When I was a little girl, my mum and dadtold me that if I planted something in spring, I could get1inautumn.
At the age of six, when I was eating a bigapple, something hard (硬) pressedagainst (挤压) my tongue (舌头).What was it? It was a tooth!
I was afraid. I2andran to my grandma's room. She picked up the tooth and said, "Don't worry,dear. It's a baby tooth. You will have a new tooth in a few3."
"A new tooth?" I felt very4.
"Yes. But when you get old, your teethwill5out again, but at that time, they won'tgrow again. So it's not6for old people to eat something hard,"my grandma said.
I went out of my grandma's room andthought, "Where can I7the dropped tooth?" Suddenly, agood idea8into my mind, "Why not plant it inthe ground? If I look after it well, maybe it would become a big tree. When9comes,there will be many white and strong teeth10the tree. I can give themto the old people then."
Of course my tooth didn't grow into a bigtree, but I won't forget the beautiful dream in my childhood.
A dinosaur for my birthday is the only thing I need. It doesn't matter if it's slow or one that has a fast speed.
A huge one, a tiny one or one that's in between. A dinosaur that's dark brown or bright green.
I don't care if it's big and tall or really old and not beautiful. I don't care if it's rough and tough or soft and cute.
Just it's a living, breathing (呼吸的) dinosaur, and_____________.
I promise if you bring me one I'll never ask for more. That's all I want for my birthday: just one single dinosaur.
William Shakespeare was a writer of plays and poems. Some of his most famous plays are Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth. He wrote thirty-seven plays in all. They are still popular today.
He was born in 1564 in England. At school he liked watching plays. He decided to be an actor (演员) when he finished school at the age of fourteen. In 1582, he married a farmer's daughter. She was eight years older than he was. Their first child was a daughter. Later they had twins. In 1585, Shakespeare left his hometown, Stratford-upon-Avon. His wife and children stayed behind. No one knows why he left or what he did between 1585 and 1592.
At twenty-eight he moved to London and joined a theatre company which opened the Globe Theatre in 1599. He became an actor, and he also wrote plays. He usually acted in his own plays. He earned almost no money from his writing. But he made a lot of money from acting. With the money he bought a large house in his hometown.
At the age of forty-nine, Shakespeare retired (退休) and went to live in Stratford-upon-Avon. He died at the age of fifty-two. He left his money to his family. He left his genius to the world. You still see his plays in English and in many other languages. He is one of the most famous writers in the world.
Mother bird is busy,
Flying from tree to tree,
Trying to find the right one,
To raise (养育) her family.
Should it be a maple, or maybe a pine?
Whichever it is, it will be just fine.
She finds one stick and another,
And hurries back to put them together.
She sits on her eggs to keep them warm,
And hopes they don't fall during the storm.
The nest is strong and holds them well.
The babies suddenly come out from their shells (壳) .
Mother bird is happy and as proud as it can be.
Now she is looking for food you see.
She feeds her babies most of the day.
They eat and eat but have no time to play.
It's time to learn to fly from the nest.
Mother bird doesn't get much rest.
The babies are so eager (渴望的) to fly,
But sad to tell their mother, goodbye.
He was a poet known for the nostalgia (乡愁) he describes in his poems. Now, it's time for us to express (us) nostalgia for this great writer.
On December 14, 2017, the famous Chinese poet Yu Guangzhong passed away in Taiwan. He was born in 1928 in Nanjing, Jiangsu. Yu and his family moved to Taiwan in the 1950s. He lived and worked there his death.
Nostalgia is Yu's famous poem in which he (express) his homesickness (乡愁) for the Chinese mainland when he was in Taiwan. The poem came out in 1971, and it remains highly popular among Chinese (speak) worldwide. Even those who know little about literature (enjoy) lines from the poem. The poem is included in (China) high school textbooks.
Besides his achievements in poems, Yu was also a (success) translator (翻译家), essay writer and critic.
He once translated (翻译) English poet Siegfried Sassoon's poem In me, past, present, future meet Chinese. It is regarded as perfect and powerful translation, in which the most famous line is“心有猛虎，细嗅蔷薇”for "In me the tiger sniffs the rose".
Yu spent his whole life (write). In a 2015 interview with People's Daily, he said, "The reason why I keep writing till today is my passion (热爱) for the Chinese language." He then added that his love for his mother and his motherland made this passion stronger.
XuYuanchong was born on April 18, 1921 in Jiangxi, China. He is best known fortranslating Chinese ancient poems into English and French. Xu took foreignlanguage studies at Tsinghua University after he studied abroad. And afterthat, he became a professor in English and French. Since 1983, he has been aprofessor at Peking University.
Xu'smother was well educated and good at painting. She had great influence on Xu inhis literature. His uncle Xiong Shiyi was a translator, who translated the playWang Baochuan into English, which was a hit in the UK. Xiong's achievement gaveXu a strong interest in learning English. In 1939, he translated his firstwork, Lin Huiyin's poem Do not throw away into English, which was published inthe Literary Translation News.
His30 poems were selected (选) asteaching materials by foreign universities. In 1994, British publishing companyPenguin published Xu Yuanchong's 300 China's immortal poems (《中国不朽诗三百首》). That was the first time that the publishing company had publisheda Chinese translation. Apart from (除……之外) translatingthe classical Chinese poetry into foreign languages, Xu Yuanchong alsotranslated many of the British and French classics into Chinese. Xu was awardedthe "Lifetime achievements in translation" from the Translators Association ofChina (TAC) in 2010.
Now,at the age of 97, Xu is still working hard at translating. He said, "I start mywork at 3：30 in the morning because Ilike doing what I like."
