【推荐1】These days, a video of a grandma is popular on the Internet. In it, 78-year-old Xu Xiuzhen talks with foreigners in different languages. Xu, also known as “Mama Moon”, lives in a village at the foot of Moon Hill, a popular place of interest in Yangshuo. From 1998, Xu started working as a guide and vendor (小商贩). To communicate with more foreign people, she began to learn different languages.

When she heard a new word, she would write it down in her notebook and ask people to explain it to her. Every night before bedtime, she would repeat (重复) the word in her head. At last, she could remember and use the word well. Over the past 25 years, Xu has taught herself 11 foreign languages.

Now, Xu’s ability in speaking different languages makes her one of the busiest guides. Many foreign visitors in Yangshuo come to meet her. Though Xu is almost 80 years old, she wants to learn more foreign languages in the future. “More and more foreigners come to Yangshuo every year. I hope they can feel at home here with my help,” she said.

【推荐3】Welcome to Sunshine Middle School! Let me tell you about it.

Sunshine Middle School is a beautiful and modern school. Behind the school gate, you can see a big playground. Students have different sports here. Our classrooms are clean and bright. There are 20 classrooms in the classroom building and my classroom is on the ground floor. Beside the classroom building is the library. We often go there in the afternoon. The art and music building is behind the library. We have four art rooms on the ground floor and four music rooms on the first floor. You can draw pictures and play music there. We also have a school hall. It is big and we have meetings there every week.

My school is very nice. We all like it.

【推荐1】Christmas is as important to British people as Spring Festival is to us. Every year on Dec 25, English people gather together to celebrate this holiday. It is the most important family gathering of the whole year.

In the UK, people start preparing for Christmas soon after Halloween — as early as the beginning of November! In every shop window I pass on my way to school, I see Santa decorations (装饰), candy canes (拐杖糖) and presents. The whole of London is getting ready for Christmas.

One tradition in the UK is to have an advent calendar (圣诞倒数日历). It has 24 little flaps (片状小门) that you can open starting from Dec1. There is a tiny gift behind each flap. It can be makeup, chocolate or stationery, depending on what kind of calendar you buy. You can open one flap each day until you get to the last flap on the morning of Dec 25! This tradition began in the mid-19th century in Protestant areas (新教徒地区) in Germany.

Another interesting tradition began in 1954. Every November, London is lit up by thousands of decorative lights. The lights are shaped like the common symbols of Christmas, such as angels, reindeers (驯鹿) and Christmas trees. It is a breathtaking sight from far away and it is wonderful how the colors create an atmosphere of celebration.

In London, we don’t celebrate Christmas for only one day. You can feel the festive mood around the whole city from November until January.

【推荐2】A man was sitting in the park watching the ducks on the pond, when a woman came near him.She had a white dog with her.

She sat down on a chair, took out of a magazine and began to read.

The dog was sitting between her and the man.

After it had been sitting quietly for about ten minutes, the dog turned and looked up at the man.

“ Excuse me,” the dog whispered(低语),“ but you look like a kind man. Please buy me from this awful woman.”

The man could hardly believe his ears. A dog was whispering to him, in English.

“ She is so mean to me,” the dog continued. “She never pets me or plays with me. She doesn't feed me properly and she often beats me when she is unhappy, which is most of the time.”

The man was amazed to hear the dog say all this. He was even more surprised when the dog added, “ And I am really a very good dog. I’m quite famous, too. I won a medal in the last war and was twice wounded in action. I’ve saved three children—two from drowning and one from a fire.”

The man decided that he would try to buy the dog from the woman. He would pay a lot of money if necessary. The dog would soon earn tens of thousands of dollars on television. It would be the world's first talking dog.

“ Excuse me,” he said to the woman,“ but I love your little dog. Will you sell him to me?”

“I’ll be pleased to sell him, “ the woman said. “ You can have him for ten dollars.

“ Ten dollars!” the man said. “ Only ten dollars? Why so little? ”

“ Because,” the woman said, “ he’ s a trouble- making liar(说谎者).”

【推荐3】My name is Jeff. I’m from England. But now I am in China. I am a student in a school. This is my classroom. 18 small desks and 18 chairs are in the classroom. They are for the students. A big desk is in the classroom, too. It’s for my teacher. A clock is on the back wall of the classroom. Next to the clock is a map. It’s a map of China. My classroom is nice and clean. I like it very much.

【推荐1】Mary was very interested in television, so when she met a young man who worked for a television company, she was interested and asked him a lot of questions. She discovered that he also worked for a film company, so she asked him whether there was any difference between film work and television work.

“Well,” answered the young man, “There is one very big difference. If someone makes a mistake while a film is being made , it is, of course, possible to stop and do the scene again. In fact, one can do it over and over again a lot of times. Mistakes waste time, money and films.but the audience who see the film when it is finished don’t know that anything went wrong . In a live television show on the other hand, the audience can see any mistake that is made.”

“I can tell you a story about that. One day, a live television show was going on, and one of the actors was supposed to have been shot. He fell to the ground , and the camera moved somewhere else to allow time for me to run out with a bottle of tomato juice to pour (泼)on to him to look like blood, Bad luck! The camera turned back to him before I had finished, and the audience saw me pouring the juice on to the man.”

“Oh, how terrible!” Mary said. “And what did you do?”

“Well,” answered the young man. “ Our television director is a very strict man. If anyone makes a mistake, he sends him away at once. So what should I do? I just had to pretend that this was part of the story, and eat the man!”

【推荐2】Pollution

Hundreds of years ago, life was much harder than it is today. People didn't have modern machines. There was no modern medicine, either.

Life today has brought new problems. One of the biggest is pollution. Water pollution has made our rivers and lakes dirty. It kills our fish and pollutes our drinking water. Noise pollution makes us talk louder and become angry more easily. Air pollution is the most serious kind of pollution. It's bad for all living things in the world.

Cars, planes and factories all pollute our air every day. Sometimes the polluted air is so thick that it is like a quilt over a city. This kind of quilt is called haze(雾霾).

Many countries are making rules to fight pollution. Factories must now clean their water before it is thrown away. And they mustn't blow dirty smoke into the air.

We need to do many other things. We can put waste things in the dustbin and not throw them on the ground. We can go to work by bus or with our friends in the same car. If there are fewer people driving, there will be less pollution.

Rules are not enough. Every person must help to fight pollution.

【推荐3】There is a library in Peter's school. It’s new and big. It’s behind the classroom building. It has three floors(层). On the first floor, there are two reading rooms. There are five big desks and thirty chairs in each room, and Peter comes here and does homework after class every day. On the second(第二) floor, there are a lot of books for students and teachers. They can't take away the books. They can only read them in the library. On the third(第三) floor, there is a computer room with sixty computers. Students have IT(信息技术) lessons here. It's Peter's favourite lesson.