【推荐2】The world may be a big place but when it comes to teenagers’ reading habits, the differences are quite small.

Recently young people from Japan, Brazil, China and England were asked questions about what, why and how often they read. The study, done by London University, wanted to find out if there were any important differences in teenagers’ reading habits.

In the study, 200 teenagers from each of the four countries were asked to make a list of what they read in a week. They were asked to write down why they read the things on their lists. Finally, the teenagers said how much time they spent reading each thing in a week.

Here is some of what was found out. On average (平均) teenagers read for 17. 5 hours per week. Japanese teenagers read for 18.5 hours per week, a little more than the teenagers from China (18 hours), Brazil (17 hours) and England (16.5 hours). Teenagers only read for two different reasons: “for study” and “for fun”. In each country, they only spent 60% of their reading time “for study” and 40% “for fun”. Reading “for study” took so much of teenagers’ time as most of them are still at school.

The study also found what teenagers read was almost the same. Course books were the only thing they read “for study”, but when it came to reading “for fun”, teenagers most often mentioned newspapers, cartoons, sports magazines and story books (for more information, see the picture).

Time teenagers spent on reading “for fun”.

【推荐3】The topic of this year’s English Week was “Learning about Writers”. Each class chose a famous writer as the key topic of the English Week, so a series of English Week activities were also related to the work of this writer.

English Week highlights:

Visit of a famous foreign writer

We invited Mr. Green to share his reading experience with all teachers and students on November 6th and 7th. At the same time, he also gave a speech on reading for parents on November 6th, with the title of “Why we need to read aloud to children and how to do it well”.

Interesting English Week activities

Photo competition We invited parents to take a picture of their children while they were reading a book. It must be one of the works of their class’s elected writer. The more creative the photo was, the more likely it was to win.

Dress up competition All the students dressed up as characters in a novel written by the writer chosen by their class. On Friday, we also presented the best costurne award and the best class achievement award.

There were many other wonderful activities during English Week, such as English cartoon competition and English speaking competition.

We hope every student enjoyed the fun of learning English through this wonderful English Week activity, and will continue to fall in love with English reading.

【推荐1】Going to the Supermarket

Martha is at the supermarket, getting ready for a house party. She has a list of what she needs with her as she goes along. The first section she comes has produce. Martha sees apples, bananas, cherries, grapes, and strawberries. She checks her list:

-6 apples

-1 bag of grapes

- 2 cartons of strawberries

Martha gets her items (清单上的东西) and looks the bananas. They are on sale for much cheaper than they are normally. She picks 3 bananas. Next are vegetables. She sees potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, and salad in bags. She checks her list:

-5 pounds of potatoes

-6 carrots

- 4 tomatoes

- 2 onions

-4 mushrooms

As she is putting her items into her cart (购物车), Martha checks the many bags of salad and chooses 2 of them. She pushes her cart ahead. The next section is meat and dairy. She sees meat, fish, cheese, eggs, and milk. She checks her list:

-2 fish (salmon)

-1 block of cheese (cheddar)

- 1 dozen eggs

- 2 gallons of milk

She looks at the meat that is on sale and chooses a 5-pound roll of beef. She gets the rest of the items in that section. She still needs rice, bread, salt, sugar, and flour. She gets:

-2 bags of rice

-4 loaves of bread

- a 2-pound bag of sugar

- a 2-pound bag of flour

Martha then realizes that she has forgotten something. She runs back and gets 1 container of salt and then rushes to the checkout. She puts her groceries into her car and leaves.

【推荐2】Supermarkets are trying out new computers that make shopping carts more intelligent (智能的). They will help shoppers find paper cups or toilet soap, and keep a record of the bill.

The touch-screen devices (装置) are on show at the Food Marketing Institute’s exhibition here this week, “These devices are able to create value and get you around the store quicker,” said Michael Alexander, manager of Springboard Retail Networks Company, which makes a smart cart computer called the Concierge.

Canadian stores will test the Concierge in July. A similar device, IBM’s “Shopping Buddy”, has recently been test-marketed at Stop & Shop stores in Massachusetts.

Neither device tells you how many fat grams (克) or calories are in your cart, but they will quickly show you items on sale. The idea is to make it easier for people to buy, not to have second thoughts that maybe you should put something back on the shelf.

People can use a home computer to make their shopping lists. Once at the store, a shopper can use a preferred customer card to start a system that will organize the trip around the store. If you’re looking for toothpicks, you type in the word or pick it from a list, and a map will appear on the screen showing where you are and where you can find them.

The device also keeps a record of what you buy. When you’re finished, the device figures out your bill. Then you go to the checker or place your card into a self-checkout stand and pay.

The new computerized shopping assistants (助手) don’t come cheap. The Buddy devices will cost the average store about $160,000, and the Concierge will cost stores about $500 for each device.