When I was young, I liked to ________ jokes on people, especially on my parents and friends. One day my mother was cooking and I was playing ________ my younger brother Tony.

________ I ran to my mother and said, “Tony fell from the open window!” She was very ________ and ran out of the kitchen. Then I said, “Don’t worry, I’m just joking.” And my mother shouted at me, “If you do it ________ , I’ll hit you.”

One day I ________ swimming with my friends in the sea. I wanted to make fun of them. In the beginning, I went swimming ________ , and I called out, “Help!”All my friends came to help me, only to ________ that I was joking. But the next time, I wasn’t joking. I was so careless that I swam in deep water. I tried my best to call my friends for help, ________ this time nobody came to help me.

In the end, they found I was telling the truth. They came and saved my life. They took me to the hospital. This is the best ________ in my life. From then on, I haven’t joked on anyone

A farmer was put in prison (监狱). One day, he got a letter from his wife. “I am worried about our farm,” she wrote. “It’s time to plant potatoes, but I can’t do all the digging (挖) by myself.” The farmer thought over and then had an idea. He wrote to his wife, “Don’t dig the fields. This is where my gold (金子) is. Don’t plant potatoes until I come home.” A few days later, the farmer got another letter from his wife. It said, “Two days ago, about ten prison guards (监狱看守) came to our fields. It looked as if they were looking for something. They have dug our field.” The farmer wrote to his wife at once. “Now you can plant our potatoes,” he wrote.

We make a survey of 300 young people about what they like to do at weekends. One hundred people are from the ages of 11—18, one hundred 19—26 and one hundred 27—35. The people of 27—35 like taking a walk best. They take a walk every day with their friends or relatives. The people of 19—26 like doing many things except taking a walk. The following shows their answers:

Reading should be part of your life. But the problem is that there’s too much to read these days and too little time to read every word of it. There are hundreds of skills to help you read more in less time. Here are two skills that I think are very good.

Preview (预览)—if it’s long and hard. Previewing is very useful for getting a general (总的) idea of heavy reading like long magazine articles and reports.

Here’s how to preview:

Read the first two paragraphs and the last two paragraphs carefully.

Then read only the first sentence of the other paragraphs.

Skim (略读)—if it’s short and easy. Skimming is a good way to get a general idea of light reading like popular magazines or the sports and stars, movies of your daily paper.

Here’s how to skim:

Get your eyes to move fast. Sweep them across each line.

Pick up only a few key words in each line.

Everybody skims differently. You and I may not pick up the same words when we skim the same news, but usually we won’t get very different ideas of what it’s all about.

Ben is thirteen     46     old. He is a very clever boy,     47     he’s too lazy. He doesn’t like doing his homework. He says it is     48    . He likes watching TV and using the Internet. When he does his homework, he often makes a lot of     49     because he doesn’t pay attention to (注意) spelling.

One day, his language teacher was very surprised when he read Ben’s composition (作文). There weren’t     50     mistakes in the composition. That was unusual (不寻常的). The teacher wondered (想知道)     51     Ben did such a good job. He called Ben to his office and asked him if he wrote his composition by     52    . Ben said that his     53     sister usually helped him. But she couldn’t help him this time because she was ill in     54    . Of course, Ben’s teacher advised him not     55     his sister to help him do his homework again.