6 . Rick: I live in Chengdu and I go to No. 3 Middle School. I go to school by bike every day, because the roads (路) in Chengdu are nice and it is easy for me to ride a bike. But sometimes when it rains (下雨), I take a bus to school.

Joe: My name is Joe Smith. I’m from Miami, the USA. I take the school bus to school and it’s easy for students. After school, I still take the school bus home. What about you?

Carol: My name is Carol. I live in a village in Yunnan. Truly speaking, I don’t really like going to school, because my school is far from my home. And there are two rivers between my home and school. I need to take a boat to school.

Julie: Hi, I am Julie. I live in Beijing. My parents are teachers in a middle school and I’m a student in their school. Every morning, my father drives my mother and me to school. And after school, my father drives us home.

7 . If life can be compared to a meal, I think the mistakes are like salt and the success is a candy.

“Hey,” said the boy whose name I couldn’t remember, sitting next to me. “Don’t worry. Take your time.” And so I did. But I still couldn’t pronounce my Chinese name that was given by the teacher. I was so embarrassed on my first day of learning Chinese.

I took Chinese classes during my summer vacation. Every morning I walked for 25 minutes to the class while having a Chinese pancake from one of the breakfast carts(推车) on the way. Learning Spanish in school was a cushy job for me, because I could speak French and Italian which helped me with it. However, learning Chinese was difficult at first. As a boy who was born in America and grew up in America, I knew nothing about the language and had no experience of learning the language. I chose it mainly because my goal was to teach and work internationally.

As the classes went on, I slowly found that I was making connections. My 10 years of playing the piano has allowed me to perform for others. My several years of writing has led me to become a school reporter. I knew that my Chinese classes would allow me to speak Chinese well. As the teachers helped me build up the confidence, I soon began tasting the sweetness.

So what did my summer really taste like? It tasted like the Chinese food that, for the first time, I did not order in English, my mother language.

8 . “Life is speeding up. Everyone is getting unwell.”

This may sound like something someone would say today. But in fact, an unknown person who lived in Rome in AD(公元) 53 wrote it.

We all love new inventions. They are exciting, amazing and can even change our lives. But have all these developments really improved the quality of our lives?

Picture this. You’re rushing to finish your homework on the computer. Your mobile phone rings, a QQ message from your friend appears on the screen, the noise from the television is getting louder and louder. Suddenly the computer goes blank and you lose all your work. Now you have to stay up all night to get it done. How happy do you feel?

Inventions have speeded up our lives so much that they often leave up feeling stressed and tired. Why do you think people who live far away from noisy cities, who have no telephones, no cars, not even any electricity often seem to be happier? Perhaps because they live simpler lives.

One family in the UK went “back in time” to see what life was like without all the inventions we have today. The grandparents, with their daughter, and grandsons Benjamin, 10 and Thomas, 7, spent nine weeks in a 1940s house. They had no washing machine, microwave(微波炉), computer or mobile phones.

The grandmother, Lyn, said, “The more things you have, the more difficult life becomes.” The boys said they fought less. Probably, they said, because there was less to fight over, such as their computer. Benjamin also noticed that his grandmother had changed from being a “trendy(赶时髦的), beer-drinking granny”, to one who cooked things.

10 . Some teenagers think that newspapers are boring and only for adults. But that’s not true. There are many interesting stories in the paper. You just need to make clear what you are looking at. “I spend about half an hour reading newspapers every day,” said 15-year-old Gao Ming from Beijing. “I’m interested in things happening at school.” School news is just one kind of news story in newspapers. There’s also world news from international problems to pop stars. Read the newspaper carefully, we’ll find different types of articles on the pages.

News stories — these stories are about events. Reporters try to show all points of a story to help readers understand what happened. Reporters try to speak to as many people as possible. They also use pictures and numbers to show the readers that the stories are true. The newspaper has lots of news stories on the news page and front page. When we read them, we learn more about the facts, not the writers’ ideas.

Opinion writing — opinion writing is usually about something happening right now. But it isn’t just facts. Here writers add their own opinions to the news. Writers pick only the facts that help back up their ideas. They make readers believe that they are telling the truth. This is usually the kind of story that gets people thinking. Go to “Speak Out” on Page Two for an example of opinion writing in Teenagers.

Advertisement — Don’t get happy too early when you read them. Those sweet words and lovely pictures are just ways to get us interested in their products! People have to pay to put advertisements in newspapers!