Question
I am Saeed from Iran. I am so glad to send you an email. I have a question about differences between a "cathedral" and a "church?" Are they the same?
Answer
This is a great question, Saeed!
A "church"is a building used by Christians for their religious（宗教的）services. Because there are many different Christians, there are many different kinds of churches.
A "cathedral" is one kind of Christian church. However, a "cathedral" is the main church for an area under the direction of a bishop, a high-level church leader, in the Roman Catholic faith. Other Christian groups might also call large churches cathedrals. There are many famous cathedrals around the world like Notre Dame in Paris, St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, and the Cathedral of Brasilia in Brazil's capital.
A "temple" is another form of religious building. "Temple" is the English language word for religious centres in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Temples are places of prayer or worship. Sometimes, people who observe Reform Judaism call their religious centres "temples".
A "mosque" is a place for Muslims to pray. Women and men usually have separate places to pray within the same building. Muslim holidays and marriages are observed in mosques. "Synagogues" are Jewish places of worship. They are for prayer and religious services, ceremonies and study.
These are not the only places of worship as there are many different religions in the world. If you know of a religious centre or place of prayer or worship, we have not named, please write to us in the comments below!
Please let us know if these explanations and examples helped you, Saeed!
What question do you have about American English? Send us an email at learningenglish @ ooanews.com .
Ed Viesturs grew up in Rockford, Illinois, where the tallest thing on the horizon was the water tower. But on Thursday, Viesturs became the only American to climb to the top of the world's 14 highest mountains.
His last hike was up Mount Annapurna, in Asia's snowcapped Himalayas. At 26,545feet, its peak is the 10th highest in the world. It is the mountain that inspired him to start climbing.
"It tends to be the trickiest, the most dangerous," said Viesturs. "There's no simple way to climb it. There are threatening avalanches（雪崩）and ice falls that protect the mountain."
In high school, Viesturs read French climber Maurice Herzog's tale of climbing the icy Annapurna. Herzog's story was of frostbite（冻伤）and difficulty and near-death experiences. Viesturs was hooked right away.
Viesturs got his start on Washington's Mount Rainier in 1977, guiding hikes in the summer. Fifteen years ago, he set out to walk up to the world's highest peaks. Finally, he's done.
The pioneering climber talks about mountains as if they were living creatures that should be treated with respect. "You have to use all of your senses, all of your abilities to see if the mountain will let you climb it," said Viesturs. "If we have the patience and the respect, and if we're here at the right time, under the right circumstances, they allow us to go up, and allow us to come down."
What's next for a man who can't stop climbing? "I'm going to hug my wife and kids and kind of kick back and enjoy the summer," says Viesturs. But for a man who's climbed the world's 14 tallest mountains, he will probably soon set off on yet another adventure.
Computers, smartphones, and audio players are an essential part of students' everyday lives. That means that whenever students are doing homework, they are going to be faced with the problem of using their devices for purposes other than learning. Instead of concentrating on one task, they are performing multiple tasks.
According to the research by Larry Rosen, published in the journal Computers in Human Science, students spend up to 45% of their homework time on various tasks unrelated to their studies. Students often get distracted（使分心）by their phones or use their laptops for unauthorized activities. Often, students think that they are able to multitask effectively, without sacrificing（牺牲）their studies. However, the research shows that it is true in only 5% of all cases.
But why do teenagers multitask? The answer is simple: multitask ing makes us feel good. As the research indicates, the entertainment gained from secondary activities during studies makes learners feel better emotionally.
Watching TV or talking to your friends by email is pleasant and helps students fight boredom while doing homework or listening to a lecture they find boring. Another reason why students multitask is that they simply do not see the negative impact it has on their coursework. Teenagers often overrate their abilities. The seemingly tiny distractions, however, result in a constant need to switch focus and sort out information, injuring the brain by overuse and making the process inefficient.
However, the effects of multitasking are not entirely negative. The research conducted by HKU indicates that people who routinely multitask are able to use their senses in conjunction more easily. Other research also shows that multitasking has a positive effect on the ability to pass judgment and solve problems quickly and efficiently.
In June 2014, Huf fington Post and Mail Online reported that three-year-old Victoria Wilcher, who had suffered facial scarring（结疤）, had been kicked out of a KFC because she was frightening customers. Later, KFC announced that no evidence had been found to support the story. This phenomenon is largely a product of the increasing pressure in newsrooms that care more about traffic figures.
Brooke Binkowski, an editor, says that, during her career, she has seen a shift towards less editorial oversight in newsrooms. "Clickbait is king, so newsrooms will uncritically print something unreal. Not all newsrooms are like this, but a lot of them are."
Asked what the driving factor was, a journalist said, "There is undoubtedly pressure to churn out（粗制滥造）stories in order to get clicks, because they equal money. At my former employer in particular, the pressure was on due to the limited resources. That made the environment quite horrible to work in."
In a February 2023 report for Digital Journalism, Craig Silverman wrote, "Today the bar for what is worth giving attention to seems to be much lower. Within minutes or hours, a badly sourced report can be changed into a story that is repeated by dozens of news websites, resulting in tens of thousands of shares. Once a certain critical mass is reached, repetition has a powerful effect on belief. Thus, the rumor（谣言）simply becomes true for readers."
And, in spite of the direction that some newsrooms seem to be heading in, a critical eye is becoming more, not less important, according to the New York Times' public editor, Margaret Sullivan. "Reporters and editor s have to be more careful than ever before. It's extremely important to question and to use every verification（验证）method available before publication." Yet those working in newsrooms talk of doubtful stories being tolerated because, in the words of some senior editors, "a click is a click, regardless of the advantage of a story". And, "if the story does turn out to be false, it's simply a chance for another bite at the cherry."
Verification and fact-checking are regularly falling victim to the pressure to bring in the numbers, and if the only result of being caught out is another chance to bring in the clicks, that looks unlikely to change.
How to Build Patience Abilities
What's the purpose of building patience abilities? In a word, happiness. Better relationships, more success. But indeed it takes efforts to build them successfully. . Thus, when the big ones come, we will have developed the patience we need for hard times.
. We, human beings, are still constructed with our old reptilian（爬行动物的）brain that protects our physical and emotional survival. The urge to protect ourselves and what we consider valuable is absolutely habit-forming. So the first step in growing patience is to get in touch with the addictive quality of the opposite of patience—anger, impatience, blame and shame. We all have them, and we can grow beyond them.
Upgrade our attitude towards discomfort and pain. . We try to change the other person, situation or thing that we think is causing our discomfort. But the problem is that it is not the outside thing that's the source of our pain, but how our mind is set. So the solution to pain is an inside job.
Pay attention when the impatience or pain starts. Most of us don't really realize it when we are feeling even the smallest—but very present—painful feelings. We ignore the fact that we're in pain and focus completely on fixing the problem. . Focusing on what's actually happening, you can notice the worry of not wanting what's happening, the resistance.
Practise positive self-talk. When you find yourself impatient, or angry with yourself, you can remind yourself that you are growing. You can say to yourself, "It's true. I don't like this. ."
A.This is uncomfortable, but I can tolerate it.
B.Patience is good for you in every aspect.
C.Don't blame yourself for being angry sometimes.
D.Pain has its purposes and pushes us to find solutions.
E.Understand the addictive nature of anger and impatience.
F.Effective ways are recommended to train ourselves to work with little pain and annoyance.
G.But to care for ourselves, get curious' about what's happening in the moment inside you.
If someone were to ask me who the most influential person in my life was, I'd most likely tell him or her that it's my brother, Chris. My brother is one of the most 1 people in my life. I may not always act like it, but I 2 him and respect him. It's hard to think of everything he's done for me and not 3 him. There's the basic 4 that most older brothers do. You know, baby-sit you, 5 you with your homework, and let you use their stuff. But my brother did a lot more for me. He was the one who taught me how to read and how to tie my shoes. He taught me how to hold my 6 underwater.
He even taught me how not to touch his things. He also did other typical big brother stuff. Like shut me in the closet（储藏室）, play tricks on me, "forbid（禁止）" me to 7 his stuff. But for each "mean" thing he did to me, he did about five 8 things. One nice thing he did was that he always let me hang around with him and his friends. Because of that I actually have two brothers instead of one. My other "brother" is Chris's best friend, Corey. They spent a lot of time together when they were younger, and since Chris was nice, I 9 got to do stuff with them. Since Corey was as much my brother as Chris was, of course they both pulled little 10 on me. But I must admit a lot of the tricks 11 because I was a slightly gullible（易受骗的）child. One that 12 comes to mind is when Chris and Corey 13 to convince me that they were being sucked（吸入）into the ground.
I was so 14 that I went inside and told Mum that they were, being sucked down. As I said, I was a slightly gullible child. Yes. We had some 15 times.
Laba Festival, also simply （call）"Laba", falls on the eighth day of the twelfth month of the Chinese lunar year. The festival has this name because the twelfth month is also called "la" month in Chinese while the number eight （pronounce）"ba".
Since it's in the last month, the festival implies （say）goodbye to the old and embracing the new, and is often regarded a warm-up celebration for the upcoming Spring Festival.
Legend has it the Ming emperor Zhu Yuanzhang herded the landowner's cattle when he was a child. Because one of the cattle broke its leg and the landowner didn't give him any food for three days. Zhu was almost starved to （dead）and found a mouse hole. He dug out some beans, grain and some other food, so he made some porridge and found it delicious.
Later, Zhu Yuanzhang came into power. When he thought of the delicious taste of the porridge, he ordered his servants to use a variety of food （cook）sweet porridge and shared with all the top civil and military officials. Later, the officials learned to cook this kind of porridge （they）and introduced it to the civil society. Gradually eating porridge became a （tradition）custom. The day Zhu Yuanzhang ate the sweet porridge was on the eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, this porridge is also called lab a porridge.
I knew the fearful day would come sooner or later. However, it came too fast. I was waiting in the dental（牙齿的）clinic, nervous about what was to come.
Seeing my nervousness, my parents told me to sit up, and to take deep breaths to keep calm, which worked. However, the peace was short-lived. Almost immediately, my name was called, signaling my turn had come. I pretended to be deaf but my mother gestured at me to stand up. I forced myself to step forward and tripped over a toy left lying around by some kid. My clumsiness（笨拙）got me the attention of everyone in the room.
I had refused my parents offer to accompany me. I meant to show them that I was brave enough to face the difficulty on my own. Thankfully, I forgot my anxiety as I looked around the dentist's room. Tools of different sizes were arranged neatly in a tray（托盘）on the tiny table which was connected to a chair with buttons and a light hanging right over it. I didn't look at my dentist in the eye as I took my place on the chair nervously. I almost jumped out of the seat when all of a sudden the chair moved and I was lying down facing the bright yellow light.
The dentist spoke in a relaxing voice behind her mask. Everything was going smoothly and I was quite proud of myself. Then something went wrong. I was picking up the cup of water placed next to the chair for patients to rinse（冲洗）their mouths when I caught sight of the dental drill. Panic related to a bad childhood experience involving the drill kicked into me, and I spat out the rinsing water, right into the surprised dentist's face. I froze with awkwardness and my mind went blank.
注意：
1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
A moment later, I got to my feet and tried to wipe（擦去）away the water on the dentist's face with a tissue.
I lowered my head in shame and apologized to her.
