【推荐1】

Summer vacations should be relaxed for students. However, many of them use the opportunity to take part in summer project.

Xu Dan, a 15-year-old girl, loves vacations because it means she can spend more time volunteering. She believes that volunteering has acts instead changed her life and made her a better person.

Two years ago, Xu was a shy girl. One day, she saw a group of volunteers picking up trash in the street. Since she had no plans for the summer vacation and wanted to make some friends, she decided to join them.

“I used to think volunteering was nothing more than picking up trash. Now I know that the aim of volunteer work is helping others and gaining self-esteem(自尊),” Xu says. Her volunteering schedule is full: teaching migration workers’(外来务工人员) children English from Mondays to Fridays, picking up trash on Saturdays, and visiting old people on Sundays.

For Xu, visiting old people is the most meaningful activity. “I help them clean their homes and cut their hair. I talk to them and listen to their life stories. These are just small things, but every time I help others I feel more confident about myself,” Xu says.

According to Xu, the positive energy(正能量) from volunteering influences the way she deals with people and sees the world. “I can see things from other people’s point of view and look at things more positively. I think I’m going to hold on to it all my life.” she says.

【推荐2】Have you ever heard of a famous charity called Operation Smile? We hope we can help you understand how we are trying to help children all over the world.

Operation Smile was started by a doctor and his wife. In 1982, together with some volunteers, they went to Philippines to help children who had holes in their lips (嘴唇) or inside their mouths. It was very difficult for them to eat and drink. These volunteers worked very hard. But they worried that they could not carry on with the work because they were short of money. Then they decided to start a charity so that they could help these needy children. They called it Operation Smile.

Operation Smile works in more than twenty developing countries and has cured over 10,000 children who have problems with their mouths. Operation Smile has won many prizes for its work and in 1999 they even started a special event called “The World Journey of Hope”. 5000 children in 18 countries are cured during the event.

On the other hand, Operation Smile trains local doctors and nurses in developing countries so that they can continue to help children when Operation Smile has left. As to the children with much more serious problems, they will send them to American for further treatment.

So show your kindness and generosity (慷慨) to the needy children now. You can send your donation to Operation Smile at local bank. Many thanks from the children who can smile now will come to you.

【推荐1】Have you ever seen lions dancing in the streets? The lions dance to the beat of a drum. Of course, they are not real lions. They are dancers in lion costumes. Lion dancing first started in China centuries ago. It is meant to bring good luck in the coming year.

Usually, a lion is made up of two dancers. One dancer controls the head. The other controls the tail.

“I think of it as a sport,” says Anthony Huang, aged 16. He is a member of the New York Chinese Freemasons Athletic Club. Anthony performs as the lion’s head. It can weigh 20 pounds. Lion dancing is important to Anthony. “This tradition really lifts me up,” he says.

In the past, lion dancing was performed mostly by men. But it is different today. LionDanceMe is a lion dancing group in San Francisco, California. There are boys and girls on its team. They dance together.

“Anyone can take up lion dancing. You have to believe that you can do it,” says Ananda Tang-Lee, a 17-year-old girl.

Lion dancing will continue to evolve (演变). But a team’s sense of community will never change. “We call it a family,” Ananda says, “It’s really great, because we always have each other’s backs.”

【推荐2】Do you enjoy traveling and eating?

If your answer is yes, you’ll surely love visiting Macau (澳门), a lively place full of culture and beauty. Join us on our exciting two-day tour!

Our tour begins at the Ruin of St. Paul’s. A fire burned this famous church many years ago. But one wall still remains. Tourists from all over the world come to visit it.

Next, we’ll visit the Museum of Macau, which shows you the history and tradition of the city. You should miss none of the exhibitions (展品)! They are all fascinating!

After that, we’ll go to Macau Tower, the 10th tallest tower in the world. This is certainly the best place to see the city.

The next day, we’ll enjoy many of the best foods of Macau. Anyone who has visited Macau will tell the food is hard to keep from enjoying! One of the places we’ll take you to is Lord Stow’s Bakery. Nobody should miss the egg tarts (蛋挞) there!

Finally, we’ll end our tour at Nam Van Lake, where we’ll watch an excellent laser (激光) show.

Come and join our tour! There’s something for everyone in Macau!

【推荐3】Mails, games, music, news, chat rooms and shopping! The Internet is part of the way we live today. It’s easy to get onto the Internet. The only thing we need to do is to use a modem(调制解调器). We use it to connect(链接) a computer to a telephone line. The Internet is changing and growing all the time. More and more people have computers and use the Internet. Using the Internet means surfing the World Wide Web (That’s the “www” you always hear about.) The web has large numbers of the websites in it. They are the places you go to get information and do things.

Where do these websites come from? Web designers make them. What happens when you click on(点击) a word or a picture? You are sent to another page. It’s all because of the web designer. Web designers do a lot of work by using a computer programming(程序编辑) language.

Is Web design all about computer programming? No. it’s about making something new. Web designers must imagine(想象) a lot when they are making a website. It must look good and fun to use. A big part of Web design is art. They choose the best pictures and colors to make the website look good. They also write things that you can see on the Website. An important part of their job is to share ideas with the website managers about how to design the website well.

【推荐2】Gardening is popular in many parts of the world. It brings us sweet smelling flowers, fresh fruit and vegetables. But you can get more from your garden.

Gardening helps to keep healthy. Today’s people sit indoors for too long and don’t get much exercise. When you garden, you have to move around. It’s a good chance for you to exercise your body by watering flowers or doing some digging. Besides, when you are in your garden, you can feel the warm sunshine. This means you are getting Vitamin D.It helps your bodies use calcium (钙), which is necessary to keep your bones(骨骼) strong.

Gardening is a great activity to do with children. It gets them off computers, televisions and phones. Gardening can be a great teacher to teach children about nature and healthy eating. It can also help them to understand the meaning of “No pains, no gains.”

Gardening is a great way to meet people and build relationships. When you are gardening, you are outdoors. So it is a perfect time to communicate with your neighbors. Most people love to talk about their hobbies, and so do gardeners. They usually enjoy showing people what they are growing. And most enjoy sharing advice and stories about their gardens.

In the world, there are lots of people who want to help out. Many join organizations run by their governments, for example, the Peace Corps in the United States and Volunteer Service Overseas in Britain. Since the terrible earthquake took place in Wenchuan, more than 200 thousand volunteers across China have been helping there. They do all kinds of work or come up with ways to help improve life. Some offer their professional skills for free. Others have no qualifications (资源), but they love to work hard to help.

One of the most famous volunteers in the world was Mother Teresa. She could be the best volunteer because she gave her life to help the poorest people of Calcutta. She helped the homeless, cared for the sick, gave out food, and became the mother of those without families.

Now, more and more teenagers actively look for volunteering chances, too. They volunteer because they think it will be fun or they will be fun or they will learn something. They also like the idea of being helpful to others, even if it is just handing out books for teachers. As they get older, these reasons are still the same, but there are other important reasons for volunteering such as learning on the job, getting work experience, and improving their social life.

All volunteers bring joy to the people they help in so many ways. They might read books to the blind, fix up broken homes, find ways to get water for villagers. Could you be a volunteer? What kind of volunteer work could you do? There is someone in the world who needs you.

【推荐2】You must have remembered the story from your childhood: an old man was worried about his sons who were always quarreling(吵架) among themselves. In order to teach them a lesson, he asked them to break a bundle(捆) of sticks tied together. Clearly, none of them could. And when the bundle was untied, they were able to break each stick easily enough. Why? This is because of the power of unity(团结).

The power of unity is known to all of us. But we often seem to forget it when it comes to individual(个体的) success. Most of us consider our success as a personal thing, and it has nothing to do with others.

Dr. John Maxwell, in his book Success Journey says that success is not a trip that you take alone. But it is something that you take with your family and your friends. Think about it—if at the end of all the achievements, you find yourself alone, will you call it success in a real sense?

Your dream and your success do not belong to you alone. Even though you work hard towards your dream, there are people who are working behind to make sure that you are able to give you a hundred percent. For example, you are studying in school so that you can have good education; your parents are working hard to pay for the cost and provide something you need for you.

Do you think that it is possible without unity? Don’t you feel that these people are doing their best so that you can be successful? And so, unity plays an important role, even if you are talking about your personal success. So, it is your responsibility(责任) to maintain unity if you really want to be successful in life. Only if you always treat things and people in your life seriously, will you succeed because all the things and people around you have connections in some way.

【推荐3】C

Today most people can't live without a television set! During the 1980s and 1990s the quality (质量) of both pictures and sound became very, very good. The first VCR (video cassette recorder) was introduced in 1977 in the USA. With VCRs, people could record their favorite programs, but the quality was not perfect. The invention of the CD and the DVD during the 1990s produced a better quality of both pictures and sound. The first DVD player was introduced in 1997 in the USA. At that time you could not record programs with DVD players, but today DVD recorders are available.

During recent years, people began to develop new ways to record television programs with machines that had memory. This way your television set can save films, almost like a computer. This new invention is called TiVo, and it has become very popular in the USA. With TiVo, television sets are similar to computers, but at the same time computers are similar to television sets. With a computer you can now pay to download (下载) films and TV programs from the Internet and watch them on the computer screen. In the future, computers will probably take the place of television sets.

Living rooms with large-screen TV sets and big speakers (扬声器) are like small cinemas at home: they are called “home movie theaters”. Watching movies at home or in the cinema are both great and fun, but some people think that cinemas are still the best places to watch movies.