There are many optimistic（乐观的） people around us. The ________ person I have ever seen is my dad! He is so positive（积极乐观的）that I have never heard ________   single word from him which is related to hopelessness!

Unlike most mums and dads, my dad never says things that may make me feel ________. He is always there to give ________ encouragement and help. When I do something wrong, he always tells me ________ I should do next time in a positive way. For example, if I am ________ trouble, he often tells me to open the books he has bought for me. Then he asks me ________ the stories that can help me with the problems I’m facing. After that, we will have a discussion together. If it’s useless, he ________ me calm down firstly and think about what happened to me by myself.

________ I’m not always a good kid because of my naughty character, my dad never shouts at or gets angry with me. I know that he’s waiting for the day when I grow up and understand some important things in my life.

I can see the reason why he is so positive is that he believes in himself and also I ________ by him. He believes that whatever happens, it is under control. So we have nothing to worry about. Be positive! Sunshine will be in your life forever.

Ms. Hagen had asked that every student entered the science fair this year. Kyle and Seth were divided into a group, much to Kyle’s upset. Everyone knew that Seth was the laziest kid in the class. He never finished his homework, and he was always talking rather than listening in class. The boys decided to meet at Kyle’s house after school to plan their project.

Seth arrived with a backpack that was filled with test tubes（试管）, magnets（磁铁）, and other needed materials. Kyle was surprised. Why would this lazy kid have such cool things? At first, when Kyle suggested building a model of the solar system, Seth told all kinds of facts about each model planet quickly. Maybe Kyle had mistaken about Seth.

But finally, the boys agreed to experiment to find the best place to store bananas. The boys met each day after school and believed that their project would be the best. Kyle worked on writing the report, while Seth continued to question and study further. They found they made quite a team.

Ms. Hagen told Kyle that she was proud of him for helping Seth with the project. Kyle had to explain that Seth was responsible for much of the work. He went on to ask if Seth could be his partner for next month’s math project.

During the 1980s, artist Wilder created a song in about 30 minutes. That song, Break My Stride, has been played in films and TV shows over the years and turned him into a one-hit wonder.

Now, nearly forty years later, the song is being listened to by people who weren’t even born when it was created, thanks to its popularity on the social media（社交媒体）TikTok.

On TikTok, users usually share very short, usually 15-second, videos of themselves dancing, singing or doing something funny, most often set to music. Break My Stride became popular on TikTok earlier this year and has been used in over 800, 000 videos. School students have posted vid-eosof themselves dancing to the song. The pop song has the magic to make people feel like dancing. In one TikTok video that was liked 3.5 million times, the creator took a video of his mom sleeping and then photos hopped her into different backgrounds related to the words of the song, such as traveling across the sea to China in the row boat.

“Now with the coming of TikTok, it’s like having a hit record all over again with a whole new generation,” Wilder, 67, told CNN. Break My Stride recently has been on Apple Music’s Top 100 songs in over 20 countries.

Break My Stride isn’t alone. A number of other artists have seen their songs become popular on TikTok. The success of Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road depends heavily on its popularity on TikTok, where the song has been used in 7.5 million videos. The song finished 2019 in the UK as “Song of the Year”.

The success of these songs, both old and new, highlights the influence that social media have on arts and culture. TikTok is changing how musicians create and publicize their work.

When you spend three weeks reading a book, and a month later somebody asks you about it and you can’t remember anything you read. What’s your feeling? It makes you wonder why you wasted time on it.

There are some effective (有效的) ways to learn. And when I say “to learn effectively”, what I mean is to not just build up knowledge, but to be able to use that knowledge effectively. So I say, most of the courses people spend money on is not learning. Something is not truly learned until it changes you in some way.

●Memory is based on (基于) connections

One of my favorite online book clubs is Mentor Box. The club will send you books to read and study materials related (联系) to them. The materials can help you put what you’ve learnt into good use and make you remember things quickly.

You can do this on your own. When you read something useful, write down its connections with something in your life—how you can use the idea, how it can help with your problems, etc.

●Read in a right way

People believe they have to read everything, line by line, one after another. This is not true. When you buy a book, you’re not buying the words, you’re buying the useful ideas. The point of a book is the information that is important to you. What matters is the key idea. Once you’ve received that idea, there’s no reason to feel obligated to sit there and read the rest.

●Ask the right questions

Everything you read should be questioned. You can question the writer’s ideas, whether they’re explaining information correctly. When reading something you agree with, you can ask yourself, “Is it possible that this could be wrong?” Asking the right questions will decide the depth of your knowledge and understanding, not the ability to remember a lot of facts and numbers.

Many students have problems with vocabulary when preparing for tests. Here is some advice on how to memorize（记忆）new words. You can build up your English vocabulary with these methods.

Repeated encounters（反复遇见）

The usual way of “memorizing”new words is through repeating them while they’re still in your mind. However, simply repeating a word doesn’t seem to be useful. But the following way is helpful: repeated encounters. Words can be memorized more easily if they’ve been met at least seven times in your reading. So, read English magazines and newspapers from time to time.

Spacing and review

It’s necessary to make a plan of your memory work over a period of time. You’d better memorize words day by day instead of doing it in a single day. That’s why new vocabulary introduced in one lesson is reviewed in the next, and then in later lessons.

Use it or lose it

Putting words to use in interesting ways helps add them to your long-term memory. In a study of vocabulary learning, students who made up their own sentences with new words and read them aloud memorized them better than those who learned the words separately and silently. Besides, you can imagine a picture when memorizing a new word. That can help a lot.

Mix it up

Let’s face it—learning words can be really boring, but it doesn’t have to be. Thanks to the Internet, there are more interesting ways to get the job done. Try watching videos from English-speaking countries and copying the way they speak. You can even upload（上传） your own videos and try becoming a star yourself.

My father often tells me, “Be proud of what you do.” “Whether you are a manager     41     a cleaner.” At the age of 15, I got my first job —a summer job in a hospital. My work is to wash     42     (dish) and sweep the floors.

My job was the     43     (low) in the hospital, but it made me feel excited. I saw it as a challenge(挑战)     44     it was my first job. I learned to be on time and     45     (try) to do everything well. People in hospital all liked me. Every morning I always thought that the dirty dishes would make people ill     46     my job to wash them. After breakfast was     47     (do), I started sweeping the floors of all patients’ rooms and cleaning restrooms. I was very tired, but I wanted to do the job well. People often say, “That young boy     48     (real) does a good job.” That gave me a pride.

Working in the hospital taught     49     (I) that being proud of one’s job is important. It doesn’t matter whether the job is sweeping floors or doing a large business. I have     50     (sweep)floors, and I have been a manager. My father’s words have always stayed with me. I think Dad would be proud of me.

56. “少年强则国强！”作为新时代青年，未来属于我们，希望寄予我们，奋斗的青春更美丽。请以“How to Make Myself Better”为题，谈谈你将如何塑造更好的自己。

How to Make Myself Better

As a teenager, I think I should work harder to make myself better. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

By doing this, I will make myself better and better.