by itself, after the US, Russia, UK, France, Italy and Spain.
E
When children are little we make them read before the teacher. In this way, we can be sure they "know" all the words. This means that when they don't know a word, they are going to make a mistake. This makes children dislike reading. After having taught fifth-grade classes for four years, I decided to make children read for themselves.
One day after school, I said to them, "Now I'm going to say something about reading. I would like you to read a lot of books this year, but I want you to read them only for pleasure. I am not going to ask you questions. I'm not going to ask you what words mean either."
The children sat silent. Was this a teacher talking? One girl looked at me for a long time. Then she said seriously, "Mr Holt, do you really mean that?" I said just as seriously, "I mean every word of it."
During the spring she really surprised me. One day, she was reading at her desk. From the introduction I thought I knew what the book was. Then I took a closer look. I was sure that she was reading Moby Dick. I said, "Don't you find parts of it very difficult?" She answered, "Sure, but I just skip over(略过) those parts and go on to the next good part."
This is exactly what reading should be. Take the good parts, skip the bad parts and go on to something else.
A long time ago, some children were playing at seaside when they found a turtle. They wanted (kill) it. Just at that time, a young man came and said to them, "Stop!" The children ran away (quick).
The turtle was thankful and invited the young man to a (wonder) palace. The young man (take) to a secret palace in the sea. When he arrived at the palace, he was surprised and (say) to the turtle, "What a nice palace!"
To thank him, the king of the turtle gave him big dinner. After dinner, the king gave him two boxes. the young man could open only one. He promised.
After (go) back home, he opened the bigger one. It was full of gold. He thought things in the other box must be expensive too. He broke his promise opened the other box. As soon as he opened it, he became an old man. He was sorry for what he did, but it was too late.
From the story we can learn that (keep) a promise is so important for us.
