广东中考英语●晨读必备Stop wastingWaste can be seen everywhere in the school. Some students ask for more food than they can eat and others often forget to turn off the lights when they leave the classroom. They say they can afford these things. But I don’t agree w ith them.Waste can bring a lot of problems. Although China is rich in some resources(资源), we are short of(缺乏) others, for example, fresh water(淡水). It is reported that we will have no coal(煤) or oil to use in 100 years. So if we go on wasting our resources, what can we use in the future and where can we move? Think about it.. I think we should say no to the students who waste things every day. Everybody should stop wasting as soon as possible.In our everyday life, we can do many things to prevent waste from happening, for example, turn off the water taps(水龙头) when we finish washing, turn off the lights when we leave the classroom, try not to order more food than we need, and so on. Little by little, everything will be changed. Waste can be stopped one day, if we do our best.Jay ChouHe is quiet and shy. H e likes to hide his eyes behind his hair. He doesn’t smile very often. However, if you talk to him about music, he’ll have a lot to say.This is Jay Chou, the 24-year-old Taiwanese pop king(天王). His fans are so excited because he will sing songs in Beijing on September 12. Those songs are from his new album (唱片), “Ye Huimei”, and the album was released (发行) in July and was named after his mother.Chou grew up just with his mother. He did not talk much and did badly in many school sub jects.His mother not iced the boy’s special interest in music and sent him to learn piano when he was only three years old. He loved it and kept on practicing.Chou is not very handsome. He does not speak clearly when he sings or talks. But the singer has huge crowds of fans. “He is really good at music. It makes him attractive(有魅力的) to me,” said Liu Jiajun, a Junior 2 student in No.101 Middle School in Beijing.“He is true to himself. He never follows others,” said Zhang Yujie, a Junior 1 girl at Huaibei Middle School in Sihong, Jiangsu Province.A ¥100 bill.A famous teacher was speaking to the students at our school. He began his lesson by holding up a ¥100 bill. Then he said to the three hundred students, “Who would like this ¥100 bill?” Th e students began to put up their hands at once.Then he said, “I am going to give this ¥100 to one of you, but first, let me do this.” He th en made the bill into a ball. Then he said, “Who wants it now?” The hands went back into the air.“Well,” he said, “What if I do this?” and he dropped it on the floor and stepped on it. He picked up the dirty, crumpled bill and said, “Who still wants it?” Hands went back into the air.“My friends,” he said, “you have learned a valua ble lesson today. No matter (无论) what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not go down in value (价值). It was still worth ¥ l00!”Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and stepped on by the chances we take and the things that happen to us. We feel as if we are worth nothing. But remember, no matter what has happened to you, you will never lose your value: you are always valuable to those peo-ple who love you. Your value doesn’t come from what you do or whom you know, but WHO YOU ARE.You are special and valuable. Don’t ever forget it!Making friendsIt’s hard to make friends if you stay at ho me alone all the time. Get out of the house and d o things that will put you in touch with(接触) other people. It’s easier to make friends when you have similar interests.Don’t be afraid to show people what you’re really good at. Talk about the things you li ke an d do best. People will be interested in you if there is something interesting about you.Look at people in the eye when you talk to them. That way, they’ll find it easier to talk to you, or people may think you’re not interested in them and may stop b eing interested in you.Be a good listener. Let people talk about themselves before talking about “me, me, me”. Ask lots of questions. Show an interest in their answers.Try to make friends with the kind of people you really like, respect (尊敬), and admire (羡慕)—not just with those who are easy to meet. Be friendly with a lot of peo ple. That way, you’ll have a bigger group of people to choose from and have more chances for making friends.Thanksgiving DayThanksgiving Day is a very special day for people in the United States. They celebrate it on the last Thursday in November. Canadians also celebrate Thanksgiving Day, but they do it on the second Monday of October. In Britain, where this festival is called Harvest Festival, people celeb rate it earlier in the year, in September.A harvest is the fruit you take from the trees and the crops you take from the ground. In North America and Britain, harvest time for most fruit and crops is in the autumn. In these count ries and other Christian places, people give thanks to God on a special day of the year. They thank God for the good things that have happened during the year and for the good harvest they have had. People usually take small boxes of fruit, flowers, and vegetables to their churches to show their thanks.The first thanksgiving service (仪式) in North America took place on December 4th, 1619 when 38 English people, arrived in America to make their home in the new country. They held this service not to thank God for the harvest, but to thank God for their safe journeys. The next year, many more English people arrived. They had a bad winter, but fortunately the harvest was good. they decided to celebrate it with a big meal. They shot and killed small animals to eat and cooked everything outside on large fires. About 90 Indians also came to the meal. Everyone ate at tables outside their houses and played games together. The festival lasted three days.A Thanksgiving Day celebration was held every year for a long time, but not always on the same day of the year. Then, in 1789, President George Washington named November 26th as theDay of Thanksgiving. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln changed the date, and said that the last Thursday in November should be Thanksgiving Day.Nowadays, North Americans around the world get together with their families on this day to eat good food and have a happy time.Pleasure readingReading for pleasure is the easiest way to become a better reader in English. It is also the most important way.Some students say they don’t want to read for pleasure. They say they want to use their time to learn the rules of the language and new words. They say that pleasure reading is too easy.Many experts (专家) say pleasure reading is very important for learning English. Dr. Stephen Krashen, a famous expert on learning languages, says that pleasure reading helps you learn many important things about English. Students learn more grammar and more words when they read for pleasure. They also learn more about good writing.Dr. Krashen tells us that pleasure reading helps each student in a different way. Each student needs to learn something different. Pleasure reading makes it possible for each student to learn what he or she needs.Reading for pleasure is not the same as studying. When you read for pleasure, you choose your own books, and you don’t have to remember everything. There are no tests on your pleasure reading books. Pleasure reading will help you:Learning EnglishWhen you are learning English, you find it not clever to put an English sentence, word for word, into your own language. Take the sentence “ How do you do?” as an example. If you look up each word in the dictionary, one at a time, what is your translation? It must be a wrong sent ence in your own language.Languages do not just have different sounds, they are different in many ways. It’s important t o master(掌握) the rules(规则) for word order in the study of English, too. If the speaker puts wo rds in a wrong order, the listener can’t understand the speaker’s sentence easily. Someti mes when the order of words in an English sentence is changed, the meaning of the sentence changes, But s ometimes the order is changed, the meaning of the sentence doesn’t change. Let’s see the differen ce between the two pairs of sentences.“She only likes apples.”“Only she likes apples.”“I have seen the film already.”“I have already seen the film.”When you are learning English, you must do your best to get the spirit(精神实质) of the lan guage and use it as the English speaker does.ComputersWe are already familiar with computers—computers work for us at home, in offices and in fa ctories. But it is also true that many children today are using computers at schools before they ca n write. What does this mean for the future? Are these children lucky or not?Many people who do not know about computers think of them as machines that children play with. They worry that children do not learn from experience but just from pressing a button and that this is not good for them. They think that children are growing not knowing about the real world.But people who understand more about computers say that computers can be very good for c hildren. A computer can help them to learn about the real world more quickly, to learn what they want to learn and think for themselves. And for the future, don’t we need people who can think clearly, who know how to get information quickly and use it well? What do you think?Young peopleYoung people are often unhappy when they are with their parents. They say that their parents don’t und erstand them. They often think their parents are too strict with them, and they are never given a free hand.Parents often find it difficult to win their children’s trust(信任) and they seem to forget how they themselves felt when they were young..For exampl e, young people like to do things without much thinking. It’s one of their ways to show that they grow up and they can do with any difficult things. Older people worry more easily. Most of them plan(计划) things ahead and don’t like their plans to be changed.When you want your parents to let you do something, you will have better success (成功) if you ask before you really start doing it.Young people often make their parents angry by clothes they want, the music they enjoy and something else. But they don’t mean to cause (引起) any trouble. They just feel that in this way they can be cut off from the old people’s world and they want to make a new culture (文化) of their own. And if their parents don’t like their music or clothes or their manner of speech, the young people feel very unhappy.Sometimes you even don’t want your parents to say, “Yes” to what you do.You want to stay at home alone and do what you like.If you plan to control (控制) your life, you’d better win your parents trust and try to get them to understand you. If your parents see that you have high sense of responsibility (责任感), they will certainly give you the right to do what you want to do.。