【推荐2】Hello. I’m Kate. I like different kinds of food. I like hamburgers, salad and orange juice. For breakfast, I often have some milk and hamburgers. I don’t like dessert. My favorite football star, Tony Brown eats lots of healthy food. He likes eggs and vegetables for breakfast. For lunch, he has hamburgers, tomatoes, chicken, oranges and apple juice. For dinner, he likes meat and fruit. He doesn’t have dessert. “I like football better than dessert,” he says.

【推荐1】Bob and Bill are middle school students. They are classmates, and they are very different (不同的). Let’s have a look!

Bob is very fat. He has a lot of food every day. He likes to eat hamburgers and chicken very much. Chocolate, ice cream, cakes and candies are his favorite, too. He drinks too much cola every day. Bob doesn’t like doing sports. He likes to stay (待) at home and eat.

Bill is very healthy. He has lots of healthy food every day. He likes fruit and vegetables. Bill eats meat too, but he doesn’t eat too much. Bill plays sports every day and he plays ping-pong very well.

Do you eat well every day? It is very important for us to eat healthy food and do some sports.

【推荐1】Do you like playing sports? What’s your favorite（最爱的）sport? My favorite sport is football. Football is also many young people’s favorite sport. English people call it soccer. Soccer is quite different from American football. Do you know the differences（不同）between them?

A soccer ball is round, but an American football is oval, like an egg. Soccer teams have eleven players on the field. American football teams have forty players, but only eleven players on the field at one time.

In a soccer team, the goalkeeper（守门员）tries to stop（阻止）the ball from going into the goal. He’s the only player to stop and pick up（捡起）the ball with hands. American football players can catch the ball with their hands. They can run with it and throw（扔）it to other players.

Both of them are very interesting. They can make you healthy and strong.

【推荐2】Time passes quickly when we play on our mobile phone. But when we get down to work and study, one hour feels like a year. Why are we so interested in mobile phones but easily bored by studying?

In fact, this is because of something small and hard to see: dopamine (多巴胺). Dopamine is a pleasure chemical (化学物质) that makes people feel good.

Compared with studying, playing on mobile phones makes our brains produce more dopamine. When we use our mobile phones, we don’t know what we’ll see next. This uncertainty (不确定性) makes dopamine active. And to find more dopamine, we keep on playing our phones. Studying doesn’t provide such uncertainty.

Can we do something to change that? According to Harvard Medical School’s Trevor Haynes, apps can become less interesting if we turn off notice or change the screen colors to black and white. We can also set time on apps to avoid using them too much.

Hippos（河马） live in Africa. Their sweat（汗水） is red. Sometimes they walk a long way to find water. In fact（事实上） hippos walk in the water. They can’t swim.

Hippos love to play in the water in the day. They like to eat plants（植物）at night. They never eat meat. They are easy to be angry.

An adult（成年的） hippo is about 3,000 kg. He can run very fast. But he cannot run a long way. His longest（最长的） tooth is about 60 cm. His open mouth is big. A child can get into it.

Crocodiles （鳄鱼） eat young hippos. But they cannot hurt adult hippos. So the mother hippos often go with their children.

【推荐1】

How should I respond?

You are in the mall and see a lady trying to open the door with bags in both of her hands. You help her open the door. “Thank you!” she says warmly. How would you respond?

The standard response is “You’re welcome”. This is what you learned in your textbook. While the textbook is correct, you may get caught out in conversation on the street. That’s because spoken English is quite casual, meaning it is informal. “You’re welcome” is formal, so you’ll hear the shopping assistant respond with this – and hopefully with a smile, too! Another formal response is “my pleasure”, which is getting outdated, and seldom said.

Common British replies include “No problem”. This is casual and said among friends. It’s also common when you’ve helped someone with a favor, for example helping someone to move a heavy box. It means it wasn’t difficult to give a helping hand. “It’s OK” is also another popular response.

While if you’re speaking with an Australian friend, impress them by responding with “no worries”. Americans like using “Sure” or “It’s fine” to respond.

However, there is no wrong way to respond. So try these phrases and find the response that suits your own style.