Teenage life is full of adventures and challenges. Doing voluntary work is popular among some teenagers. And extra-curricular activities     1     (prefer) by others, such as organizing debates, studying literature, dancing ballet and cleaning up the greenhouses. But more people sign up for advanced     2     (course) out of curiosity.     3     (actual), some teenagers feel confused in their youth, and their behaviors are sometimes confusing. They think there is a generation gap between     4     (they) and adults, so experts are trying to find a suitable solution. Johnson is     5     outgoing freshman. He is so attracted to Chinese literature that he     6     (give) up his studies in Chicago and come to China since he was 10 years old. Obviously,     7     the help of his teacher, his Chinese has improved greatly and he can speak fluent Chinese on campus now. As scheduled, he will graduate from the school     8     he has stayed for a long time next year. What he is concentrating on is the ancient Chinese literature and he is     9     (interest) in Tang poetry. The topic of his research content is “the differences between Eastern and Western literature”. An editor that acts responsibly has advised him     10     (read) some classical Chinese literature first. This suggestion means a lot to him.

2 . Technology seems to discourage slow, immersive reading. Reading on a screen tires your eyes and makes it harder for you to keep your place. Online writing tends to be more skimmable and list-like than print. The cognitive neuroscientist Mary Walt argued recently that this “new norm” of skim reading is producing “an invisible, game -changing transformation” in how readers process words. The neuronal circuit that sustains the brain’s capacity to read now favors the rapid absorption of information.

We shouldn’t overplay this danger. All readers skim. From about the age of nine, our eyes start to bounce around the page, reading only about a quarter of the words properly, and filling in the gaps by inference. Nor is there anything new in these fears about declining attention spans. So far, the anxieties have proved to be false alarms. “Quite a few critics have been worried about attention spans lately and see very short stories as signs of cultural decline,” the American author Selvin Brown wrote. “No one ever said that poems were evidence of short attention spans.”

And yet the Internet has certainly changed the way we read. For a start, it means that there is more to read, because more people than ever are writing. And digital writing is meant for rapid release and response. This mode of writing and reading can be interactive and fun. But often it treats other people’s words as something to be quickly harvested as fodder (素材) to say something else. Everyone talks over the top of everyone else, desperate to be heard.

Perhaps we should slow down. Reading is constantly promoted as a social good and source of personal achievement. But this advocacy often emphasizes “enthusiastic” “passionate” or “eager” reading, none of which adjectives suggest slow, quiet absorption. To a slow reader, a piece of writing can only be fully understood by immersing oneself in the words and their slow comprehension of a line of thought.

The human need for this kind of deep reading is too tenacious for any new technology to destroy. We often assume that technological change can’t be stopped and happens in one direction, so that older media like “dead-tree” books are kicked out by newer, more virtual forms. In practice, older technologies can coexist with new ones. The Kindle has not killed off the printed book any more than the car killed off the bicycle. We still want to enjoy slowly. formed ideas and carefully-chosen words. Even in a fast-moving age, there is time for slow reading.

3 . We talk continuously about how to make children tougher and stronger, but whatever we’re doing, it’s not working. Rates of anxiety disorders and depression are rising rapidly among teenagers. What are we doing wrong?

Nassim Taleb invented the word “antifragile” and used it to describe a small but very important class of systems that gain from shocks, challenges, and disorder. The immune (免疫的) system is one of them: it requires exposure to certain kinds of bacteria and potential allergens (过敏原) in childhood in order to develop to its full ability.

Children’s social and emotional abilities are as antifragile as their immune systems. If we overprotect kids and keep them “safe” from unpleasant social situations and negative emotions, we deprive (剥夺) them of the challenges and opportunities for skill-building they need to grow strong. Such children are likely to suffer more when exposed later to other unpleasant but ordinary life events, such as teasing and social rejection.

In the UK, as in the US, parents became much more fearful in the 1980s and 1990s to those rare occurrences of crimes and accidents that now occur less and less. Outdoor play and independent mobility went down; screen time and adult-monitored activities went up.

Yet free play in which kids work out their own rules of engagement, take small risks, and learn to master small dangers turns out to be vital for the development of adult social and even physical competence. Depriving them of free play prevents their social-emotional growth.

What can we do to change this situation? How can we raise kids strong enough to handle the ordinary and extraordinary challenges of life? We can’t guarantee that giving primary school children more independence today will bring down the rate of teenage suicide tomorrow. The links between childhood overprotection and teenage mental illness are suggestive but not clear-cut. Yet there are good reasons to suspect that by depriving our naturally antifragile kids of the wide range of experiences they need to become strong, we are systematically preventing their growth. We should let go — and let them grow.

4 . Time and time again, I hear someone ask why anyone would want to keep an “ugly” building or a building that is dirty and clearly in need of work. I think you could say we preservationists look at buildings through a different angle — an angle that can see the swan (天鹅) in the ugly duck, the story in the simple lines, the book behind the cover.

Take the Queen Emma Building for example. While people may remember that building being named as one of the ugliest buildings in town, the angle from which a preservationist will view the building is that it is uniquely constructed with an artistical brise-soleil to block the sun. The designer used standard concrete bricks to form a decorative wall. Unfortunately, the brise-soleil was removed in 2011, making the building look like many of the contemporary buildings in town.

Sometimes people remember a beautiful site that was replaced by a “horrid” piece of architecture and can’t get over their anger, even when that building becomes an important part of our story. This is particularly true in San Francisco where many preservationists themselves dislike anything newer than the Victorian era. Yes, it was a tragedy that many failed to appreciate the Victorian buildings and let many get torn down several decades ago, but those losses also tell another important story. It tells the story of the 1950s and 1960s when there was hope for a more equal society with inexpensive housing for the working class. Should that history be wiped from our memories?

Preservation is not just about keeping pretty, well-kept buildings, but about conveying parts of our history-not just the history of huge events, but the story of how everyone used to go to a certain corner market. Our history cannot be told only in buildings that meet someone’s criteria of beauty; sometimes our history is painful, but no less important.

If you live in Shanghai, you might have to take a lesson in sorting garbage.     1     is now required that people should sort garbage into four categories —    2     (recycle), harmful, dry and wet waste. However, if people fail to sort their garbage properly, they can     3     (fine) up to 200 yuan.

More cities are introducing similar regulations,     4     (follow) the practice in Shanghai. However, garbage sorting is still a big problem in China. Only 30% of the     5     (participant) think they are adequately sorting their trash. It’s partly because many people lack their willingness to sort their own waste. “It’s     6     must to have a legal guarantee     7     (promote) garbage sorting,” said Liu Jianguo, a professor from Tsinghua University.

Aside from China, many other foreign countries     8     (introduce) garbage-sorting regulations in the past years. In Japan, waste sorting has become a basic survival skill. There is a     9     (fix) time for the disposal of each kind of garbage and littering can result     10     high fines and even jail time. Over 90% of the public believe that garbage sorting is important for the protection of the environment.

9 . Once upon a time, eating alone was just that: sitting down in a restaurant on one’s own and eating a meal. Everyone did it sometimes, and when they did so it might suggest that they didn’t have any family or friends, or didn’t like people. There was a kind of shame attached to it.     1     They choose to eat alone for various reasons.

“Foodies”-people who have a passionate interest in different cuisines—do it because all they need for their pleasure is the chance to eat good food.     2    

    3     For instance, it’s estimated that nearly a third of all the customers of fast-food restaurants eat alone. They are served with their food fast, eat it fast and then leave fast because they have a meeting to make or a child to pick up from school.

But for others, the appeal of eating alone is quite different.     4     For the hour that it takes to have a meal, they can forget all the pressure of their lives. For a brief window, they don’t have to deal with their family or job. They can relax and let their mind wander.     5     Part of the appeal of this new trend is surely that a meal taken alone is like a little holiday from the busyness of modern life, in which they have so much to do all the time.