1 . Are you happy with your appearance?     1    

“Almost all the girls with single-fold eyelids (单眼皮) in our class have had double eyelid operations,” Zeng, a Senior 2 student from Chengdu, told Xinhua. Zeng had the same surgery done this summer.     2    

From popular photo-editing apps to plastic surgery (整形手术), it seems that large eyes, pale skin and a skinny body are the only standard for beauty these days. But can following this standard really make us feel good about ourselves?

    3     . According to Huxiu News, over six in ten girls choose not to take part in certain daily activities, such as attending school, because they feel bad about their looks. As much as 31 percent of teenagers avoid speaking up in class because they worry that others will notice their looks.

“Many teenagers are upset about their appearance because they believe in unrealistic standards of beauty,” experts say.       4     Seeing all these things can make anyone believe that they’re too dark, too fat, too short, or too tall.

However, trying to live up to strict standards can make us feel anxious. What troubles us is not just our “imperfect” looks, but the fact that we criticize ourselves too much.

    5     Plus-size models are being featured in some fashion shows. All of us should be just as confident as they are.

2 . Every festival has its own meaning. Labor Day, for example, celebrates the value of hard work. Thanksgiving is about showing thanks to people around you. And Valentines’ Day is a time when you express love to your loved ones. But somehow it now seems that all festivals we just care about one thing — shopping. And that can be a big problem.

“In a way, over-consumption (过度消费) is the mother of all our environmental problems,” Kalle Lasn once told CNN. Lasn is the organizer of Buy Nothing Day, a day set up in Canada in 1992 to fight against unhealthy spending habits, and has now become an international event. It’s held on the day, which is known as Black Friday — a famous shopping day in the US and Canada.

You can see the irony (讽刺) here.

Even though the idea of Buy Nothing Day was brought up 26 years ago, we seem to need it now more than ever. It’s just as Lasn said, all the different kinds of pollution in our lives today — bad air quality, the reduction of forest area, endangered animal species, and plastic bags found in the ocean — seem to be the same cause: over-consumption.

The latest example is the Singles’ Day shopping craze of Nov 11, which saw a new sales record. But as Nie Li, a campaigner at Greenpeace, told Reuters, “Record-setting over-consumption means record-setting waste.” And it was reported that last year the Singles’ Day packages left more than 160,000 tons of waste, including plastic and cardboard. The Collins Dictionary has also just named “single-use” its Word of the Year, pointing out the problem that there’re too many things we tow out after only using them once.

So, Buy Nothing Day might only be here for one day a year, but it’s not just to remind us to the a break from shopping on that day, but to change our lifestyle completely, focusing on fun “with people we care about” rather than wasting money on useless things.

3 . After years of observing human nature, I have decided that two qualities make a difference between men of great achievement and men of average performance — curiosity and discontent. I have never known an outstanding man who lacked either. And I have never known an average man who had both.

Together, these deep human urges (驱策力) count for much more than ambition. Galileo was not merely ambitious when he dropped objects of varying weights from the Leaning Tower at Pisa and timed their fall to the ground. Like Galileo, all the great names in history were curious and asked in discontent, “Why? Why? Why?”

Fortunately, curiosity and discontent don’t have to be learned. We are born with them and need only to recapture them. “The great man,” said Mencius, “is he who does not lose his child’s heart.” Yet most of us do lose it. We stop asking questions. We stop challenging custom. We just follow the crowd. And the crowd desires only the calm and restful average.

Most of us meet new people, and new ideas, with hesitation. But once having met and liked them, we think how terrible it would have been, had we missed the chance. We will probably have to force ourselves to waken our curiosity and discontent and keep them awake.

How should you start? Modestly, so as not to become discouraged. I think of one friend who couldn’t arrange flowers to satisfy herself. She was curious about how the experts did it.

The way to begin is to answer your own excuses. You haven’t any special ability? Most people don’t; there are only a few geniuses. You haven’t any time? That’s good, because it’s always the people with no time who get things done. Harriet Stowe, mother of six, wrote parts of Uncle Tom’s Cabin while cooking. You’re too old? Remember that Thomas Costain was 57 when he published his first novel, and that Grandma Moses showed her first pictures when she was 78.

However you start, remember there is no better time to start than right now, for you’ll never be more alive than you are at this moment.

4 . From a very early age, some children exhibit better self­control than others. Now, a new study that began with about 1,000 children in New Zealand has tracked how a child’s low self-control can predict poor health, money troubles and even a criminal record in their adult years.

Researchers have been studying this group of children for decades now. They observed the level of self-control the youngsters displayed. Parents, teachers, even the kids themselves, scored the youngsters on measures like “acting before thinking” and “Persistence in reaching goals.” The study led by Moffitt of Duke University and colleagues followed 1,000 children from birth to age 32 in Dunedin, New Zealand.

“The children who had the lowest self-control when they were age three to ten, later on had the most health problems in their 30s,” Moffitt said, “and they had the worst financial situation. They were more likely to have a criminal record and to be raising a child as a single parent on a very low income.” Moffitt explained that self-control problems were widely observed, and weren’t just a feature of a small group of misbehaving kids.

Moffitt said it’s still unclear why some children have better self-control than others, though she said other researchers have found that it’s mostly a learned behavior, with relatively little genetic influence. But good self-control can be set to run in families because children with good self-control are more likely to grow up to be healthy and prosperous parents. But the good news, Moffitt said, is that self-control can be taught by parents, and through school curricula that have been shown to be effective.

5 . Our local Community Youth Club is a very popular organization with young people in my town. I have been a member for four years now and I’ve taken part in a lot of interesting projects. These include fun activities such as holiday camps and discos. We have organized sports competitions and we even made a video.

But it isn’t all just enjoyment, we have also started doing social work to help people in our neighbourhood. We have organized activities for small children during the holidays. We have also formed a social support group to help young people stop smoking.

We are particularly proud of the most recent group we have created. It organizes regular visits to the local old people’s home. This idea came from a school visit to an old people’s home. My class spent an afternoon at a home and everyone found the visit very rewarding.

The old people at the home were very excited by our visit. They were very talkative and they told us their personal stories. During our visit, the home was filled with the sound of laughter. We sang songs and played games with the old people and had tea together. But we realized that life wasn’t always easy. Some of them were in poor health and were very unhappy. They couldn’t go outside and the visits by children brought some sunshine into their lives.

Many young people like me do not live with our grandparents and we have very little contact with elderly people. As a result, many young people don’t know what they are like and we have a lot of wrong ideas about them. We have little or no idea of the kind of lives they lead in their homes. After this visit, my friends and I decided we should do something to help improve the quality of their lives.

Since the creation of our visiting group, over twenty volunteers have joined us. Up to now, we have organized three group evenings and a concert.But it is the individual (单独的) visits which are the most important. Club members regularly visit old people and everyone finds the experience rich and rewarding.

6 . Every culture has a recognized (公认的) point when a child becomes an adult, when rules must be followed and tests passed.

In China,   although teenagers can get their ID cards at 16, many only see themselves as an adult when they are 18. In the US, where everyone drives, the main step to the freedom of adult life is learning to drive. At 16, American teens take their driving test. When they have their license (执照), they drive into the grown­-up world.

“Nobody wants to ride the cheese bus to school,” said Eleanor Fulham. 17. “It’s like you’re not cool if you don’t have a car,”   she said.

According to a recent research, 41% of 16 to 19 ­year-olds in the US own cars, up from 23% in 1985. Although, most of these cars are bought by parents, some teens get part­-time jobs to help pay.

Not all families can afford cars for their children. In cities with undergrounds and limited (有限的) parking, some teenagers don’t want them. But in rich areas outside the city, if there are no undergrounds, and bicycles are more for fun than cars, it is strange for a teenager not to have a car.

But police say 16­-year­ olds have almost three times more accidents than 18 and 19 ­year-olds. This has made many parents stop before letting their kids drive. They need to wait until they are more experienced.

Julie Susiana, of Virginia, decided that her son Chad, 15, will wait until he is 17 to apply for his learner’s permit (许可).

Chad said he has accepted his parents’ decision, although it has caused some laughing from his friends. “They say that I am unlucky,” he said. “But I’d rather be alive than driving, and I don’t really trust my friends on the road either.”

In China as more families get cars, more 18 ­year­-olds learn to drive. Will this become a big step to becoming an adult?

The shopping mall,     1     (很多人喜欢它的环境), was on fire last week because the gas pipes     2     (使用太长时间的) cracked. Those     3     (正在里面购物的) were trapped. It was such a big fire that the world seemed as if it came to an end. Many goods     4     (正在销售的) were destroyed. This was the biggest fire     5     (人们有史以来看到的). Luckily, the firefighters     6     (收到紧急电话的) came at once. They did all     7     (他们能做的) to put out the fire. To our relief , no one was injured or dead.

10 . Being stuck behind crowds of slow walkers when you’re in a hurry is one of the most annoying things. But now, Lakeside Shopping Centre in Essex, one of the UK’s largest shopping malls, has introduced its very own fast lane (通道) for shoppers in a hurry, aiming to help impatient shoppers avoid slow walkers and the anger that goes with them.

The Lakeside Shopping Center in Essex has introduced a 720­foot “fast lane” reserved for fast walkers only, just in time for the Christmas rush. The center's management team said: “the lane will help the shoppers who know where they want to go quickly and don't want to get caught in behind unhurried shoppers at the busiest time of the year.”

The fast lane was introduced after a MasterCard survey found that 80 percent of consumers found slow walkers their biggest annoyance while shopping. The research also found that the average walking speed slowed down by 21 percent during the Christmas shopping period, as most shoppers spent more time window shopping during this period.

Gary Mortimer, an expert from the Queensland University of Technology, said he wasn’t surprised by the promotion about the launch of the fast lane, and thought the concept would appeal to shoppers all over the world. “Crowded parking lots and busy shopping centers tend to be two of the biggest complaints of shoppers over the festive season，” he said. “I think the fast lanes are a new approach. However, I suspect it will be a bit like fast lanes on the highway, so it might end up being more trouble than its worth.”

The MasterCard survey also identified the four most common types of shoppers. They include “Skaters” —the 31 percent of shoppers who try and make their way through crowds politely, “Dodgers”—the 51 percent of customers who move down the paths to avoid slow walkers, “Bulldozers” —the 11 percent who push their way through crowds, and “Tutters”—the 15 percent who express their frustrations to slow walkers.