1 . Keeping fit often means sharing a busy pathway with cyclists,runners and walkers,but imagine facing the task of doing it all without being able to see or hear.It is a challenge many disabled athletes face,unless someone agrees to be their eyes and ears.

Newly formed group Achilles Brisbane pairs visually and audibly impaired (视觉和听觉受损的) athletes with people who would like to guide them.

Jane Britt,president of Achilles Brisbane,who is—vision and hearing—impaired,said,“When we go out,it’s much less frightening to have someone beside us that has full hearing to listen for us and tell us what’s there.”

Ms.Cullen and Ms.Britt meet up most Saturday mornings to take part in the five-kilometer park run.Their partnership is built on trust,but Ms.Britt said that it took time to develop.

Ms.Britt said it took an unexpected storm for her to trust Ms.Cullen completely.“There was violent rain,my glasses were broken and we were walking together.I suddenly had to tell her I couldn’t see anything,and I was going to have to completely trust her.From that time I knew it was going to work because she was so good about dealing with the special situation we both found ourselves in,” she said.

Isabella Allen and her seeing eye dog Tatum are two new additions to the Achilles Brisbane.Ms.Allen kept active by rowing,running and cycling but found it difficult to keep going as her vision became worse.After nearly giving up completely,she worked up the courage to ask Achilles Brisbane to find someone to share a boat with her.

Ms.Allen said the fear of not finding anyone to row with almost stopped her from reaching out to Achilles Brisbane.“But,they found people and matched me to them,” she said.“It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

2 . Some people say that city living in the 21st century is stressful and offers no advantages, but I don’t agree with them completely.

With the development of high-tech and the improvement of living qualities, more and more people crowded into the city, which leads to the uncontrollable urbanization(城市化). Because of this, some of the largest cities must be fairly oppressive(压抑的) places in which to live if you are short of money or unemployed. However, for those with much income, a city provides colourful environment which enables people to enjoy their modern life. In that case, I believe the advantages of urban living far outweigh its shortcomings.

Regarding shopping, as for me, rather than click on the Internet to get what I want, I prefer to window-shop. All kinds of shopping malls and supermarkets located in the city centre really content me. What’s more, a large city’s service even covers numbers of the surrounding towns and benefits many people.

In terms of entertainment, city residents are usually spoiled for choice, from amusement park to sport stadium, whoever you are will find exactly what you need. Maybe going to a concert tonight and visiting museums tomorrow. The city always contains various activities and full of energy.

The city also provides better opportunities with so many choices and challenges. Cities with universities offer high-standard education so that graduates from these places always get ideal jobs with considerable salary. Every day in the business district, you can see a fierce competition among those large companies, while there are exactly places that may give birth to talents.

Many people may complain about the traffic jam or pollution in the city, but I think with some useful measures to take, our city will be more habitable rather than stressful.

3 . Who’s in control of your life? Who’s pulling your strings? For the majority of us, it’s other people—society, colleagues, friends, family or our community. We learned this way of operating when we were very young, of course. We were brainwashed. We discovered that feeling important and feeling accepted was a nice experience and so we learned to do everything we could to make other people like us. As Oscar Wilde puts it, “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. ”

So when people tell us how wonderful we are, it makes us feel good. We long for this good feeling like a drug—we are addicted to it and seek it out wherever we can. Therefore, we are so eager for the approval of others that we live unhappy and limited lives, failing to do the things we really want to. Just as drug addicts and alcoholics live worsening lives to keep getting their fix we worsen our own existence to get our own constant fix of approval.

But, just as with any drug, there is a price to pay. The price of the approval drug is freedom—the freedom to be ourselves. The truth is that we cannot control what other people think. People have their own agenda, and they come with their own baggage and, in the end, they’re more interested in themselves than in you. Furthermore, if we try to live by the opinions of others, we will build our life on sinking sand. Everyone has a different way of thinking, and people change their opinions all the time. The person who tries to please everyone will only end up getting tired and probably pleasing no one in the process.

So how can we take back control?I think there’s only one way—make a conscious decision to stop caring what other people think. We should guide ourselves by means of a set of values—not values imposed from the outside by others, but innate values which come from within. If we are driven by these values and not by the changing opinions and value systems of others, we will live a more authentic, effective, purposeful and happy life.

4 . German artist HA Schult is an unusual artist who uses trash (废物) to make sculptures. “We are living in the time of garbage,” says Schult. “I created a thousand sculptures of garbage. They are a mirror of ourselves.” Here, Schult was talking about his 1,000 trash sculptures in the form of humans. He first exhibited them in 1996 in the western German state of North Rhine－Westphalia.

“They are social sculptures,” he explains. “They are not only sculptures for the eyes. They are sculptures to spread the idea that we live in a time of garbage.” So far, Schult’s social sculptures have been on show in Paris, in Moscow’s Red Square, on the Great Wall of China, and in the desert next to the Pyramids of Giza near Cairo.

HA Schult’s work is unforgettable. Although his work has had a big influence on the art world, Schult remains modest about his creations: “Artists have to learn every time. We are not important. All that counts is the time in which we are living.”

Trash art has been around for years. But it seems that only the popular artists are regarded as true artists when working with trash. Why can’t common people be considered artists when they use the same things and change them into some form of personal art? Maybe it’s because we all have our own preset ideas of what art is and isn’t, or whom artists are or should be.

You can be an artist like Schult if you try. Look at used metal cans. What might be done with them? Imagine them in any number of new uses, or imagine them simply as an art form. What about boxes or clothing? Boxes can usually serve as new storage containers and houses for pets. And clothing? Imagine taking old clothes and turning them into hats or hanging organizers.

At present, major parks across the US are facing a     1       (grow) problem. From getting too close to wildlife to camping in off-limit areas, more and more visitors     2     (break) park rules. In July alone, park rangers handled more than 11,000 incidents at the 10 most visited     3       (nation) parks. 

Record numbers of visitors at Yellowstone National Park, in Wyoming, have caused problems. Visitors stray from     4     (mark) paths. They break park rules in order to take selfies     5     wildlife, getting too close to elk, grizzly bears, and bison. As drivers slow    6     to snap pictures of the animals, traffic backs up. 

The breaking of park rules comes from disbelief among visitors     7     they will get hurt, said Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk. More than 52,000 warnings were issued at Yellowstone in 2015, up almost 20 percent from the year before. That     8     (worry) the National Park Service. 

As the number of visitors increase, the group is working     9     (protect) national land for future generations. The top 10 parks, including Yosemite in California and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, hosted almost 44 million people last year. That’s a 26 percent increase from a decade     10     (early).

At present, major parks across the US are facing a    1    (grow) problem. From getting too close to wildlife to camping in off-limit areas, more and more visitors    2    (break) park rules. In July alone, park rangers handled more than 11,000 incidents at the 10 most visited    3    (nation) parks. 

Record numbers of visitors at Yellowstone National Park, in Wyoming, have caused problems. Visitors stray from    4    (mark) paths. They break park rules in order to take selfies    5    wildlife, getting too close to elk, grizzly bears, and bison. As drivers slow    6    to snap pictures of the animals, traffic backs up. 

The breaking of park rules comes from disbelief among visitors    7    they will get hurt, said Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk. More than 52,000 warnings were issued at Yellowstone in 2015,up almost 20 percent from the year before. That    8    (worry) the National Park Service. 

As the number of visitors increase, the group is working    9    (protect) national land for future generations. The top 10 parks, including Yosemite in California and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, hosted almost 44 million people last year. That’s a 26 percent increase from a decade    10    (early).

The Chinese language has become increasingly popular in the world. More British students chose to take Chinese tests than German in this year’s A levels, showing a great     1     (curious) about the ancient Asian language.

This is the first time that Mandarin     2     (overtake) German at A levels, a British public exam taken by high school students,     3     (make) it the third most popular language in the UK.

A total of 3,334 candidates chose Mandarin     4     their foreign language, up 8.6 percent from 2017,     5    around 3,058 took German A­level, down 16.5 percent year on year.

French and Spanish still remain the most popular foreign languages. The German language     6     (follow) by Russian and Polish.

According to the Office of Chinese Language Council International (Hanban), as of 2017, some 100 million people, excluding native speakers, use Chinese     7     (global), while the number of Chinese teaching centers has surpassed (超过) 70,000.

South Korea has a larger population of Chinese language learners     8    any other country in the world with the number estimated at around 10.6 million. Last year alone, over 170,000 people     9     (sign) up for Chinese language tests, like the HSK,     10    full name is Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi in Chinese.

The United Nations in 2010 suggested a Chinese Language Day which falls on April 20th each year to celebrate cultural diversity as well as to promote the equal use of all official languages.

The influence of America is increasing in Spain. Spanish people drink Coca­Cola, wear blue jeans, watch Hollywood movies, listen to American music, and eat fast food, and they do all these things daily.

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 entertainment programs and documentaries we watch on TV are from America, and most of the movies we go to 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 a country of the European Union.

American culture is very much a part of Spanish life. It’s certain that many things from America are as much a part of their lives as Spanish things. For example, Coca­Cola is as familiar to everybody as any typical Spanish product. I’ve known Coca­Cola 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.

It may be that McDonald’s hamburgers will eventually replace the famous Spanish tapas because in every city in Spain you can find a McDonald’s, and they are more popular among the Spanish children than among the adults. In any case, it’s obvious that American culture is more and more a part of our everyday life.