Have you wondered how your body knows when to wake up or why you need the toilet less at night? Influencing by light, body clocks use the sun to help your body to run on time. They repeat every 24 hours and almost every living thing has them. When the sun shines across the window in the morning, your body clock tells you it’s time to wake up. When it’s dark, your body feels sleepy. Not listening to your body clock, such as by going to bed late can mess up your sleep cycle, that makes you tired the next day. Scientists have found body clocks help our whole body run smooth. The Sleep Charity, which helps people to sleep better, recommend sticking to regular sleep patterns. So you’re a night owl who stays up late or a morning lark who likes to get up early, try going to bed and get up at the same time every day. It also suggests getting lots of natural lights in the morning. Even if the sky is cloudy and grey, this can reset your body clock and make you to feel more awake.

This is a story about how a foreigner got confused about a Mexican word even though she could speak     1     Spanish. It happened when she     2     foot on Mexican soil for the first time. She asked an ice-cream seller for an ice-cream, and he said “ahorita.” She thought it would be     3     immediately because the word can be directly translated to “right now.” But she waited for half an hour and still no ice-cream came. When she asked the seller about it, he said “ahorita” again, with his face showing     4    . She felt     5     between waiting and walking away. Finally, she had to go home, so she     6     to the seller that she could not wait any longer. Years later back in Mexico, she came to realise that the meaning of “ahorita” changes according to its     7    . It could mean “tomorrow,” “within five years,” “never,” or even “no, thanks” when one wants to refuse an     8    . “Ahorita Time” is a     9     of different cultural understandings of time. That is, understanding “ahorita” takes not a fluency in the language, but a fluency in the    10    .

In Xixian county, located in Linfen, Shanxi province, a smart pear orchard (果园)     1     (stretch) 33.3 hectares (公顷) has been developed with the     2     (assist) of the Shanxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

In this orchard, every pear is given     3     unique QR code that enables monitoring of the entire growth process. “The QR code serves     4     an ID card, recording the life of a pear,” said Wang Yibo, an agriculture official from the county.

    5     (establish) in 2020, the smart orchard is operated with the help of cutting-edge technologies such as the internet, big data, cloud computing and the internet of things. There are 64 villages in the county     6     rely on pears as their primary industry,     7     (account) for 80 percent of the farmers’ income.

So far, Xixian     8     (build) a smart agriculture integration platform made up of 12 systems, including water-fertilizer     9     (integrate) management, disease and insect monitoring, and the monitoring and evaluation of the quality of the land.

According to Wang, the platform not only helps with production but also promotes sales, as its tracking system can collect first-hand marketing feedback data. Pear farmers can learn about the market demand through the system to     10     (accurate) identify their customers and carry out targeted promotions.

4 . “How are you?” These are the three most useless words in the world of communication. The person asking doesn’t really want to know, and the person responding doesn’t tell the truth.     1    

But the key to making the most out of small talk, according to Harvard researchers, is, to simply ask the other person follow-up questions. In a series of experiments, researchers analyzed more than 300 online conversations and found that those who were asked more meaningful follow-up questions (a.k.a. questions that aren’t “how are you?” or “what do you do?”), found the other person much more likable.

So how do you move from tongue-tied to being an interesting person? It depends on questions you start with, and then you can focus on the stream of follow-up questions.     2    

    3    

Open your eyes before you open your mouth. Find something to focus on in your surroundings, like the piece of art on the wall, a family picture on their desk, a race car helmet, scattered coins from various countries and so on. There’s bound to be something that will spark small talk and help lead the conversation into unique follow-up questions.

Share some news (that actually happened).

If you have “news”, share it: “I adopted a pet over the weekend” or “My 6-year-old rode a bike for the first time yesterday”. Believe it or not, most people actually do want to know more about others, especially if they both work at the same company.

If you’re new to a company and leading a team, for example, start your first meeting by going around the room and asking each person to say one interesting thing that recently happened in their lives.     4    

It’s not just what you say.

No matter what or how much you say, your tone of voice, facial expression and eye contact will broadcast so much more. In person, look at the other person when you speak, not at the conference table or the wall.     5     It’s not just what you say, but how you say it, that will help others connect with you.

Take a moment     1     (imagine) yourself in ten years. You might have a few more grey hairs and wrinkles, and hope to change your material circumstances, too. But does the person you imagine feel very close to the person you are today.

Some people have a vivid sense of future self, which feels     2     (extreme) close to their current identity. These people tend to be more responsible for their money     3     they are keen to act in a way     4     will make life easier in the years ahead than present. Many other people see their future self as a separate person that has little     5     (relevant) to their present identity and,     6     consequence, they are far less worried about the long-term consequences of their actions.

You could almost think about your future self as a relationship that should     7     (pay) great efforts to develop. Thinking more about whom we will be in the future has a profound effect on our health, happiness and     8     (finance) security. You might consider a simple imaginative exercise—writing     9     letter from the future. This encourages people to feel a greater sense of link with their future self, thus     10     (prepare) for positive behavioral change.