【推荐1】Ways to have a happy school life

Your schooldays should be some of the best and happiest days of your life. How can you gain(收获) the most from them, and ensure you do not waste this wonderful opportunity to learn?

    1     Don't say things are difficult or boring. Be interested in school-life and your school subjects. Join in lots of activities. Go round the school with a big smile.

Expect to work. School is not a holiday camp. If you are not working, you are wasting your time at school. Teachers cannot make everything enjoyable.

Keep fit. If you do not eat a good breakfast, you will be thinking about food in class. If you go to bed late and do not have enough sleep, you will be sleepy in class.     2    

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.     3     If you get behind the class. it is very difficult to get back in front. You cannot finish a race if you rest all the time.

    4     Everyone will fail in some tests, lose some matches and have bad days. Don't make small problems seem very big and important.

Set study targets. If your last grade was a D, work for a C.     5     Think of small targets: "l will speak in class four times this week." or "I will get two more marks this week."

Follow my advice and have a happy school life!

【推荐2】Are you bored with your daily routine？Here are some things you should try before you are 18, because after that it’s too late!

Learn to swim.

Actually, this is so important that it could save your life. If you can’t swim well, you won’t be able to do water sports like water skiing(滑水), surfing and diving.    1     Make sure you do it.

Collect something.

One of the best hobbies for under­18s is collecting things. You could collect Chinese stamps, or you could collect things that make you remember what you’ve done, like cinema tickets for films. The best way to collect is to have a special album to put your collections in and to write what each thing means to you.    2    

Try at least one kind of team sports.

    3     You can’t just think of yourself, but have to work well with other people. Other advantages of team sports like basketball, football and baseball are that they keep you fit and healthy, and that they are also great fun.    4     So you’ll go to lots of parties and make many friends.

    5    

When you are young, get to know all the older people in your family and find out as much as you can about them when they were young. Draw a family tree and make notes about each person so that you won’t forget.

【推荐1】Teenagers do not always agree with adults.     1     But in a program in New York, adults and teenagers live together in a friendly way.

Each summer 200 teenagers and 50 adults are invited to join the program.     2     Every- one in the group works for seven hours a day. They not only keep busy, but also find meaning and happiness in work. Some teenagers work in the forest or on the farm. Some learn to make things like tables and chairs.     3    

There are a few free hours each day, and weekends are free, too. During the free hours, some of the teenagers learn to take photos or paint pictures. Some sit around and talk, sing or dance. All in all, each teenager has his own way to spend his free time.     4     In this pro- gram the teenagers and the adults make the rules together. If someone breaks a rule, they will talk about it and ask: “What should we do about it?”

One teenager talks about his experience. “You stop thinking only about yourself.     5    ”

【推荐2】People in Japan tend to live longer and stay healthier in their later years, with an increasing number of old people living alone. Japan is on a fast track to “ultra-age” with people aged 65 or above accounting for 28 percent of its total population in 2017; it was 26.7 percent in 2015. On the other hand, the number of births in 2017 fell to its lowest (about 941,000) since records began in 1899.

Demand for care services for elderly people has boomed. A shrinking working population means fewer able-bodied adults are available to look after the elderly. There is a shortage of state-provided elderly care facilities (养老院), while private ones are expensive. Any elderly people do not have the heart to burden other family members who may not live nearby. So they choose to live alone, and often die alone.

The country will be short of 380,000 of health nurses by 2025. The government has to turn to advanced robots to meet the shortage. Now about 5,000 nursing homes are testing robots which assist the elderly with a lot of physical issues, even emotional and psychological issues. A study found that using robots encouraged one third of the people to become more active and independent. Yet there is no robot that can provide the emotional support to the elderly by listening to their need, taking care of them and in general making their twilight year (暮年) happy.

Japan provides a case study for China, which is too faced with a fast aging population. 17.23 million babies were born in China in 2017, about 630,000 fewer than in 2016. people aged 60 accounted for 17.3% of China’s population in 2017. With insufficient elderly care facilities and unbalanced supply, China may find it tough to cope with the rapidly increasing number of senior citizens.

To meet the challenge, the Chinese government should make policy changes, which Japan is unwilling or unable to do or even consider. China should pay attention to the signals its aging population is sending and take proper and timely action.