“Mom, can we go shopping?” Becky asks. She and her twin sister, Angela, they’ve never gone shopping alone. Becky and Angela think vacation time is a good time to begin.

“All right,” their mother says, “but be back for _____.” She is a little uncertain about letting the girls go by _____, but she knows they are careful.

Three hours later, the girls haven’t _____. Dinner is long past. Becky and Angela’s mother begins to _____ that she has made a mistake. She gets in the car to look for them. Their father goes to the boardwalk on foot. He _____ every video arcade (电子游戏室), T-shirt shop and ice cream shop. Neon (霓虹灯) signs dance before his eyes. The sound of video games and the voices _____ his head. He grows very worried. Where are his daughters?

Then he _____ the girls, far out on the sand. He seems relieved (放心的). He walks out to them. There, it’s _____. The beach is quite silent.

The girls wave to their dad and _____ run up to him. They are surprised that he has come looking for them.

“We’re sorry, Dad,” Angela explains. “We had no _____ it was so late. We finished shopping and came to the beach.”

“After this we’ll have to have more specific rules for going out alone,” their father replies.

Would you like to live in a place where it hardly rains? That’s what a desert is. Deserts are dry. Most deserts are hot, too. The sun beats down, day after day. All the people, and plants in a desert search for water. The people and animals also try to stay out of the sun. If they can do both, they can be alive in the desert. If not, they will die.

Desert plants use their own ways to get and save water. Some have long roots (根). They reach down deep to get every drop of water. Some have waxy (蜡质的) leaves, these plants drink up the water quickly. They hold water inside for a long time.

Some desert animals live underground all day to keep out of the sun. Some make a hole and move into the plants. That keeps them out of the sun and keeps them wet, too. Desert birds hide in bushes (灌木丛).

What about people? Some desert people wear thin white clothing and stay covered from head to foot. White helps stay cooler. Thin clothing allows the wind to blow through. Some desert homes have thick walls. The walls get cool when the sun goes down and stay cool during the day. Usually, desert people live as close as they can to water.

A．	B．
C．	D．

Beijing is a China city with one of the richest Spring Festival atmospheres （氛围）.When the Forbidden City “dresses up” for Chinese New Year, when the countless red lanterns （灯笼）, when the children have fun on the frozen lake, it is the best time to visit Beijing in winter.

Celebrate Chinese New Year just as locals in Beijing do! You can experience the festival atmosphere and the traditional customs of northern China, enjoy interesting outdoor activities, and taste the best local food during this Beijing Chinese New Year tour.

•Learn about How the Emperors （皇帝） Celebrated Chinese New Year

Visit the Forbidden City when it’s adorned （装饰） with beautiful things for Chinese New Year. The lovely palace lanterns and fine New Year pictures present the customs of Chinese New Year celebrations in the palace.

•Experience the Happiness of the Locals in a New Year Fair

Visit the Temple of Earth where a popular New Year fair is held. Experience northern China's Chinese New Year celebration customs.

•Enjoy Skating and Biking on a Frozen Lake

Join the locals in popular and interesting activities on the ice of the frozen Houhai Lake.

•Enjoy Peking Roast Duck and a Northern Hotpot

Taste the most traditional dishes of Beijing in its time﹣honored restaurants.

Every day, people invent new things. Some inventors work hard for years to create something new. But some of the best inventions happen by accident.

Can you imagine a world without chocolate chip cookies? Back in 1930, Ruth Wakefield and her husband opened a restaurant in Massachusetts. It was called the Toll House Inn. Ruth worked as the cook. The restaurant held 30 guests. Ruth often had to rush to feed them all on time.

One day, Ruth was mixing up some chocolate cookies in the kitchen. The recipe said to melt (融化) squares of chocolate. The next step was to pour (倾倒) the melted chocolate into the pale cookie batter (面糊).

You have to melt chocolate slowly or it will burn. Ruth was in a hurry. She decided to break the chocolate squares into little pieces. Then she threw the pieces into the batter. After all, the cookies had to be put into a hot oven (烤箱). She thought the chocolate would just melt into the rest of the batter.

When she took the cookies out of the oven, she could still see big pieces of chocolate. She could never serve these to her guests!

Then, Ruth tasted the cookies. They were delicious! Her guests agreed.

Ruth began buying lots of chocolate and cutting it up. Then she asked the candy makers if they could make the chocolate easier to break into small pieces. That’s when they came up with chocolate chips.

Thanks to Ruth Wakefield, today you can find “Toll House” cookies in every food market. But none of them tastes as good as a homemade chocolate chip cookie, hot from the oven.

One day, I spent about an hour in the language learning section（部分；区域）of a bookstore. I picked up one textbook, then another and thought how cool they were. I picked up an English grammar book. It was good! Really good! I said to myself, “Well, Robby, you’ve got to have this one !”

And then I suddenly thought: What on earth am I doing at the English language learning section when there are thousands upon thousands of real English books around me?

Having read lots and lots of interesting novels in the English language, I still reached for that grammar book because this stupid idea is somewhere at the back of my head: To learn and improve your English, you need to learn English grammar from grammar textbooks. It’s wrong, my friends, it’s completely wrong—you’re so much more likely to enjoy yourself by reading an interesting book than doing English grammar exercises. You can LIVE English rather than LEARN or STUDY it!

English grammar books —fair enough, but that’s not real language. Grammar books are written to show you how grammar works and by and large they are more likely to be boring.

Real English novels —that’s real English language! That’s language that’s enjoyable and it already contains （包含） all the English grammar you need, so you’ll learn to understand grammar without even trying.

So what did I finally do? Well, of course, I found a great history book and bought that instead!