2 . “Farm to table” is the name of a movement that encourages people to eat locally grown food. The farm­to­table idea has become more popular in recent years. But there is also a movement that brings “table to farm”. Its purpose is to connect people to the land and to honor local farmers by creating a sort of restaurant without walls.

Its founder, Jim Denevan, got the idea for this kind of “culinary adventure (美食探险)”, as he called it, ten years ago. He recently prepared tables for more than a hundred people at Briars Farm in Virginia. He and his eight­member team arrived the night before. Chefs (厨师) from a local restaurant prepared the dinner.

Jim Denevan’s brother is a farmer and he himself is a chef. He thought that the idea of a meal served right on the farm made sense, though not everyone agreed.

“But I wanted to make the idea work, so I decided to cross the country,” said Denevan. “I went all the way across the United States and set the table on farms, ranches (大牧场) and beaches, and all the places where food came from.”

“This kind of event connects us with a lot of enthusiastic people, people that we can form relationships with,” said Matt Szechenyi, who operates Briars Farm.

The tour of the farm ends at the dinner table. The meats in the meal come from Matt Szechenyi’s farm. The vegetables come from nearby farms. Guests and local farmers sit together.

Annoica Ingram came with a friend. “The food is wonderful. I appreciate their hard work. I see everything they have to do to take care of the animals and make sure they are well­cared­for. Without them, I think, we’ll have big problems,” she said.

3 . Mr. Hart, a London taxi driver, has a new black taxi. He hurries through the busy _________ every day. One day when he was having a short rest, a young man jumped into his taxi. “To the station as fast as you can,” shouted the man in a very _________ way. “My _________ leaves at 3 o’clock.” Mr. Hart did his best, but there was a lot of traffic. At every corner there was a _________ light. “Hurry up, man, I don’t want to _________ my train,” said the young man. “And I don’t want to have an _________ ,” replied Mr. Hart quickly. While he was _________, Mr. Hart suddenly recognized the man’s _________. He was a _________. The police were looking for him. His picture was in the __________. Mr. Hart drove through the streets and red lights. Soon there was a police car __________ him. Mr. Hart raced on until he __________ the station. He stopped in front of the station at two minutes to three, and the young man quickly jumped out of the taxi. “__________!” cried Mr. Hart. At the moment the police car stopped, too. “Quick! he is the thief!” shouted Mr. Hart. Two policemen __________ into the station. Three minutes later they __________ with the young man.

“Well done!” a policeman said to Mr. Hart as they were taking the thief to the police car.

4 . Today’s grandparents are joining their grandchildren on social media, but the different generations’ online habits couldn’t be more different. In the UK the over-55 s are joining Facebook in increasing numbers, meaning that they will soon be the site’s second biggest user group, with 3.5 million users aged 55-64 and 2.9 million over-65s.

Sheila, aged 59, says, “I joined to see what my grandchildren are doing, as my daughter posts videos and photos of them. It’s a much better way to see what they’re doing than waiting for letters and photos in the post. That’s how we did it when I was a child, but I think I’m lucky I get to see so much more of their lives than my grandparents did.”

Interestingly, Sheila’s grandchildren are less likely to use Facebook themselves. Children under 17 in the UK are leaving the site - only 2.2 million users are under 17 -but they’re not going far from their smartphones. Chloe, aged 15, even sleeps with her phone. “It’s my alarm clock so I have to,’ she says. “I look at it before I go to sleep and as soon as I wake up.”

Unlike her grandmother’s generation, Chloe’s age group is spending so much time on their phones at home that they are missing out on spending time with their friends in real life. Sheila, on the other hand, has made contact with old friends from school she hasn’t heard from in forty years. ”We use Facebook to arrange to meet all over the country,” she says. “It’s changed my social life completely.”

Parents have an important role to play if they want their kids to spend more time in real life. Peter, 38, who spends most of his time in front of a screen, is recently determined to set a better example to his kids. In the evening or at weekends, he would leave his smartphone home and take his kids out to nature.

7 . Do American children still learn handwriting in school? In the age of the keyboard, some people seem to think handwriting lessons are on the way out. Ninety percent of teachers say they are required to teach handwriting. But studies have yet to answer the question of how well they are teaching it. One study published this year found that about three out of every four teachers say they are not prepared to teach handwriting. Some teachers are teaching handwriting by providing instruction for 10 ~15 minutes a day, and then other teachers basically teach it for 60 ~ 70 minutes a day — which really is pretty much for handwriting.

Many adults remember learning that way — by copying letters over and over again. Today’s thinking is that short periods of practice are better. Many experts also think handwriting should not be taught by itself. Instead, they say it should be used as a way to get students to express ideas. After all, that is why we write.

Handwriting involves two skills. One is legibility, which means forming the letters so they can be read. The other is fluency — writing without having to think about it. Fluency continues to develop until high school. But not everyone masters these skills. Teachers commonly report that about one fourth of their kids have poor handwriting. Some people might think handwriting is not important any more because of computers and voice recognition programs.

But Steve Graham at Vanderbilt University says word processing is rarely done in elementary school, especially in the early years. American children traditionally first learn to print, and then to write in cursive, which connects the letters. But guess what we have learned? More than 75 per cent of students choose to print their essays on the test rather than write in cursive.

8 . Taking photos of your food and posting them online is becoming more and more popular. However, not everyone thinks it’s a good idea.

Food photos are popular on social networking sites. Many of the pictures are of delicious-looking food from top-class restaurants. Some people even find it addictive (上瘾的). “I couldn’t get enough of it. I had to share every single meal,” one food poster wrote.

However, not all food photos are so attractive. There are now sites where you can post pictures of terrible-looking food. One such website is saddesklunch.com. Users send pictures of their depressing meals, which include things such as half-eaten bits of chicken and leftover (剩余的) pizza.

saddesklunch.com. was created by office worker Kira in 2012. At the time, she was working as a video editor. “I was staring at my rather terrible vegetable soup, which I was eating at my desk, and just thought, I can’t believe I’m eating this soup, let alone eating it alone at my desk’,”she said.

Some chefs are trying to stop people photographing food in their restaurants. Gilles runs a three-star restaurant in southern France. He told a news website that every time his food appears on social networks it “takes away the surprise, and a little bit of my intellectual property(知识产权)”.

Alexander is the chef at a restaurant. He has included a “no cameras” logo on his menu. “Before, people took pictures of their family in the restaurant; now they take pictures of food... They put them on the Internet, others ‘like’, they respond to comments, and the dish is cold,” he explained.

Will you take your camera next time you eat out?

9 . Smart phones are greatly changing the way we walk down the street. Office workers and young people are walking like the old as they check emails and messages.

Scientists have found mobile phones make us walk more slowly, with modest steps, to avoid falling over. The leader of the study said the walk is just like someone in their eighties. Researchers found people writing a text message walk more than twice as slowly as those without a phone, finding it harder to stay in a straight line.

The scientists examined 252 people walking while reading a text message, writing one, speaking on their phones or without their phones at all. Writing a text is the hardest activity, causing people to look down at their phone 46 percent more, and 45 percent longer, than when reading a message. This led people to walk 118 per cent more slowly than when they were without their phones. People walked almost a third more slowly while reading a text and 19 per cent while talking on the phone.

Smart phones were found to stop people from walking in a straight line, putting them at greater risk of running into other people, cars or street lamps. This increased the need to slow down and take more careful steps.

John Timmis said the idea for this study came from following someone walking down the street in the afternoon, who was walking as if he had had several drinks. I thought it was a bit early for that, then walked up alongside him and saw that he was on his phone. Simply being on the phone changes the way people walk.