【推荐2】Hello, I am Li Hua. My English name is Alice. I am 12. I am in China now. I am a middle school student in No. 4 Middle School.     1     I have a white jacket and a white phone. My phone number is 567-2634.     2     Liu Mei is in No.1 Middle School. She is 12, too.     3     She likes red. She has a red ruler and a red pen. Her phone number is 256-8765. Cindy is an English girl. She is 11. Her favorite color is purple.     4     Her phone number is 235-3476. Frank is 13. He is in No.5 Middle School.     5     He has an orange jacket. He is a nice boy.

【推荐3】Every day, Joan gets up early at six. Then she washes her face and brushes her teeth. After doing morning exercises, she reads English for 30 minutes and then has breakfast. She usually has some bread , an egg and a glass of milk.

At seven o’clock, Joan takes her schoolbag and goes to school. Her school is far away from her home. She has to transfer (换乘）two buses to the school, and on her way, she likes listening to songs.

After Joan gets to school, she gets ready for classes. The first class begins at eight. She has five classes in the morning and three in the afternoon. She has lunch at school. English is her favourite subject. School ends at five o’clock, and then she goes back home.

Joan sometimes helps her mother cook supper and sometimes watches TV in the evening. After supper she does her homework. She always ends it by nine and then takes a bath. She goes to bed at ten.

That’s the everyday life of Joan.

【推荐1】At the age of 12, seeing my grandfather coming into the sitting room and sit down, I said to my brother, “I hope he doesn’t sit down.”

My grandfather wrote poems on great rolls of thin white paper with a paintbrush（毛笔）, but over the years I wouldn’t listen to him read his poems. I would leave my Chinese poor as it was, which made listening to him too much of an effort.

On Mondays, he’d sit at Dragon Boat Restaurant with other old Chinese men. While from Tuesdays to Fridays, he was at a small square table by himself with a pot of tea and the Chinese newspaper. Life seemed easy and peaceful for him before he got brain cancer（癌症）and three months later, he died.

I was never particularly kind to my grandfather. At the funeral（葬礼）, my heart was filled with a sense of regret rather than sadness. I didn’t even show my grandfather the commonest kindness he was supposed to receive. I was 16 years old then.

Now I am 26. A few weeks ago, during a family dinner at a Chinese restaurant, the waiter talked with my mum about my speaking to him in Chinese, wishing that his own kids could speak a little Chinese as I did. Mom told him I had stopped speaking Chinese for some years and then had suddenly started up again in my late teens.

I have often wondered if my mum knows that my improvement in Chinese had to do with Granddad’s death. Whenever I am stuck for a word, I ask her. Whenever I am with her, or relatives, I practice. Now I am confident that the next time an elderly relative wants me to listen to them, I am not only willing, but also I am able to. In fact, the more I learn, the more interest I have in the fantastic Chinese culture. For me, the learning process is like a journey to rediscover my roots（根）.

【推荐2】①As soon as the woman got into the house, her eight-year-old daughter told her that her younger brother drew so many pictures on the clean wall of his bedroom and made the white wall untidy.

②When the woman heard this, she was angry. “Where’s your brother now?”

③“He’s hiding himself in the cupboard in his bedroom.” The little girl answered.

④The woman got much angrier. She complained（抱怨） about her son when she went into her son’s bedroom.

⑤The six-year-old boy was staying with fear in the cupboard when he heard what his mother said. He knew she got really angry this time.

⑥The woman opened the door with a loud noise. But when she saw the words and pictures on the wall, her anger soon went away. “I love you, Mum!” covered the whole wall, with so many hearts around them, and so many stars in the sky.

⑦The mother’s eyes were full of happy tears. She opened the door of the cupboard, and hugged her son. The boy said “I love you, Mum!” to her mother in a low voice when he was in his mother’s arms.

⑧It’s the most expensive gift from her son — “Love on the wall”. Eight years later, the boy died of cancer（癌症）. The mother had kept the wall tidy with great care for almost fifty years until she died.

⑨In the mother’s heart, it seemed that her son still lived in the world, and always looking at her in the sky with many beautiful stars around him.

【推荐3】Do you still hug your parents? How do you feel when you hug them? When do you need a hug the most?

It was a cold November morning several years ago. My alarm clock had just gone off, but I was having trouble getting out of bed. My dad had died a few weeks before. I felt weighed down by sadness and depression.

Tough and strong, my dad had worked so hard all of his life to support us. He would sometimes shout at my brothers and me, but I always knew that he loved me. Still, he had been raised (养育) in a traditional way and raised us that way too. I couldn’t remember, for example, ever being hugged by him.

After my mom and grandma passed away, my dad moved into grandma’s home. I was so happy to have him close by. I would often visit him and just talk with him about life. But we still seldom touched and never hugged. Finally his own health began to rapidly fail and within a few months he left us. It was a cold morning when we had his service (追悼会), but I was too cold inside myself to feel it. I couldn’t remember when we’d had our last hug.

I sighed (叹气) and got out of my bed. I turned on the lights and walked into the hallway. I saw my son Jim walking down the hall to meet me. Suddenly, he opened his arms and gave me a heart-felt hug. And just as he did, I heard my dad’s voice deep inside of me say, “Joey, this hug is from me!” I cried and smiled at the same time. In that moment, in the place where heart, mind, and spirit all meet, I felt loved. I felt loved by my dad. I felt loved by life.

It is Sunday today. Sue and her cousin Tom, want to go shopping.

“Sue, we need to buy some fruit and vegetables,” Tom says.

“     1    ” Sue asks.

“Good idea,” Tom says.

After they get to the foot shop, Tom asks, “First of all, we must get the fruits. Is that right?”

“Yes, two kilos of apples and three kilos of bananas are on the list,” Sue says.

“     2    ” Tom says.

“I see them, too.” Sue says.

After that, they go to buy vegetables.

“     3    ” Tom asks.

“I like carrots best. Do you like them?” Sue asks.

“     4    ” Tom says. Then Sue and Tom get all the vegetables.

Sue sees a book shop on the way home. She buys a book for her father because next Sunday is his 40th birthday.

“     5    ” Sue says to Tom.

“I think so. You are really a nice girl,” Tom says.

【推荐1】Thousands of years ago, there lived a king. His people loved him, since he looked after their needs well. He would often invite some smart people to look at his work and give him advice.

The king built many things. As he grew old, the king thought, “I will build a perfect palace to remember my whole life. It will be the best one not only in my kingdom, but also in neighboring states.”

In a month, the king worked out a perfect design (设计) for his palace. He invited his advisers (谏言官), as well as smart people from neighboring states, to get their ideas about the design.

“Unbelievable! It will be a perfect palace,” all the advisers said, except for an old man standing in the corner.

The king turned to the old man and asked, “Why are you silent? Don’t you think that my palace will be a perfect one?”

The old man replied in a calm voice, “Dear king! Your palace will be strong and last forever. It will be beautiful—but not perfect. It may take tens of thousands of workers a whole lifetime to build it, working day and night. Your palace will cost a lot of money, which must come from the people. If your people will live worse because of this building, how perfect can it be?”

The king thought for a while and thanked the old man for his words. He decided to give up his plan and care more about people’s lives.

【推荐3】Most students have biology classes in the classrooms or the labs in China. But several days ago, I had a biology class outside in my school. My biology teacher, Mr. Ji, asked us to play a game about how birds find food.

He gave us something like spoons or knives. I thought we were going hunting, so knives might work better. Surprisingly, he told us to pick up the beans on the grass with our tools.

When the game started, all of us ran to the grass area and looked for beans. It was hard to pick up something that small, especially from the grass. When I almost got a bean, it dropped back to the ground. When I finally picked up several beans, one of my friends ran into me. I couldn’t keep my balance and fell over. All beans dropped to the ground! Just at that moment, Mr. Ji called us back. I had to leave the game and of course I got a bad result. I couldn’t help thinking that if I were a bird, I would be dead soon.

The fun game made me realize everyone is trying his or her best to survive.