Welcome to the City Youth Club. Find out what’s going on!

Are you 10-18 years old? Open Monday to Friday. 5 pm-8 pm.

Tell us here：

I’m Emily. I like doing arts. We often paint pictures and make things at the club. We have a helper in the arts room. He’s really nice. People talk to him about their problems.

I’m Sam. There’s a skateboard park at the club and I love skateboarding. I don’t have a skateboard, but that’s OK. It has skateboards for people to use.

I’m Rose. I like rock climbing and there’s a big climbing wall at the club. You can do rock climbing on Mondays and Wednesdays.

I’m Bob. There’s a coffee shop and you can buy food and drink there. I help in the coffee shop on Fridays.

I’m Mark. I work at the club on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’m a volunteer—I don’t get money for my work. I like helping people.

Last year I had a trip with my friend, Nancy. The weather was cloudy except for one night. Nancy and I sat in the field and we felt relaxed. We talked about the fantastic trip, looking at the stars. “It’s a pity we don’t know which stars we’re looking at, Jenny,” said Nancy. “I know some of them,” I answered. Nancy felt surprised when I finally finished telling her all the names I knew.

My interest in stars began when I was eight. My aunt took me to a planetarium（天文馆）. A guide showed us the groups of stars and told us stories about how they got their names. The stories were wonderful.

Everyone knows we can see the stars better when it’s not cloudy, but lots of people don’t realize that a bright moon also stops us seeing very much. I always look for the Plough（北斗星）, because once I see that, I can find the North Star and other stars.

I wanted to learn more about the stars, so I took a course at the club. There are so many lights in the city that we have to go into the countryside to see any stars. I’m planning to make videos about stars in the countryside. I’ll post them online for everyone to watch. My greatest dream is to be an astronaut（宇航员）and I wish I could have a space travel.

Presentation（展示）skills are important at school and in other areas of life. Some people don’t like giving presentations because they don’t know what to say or because they get nervous about public speaking. Here’s some advice to help you make presentations easier and more enjoyable.

1. Get organised

The best presentations are well planned and clearly organized. Think about topics（话题）and choose a proper one. In one topic, three or four main ideas will be fine. The beginning of your presentation should be interesting. For example, you can tell a short, funny story to make people laugh.

2. Use photos or videos

Try to use photos or videos. These things make your performance more exciting and help you remember what you’ re going to say. However, you shouldn’t use too many. The “star” of your presentation should be you, not your photos or videos.

3. Practice before your performance

You need to practice many times before the “big day”. Practice saying any unusual words. Then write the main ideas on small cards to help you remember. Practice in front of a mirror and time your presentation. Finally, you can record your performance or ask a friend to watch you and then make suggestions for improvements.

4. Connect with your audience（观众）

Always look at the audience when you speak. Stand up straight, but don’t stand still or move around much. Finally, be sure to thank your audience when you finish speaking. It’s a simple but good way to end any presentation.

Nobody wants to lose, but we must accept that losing is a part of life. After all, we can’t win all the time. However, we can learn something valuable from every failure（失败）. This may help us succeed in the future. So we must know how to be a good loser.

We must not be afraid of losing. When we lose, just take it with a smile and look on the bright side of it. Failure can’t be avoided in our life. Edison failed 10,000 times before he invented the light bulb（灯泡）. When he was asked how he felt, he said that he hadn’t failed 10,000 times but had learned 10,000 things which didn’t work. We must know that history is full of examples of men and women who achieved success although they failed many times.

Losing is not very disgraceful. We must accept our failure and learn to take advantage of it. Remember that it can be helpful. Take action to walk out of it. When we lose, think about what we did and how we can improve. If someone else can help, we’ll be lucky enough. Maybe he or she has been through the same experience before. Many people enjoy helping others solve problems. This can save us a lot of time in learning how to avoid the same mistakes in the future.

We should face our failure when we lose. There is only one winner in every competition. Some win, while some lose. That is a usual way of life. If we offer our congratulations（祝贺）to the winners and share in their happiness, we won’t feel sorry for our failure.

In a word, being a good loser will help us to succeed in life. It might be painful at the beginning, but there are many advantages. Good losers set examples to us, and most importantly, they finally win.

“I could tell it was him by the way he walked.” If you’ve ever said that, you understand biometrics（生物识别技术）. Biometric technology is an important topic in our work and private lives. It includes the use of finger prints or knowing a person’s voice. It is the science about what a person looks like and how a person does things. Like tree leaves, no two human beings are exactly the same. They’ve got different eyes and different hair. And everyone has a different way of walking or moving.

This technology can tell you from others. At the moment if you travel through an airport, you need your ID card or passport. If you go to your bank to get some money, you need a card and a special number. But what should you do if you lose your passport or forget your number? Biometric technology can solve this problem. The technology is becoming more and more popular with old people because they no longer need to remember their passwords（密码）.

This technology is all around us in our life. We use them to unlock a smart phone, get into our homes, start our cars without a key or even pay for our shopping.

Nothing is perfect. People are worried about the safety of their private information. However, the technology will become much better in the future, and it will become more and more important in our daily life.

Mrs. Zhang is my neighbor. Her house is next to     71    （my）. She is a warm and     72    （friend）person. She is popular among us. She always     73    （like）to help others. And she often asks people     74     she can do for them. She often says hello     75     me from her front garden when I come back home. She plants different     76    （kind）of beautiful flowers in her garden. It was Mrs. Zhang’s birthday last Saturday. She held a party and     77    （invite）all the neighbors. She made     78     very big cake with fresh flowers on it. It was my     79    （one）time to see such a cake. I thought it was the     80    （nice）cake I had ever eaten. We sang, danced and talked and it was really a great time.