参考答案：Topic A: How to Make the Best Use of Money
— How do you finance your college education now
— My parents finance my education at the present time. I think this happens to the overwhelming majority of students in China. What about you
— Me too. Various media have been constantly spreading Western idea to us. They say most American college students earn their own tuition and daily expenses by doing part-time jobs in their spare time or during the holidays.
— It’s a better way actually, both for students and their parents. However, this doesn’t work in China. At most we could take up some part-times jobs which could only be sufficient for our daily expenses.
— Yeah, and there’s another thing we could do —to make the best use of the money given by our parents. What do you think is the best way to budget our money
—In my opinion, we must know what to buy and what not to buy. As students should be independent from our parents’ support, we have no right to enjoy a luxurious life with our parents’ money no matter whether they are rich or not.
— What on earth is necessary or unnecessary according to your ideas since l think it’s not an easy job to distinguish between them.
— In my belief, the things we cannot do without are necessary while something that makes our lives more comfortable is optional and to some extent unnecessary. We can only enjoy life at will after we have begun to earn our own living.
— So you will spend your money freely when you graduate and start a career
— Of course not. At that time I’ll have another way to make the best use of my money.
— I agree with you here. Even we are financially independent, we should make the best use of money. I will have a budget for the proportion of my monetary consumption for every month or every year. I must set aside a reasonable amount of money for my savings every month when I receive my pay. The rest could be at my free disposal.
— Ha-ha-ha! Then you’ll be quite rich after a few years! If I’ll be able to earn my own expenses, I’ll isolate a handsome proportion of my salary to buy stocks or other securities that could bring me regular profits.
— But before you invest money, you must be an expert in investment, or you’ll lose everything.
— Of course, I will
— I don’t have the courage to take any risky investment. Banking is my best choice I think. Even if I’ll not get anything extra, at least I could get back what I have.
Topic E: Virtues of Being Young and Being Old
— There’re more and more old people in the world you know. The society is getting older. If some predictions about the future come true I could hardly imagine what I’ll see after dozens of years.
— So you are worrying even now. Are you worrying that you’ll see groups of old ladies and gentlemen everywhere one day
— Exactly! Can you imagine that White hair, wrinkled faces, bent bodies, slow motion... everywhere! Unfortunately I’ll be one of them. The world will not be as beautiful as it is now.
— Don’t worry! The society is changing; people’s ideas are changing and so is their life style, and ways of looking at life as well as old people’s way of living in all aspects.
— What do you mean by listing so many changes
— You know, both being young and being old have their respective virtues.
— But I think there must be more conveniences and beautiful things about being young.
— Not necessarily. I want to know what you think of the virtues of being young.
— First, young people have sunny faces, strong and straight bodies, quick minds and movements, and most importantly they have more time in front of them.
— Those are really the virtues of being young, but we could view them in a quite different way. All the perfect faces and bodies they have will be gone one day. They tend to make more mistakes only because they always think that they will still have the chance to learn and to correct mistakes, but that isn’t always the case.
— You’re being quite realistic. We all will get old and face all the problems old age brings us. That’s what I’m worrying about. Maybe there’re also some virtues about being old too.
— Truly. When you are old, you’ll look at the world with a detached attitude, never too happy, never too sad, never too anxious and never too fussy.
— That sounds fabulous! We young people are always disrupted by various strong emotions and cannot find the way out. Maybe old age will be a good solution.
— Also at an old age you’ll have more time of your own. You could do something that you haven’t had the time to do when young. Now comes the chance.
— Wow, great! I like computer games so much that I have always been dreaming of playing them all day long without any worrying, but now I couldn’t do that because I know study and work must be the first on my list. I cannot wait to be old now.
— Well, you will some day! But I don’t think you’ll still be a computer game fan when you are a little old woman!