1 . Aesha Ash is a ballet dancer who began The Swan Dreams Project in 2011. It is a program designed to bring ballet to girls of color in her community. Aesha Ash is one of the few women of color to ever grace the stages of the School of American Ballet in New York City. She wants to expose her community to more positive images of women of color through the use of ballet. She wants to show the world that beauty and grace are not defined by status or race.

Aesha grew up in the inner city of Rochester, New York, where crime, gun violence and poverty were among the biggest threats to the community. For her, that’s normal. That’s just life in the neighborhood, but what she remembers most is the dance studio. She started dancing at the age of five. A teacher mentioned to her mother that she had some promise in ballet, and that it would be difficult for her, as a woman of color, to enter the ballet world. But the hardship she faced was the very thing that pushed her to pursue a career in ballet.

And there’s so much negative stereotypes (刻板印象) and misunderstanding of who they are in the media. Through the use of imagery and her career as a ballet dancer, she challenges stereotypes that exist for women of color, particularly those from inner-city communities.

“It’s important that our girls see that side of themselves because for many kids it’s hard to be what you can’t see. I hadn’t seen a black ballet dancer before I decided that was what I wanted to be. It was really important for me to be in my environment displaying that because this is where I’m from. It was always beyond ballet,” Aesha Ash stated.

2 . Corporate (公司) culture is the values and beliefs a company develops over time. The role of corporate culture is to improve a company’s mission and strategies, with long-term hopes of improvements in a company’s profit. Mostly corporate culture comes from a company’s top management.

One role of corporate culture is to influence employee (员工) behavior, honesty, and compliance (服从). A company does not have to necessarily create a direct influence for these actions. A direct influence may be a set of written regulations or other policies, and while these may be in place, the corporate culture is usually more of an indirect influence.

While many companies try to create corporate culture through the use of written policies, its role is harder to define. The human factor has an influence on how corporate culture is expressed. The way upper management acts and reacts to various situations defines how lower-level employees will act, and this aspect may be more important than any written policy.

A company’s corporate culture can also extend beyond the walls of the business. Consumers who believe a company to be honest and forthright may be more loyal in their buying behavior. Employees in a company’s customer service department can also exhibit positive corporate culture to outside individuals. In this case, the culture creates a link between the company’s employees and its customers. How customers react may be a direct result from the company’s corporate culture.

Product quality can also be influenced by a company’s corporate culture. Companies that focus only on profits may decide to avoid high-quality materials in products, but try to suggest that the products are of higher quality than they really are. This negative culture can then result in lower brand loyalty with consumers.

4 . Parents feel that it is difficult to live with teenagers. Then again, teenagers have ________ feelings about their parents, saying that it is not easy living with them. According to a recent research, the most common ________ between parents and teenagers is that regarding untidiness and daily routine tasks. On the one hand, parents go mad over ________ rooms, clothes thrown on the floor and their children’s refusal to help with the ________. On the other hand, teenagers lose their patience continually when parents blame them for ________ the towel in the bathroom, not cleaning up their room or refusing to do the shopping at the supermarket.

The research, conducted by St. George University, shows that different parents have different ________ to these problems. However, some approaches are more ________ than others. For example, those parents who yell at their children for their untidiness, but ________ clean the room for them, have fewer chances of changing their children’s ________. On the contrary, those who let teenagers experience the ________ of their actions can do better. For example, when teenagers who don’t help their parents with the shopping don’t find their favorite drink in the refrigerator, they are forced to ________ their actions.

Psychologists say that ________ is the most important thing in parent-child relationships. Parents should ________to their children but at the same time they should lend an ear to what they have to say. Parents may ________ their children when they are untidy but they should also understand that their room is their own private space. Communication is a two-way process. It is only by listening to and ________ each other that problems between parents and children can be settled.

6 . Most of us spend our lives surrounded by screens, which offer us convenience as well as connection and an ocean of information. But since it’s easy to feel pressured to keep up with every notification, technology may feel more like a burden than a blessing. Thus, the idea of “digital detox” is becoming increasingly inviting.

The phrase “digital detox” describes getting rid of TV, phones, computers and other forms of technology that control our lives for a period of time. Some experts advocate completely avoiding unnecessary screen time for 30 years. Others suggest using an app that will limit the amount of time one can spend on certain websites. A third option is logging out in evenings or on weekends. Others simply turn their phones off at scheduled times. Some even pay high prices to take vacations in places where they can unplug from their digital routine.

Why might you want to take a digital detox? Perhaps you find that you are spending longer than you intend on certain apps or that they distract you from more important things. Perhaps social media is depressing because you compare yourself to others or you fear missing out on things that other people are enjoying. Constant negative news can also give rise to a lot of stress.

Technology can also have physical effects. Many people experience back or neck pain as a result of bending over screens. The blue light coming from most screens can also affect people’s sleep by preventing production of melatonin(褪黑素).

Giving up all screens may not be realistic, but strategic breaks from technology may be good for your body, mind, emotions and relationships. It is high time that you picked a time to turn off your devices and focus on really important things.

7 . It is quite reasonable to blame traffic jams, the cost of gas and the great speed of modern life, but manners on the road are becoming horrible. Everybody knows that the nicest men would become fierce tigers behind the wheel. It is all right to have a tiger in a cage, but to have one in the driver’s seat is another matter.

Road politeness is not only good manners, but a good sense. It takes the most cool-headed drivers great patience to give up the desire to beat back when forced to face rude driving. On the other hand, a little politeness goes a long way towards reducing the possibility of quarrelling and fighting. A friendly nod or a wave of thanks in answer to an act of politeness helps to create an atmosphere of good will and becomes so necessary in modern traffic conditions. But such behaviors of politeness are by no means enough. Many drivers nowadays don’t even seem able to recognize politeness when they see it.

However, misplaced politeness can also be dangerous. A typical example is the driver who waves to a child crossing the street at a wrong place into the path of oncoming cars that may not be able to stop in time. The same goes for encouraging old ladies to cross the road wherever and whenever they want to.

An experienced driver, whose manners are faultless, told me it would help if drivers learnt to correctly join in traffic stream without causing total blockages that give rise to unpleasant feelings. Unfortunately, modern drivers can’t even learn to drive, let alone master the roadmanship (公路驾车技能). Years ago, experts warned us that the fast increase of the car ownership would demand more give-and-take from all road users. It is high time for all of us to take this message to heart.

10 . The other day, I was looking at my schedule for the summer. I had a moment of _________, realizing I’d be without my laptop for two weeks during our family camping trip.

You might be thinking my response sounds _________ and that two weeks with no pressure to work, just relaxing in nature is the time to _________ and restore one’s brain and body. I used to be a workaholic (工作狂). So taking two weeks off from my business made me _________.

I know I’m not _________ here in our busy world. To work hard is especially significant for high-achieving people to _________ in their careers. We live in a culture that _________ the state of being busy. There might have been many times when you _________ some relatives or friends on the street and heard they said they were very busy when asking about their recent situations. Being busy is the new _________. Therefore. when we’re not busy, we feel like we’re doing something wrong.

I’m not saying working all the time makes us feel OK. Taking a break brings us __________. We’ll be more __________ after relaxing, thus having more novel ideas. Iceland has __________ a 4-day work week for 2,500 people. A study by Stanford University found that their __________ didn’t decline; they reported a better work-life balance.

Our brains aren’t __________ to work all the time. Working hard enough to pass our limits will unavoidably lead to burnout. __________, we should give ourselves a break once in a while.