DAMP

It is damp and wet in Hong Kong in late spring and early summer. Damp air can damage our radios or TV sets. If your house is very damp, the damp will even damped the walls and cause them to stain badly.

Bad news may dampen your spirits. A sad story can put a damper on your happy feelings. Bad weather will damp down your keenness on outdoor activities.

RIVER

The most important river in the United States is the Mississippi River. The river that flows through London is the River Thames.

Heavy rainfall makes a river rise; continuous dry weather makes a river sink.

We go boating on a river, and go swimming in a river. Ships and boats sail up and down a river.

How do you know a friend is a devoted friend? A devoted friend will never sell you down the river.

Studying Abroad

To my understanding, the reason that they would like to study abroad is to start a new life because they could learn new things, make new friends, and would be independent.

First of all, most of the students study abroad for learning new things. In a foreign country, they may learn a lot of things, such as the culture, the custom and even the language there. They would surely see and experience many different and special things which would broaden their horizons when they go abroad.

Second, students going abroad are for making new friends from a foreign country. When studying abroad, they may want to make friends with local people to get familiar with their daily habits. If they stay in their own countries, they probably would not know those different people of different thinking around the world. Besides, getting to know someone form a different country would really make your life abundant.

Least but not last, students that go abroad for further studying are trained to be independent. In the foreign country, without their parents aside, they are definitely going to make living by themselves, such as washing their own clothes, cooking themselves, weighting the balance of their household, and so on.

In conclusion, to start a new life, students would choose to study abroad, would learn many things about the foreign, would make friends with local students and would be more independent comparing to going to their own countries’ university. In the view of this, I believe that they will benefit a lot as they study in foreign countries in their lives time ever after.

CRAB

Certain kinds of crabs are very tasty seafood. Do you know how many pairs of legs a crab has? Five pairs, or rather, four pairs and a pair of large front claws.

The crab walks or runs sideways, hence the saying, “You cannot make a crab walk straight.” This saying tells us not to do what cannot be done. For example, don’t try to force a boy to learn ballet if he is not cut out for it: you cannot make a crab walk straight.

What is “crabbed hand”? It refers to hand writing that is small and difficult to read. If your composition is written in a crabbed hand, other people will find it illegible.

BEE

In spring and summer, when flowers are in bloom, bees are especially busy – busy gathering nectar from flowers to make money.

People are sometimes as busy as a bee. On a day when you have a lot of cleaning and washing to do, you are as busy as a bee, aren’t you?

What’s “a bee in one’s bonnet?” It’s an idiom, meaning “a strange, fixed idea.” If a boy has a bee in his bonnet about becoming another Superman, that will be a big problem. Then it will be necessary for his parents and his friends to talk him into giving up the idea.

Ice

Ice is the solid form of water. On hot summer days you certainly enjoy iced drinks and ice-cream.

In winter time many people like to skate on frozen lakes. Everybody knows it is dangerous to skate on thin ice. So it is easy to see why the idiom “to skate on thin ice” means “to be in a risky situation”. You’ll be skating on thin ice if you take an examination without preparation.

“Break the ice” is another idiom. On a social occasion there must be somebody to break the ice at the beginning and start a conversation.

PEACOCK

A peacock is a large bird. Its long tail has bright green and gold feathers with spots like eyes on them. When a peacock raises its tail and fans out the feathers, it is indeed a wonderful sight.

A peacock likes to walk about proudly. So, if a person is very proud, we can say he is as proud as a peacock. Such a person is unpleasant. A person who plays the peacock is even more unpleasant. What kinds of people often play the peacock? Vain people do.