【推荐3】Oil is essential for modern life. About 64 percent of the world’s oil is located in the Middle East, but the heaviest consumers of oil are Europe, America, and Japan. The problem lies in getting the oil from the countries that produce it to the countries that consume it. This is mainly done using oil tankers. Usually the oil is shipped safely and with no problems, but occasionally there is a disaster.

Every year millions of tons of oil are spilled into the ocean. Although this is only a small percentage of the total amount shipped around the world each year, this spilled oil can have terrible effects on ocean life, including the coastlines where the oil washes up onto shore.

One of the worst oil spills in history occurred along the Alaskan coastline in 1989, when the Exxon Valdez tanker got stuck off the coast of Alaska, spilling 42 million liters of oil. Although it wasn’t the largest oil spill, the disaster was terrible because it occurred in such a sensitive natural area. In this spill, the tanker’s captain, who was tired from overwork and drinking alcohol, had gone to take a rest. He gave control of the ship to another sailor, who was unfamiliar with the route. The ship ran onto Bligh Reef. Damaged by the reef, the ship leaked oil out into the ocean. More than 1,600 kilometers of coastline were affected by the oil spill. Many birds and otters died as a result of the oil covering their skin, and many other sea creatures and the animals that fed on them were also severely affected.

【推荐1】World Book Day falls on April 23 every year. It was set up in 1955 to encourage people to discover the pleasure of reading.

Many countries celebrate World Book Day. In the UK, the government has introduced a rule that a book token(购书券)is a passport. Every year 15 million tokens are given out to students in Britain and Ireland. With a token, students can go to any bookshop to choose a free book according to their taste and hobby. It is believed that 15% of the UK children don’t have a book of theirs. This mainly results from the high book prices. A book token will help them realize their dream to have their first book.

Reading helps us become more knowledgeable and more intelligent(智慧的). Reading helps us to follow the latest developments of science and technology. Reading provides us with information about other culture and places of the world. When we read, we may learn many things that are off our beat to us. We would have to use our brain to think about them or do more reading to find out the answers. The more we read, the more we know. The more we know, the smarter we become.

Reading is also one of the most important ways to learn a foreign language like English. we all know that we can’t learn everything at school, for example, the ways English people are speaking and writing today.“Reading makes a full man.”Books, magazines, newspapers and other kinds of reading materials can help to know more about the outside world and perfect us. Therefore, it is necessary to form the habit of reading every day.

【推荐3】Like many inventions, language translators were imagined by writers long before they became real. In Hugo Gernsback’s 1911 novel A Romance of the Year 2660, characters use a video telephone that can translate from one language to another. A language translator also appears in Murray Leinster’s 1945 First Contact. In that story, humans and creatures from another planet made a translation device together after asking for contact with one another. The idea of the language translator didn’t become truly popular, however, until the “universal translator” appeared in the 1970 Star Trek series, which delighted television viewers at that time. That device was universal in the sense that it could translate any language that it came across.

The first real language translator was demonstrated（展示）by engineers from IBM company and Georgetown University in 1954. Their machine could only translate Russian sentences into English.

Language translators have come a long way since then. Today, online translations can be accessed easily at no cost to users. With translation apps, users sometimes don’t even have to look things up. All they need to do is point their cellphone’s camera at some writing, and a translation immediately appears. If users want to translate something being said aloud, they just turn on their phone’s microphone. All of these features save time and effort.

Translation apps on phones make foreign travel much easier than before. They are invaluable and convenient when it comes to communicating with taxi drivers or hotel waiters who don’t speak a traveler’s native language. But these apps are far from perfect. Sometimes a translation makes no sense, forcing the user to guess what the translation means. At other times, the user might not know that the translation has failed until he or she shows it to a native speaker.