— Simon, when are we going to have a class me...

Our class had a weekly class meeting this week. We talked about how to deal with lies, hoaxes(骗局) or rumors (谣言) . Here are the stories some students told.

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Zhang Wei: Yesterday my friend Jim went to school without his homework. He told the teacher that his dog ate it. It was just an excuse he made to cover the fact that he didn’t do his homework. The teacher knew about that and made Jim stay to finish his homework after school. Sometimes we think we can avoid trouble by making excuses when we do something wrong, but we’re really making the bigger.

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Chen Ping: Last week I got a message. It said,” A little girl called Julia has brain cancer. The girl will get three cents from American Online each time this message is forwarded(转发). So please be kind and forward this to everyone you know. If not, you will have bad luck for a year.” In fact, it is just one of the silly chain letters(连锁信)to cheat you and waste your time.

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Xu Yan: A big earthquake (地震) hit Ya’an, Sichuan on April 20th. The earthquake was strongly felt by people in Chengdu. A rumor said Chengdu would be hit by a bigger earthquake in the coming days. For the next several days, thousands of people camped outside their houses at night because of fear. Besides, many people rushed to buy food, water, medicine and so on. Some businessmen used people’s fear of earthquake to help sell their goods (商品) at a higher price. Of course, nothing happened in the end.

The topic of this week’s class meeting

1.

Jim’s excuse for not bringing his homework

2.

Julia’s illness

3.

The place people in Chengdu camped when the rumor came

4.

The people who sold their goods at a higher price

5.