2 . In schools all over the world boys and girls are learning foreign languages. Everyone knows his own language, but knowing another one is very useful. If we go to England or the USA, we must be able to speak English. And in Japan people will expect us to understand Japanese. How many languages are there in the world? There are thousands of languages, but most of them are not very important. English is one of the most important languages because so many people use it, not only in England and the USA but also in other parts of the world. About 300 million people speak it as their own language and another 200 million use it as a second language. It’s difficult to say how many people are learning it. Million upon million of school children are trying to learn it.

Some people like breakfast. They think it’s very important. Some people love lunch because it’s time for them to have a rest (休息). And some like dinner. They go home and cook their favorite food.

For Jessica, she loves breakfast. Her mom always makes (做) her favorite donuts(甜甜圈) for breakfast. Jessica says her mom’s donuts are great and full of (充满) love. She usually eats one at home. But these days, she also takes one to school. “You can’t eat too many donuts, Jessica. You will get fat.” her mom says.

“This one is not for me, Mom, but for Molly. Molly is my friend. She loves donuts, too. She doesn’t have money to buy food for breakfast. You always say that breakfast is important, right? I want Molly to have a good breakfast, too.” Jessica says.

These years people show all kinds of things on the Internet—good food, nice clothes, wonderful vacations and so on. Now showing the number of steps is becoming popular too. Why?

People are finding it important to be in good health. To keep healthy, many people go to work on foot. When they start walking, they open the step counter app in their phones to record how many steps they walk that day. After a day's walk, some people show the number on WeChat or Weibo. This can make them learn from each other and keep exercising.

"This helps me to exercise much and keep a good habit." Miss Liu said, "I can also talk about how to keep healthy with my friends on WeChat. We are in the same group to encourage each other to keep exercising."

Mr. Wu likes to exercise. But in the past he was kind of lazy and didn't want to exercise every day. "After I use the step counter app, everything is different. It's great to exercise with my friends. Sometimes there are prizes for those who walk more steps. I really like it." he said.

Walking is a relaxing and useful way to exercise. Both the old and the young like it. Recording the steps helps people develop a good habit of walking and showing the number can make people more interested in walking. But don't take the number too seriously.

6 . A new study says the habit of sleeping in（睡懒觉）on weekends may not be such a good idea for your health.

36 healthy young men and women took part in the study. They were divided into three groups and were followed over 30 days.

The first group could sleep for nine hours each night for the 30 days. The second group had other only five hours of sleep every night. The third group had five hours on weekdays but was allowed to sleep as long as they wanted on the weekend. But on Monday, the third group was put back to the sleep schedule（周期）of only five hours a night.

The study showed that the first and the third groups ate more snacks after dinner and put on weight during the study, men much more than women.

What was surprising the scientists was the third group who slept in on weekends. "Even though people slept as much as they could, it was not enough," Dr. Wright said. "As soon as they went back to the short sleep schedules on Monday, the ability of their body to control blood sugar was badly affected." "Not only that, the result showed increased sensitivity to insulin（胰岛素）in both their muscles（肌肉）and their livers（肝脏）, the result wasn't found in other groups. The reason may be that their body clock had been changed.

Every day, Vicky travelled by bus between her office and home. She noticed something special about the bus driver. Whenever the passengers（乘客）got on the bus, he would smile at them.

However, Vicky also noticed a passenger who ever smiled back at the driver. It seemed that he never had any clean clothes. He often made big noises. Every time he got on the bus, he made the other passengers give up the seat to him in a loud voice. But the driver still smiled at the passenger. Instead, the "noisy" man seemed to never see the smile.

This got Vicky more interested. Once, she asked the driver. "Sir, may l ask you a question? Why don't you throw that noisy man out of the bus?"

The driver looked at Vicky and said, "He's my guest." "He is rude. Don't be so nice to him!" "Let me tell you about my dog." the driver said patiently. "Each time the moon shines, my dog barks at it crazily." Hearing this, Vicky was confused and said, "Sorry, but I don't understand what you're trying to tell me." The driver said, "It keeps barking, but the moon still shines."

We all know health is the most important in our life and we know smoking is harmful to people’s health. But not many people know about the danger of second-hand smoke.

Second-hand smoke is the smoke that comes from the smoker’s breath. If people breathe in second-hand smoke from time to time, they could get sick from it. It can cause lung cancer (肺癌) and many other diseases.

But how serious is the problem of the second-hand smoke? The World Health Organization (WHO) did a study of 194 countries. They found that second-hand smoke causes about 600,000 deaths every year. That is about 1％ of the world death and it leads to a lot of trouble and pain.

Second-hand smoke is especially harmful to children because their bodies are growing. According to a study, around 165,000 children under 5 die each year because of second-hand smoke. Most of these deaths happened in Africa and Southern Asia where health care is very poor.

You can do something to keep yourself and other people away from second-hand smoke. You can ask the smokers, such as your parents, to smoke outside. And, if someone smokes close to you, you’d better hold your breath or just walk away.

Are you nervous? Maybe you should sit in a blue room. Are you always cold? Maybe you should sit in a room painted in a “warm colour” such as soft orange. Are you often sad? Maybe you should sit in a yellow room. Some researchers believe that colour has the power to influence our feelings. They believe that colours affect (影响) everyone in the same way.

One study was in a workplace. The researchers painted heavy boxes white and light boxes black. They wanted to see how colour affected the workers’ feelings. Which boxes do you think were more difficult to lift? The heavy white ones? No. The white boxes were heavier but they looked light. The researchers think that this is because light colours seem light.

Another study was at school. Researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, studied children with behaviour problems in their classroom. When the walls were brown and yellow, the children’s heart rate went up and they were over active. However, when the walls were dark blue, the children’s heart rate was slower and the children were much calmer. If this is true, we can think carefully about the colors around them-- not just in our homes, but also in offices, in schools, in hospitals, in gyms, in museums, in restaurants and even in prisons.

10 . Are you still doing the V for victory sign? It’s out. The latest popular hand gesture (手势) is to curl (卷曲) both of your hands and put them together to make a heart shape.

Known as “Hand heart”, many young stars in the US including Justin Bieber, Blake Lively and Taylor Swift have done the gesture in recent photos.

“The heart hand gesture means something between I love you and thank you,” said the country singer Taylor Swift. It’s a sweet, easy message which you can send without saying a word.

Taylor Swift often puts her hands above her head in the heart shape at her concerts. And she as believed to be the first to make the gesture popular. Last month during a charity show, Justin Bieber and his superstar friends did the hand heart and put the photo online. They did it to help three kids whose parents were killed in a car accident. The gesture became more popular after that.

“It used to take longer for nonverbal (不用语言的) culture to move. But now, with smart phones and the Internet, it’s much faster,” said Patti Wood, an American language expert (专家).

In our neigkbor country - South Korea, the hand heart has been popular for a long time. In a different way, people there like making a “bigger heart” by putting their hands above their heads and making a heart shape with their arms. It means “I love you”.