【推荐1】Reading is an important professional skill. In order to build your reading habit and enjoy your reading to the fullest, begin practicing good reading skills as follows.

Read for content.

When you read, read for the main idea of each paragraph, along with its supporting reasons. When building up reading skills, it can be helpful to read with a pencil in hand to take notes.     1    .

Look up unfamiliar words.

Merriam Webster online is a wonderful resource for defining (定义) unfamiliar words.     2    . When you reach a good stopping point, return to each word and look it up, re-reading the sentence where it appears. This helps understand the word and its usage in case there are various meanings.

Let your imagination get involved (参与).

    3    . Learn to enjoy your reading without asking too many questions. Just enjoy and look forward to getting the information, ideas and thoughts expressed by the writer.

    4    .

Reading for learning and enjoyment is never a hurry. Instead, take your time, develop your skills at your own speed. Do not get discouraged if you are a slow reader, especially at first. Each day, as you read, your mind will take the reading skills it learned before and apply them again, often with greater effects.

【推荐1】Blue Planet Ⅱ’s latest episode (情节) is about how plastic is having a terrible effect on the ocean and slowly poisoning our sea creatures. Researchers have also found that sea creatures living in the deepest place on Earth, Mariana Trench, have plastic in their stomachs. Indeed, oceans are drowning in plastic.

Though it seems that the world couldn’t possibly function without plastic, plastic is a very recent invention. The first plastic bags were introduced in the 1950s, the same decade (十年) that plastic packaging began gaining popularity in the United States. This growth has happened so fast that science is still catching up with the change. Plastic pollution research, for example, is still a very early science.

We put all the plastic into the environment, but we still don’t really know what the outcomes are going to be. What we do know, though, is disturbing. Ocean plastic is expected to kill millions of sea animals every year. Hundreds of species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by it. One in three leatherback turtles, which often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, have been found with plastic in their stomach. Ninety percent of seabirds are now eating plastic regularly. By 2050, that figure is expected to rise to 100 percent.

And it’s not just wildlife that is threatened by the plastic in our seas. Humans are consuming plastic through the seafood we eat. I could understand why some people see ocean plastic as a disaster, worth mentioning in the same breath as climate change. But ocean plastic is not as complicated (复杂的) as climate change. There are no ocean waste deniers (否认者), at least so far. To do something about it, we don’t have to remake our planet energy system.

This is not a problem where we don’t know what the solution is. We know how to pick up garbage. Anyone can do it. We know how to deal with it. We know how to recycle. We can all start by thinking twice before we use single-use plastic products. Things that may seem ordinary, like using a reusable bottle or a reusable bag — when taken collectively, these choices really do make a difference.

【推荐3】Hamburgers were first introduced to the United States in the early 20th century, and the first fast-food restaurant chain opened its doors in 1921. However, it was only after World War II that fast food became popular in the whole country.

After designing their hamburger restaurant to make food in a simpler and more effective way,the McDonald brothers reduced the costs of production. They ended up earning $275,000 by 1951which was quite a fortune for a small restaurant at that time. Along with other pioneers in the fast-food business, by 1990 fast-food restaurants had taken over the American landscape. Today, at least 50 million Americans are fed by more than 180.000 fast-food restaurants every day.

When analyzing these data, we might find it shocking that the decline of our health has moved in direct proportion(比例) to the rise of fast-food consumption.This,sadly, is not a coincidence(巧合) Since1990, various kinds of fast food have led to more consumption of calories compared to homemade meals.

The US government has conducted several surveys on this issue, and they have pointed out some alarming facts. Fast food and ultra-processed snacks are now taking the lead in more and more Americans’ daily diets. Rather than healthy food, more people prefer quick, easy treats with high calories like fried chicken and potato chips. Moreover, according to the surveys, fast-food consumption has more than doubled since the 1970s among people aged between 19 and 39. In a relatively short period of time, the fast-food industry has changed not only the way Americans eat, but also their economy and cultural landscape.The rapid development of the fast-food industry alsotriggersthe problem of increased overweight population in the US.