【推荐1】In choosing a friend, one should be very careful. A good friend can help you study. You can have a good time together and make each other happy. Sometimes you will meet fair weather friends. They will be with you as long as you have money or luck, but when you are down, they will run away. How do I know when I have found a good friend? I look for certain qualities of character, especially understanding, honesty and reliability.

Among these qualities, I think understanding is the most important. A good friend tries to understand how another person is feeling. He is not quick to judge. Instead, he tries to learn from others. He puts himself in the other person’s place, and he tries to think of ways to be helpful. He is also a good listener.

At the same time, however, a good friend is honest. He does not look for faults in others. He notices their good points. In short, a friend will try to understand me and accept me.

Another quality of a friend is reliability. I can always depend on a good friend. If he tells me he will meet me somewhere at a certain time, I can be sure that he will be there. If I need help, he will do his best to help me. If I am in trouble, he will not run away from me.

When I meet someone who is reliable, honest, and understanding, I know I’ve found a friend!

【推荐2】Everyone needs friends. We all like to feel close to someone. It is nice to have a friend to talk, laugh and do things with. Surely, sometimes we need to be alone. We don’t always want people around. But we would feel lonely if we never had a friend.

No two people are the same. Sometimes friends don’t get along well. That doesn’t mean that they no longer like each other. Most of the time they will go on being friends. Sometimes friends move away. Then we feel very sad. We miss them very much. But we can call them and write to them. Maybe we would never see them again. And we can make new friends. It is surprising to find out how much we like new people when we get to know them. Families sometimes name their children after a close friend. Many places are named after men and women, if they are friendly to people in a town. Some libraries are named this way. So are some schools. We think of these people when we go to these places.

There’s more good news for people, if they have friends. These people live longer than those people who don’t have friends. Why? It could be that they are happier. Being happy helps you stay well. Or it could be just knowing that someone cares about you. If someone cares about you, you take better care of yourself.

【推荐3】Friendship is a gift of God. But it may be taken for granted in some cases and not valued.     1    Say one has no child even after many years of marriage and the other has many children, more than they can manage. What do you think? Will the couple with many children value the children as much as the couple which has none? Everything is relative in life. We value what we don’t have and give less value to what is freely available to us.    2    

Why should we value friendships? What qualities does a good friend bring to our relationship that makes the friendship so valuable? Let us examine some of these.

Judgement——A good friend is rarely judgemental. We can be open in our behaviour with our good friends because we know that they will not judge us.     3     With other people our actions and behavior are always calculated and guarded and that takes away lots of pleasure from our life.

Share sorrow and losses ——A friend can be depended upon to share all our problems and sorrows.     4    Once I saw the image of a man left alone in a village after an earthquake. The whole village got killed except this man with whom, will this man share his sorrow? A friend gives us this gift.

Hope——During our times of trouble, only a friend comes forward and gives us encouragement and hope.     5    

【推荐1】Growing up, I understood one thing about my dad: He knew everything. This was our relationship :     1    

In my teen years, he taught me things I’d need to know to survive in the real world. When I moved out on my own, I called him at least once a week, usually when something broke in my apartment and I needed to know how to fix it.     2    I got married, and my husband had most of the knowledge I lacked. For everything else, we had Google.

I don’t know when it happened, but our conversations when I called changed into six words. “Hi, Dad, sweets. Here’s Mom.” (Because I still needed her. ) I loved my dad, of course, but I wondered at times if maybe he had already shared everything I needed to know.    3     Then, this summer, my family and I moved in with my parents for three weeks while our house was being renovated (翻新). One day, Dad asked me to help him rebuild the board at their dock. As we put the new board together piece by piece, my dad knowing exactly what went where. I looked at him. “How do you know how to build it?” The heavy hammer he was swinging paused in midair. “I spent a summer in college building them on the Jersey Shore.”    4    But I never knew this. I realized that maybe it’s not that there’s nothing left to say.

A few weeks later, after my family moved back into our house, I called my parents. Dad answered. “Hi, sweets,” he said. “Here’s Mom.” “Wait, Dad,” I said. “How are you?” We ended up talking about what he was working on. To anyone else, it would sound like a normal conversation between a dad and his daughter.     5    I spent the first part of my life needing to talk to my dad. Now I talk to him because I want to.

【推荐3】A girl pulled back on the rope, making the homemade swing(秋千) fly higher． Her red sweater flashed brightly in the morning sunlight． She was mad at her brother, David． "How could he have been so mean?" she asked herself, remembering how he had made a face and called her a “big baby”． “He hates me,” she thought, “Just because I took the last biscuit from under his nose．”

On a distant hill behind the swing, a huge bull (公牛) with long, sharp horns was watching her． It was ready to attack anything that moved． Then it lowered its head and bean charging (猛冲) across the field toward the red sweater．

Meanwhile, David was in the farmyard, feeding the chicken． He saw his little sister on the swing and the bull heading straight for his sister． Without a second thought, David screamed as loudly as he could, “Look out behind you! Get out of there!”

His sister didn't hear him． The bull was halfway across the field and closing in fast． David's heart pounded． It was now or never． He ran across the chicken yard, jumped the fence and dashed toward his sister． He ran faster than he had ever run before．

David gabbed the swing to stop and pulled his sister sideways to the ground only a second before the bull charged at the place she had been． She let out a terrified cry． The bull turned around and charged again． David quickly pulled of the sealer of his sister and threw it far away as he could． The bull followed it． As the bull was tearing the sweater into pieces, David half-dragged, half-carried his sister to safety． A weak smile crossed the little girl’s face as she had realized something important that day．