【推荐1】People from around the world have different ways to wish for good luck. In China, people believe that good luck goes to your life through your front door. Just before the New Year, Chinese people clean the their homes to say goodbye to the past. Three days later,     1    , because people think the dust can't go through the lucky door.

According to Serbian(塞尔维亚的) stories, spilling(泼) water behind someone is a great way to give him or her good luck.     2     before they go for a test, an interview or a trip.

In Ireland, brides (新娘) wear small bells(铃铛) on their wedding dresses or jewelry(珠宝)or put bells in their flowers.     3    . People think the ringing of the bells keeps evils(邪恶) away.

On New Year's Eve,     4     People in Spain think green grapes can bring 12 months of good luck. They eat one grape quickly at each bell toll. (钟声)

【推荐2】Everything has a name. All people, places, and things have names.

Jenny is the name of a student from the UK. The UK is the name of a country. Cities and towns have names, too. Schools also have names. Tomato, potato and carrot are names of vegetables. Apple, orange, and banana are names of fruit. Names are different all over the world. In Jenny’s class, Jenny must know the names of the students from all over the world. This is not easy because the names are different.

In the US, most people have a first name, a middle name and a last name. Parents choose (选择) the first and middle names for their babies. The last name is the family name. Usually it is the father’s family name. In a family, the mother, the father and the children usually have the same last name.

Sometimes a person has a nickname (绰号), too. A nickname is not a person’s real name. Abraham Lincoln’s nickname was “Honest Abe” because he was honest (诚实的) and Abe is short for Abraham Countries and cities also have nicknames. Uncle Sam is the nickname of the USA, and people call New York Big Apple.

【推荐1】Are you emotional? Do you often have strong feelings? How do you deal with bad emotions?

We feel angry or guilty about the things we did or did not achieve, about the things we cannot have, and many other things. It seems that everyone carries their own bad moods. But neither guilt nor anger can help us. Over time, they can be heavy weights on our shoulders. These bad moods don’t do anything good for us at all. So you might ask yourself—is it possible to put down this heavy burden (负担) and give yourself a break? It is quite possible. Start by actually looking at your feelings. How do they get inside of us? Why do we carry them for so long instead of putting them down? Can we live without them?

By thinking about our bad moods, we can find healthy ways to deal with them. Unhealthy behaviors are not the way to do this. They provide no relief. Instead, there are better ways to deal with them. One of the best ways is forgiveness.

________. We should forgive ourselves first. We shouldn’t keep bad moods inside. We must also forgive others who have made us guilty or angry. This is not always easy. But when we learn to forgive ourselves, it becomes easier to forgive others as well. There is nothing good about carrying years of emotional burdens. By forgiving ourselves and others, we can abandon our burdens and feel better about ourselves. The moment you do this, you will start to feel a lot lighter. Years of heaviness will be magically lifted! You’ll start to feel like you have more energy and you’ll be much happier with your life.

【推荐3】The earth is our home. We must take care of it. Life today is easier than it was hundreds of years ago, but it has brought some new problems. One of the biggest problems is pollution. We can see it, smell it, drink it and even hear it.

Many years ago, the problem was not so serious because there were not so many people. When the land was used up or the river was not clean in a place any longer, people went to another place. Now human beings are slowly polluting the whole world, which makes this difficult.

There are many kinds of pollution such as noise pollution and water pollution. But air pollution is still the most serious, because it’s bad for all the living things in the world. Many countries don’t allow people to burn（燃烧）anything bad for air in houses and factories in the city. Pollution by SO₂ is now the most dangerous and the worst, because of the heavy traffic. People say it’s the best to ride bikes. If you choose to ride bikes in your daily life, the pollution will be less and less. But in fact, most people don’t go to work by bike. It’s not because bikes are expensive or people are tired if they ride to work. It’s because the number of the cars on the road becomes larger and people even can’t ride bikes on the streets. The road is filled with so many cars with their bad air coming out. So more people put away their bikes and choose to go to work by car. Then, things are getting worse and worse.

So the government（政府）should take actions in the first place. It’s also our duty to save the earth and it’s time to protect the environment together. Everybody should play a part in making our earth a better place for people.

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【推荐2】If you go shopping in any toy store, you can see clearly the different games and toys for boys and girls: there are a lot of pink toys on one side of the store for girls; and dark-colored cars, guns, and soldiers for boys. Some big stores with toys may even have a pink floor for girls and a blue floor for boys. In fact, it is difficult to buy a toy for a girl that is not pink.

Some people think that too much pink is bad for girls. Sue Palmer, writer of Toxic Childhood, is very worried that most girls over the age of three are crazy about the color. According to some scientists, this happens for two reasons. Firstly, most companies offer too many products in pink. Also, many parents think their little daughter looks cute in pink. Sue Palmer says that girls at this age cannot make proper decisions by themselves, but the pink can affect (影响) the choices and the decisions they will make in the future.

Some parents are worried too-for example, Vanessa Holburn, thirty-two, who has two girls under the age of four. Their bedrooms are a sea of pink and Vanessa is not happy. “Pink says that you are soft and gentle. Blue says that you are strong and powerful. I want my daughters to be strong and powerful. I’m worried that pink will not help them with that,” she says.

But not everyone thinks there’s something wrong with pink. Grayson Turner is a father of three girls and he isn’t worried at all. “People forget that things change all the time,” he says. “My girls used to love pink when they were little, but as they get older, they change.” Turner explains that his twelve-year-old daughter never wears pink clothes anymore. “This love of pink is just a fashion and all fashions change,” he adds. “It’s only since the 1940s that people have stated dressing girls in pink-before that it was a color for boys.”

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【推荐3】You don’t need to speak French to understand the Parisians(巴黎人). You just need to know how to make gestures. A new guide has come out by French tourism officials. It can help foreign visitors understand Parisians with a list of commonly used gestures like “shut up”. “If you use them the next time when you’re in Paris, people will start mistaking you for a native (当地人) in no time,” says the online guide at www.cestsoparis.com.

Some of the city’s rude native people in Paris have been a headache for the tourism authorities(旅游当局) for a long time. They have tried their best to ask Parisians to be more friendly to foreign visitors. They have decided to show visitors commonly used gestures by Parisians at www.cestsoparis.com. Visitors can learn and get help from there.

The website includes the common gestures such as “Bof” and “Camembert”. “Bof” is used to mean “I don’t know” or “I disagree”, and “Camembert” is to tell someone to shut up. And it also includes a note, which warns visitors not to use the gestures too freely. Otherwise, they may see some even ruder Parisian expressions.

【推荐2】Kumquat is a funny name for a fruit. But the fruit doesn’t taste funny. It’s delicious! Kumquats are small fruits that look like little oranges. The Chinese name for this fruit means golden oranges!

The peel of other fruits like oranges and lemons taste sour. But the peel of the kumquat is sweet, and you can eat it. The inside of the kumquat is sour. So when you eat a kumquat, it tastes both sweet and sour.

The Daming Kumquat Factory has been making delicious kumquat products for 60 years. You can come to the factory to learn about the delicious fruit and taste the products! The fruit can be dried and used in candy. It can also be used in baked goods. You can also walk around the factory. The owners of the Daming Kumquat Factory think nature and the environment are very important. They try to keep the factory area as natural as they can. Most of the roads are dirty roads. And they don’t use any chemicals (化学物质) on their plants.

The Daming Kumquat Factory makes a lot of kumquat jam (酱). You can even make your own. To make the jam, first remove and throw away all the kumquat seeds. Then boil the kumquats. After the kumquats are cooked, they are mixed together with juice. Then everything is cooked in a pot with some sugar. After cooking, pour the jam into bottles, and let it cool. Then enjoy your kumquat jam!

【推荐3】Scientists found that people who have fewer friends in real life are happier than those with far more if many of theirs were online.

Social media, the researchers said, has encouraged younger people to have larger but more impersonal networks of “friends”. But instead of trying to get more friends, they added, a better cure for loneliness might be spending time with those you’re closest to.

Researchers from the University of Leeds, UK, studied data from two online surveys of nearly 1, 500 people. Those who took the survey gave details about their ages, social interactions (相互影响), and how satisfied they were with their social lives. They included details of how often and how they interacted with family or neighbours, and whether they included people who provided services to them in their networks.

The researchers found that those who had a small number of close friends generally were happier than those who had a large number of superficial (关系浅的) friends. “Loneliness has less to do with the number of friends you have, and more to do with how you feel about your friends,” said Dr. Bruine de Bruin, one of the researchers. “It’s often the younger adults who admit to having negative perceptions (负面看法) of their friends. Loneliness happens in people of all ages,” she added. “If you feel lonely, it may be more helpful to make a positive (积极的) connection with a friend than to try and find new people to meet,” she also said.

In her study Dr. Bruine de Bruin found that older people had smaller social circles than young people, but the people in these circles were closer to them. Younger people, on the other hand, had bigger circles that were made up of “peripheral others”—people who are not true friends, but just people they know. These so-called friends didn’t influence the younger people’s happiness.

The results of the study show that the stereotypes (偏见) society has about old people being sad and lonely might not be right. “The research shows that older adults’ smaller networks didn’t have a bad influence on social satisfaction and happiness. In fact, older adults had a better feeling of happiness than younger adults,” said Bruine de Bruin.

Based on these results, the study believes that people should pay more attention on the ties with close friends instead of increasing the number of friends.