When it comes to protecting your mental health, you can take steps to adjust your daily routine to be a bit kinder to yourself. Here’s some of the advice some experts offered.

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Stephanie Roth-Goldberg, a licensed clinical social worker, says this could mean allowing time to relax with your coffee for a few minutes before leaving the house or getting some physical activity before work. See how long you need to accomplish something good for yourself.【小题2】!

Take breaks during the workday

【小题3】 — it can do wonders for your concentration and overall mood. If you don’t have a lot of opportunities to take breaks, Goldberg recommends going for a short walk or even visiting a friend at their desk to help break up the day.

Designate a screen-free time during the day

Goldberg explains that designating a time during the day when you completely disconnect from screens is “a great mental health tool that people don’t make use of.”【小题4】It’s commonly recommended to disconnect before bed, though. “Spending time away from screens allows for creativity, connection and feelings that otherwise would not happen,” she says.

Set up a bedtime routine

Getting enough high-quality sleep is essential to our mental and physical health. Katie Leikam, a licensed clinical social worker, recommends setting up a nighttime routine to ensure you get the shut-eye you need. 【小题5】and turn off your lights at the same time every night. “This will help you obtain better sleep, which is one of the best things you can do for your mental health,” says Leikam.

If you’re ready to fire up your imagination, writing a short story or novel is one of the best ways to let your creativity run wild! To make your own story, all you’ll need is something to write with and a bit of inspiration. We’ll walk you through the best ways to beat writer’s block and create your own story right now.

【小题1】You’ll want a main character or characters, people with whom they are friends and with whom they are enemies. Authors find that actually planning the entire story, though it may take months, is beneficial to creating a smooth, connected story. Developing your characters is important and conveying them correctly in your work is even more so.

Use action and plot to progress your story.【小题2】Instead, show them. The readers can figure out your characters’ personalities better when they observe the characters’ reactions to different situations. For example: your main character, Mary, is very diligent. Don’t write, “Mary was a very diligent woman” write, “Mary always stayed in the library for hours, picking through reference book after reference book.”【小题3】

Choose a setting, or time and place, where your story will take place. Try to come up with a setting that the reader can find believable. Even if it’s a fictional setting, it should have elements that ground it in reality.【小题4】Make up your own town or state if you want. For example, Harry Potter has a very fictional setting, but the idea of school and the importance of friends and family are very real and very universal and make the fictional elements feel more realistic.

Brainstorm your plot and organize it in an outline before you get writing.【小题5】Then, when you write, all you have to do is look at the outline.

Learning to pronounce English words correctly can be one of the hardest parts of learning English. Here are some tips to help you pronounce even the difficult English words correctly.

Learn to listen. Before you learn how to speak, you’ll need to learn how to listen. 【小题1】 Did the speaker sleep or slip? Did he hurt his chin (下巴) or his shin? If you can hear the difference, it will be easier to speak the difference.

【小题2】 When you speak, you move your mouth. How you move your mouth affects how you pronounce a word. The first step to correcting your mouth shape is to notice it and pay attention. There are a few ways you can check that your mouth and lips are making the correct shape, for example, using a mirror (镜子). 【小题3】

Pay attention to your tongue (舌头). The main difference between rice and lice is in your tongue. When you speak, you move your tongue to make sounds. You probably didn’t even notice that, since you do it without thinking. To improve your English pronunciation, it’s a good idea to check what your tongue is doing. Some difficult sounds for non-native speakers to make are the letters “L” and “R”, and the sound “TH”. 【小题4】

Break words down into sounds. Words are made up of syllables (音节), or parts. The word “syllable”, for example, has three syllables: syl-la-ble. 【小题5】 To check how many syllables a word has, place your hand flat just under your chin. Say the word slowly. Each time your chin touches your hand, that’s a syllable.

Pronunciation is important for you to learn English well. Just remember: Practice makes perfect!