In the USA the high school graduation ceremony is of great     1    (important). 12th-grade students, or seniors, who are about 17 or 18 years old, look forward to     2    (attend) this event.

The graduation ceremony itself takes place at the end of May or beginning of June,     3     usually includes music, awards, and a guest speaker. After the speeches, students walk to the front of the room to receive their diplomas from the headmaster. Students start preparing for graduation a long time     4     it happens. They order rings designed     5    (especial) for their class.

    6     tradition is to have their photographs taken. These photographs are used for the class yearbook, which is a     7    (print) book about all the students in the school. Students have special cards called announcements printed to send to friends and relatives to tell them about their graduation. The cards often include     8     invitation to the ceremony. If you receive it, you should send a present     9     money to the graduate. A few weeks before the ceremony, the students     10    (measure) for the cap that they will wear at the ceremony. After the ceremony, families usually have graduation parties for friends and relatives. It’s a day and a night that high school seniors remember for a long time.

At radio station WJLT in Fort Wayne, Indiana, letters poured in for the Christmas Wish Contest. When Amy`s letter arrived at the radio station, Manager Lee Tobin read it carefully. He thought it would be good for the people in Fort Wayne to hear about this special girl and her unusual wish. Mr. Tobin called up the local newspaper.

The next day, in the whole country, newspapers and radio and TV reported the story of Amy, who asked for such a simple Christmas gift—just one day without teasing.

Then, the postman was a regular at Amy`s house. A great number of letters addressed to Amy arrived every day from children and adults all across the country. They came filled with holiday greetings and words of encouragement. Some of the writers had disabilities(残疾). Some had been teased during childhood.

Through the cards and letters from strangers, Amy saw a world full of people who were truly concerned about each other.

Many people thanked Amy for being brave enough to speak up. Others encouraged her to ignore (忽略) teasing and carry her head high.

Amy did get her wish of a special day without teasing at her school. No one laughed at her. Teachers and students talked together about how bad teasing could make others feel.

That year, in the city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, December 21 was set as Amy Day. The official explained that by daring to make such a simple wish, Amy taught us that everyone should be treated with respect, love and warmth.

I would like to invite you to join us for visit to the nearby nursing home next Saturday for Double Ninth Festival. It was the day for the elder people in our culture. We’ll go and make dumplings and cake with the elderly people here. We’ll also spend some fun time together play games, which we hope will make they happy. We should be back around 4:00 on the afternoon. If you are able to come to with us, please let us know but we will wait for you at the school gate at 9:00 in the morning.

Looking forward to your early reply.

Yours,

Li Hua

6 . The influence of America is increasing in my country. Spanish people drink Coca Cola, wear blue jeans, watch Hollywood movies, listen to American music, and eat fast food, and they do these things every day.

I think that American movies are a good way to spread American culture because people are often influenced by what they see in the movies. Most of the programs and documentaries (纪录片) we watch on TV are from America, and most of the movies we go to see are made in Hollywood.

In the last few years, the government has tried to protect the Spanish movies. Now, in our cinemas, at least twenty percent of the movies which are shown must be from Spain or from other countries in Europe.

American culture is a part of Spanish life now. It’s certain that many things from America are as much a part of people’s lives as Spanish things. For example, Coca Cola is as familiar to everybody as any typical Spanish product. I’ve known about Coca Cola for my whole life.

However, it’s different with Western fast food. For example, I don’t think McDonald’s is as successful in Spain as it is in other countries. In my opinion, one of the reasons may be the lifestyle of the Spanish people. The Spanish people normally eat at home.

On the other hand, maybe McDonald’s hamburgers will eventually replace the famous Spanish tapas. It’s true that in every city in Spain you can find a McDonald’s, and it is more popular among the Spanish children than among the adults. In any case, it’s obvious that American culture is becoming more and more a part of our lives every day.

7 . Culture is one of the most challenging elements of the international marketplace. This system of learned behavior patterns characteristic of the members of a given society is constantly shaped by a set of dynamic variables: language, religion, values and attitudes, manners and customs, aesthetics, technology, education, and social institutions. To cope with this system, an international manager needs both factual and interpretive knowledge of culture. To some extent, the factual knowledge can be learned; its interpretation comes only through experience.

The most complicated problems in dealing with the cultural environment lie in the fact that one cannot learn culture — one has to live in it. Two schools of thought exist in the business world on how to deal with cultural diversity. One is that business is business the world around, following the model of Pepsi and McDonald’s. In some cases, globalization is a fact of life; however, cultural differences are still far from converging (会合). The other school proposes that companies must adapt business approaches to individual cultures. Setting up policies and procedures in each country has been compared to an organ transplant; the critical question centers around acceptance or rejection. The major challenge to the international manager is to make sure that rejection is not a result of cultural myopia (近视) or even blindness.

Fortune examined the international performance of a dozen large companies that earn 20 percent or more of their revenue overseas. The internationally successful companies all share an important quality: patience. They have not rushed into situations but rather built their operations carefully by following the most basic business principles. These principles are to know your adversary (对手); know your audience; and know your customer.

You may think you cannot live through summer without air conditioners. But in ancient China, hand fans were almost the only help for people       1     (drive) the heat away.

Chinese people started to use hand fans over 2,000 years ago. The fans came       2     different shapes, such as round and square and they were made from various materials. Palm leaf fans were cheap and easy to make. Feather fans showed the owner’s high status. Sandalwood fans     3     (send) out a fragrant smell.

    4     (late), hand fans became more than something     5     could cool you down. They developed into art works, in which tuanshan and zheshan were the most common.

Shaped like     6     full moon, tuanshan was usually made of silk. They had beautiful embroidery(刺绣) featuring birds and flowers on them. Females, especially     7    (woman) in the royal palace,liked to use them. Poets in ancient China often compared a woman’s abandoned fate to tuanshan. A poet wrote during the Qing Dynasty, “If only life were as     8     (beauty) as when we first met, why should the autumn wind bother to pity deserted painted fans?”

Meanwhile, men, especially the literati (文人), used zheshan. The literati liked them because they could paint and write poems on them.     9     was a way for them to show off their talent in literature, painting and calligraphy. Almost anything could     10       (paint) on zheshan, but the most popular ones usually featured landscapes.

9 . China’ Forbidden City----traditionally off-limit at night for anyone except emperors and visiting dignitaries (显要人物）---- was decorated with lanterns as China celebrated the end of the Chinese New Year holiday. The complex, home to Chinese emperors for five centuries, was opened at night for the first time since it was reopened as the Palace Museum 94 years ago.

The complex and palace walls were illuminated with red lanterns and a light show, designed to recreate the feelings of the royal court, while the China National Traditional Orchestra and the Peking Opera performed. An image of a treasured scroll called A Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains was cast onto the palace roof.

Most of China’s 1.3 billion people, however, had to watch the show on television. Only 3,000 people were allowed in: 2,500 invited guests and 500 people who booked their tickets online. “The 3,000 visitors can show off for the whole year,” one person said on Weibo. When booking for the second day opened at midnight, the booking system crashed for more than an hour due to great demand. The free tickets were quickly taken when it reopened. A lively secondary market soon appeared. Scalpers were selling tickets for as much as 9,999 yuan on online trading sites.

The Palace Museum is now on a campaign to attract more visitors, with its former curator Shan Jixiang saying he wants to make traditional Chinese culture more accessible to the general public. More than 80 percent of the palace is now accessible to visitors, up from 30 percent in 2012. Shan has set a target of 85 percent by 2020 to mark the palace’s 600th anniversary . Creativity today has made the Palace Museum younger and drawn traditional culture closer to the public.