We can’t remember clearly since when we start to take our mobile phones to a dinner table. This happens a lot, especially when we gather together with family or friends to eat out. Once a d    1     comes onto the table, instead of lifting our chopsticks, we take out our mobiles and click. Later, we post the photos onto Weibo or WeChat, waiting to be “liked”. Then we check our mobiles frequently during the meal, to see whether we get “liked” or not. We just cannot l    2     our mobiles for just a meal’s time.

Does that sound familiar to you? Do you do that often? If not, how do you feel when others do that when having dinner with you?

A recent study shows that what we are used to doing is not that g    3    . Spending time taking photos of food makes the food less satisfying. To test this, some scientists did an e    4    . Some people were asked to take photos before they could enjoy food. It turned out that the more photos they took, the less delicious the food seemed to them. So, why not stop taking photos and just enjoy the food ahead of you?

As is mentioned at the beginning, besides the scientific result, there is also another bad i    5     of taking photos of food before meals. One will probably check his mobile many times a    6     posting the photos onto the Internet. “Does everyone like my photo? I hope a lot of people love it!” It seems like your mobile secretly calls your name all the time, even when you are with real people.

So, next time you go out to have dinner with your family or friends, how about not taking photos of food? Let the food be delicious as it is and s    7     your life with people around you. Trust me, it will be a wonderful time.

2 .

Hundreds of years ago, news was carried from place to place by people on foot or by horse. It took days, weeks and sometimes months for people to     1     news. Now it is possible to send words and pictures around the world in     2    . Newspapers have been an important     3     of everyday life since the 18th century. Many countries have hundreds of different newspapers. How do newspaper editors decide which news to print? Why do they prefer some stories and not others? What makes a good newspaper story?

Firstly, it is important to report new stories. Secondly, a news story has to be interesting and     4    . In addition, many people are interested in news in foreign countries, but more prefer to read stories about people, places and     5     in their own countries. So in Chinese newspapers, the stories on the     6     page are usually very different from the ones in other countries.

Nearly everybody has a mobile phone. It is not just adults that own them, many school children have them     1    .

However, some teachers don’t think mobile phones are good for children. They say children depend too much on them. Children speak to their parents at any time and ask their parents to solve problems instead of trying to solve them on their own. If they have     2     their homework at home, they phone home and expect their parents to bring them to school.

Another     3     is that if children don’t turn off their phones, they may ring loudly during lessons. This makes the teachers angry. Also, using the phones a lot might     4     children’s health. No one knows for sure what other effects the phones could have on children.

However, some parents think that if their children have mobile phones, they will be safer. When there is an emergency (紧急情况), they can use the mobile phones to ask for help. For example, if a child is in trouble or lost, or he sees something     5     happening, he could call his parents or teachers immediately. Mobile phones are also very useful when children are late back home. And parents won’t have to worry. With a mobile phone, it is easy for children to keep in touch with their parents, and friends as well.

Smart phones have clearly changed our life. Now many things can be done on the phone. For many smart phone users,     1     young people, scanning QR Codes （⼆维码）has become a new and convenient life     2     these days. In fact, the QR Code was created in Japan in 1994, but until 11 years later, it was first used in China. It soon became popular around the country. The QR Code is much-loved because it     3     a way to get to website more quickly. By scanning QR Codes, people can do lots of things, such as adding new friends, getting information, downloading Apps, shopping and so on. As for the shopping websites, there are usually more     4     , including coupons （优惠券）for the phone users. The QR code is so common that people can scan them everywhere.

Nowadays, you can see many people are busy on their smartphones (智能手机) if you     1    . Smartphones make our lives easier. But have you ever     2     what they mean to your eyes?

Staring (盯) at smartphones     3     gives you dry eyes and even causes diseases (疾病).

While you’re probably (可能) not going to stop using your smartphone, there are a few things you can do to protect (保护) your eyes. Hold your phone     4     30 cm away from your eyes when using it. Take a break every hour. These will reduce (减少) the discomfort in your eyes.

7 . Over recent years, letter writing has been replaced (替代) by other ways of communication. Technology has developed so rapidly that we now expect to be able to talk to people at any time and get response _________. Rather than put pen to paper, it feels much more natural for us to send text messages and emails.

It is true that these modern ways of communication have their own _________. We can talk to people all over the world within seconds. We can also edit our emails before sending them. However, if we make a mistake in a letter, we have to cross it out or start again.

But have you ever thought about what we are _________? Yes, we are forgetting about the art of letter writing. Almost every single person would say that reading a hand-written letter from a friend is _________. When you know someone has spent time writing a letter for you, especially a birthday letter, there’s something very special in your heart.

On the other hand, not only the person receiving the letter will benefit from a lovely envelope, but also the writer himself. When we know we’re doing something that will make our friends very happy, we feel good about ourselves, too.

_________, writing a letter can improve our language skills and we can also learn some new expressions. Letter writing has much fun. Why not begin your writing journey from now on?

Now, smartphone apps make our life easy. But sometimes they can also make us feel _________. These days, a piece of news in the newspaper talks about a question—Should teachers use apps like WeChat or QQ to give students _________? Different people have different ideas. Let’s take a look!

Some parents think it’s _________ to keep the kids far away from smartphones. But sometimes their kids have to do homework on apps. Liu Yan, a _________ in Shanghai, usually has to use his mother’s smartphone to do his homework. His father is very worried（焦虑的）. “He is _________ 12 years old. I’m afraid that he may use the smartphone to play games,” the father says, “I’m also worried about his eyes _________ it takes him a long time to do homework on the phone every day.”

But some other parents have different ideas. One of _________ is Mr. Black. He is a father of an 11-year-old boy. He says he can know about when his son begins and finishes the homework from the phone. He can know _________ it takes his son to do the homework.

Well, what do teachers think of it? A teacher from our school says students can use phones if the homework on _________ helps them with their study a lot. And teachers can give homework like listening and speaking exercises on the apps. But parents should control（控制）the __________.