Twice a month, Jenny Green sits down, picks up her pen and writes a letter to her best friend. The British woman has been doing it for 80 years. She has sent more than 1,500 letters to her pen pal in America.

The hobby started in 1942. Jenny, then 12 years old, was reading a magazine. Some ads in the magazine were asking for pen pals. One of them caught Jenny’s eye. It was from Alice Miller. She lived in America and was also 12. “It was exciting for me,” Jenny said. “I sat down at once, wrote a letter, put it in an envelope—together with a picture of myself —and posted it.”

Jenny spent every day waiting for the postman. Two weeks later—which felt like a lifetime—a reply dropped through the letter box. “I was overjoyed,” Jenny said. “There was a letter and a picture of my new friend. She was all the way on the other side of the world!”

Jenny and Alice wanted to learn more about each other. They kept writing. The two found that they had a lot in common. They liked the same books and the same films.

However, both Jenny and Alice were too poor to afford a plane ticket. It was not until 1987 that they met. “I was glad to see the person I had been writing to for 40 years,” Jenny said. “We had a big hug and then sat down, chatting for hours.”

Now in their nineties, Jenny and Alice are still writing to each other. And they still write by hand. “Writing is warmer and friendlier. So why shall we change the habit of a lifetime?” Jenny said. “I’m so glad that I wrote that first letter 80 years ago.”

For years, it has been said that newspapers are at death’s door. Each of the past few years has seen many newspapers say goodbye to their readers. But why is the situation so terrible for newspapers?

Newspapers have a long history. The first newspaper was printed in the 1600s. The industry experienced its most successful time in the early 20th century.

With the appearance of radio and TV, however, newspaper circulation（发行量）began to fall. By the mid-20 century, radio and TV had become so popular that people no longer had to depend on newspapers for news. This was especially true for the latest news.

Afternoon newspapers were the first to suffer. More and more people coming home from work turned on the TV, instead of opening a newspaper. But generally, newspapers still managed to survive（生存）. Although they couldn’t compete with TV in spreading the latest news, they could provide in-depth reports that TV news could not.

But newspapers suffered another heavier blow in the 1990s. With the appearance of the Internet, lots of information became free. Many newspaper readers realized that they could conveniently read news online for free. There seemed to be little reason any longer for them to pay for a newspaper.

So what will the future of newspapers be like? Will newspapers die? Maybe not. Many newspapers are now changing. Some are going digital（数字化的）. Some are going even farther by taking the industry to places it has never been to. After all, people still want the news. And many agree that newspapers are important for in-depth news and opinions. If newspapers were to completely disappear, there would be nothing to take their place.

There are so many expressions in American English that sound nice but are not.     16     When someone says they have to “face the music”, it does not mean they are going to a concert. “Facing the music” means to accept the punishment of an action.

Americans often use the word “face” in this way. For example, “I can’t face another night of camping! It’s cold and rainy.” Or “In life, you must face your fears.”     17    

Back to facing the music: Imagine a friend asks you to take care of her expensive sports car. She gives you the keys and says, “Thanks so much for watching my car while I’m away. But please, do not drive it. It is an extremely fast car.”     18     You want to show off to some friends. So, you drive it around town one night. As bad luck would have it, you lose control of the car and drive it into a stop sign. Bang!

When your friend returns, you must tell her what you have done and “face the music”.     19     It could be losing her friendship or paying to repair her car, or both. Whatever the music is, you must face it.

    20     To “take your medicine” means to accept the results from something bad you have done. And if someone says, “You made your bed. Now lie in it,” they mean you created a bad situation and now you have to experience the results!

“Today I will give you a special test,” said the English teacher with a smile on his face, while entering the classroom.

All the students sat up straight and _______ for the test to begin. The teacher began to _______ out the test papers to all the students. _______ he finished handing out the test papers, he asked them to begin.

The students were very _______ to see that there was not a question but a black dot (圆点) in the center of the paper. The teacher _______ the students’ surprise and said, “I want you to _______ about what you see there.” At the end of the class, the teacher took all the students’ answer paper back and read the answers. _______ of them described the black dot. After reading all the answers, the teacher said, “Here everyone only paid attention to the black dot, _______ no one wrote about the white paper.” The whole class listened _______ because they were afraid to fail in the exam.

Then the teacher said, “Don’t worry about your ________ for this test. I just want you to think about our life. The white paper is like our whole life and the black dot in the center of the paper ________ problems in our daily life. Our life is a ________ given to us by God, with love and care. Still, we only pay attention to the problems like ________ and being poor, and never realize that the problems are very ________ compared to everything else we have in our life.”

So there is the lesson: we should try to take our eye off our problems and ________ each moment life gives us. Be happy and live the life positively (乐观地).