The Xi’an City Wall is the most complete city wall that has survived China’s long history. It     1     (build) originally to protect the city     2     the Tang dynasty and has now been completely restored (修复). It is possible       3     (walk) or bike the entire 14 kilometers.

We accessed the wall through the South Gate. The wall is 12 meters high and from here you can see streams of people moving inside and outside the City Wall.

After     4     (spend) some time looking at all the defensive equipment at the wall, we decided it was time for some action and what     5     (good) than to ride on a piece of history!

We     6     (hire) our bikes from the rental place at the South Gate. My bike was old and shaky     7     did the job. It took us about 3 hours to go all     8     way around the Xi’an City Wall. Supposedly you can do it in two hours, but we stopped at the different gates and     9     (watchtower) to take pictures or just to watch the local people going about their     10     (day) routines.

2 . When almost everyone has a mobile phone, why are more than half of Australian homes still paying for a landline (座机)?

These days you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in Australia over the age of 15 who doesn’t own a mobile phone. In fact plenty of younger kids have one in their pocket. Practically everyone can make and receive calls anywhere, anytime.

Still, 55 percent of Australians have a landline phone at home and only just over a quarter (29%) rely only on their smartphones according to a survey (调查). Of those Australians who still have a landline, a third concede that it’s not really necessary and they’re keeping it as a security blanket — 19 percent say they never use it while a further 13 percent keep it in case of emergencies. I think my home falls into that category.

More than half of Australian homes are still choosing to stick with their home phone. Age is naturally a factor (因素)— only 58 percent of Generation Ys still use landlines now and then, compared to 84 percent of Baby Boomers who’ve perhaps had the same home number for 50 years. Age isn’t the only factor; I’d say it’s also to do with the makeup of your household.

Generation Xers with young families, like my wife and I, can still find it convenient to have a home phone rather than providing a mobile phone for every family member. That said, to be honest the only people who ever ring our home phone are our Baby Boomers parents, to the point where we play a game and guess who is calling before we pick up the phone (using Caller ID would take the fun out of it).

How attached are you to your landline? How long until they go the way of gas street lamps and morning milk deliveries?

6 . Most young people are always on their phones, which may upset many people. ___________, a group called Girl Scouts are receiving _________ for setting up their first walk-in clinic for elderly people, who have difficulty understanding how to ___________ the secrets of their smart phones.

Each teen spent at least an hour of one-on-one time with their oldsters. Based on their _________ knowledge, each Girl Scout was assigned to ___________ different aspects of Android and Apple phones.

Some of the oldsters actually wanted to take part in e-commerce (电子商务), and needed help to _________ a payment account on their smart phones while others simply had _________ when learning how to send messages to their family members. "I was teaching this older woman how to _________, and the first thing she did was to send a message to her daughter,” one of the Scouts said. “How ___________ it was! It just made me feel really, really happy.”

In addition to arranging group lessons for all of the seniors to ____________ together at the end of the clinic, the youngsters even printed out brochures and guides for the seniors to take home in case ____________ seniors would encounter problems with their smart phones in the future.

The eighth graders earned their “Silver Award,, for their job. After experiencing the ____________ of their project, the girls hope to organize more ____________ in the near future. “Those girls were just great,” said Nancy, a great-grandmother who once ____________ the clinic. “They were ready for us and had a very mature attitude about answering our questions, and they ______________ the praise.

8 . “If you buy things you do not need, soon you will have to sell things you need.” This is a piece of wise advice from Warren Buffet, arguably one of the greatest financial minds of the 21th century.     1     This is true especially in the present economic climate.

While the idea of being frugal(节俭的) has long been a part of Eastern culture, the relatively recent growth of wealth in China as well as the ease of purchasing has led to increased consumerism for many across the country. Yet this increased consumption of goods has been pushing up the prices of certain bare essentials such as housing, transportation and food, which is forcing people to reevaluate their priorities while spending money.     2    

The internet is flooded with advice on where one can save money as well as good opinions about how they should spend their money. For example, clothes can be bought second-hand, but you should never skip a visit to the dentist.     3     In the meanwhile, you should limit those that are fancy but not entirely necessary. Of course, it is still fine to occasionally spend money on a nice vacation, but buying thirty pairs of shoes you will only wear a few times is neither responsible nor sustainable.

Hopefully, we all fully understand at this point that the resources on the earth are indeed limited.     4     As a result, the choice (forced or not) to be frugal is not only good for one’s wallet, but also beneficial to the planet in the long run. Have you ever chosen to starve yourself to get a pair of limited-edition sneakers?     5    

10 . The two terms nature and nurture have been subjects of comparison since the 16th century. The argument is centered on the question as to whether it is nature or nurture that makes us who we are.

Nature provides the starting point for an organism that will interact with nurture, the environment, during the organism’s life. Nature does not just affect an organism during its lifetime, but it also can directly affect the expression of genes in offspring (后代). For the Geneticists, they believe that our lives are entirely determined by genetics, which is nature. An opposing view is that there is no indication that genes (基因) determines one’s personality, rather there is growing evidence that nurture serves as the determining factor in personality development.

Nurture refers to the conditions under which living things grow and develop after birth. When applied to human beings, it means how the person is raised, which includes nutrition, education, care, as well as the kind of surroundings, such as cultural influence, family and friends.

The argument of nature and nurture as to which is more important is necessitated by an attempt to differentiate how much effect genetics has on a person’s development against how easily humans are influenced by one’s environment.

While nurture undeniably plays its part on the growth and development of one’s personality, nature dramatically outweighs nurture, for nature can be likened to a foundation. The impact of nurture on the development of persons cannot be totally denied. However, nature is regarded as being of most importance because of the fact that it affords an opportunity and creates a foundation and the basis for the question of nurture to arise at the very first instance. Even without nurture, the nature impact can still stand independently without necessarily causing destruction. More so, even when the nurture impact is successfully effected, it does not remove the genetic characteristics of a person. It therefore stands correctly that nature is that which determines the substance of a person.