1 . Yu Yi, Honorary President of Shanghai Yangpu Senior High School, is among the first generation of Chinese teachers after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Yu was born in 1929, not long before Japan invaded (侵略) China. Her road to education was very difficult. During the war, Yu studied in many schools before she was admitted to Zhenjiang High School.

In 1947, Yu was admitted to the Department of Education of Fudan University in Shanghai. In 1951, as she was about to become a teacher, Yu decided to tie her future to the motherland.

As a Chinese teacher, Yu has been thinking about how to teach every class well. Rather than follow the traditional teaching method, in which teachers keep speaking while students just listen, Yu used a different one. She had her students read revolutionary (革命) books, which put the “red gene (基因)” in their blood and helped them set higher goals. In her view, Chinese classes not only teach children to use the language, they also shape children’s souls. For decades, Yu has devoted herself to her work. She has also written many books on teaching.

“I have said I will be a teacher for the rest of my life, and I will also learn to be a teacher for the rest of my life, which is by no means empty talk. I have been learning all my life, constantly improving and perfecting my personality. I keep thinking about how many lessons I have given and how many are really taught to students,” Yu says.

3 . Saving lives has always been an important mission (使命) of science. Now science, and indeed all society, are facing a new dilemma: whether or not to try and save more lives through human cloning.

The first cloning experiments in the 1950s involved frogs and toads. It was not until 1997 that scientists successfully cloned the fist mammal, the now world-famous sheep known as Dolly. Cloning techniques’ have continued to improve since then, and today there are cloned mice, salmon, and cattle.

Some scientists want to apply the methods used in cloning animals to produce skin, or organs, and other body parts for humans. One of these methods involves taking adult cells from the brain or blood and growing them into new tissues. Another more complex technique takes embryo (胚胎) cells and develops them into a wide variety of cell types and tissues. It is this planned use of human embryos that has resulted in controversy (争议) and criticism.

The cloning of human cells provides the potential to find cures and eliminate diseases. The dream of some researchers is to create a Utopian world of good health. Others question whether it is right to “Play God” in an attempt to cure the disabilities and diseases in this world.

Some of the great hopes for cloning include the utility to perform transplants, whenever they are needed, using cloned organs. For example, people with lung cancer may simply have their lungs replaced with healthy ones. Scientists also look forward to the day when people in wheelchairs can walk again, and illnesses such as Alzheinmier’s and Parkinson’s Disease can be prevented.

However, a lot of people worry about the appearance of masses of identical people, and the production of “perfect” humans for warfare or slave labor. We might even see headless human bodies being stored at hospitals for their “spare parts”. With such thought-causing possibilities for the 2lst century, human cloning will no doubt continue to receive widespread attention and scrutiny (审视).

4 . The vast majority of parents expect their children to grow up to be healthy, happy, and productive members of society.     1     If we don’t give parenting everything we’ve got, our kids will wind up unemployed, living in our basements, and there will be no one to blame but ourselves. That’s what I like to call the “perfect parent myth”.

The standards of perfection for parents these days are extremely high. Perfect parenting expectations begin with a drug free natural birth. Once our young are born we must breastfeed each baby for years. If we can’t breasted, we must at least feed on demand.     2     Let’s also not forget to organize our children’s days so they are engaged in educational pursuits in case they fall behind the curve (弯道). We must be involved in every aspect of our children’s schools. There is no free time for the perfect parent.     3    

These standards are unreasonable. They’re also crazy. Parents can’t be perfect. Why? Because we’re human and so are our children.     4    They are predictable and when they are unruly we can shut them down. Parenting is nothing like that.

    5    But, by the parent being less than perfect, the child will need to adapt and develop skills to overcome little disappointments. There is flexibility and room for real-life mistakes and limitations to our parenting abilities.

Technophobes are people who hate modern technology,     1    (probable)because they don’t understand it, or because they are afraid of doing something wrong and     2    (ruin)the equipment.

However, this is not a new phenomenon(现象). At the turn of the 20th century, when electricity was set up in many homes, signs     3    (place)on the wall next to the light-switches advising people     4     were used to gas lighting not to light the electricity with a match!

There were many cases where people were unaware of how to use new machines, causing     5    (embarrass)in the would-be user and amusement in the observer.

When     6    (video)first came on the market, a woman, who had never seen a video-tape before, took one tape out of the box     7     began shaking it violently. Seeing this, her husband asked her what she     8    (do). She replied, “Shaking the tape.     9     says on the tape ‘Shake before use’”. Her husband told her the name of the film was “Shake Before Use”!

Whatever your phobias(恐惧), new technology is here to stay until someone comes along and invents something newer for us     10    (use).

8 . Students decide to take a job while being in university because of two reasons: on the one hand, they need money; on the other hand, they want to experience something new and they want to see what working means.

But is it good to take a job while you are a university student? There are both advantages and disadvantages if we were to answer this question. If we were to think about the advantages, we could mention the ones I have just discussed. Having a job at an early age helps us gain experience, which will be very useful to our later life. We may become financially independent and don’t need to ask our parents for money each time we want to go downtown with our friends, or spend the holiday at the seaside or in the mountains.

However, students who take a job might have problems in spending enough time on their study. If they work during the day, they may have to be absent from their classes, and if they work at night they will feel tired the next day. They may choose to stay at home, resting. What’s worse, some students may even get bored with study.

Well, this fact happens every now and then, but there are cases when well-prepared students take a part-time job but at the same time they make time for study, too. And they have good results. Their case is a good example to follow among the students who decide to work while being in university. Anyway, we need to keep in mind that study is the most important job for a student.

10 . Major cities across the country, from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles, are heating up. The downtown parts of Phoenix can be up to 15 degrees warmer at night than its suburb. During the day, the street can reach over 160 degrees, hot enough to cook an egg. Unsurprisingly, walking across such a hot street to get to work, school, and do your daily work takes its toll on your health.

Local governments have turned to planting trees to help stop rising temperatures in city areas. These tree planting efforts are usually announced with much showing off but are not as simple as planting a few trees and calling it a day. There's typically this sort of blind faith that trees will provide all of wonderful social benefits. But the environmental benefits that trees provide depend entirely on context. Tree planting plans may not lead to the cooling joy we desire in city areas.

While trees, theoretically, are a “green” solution to unbearable summer city weather, in practice, many problems arise, namely keeping track of just how many trees have already found their roots and convincing land owners to keep planting trees along their personal property. In some cases, cities are already doing a good enough job that they are running out of space, like in Washington, D. C. where they are currently at 38 percent canopy coverage but are hoping to raise coverage up to 40 percent. But the biggest problem is that public area alone isn't enough for new trees in Washington D. C, as well as in cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles, and now, citizens will have to plant trees on personal property to help reach their canopy coverage goals. In many cases, that means landowners need to take care of those trees since they technically don't belong to the city itself.

At the end of the day, trees are a good starting point, but we still have so much to learn about how well they work to cool down our hottest cities.