A Letter to the Editor of a Newspaper

　　June 20th, 2004

　　Dear Mr. / Miss Editor,

　　I am a student from Tsinghua University and I am writing to you about my experience of buying a dictionary and my complaint about the service of a bookstore.

　　It was about a month ago. I went to a bookstore nearby the university to buy an English dictionary. It was only after I paid for the dictionary and returned to school that I found some pages were missing. But when I went back to the bookstore to tell them about the matter, they said that I should have checked the dictionary before I left the store. According to them, it was my fault and they hold no responsibility for the whole matter.

　　What I want to say is that sincerity and enthusiasm are vital to the survival of service industries in such a market economy featured by fierce competition. It was quite easy for them to change the dictionary for me but they refused to do so. They will lose all customers if they persist in doing so. I hope that this letter can draw the attention of the whole society and that the problem can be solved as soon as possible.

　　Best regards.

　　Yours sincerely，

　　Li Ming

　　sincerity [sin'seriti] n. 诚实，真实，诚心诚意

　　enthusiasm [in'θju:ziæzəm] n. 热情，热心;热衷的事物

　　vital ['vaitl] adj. 至关重要的，生死攸关的，有活力的，致命的

　　survival [sə'vaivəl] n. 生存，幸存者

　　fault [fɔ:lt] n. 缺点，过失，故障，毛病，过错，[地]断层

　　sincerely [sin'siəli] adv. 真诚地，真心地

　　competition [kɔmpi'tiʃən] n. 比赛，竞争，竞赛

　　Your Help Needed

　　Dear friends,

　　I am writing to you, on behalf of the Student Union, to ask for your help for Li Ming, a schoolmate of ours from the Department of Computer Science. He is seriously ill now and has to have a heart transplant at once. To make things worse, he comes from the west of our country and his family is quite poor.

　　Li Ming is now confronted with the following difficulties. To begin with, he can't afford the medical expenses. His family doesn't have a good financial background. Moreover, his parents have already been deep in debt in order to send him to university. In addition, his family is far away and he needs someone to take care of him day and night. Only with intense care can our friend recover from his disease.

　　On no account can we see our friend suffer or die. He is in desperate need of your help, especially financial donations to help him pay for his expenses. Let's all give him our hands. Anyone who wants to offer help can contact us at 88588858 or you can email us bylove@sina.com. Please act without delay.

　　Yours sincerely,

　　Zhang Hua

　　sincerely [sin'siəli] adv. 真诚地，真心地

　　addition [ə'diʃən] n. 增加，附加物，加法

　　intense [in'tens] adj. 强烈的，剧烈的，热烈的

　　desperate ['despərit] adj. 绝望的，不顾一切的

　　delay [di'lei] v. 耽搁，推迟，延误