Little Women is Louisa May Alcott’s most famous novel. The novel follows the ____ of the four March sisters-Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy-and is based on the writer’s own ____ of growing up with her three sisters during the American Civil War（1861-1865）.

The main theme in the story is the importance of ____. Other themes include the need to work and self-improvement.

When the story begins the sisters are complaining because they are ____ and have to work. Their mother says that they mustn’t spend money on pleasure ____ there is a war and everybody must help. Their father is in the army. In the letters their father sends home, he tells his daughters to work hard and not to waste their time. They must try to ____ the bad things in their lives and stay cheerful. He wants to be proud of them when he comes home. The girls decide to make an effort to ____ themselves because they love and miss their father very much.

Alcott was interested in women’s rights and through the four March sisters, she explored （探索）four different ____ of being a woman in those days. Meg leaves the family to get ____ and have a new family. Beth devotes （致力于）herself to ____ her own family. Amy focuses on herself and her own pleasure. And Jo, like Alcott herself, tries to have a career in writing and care for her family at the same time.

Like most kids, Landon Kenstrick, 5 years old, has a favorite animal. However, his favorite animal is quite different from other kids’. He loves pangolins.

Pangolins have small heads and long, broad tails. They are toothless. They have small ears, but their hearing is good.

Their sense of smell is well-developed, too. But their sight is poor. When they feel frightened, they roll up into a ball to protect themselves. “My favorite thing about the pangolin is the scales （鳞片）it has on its body. They look cool, “Landon said.

Landon first learned about pangolins from a TV show, Wild Kratts. Knowing that pangolins are facing the danger of dying out, Landon quickly decided to take action to protect them. He wanted to tell everyone he knew about them. On Halloween, he had his parents carve （雕刻）a pangolin into their pumpkin （南瓜）, so that when people asked what it was, he could tell them all about his favorite animal. When Christmas came around, Landon had only one wish: to save the pangolins. His parents had him “adopt （领养）” a pangolin in Landon’s name. They also came up with a good idea. They helped Landon make Christmas gifts to sell to help raise money for the pangolins at a market. So far, he has raised $ 400.

If you think a 5-year-old boy is too young to save the pangolins, you’d be wrong. Landon told us nobody’s too young to save anything.

   Think about what you like to wear on the weekend. There’s a good chance that you like to put on a pair of blue jeans. At any moment, about half of the world’s population is wearing jeans. But according to a new study, our love for jeans may be bad for Earth. Denim （牛仔布）might be putting some sea animals in danger.

Every time we wash our jeans, tiny bits of denim will flow out of our washing machines, down into the world’s rivers, lakes and oceans.

You might wonder: Isn’t denim made of cotton, a natural material? How can it become a danger to nature? Well, in the process of making jeans, denim is treated with many types of man-made chemicals. Some improve its durability （耐用性）and feel; others give jeans their blue color.

Scientists studied the Great Lakes in America and the Arctic Ocean in northern Canada. They found denim waste in all of the samples （样本）they had collected. It is feared that the harmful chemicals in denim have spread far and wide. Scientists aren’t yet sure how these chemicals might harm animals.

In the study, the scientists also washed jeans to see how many bits of denim each pair would drop per wash. The answer was frightening: About 50,000. Not all of them make their way into the environment. Wastewater treatment plants hold back 83 to 99 percent of them. This may sound pretty good, However, one percent of 50,000 bits are still 500 per wash. Now think about the number of jeans around the world and the times each of them gets washed. As a result, a large amount of denim waste still gets into the environment.

Does this mean we shouldn’t wear jeans? Probably not “We need to buy fewer jeans and only wash them when we truly need to do it,” says Sam Athey, one of the scientists. “You don’t need to wash your jeans after having worn them only a couple of times.”

Zhu Keming never thought he would be a hero one day, but he was just that on Saturday when he saved the lives of six runners during the mountain marathon （马拉松）in Baiyin, Gansu Province, in which 21 people lost their lives.

It started off as a normal day for the 49-year-old shepherd, who was taking care of his more than 30 sheep on the mountainside. But soon the weather was terrible, with rainfall and hail. The rain got so heavy that he couldn’t see clearly and had to run into a cave where he normally went to have a rest. Soon he fell asleep in the cave after covering himself with some quilts he had stored there.

But he was awakened at 2 pm by an unusual sound that was not coming from his sheep. The sound that woke Zhu was the cry of a runner in the marathon. He was wet from head to toe and trembling because of cold. Zhu took him into the cave, lit a fire and covered the stricken （受伤的）runner with his quilts.

Zhu said that there were soon five runners huddling （挤作一团）in the cave, and he then decided to go outside to try to attract the attention of rescuers （救援者）. When he risked coming out of the cave, he found another stricken runner lying on the ground in bad condition. Then the other runners came out of the cave to give a hand. Zhu and the six runners remained huddled around the fire in his cave until 7 pm, when the rescue team arrived.

“I just did what I had to when I saw that these people were in danger. I think everyone would do the same thing in such a situation, “Zhu said to Beijing News.

Luo Chongchuan, the village head of Changsheng, where Zhu and his family live, said that the shepherd is a warm-hearted person who often helps his villagers.

   Poverty （贫困）is a big problem around the world. But China has done a good job of dealing with it and it has found its own way to fight poverty. Instead of just giving money to poor people, it has tried to educate people and give them the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty. Ordinary （平凡的）people play a big role in the fight. Here are two of them.

After graduating from Beijing Normal University in 2016, Huang Wenxiu gave up the chances to work in big cities and returned to her hometown of Baise in Guangxi and served as the village’s Party chief. A total of 418 villagers were lifted out of poverty thanks to her efforts. Unluckily, she died in a flash flood at the age of 30 while driving back to her village in Baise. She was given the title “role model of the times” by the central government.

When Mao Xianglin started to work as the Party secretary of his village, there was only one pathway out of the village for many years. He led more than 100 villagers to build a road with their hands. It took them seven years to build an eight-kilometer road. Mao then encouraged the villagers to grow oranges. Last year, their orange yield （产量）was nearly 40 tons. Young people have returned to the village to sell oranges online. By the end of 2019, 269 villagers had been lifted out of poverty. The per capita income （人均收入）reached 12, 670 yuan, 40 times more than in the 1990s.

Now a growing number of young people are wearing traditional hanfu, or Han Chinese clothing. You may see them eating, shopping, travelling
41． even working in hanfu.

Hanfu
42． popular in part because the government is developing traditional culture. Period dramas have also helped develop the public’s interest in traditional
43． clothes.

What hanfu is like is different since each Han-controlled dynasty had
44． own style, but the clothes are usually loose, with sleeves （袖子）that hang down to the knees and flowing robes （长袍）around the body.

In modern China, people in different fields are
45． in wearing hanfu: from history lovers to students and even young
46．.

“Clothes are the foundation （基础）of culture,” said Jiang Xue, who is a
47． of a hanfu club in Beijing. “If we as a people and as a country do not even
48． our traditional clothing or don’t wear them, how can we talk about other important parts of our culture?”

However, there is
49． a long way for the style to go into people’s daily life. Some say they are
50． of being watched by others when wearing hanfu in public.

   If you don’t know what your friends are doing, will you get anxious （焦虑的）? Fifty- one percent of teenagers said yes when they were asked this question in a recent study. The fear that “I’m absent while others might be having fun” is called FOMO — fear of missing out.

FOMO pushes you to check the social media （社交媒体）more often. This can make you become more easily affected （影响）by others. You may feel sad, lonely and bored if you start to experience FOMO.

So, what can we do to deal with it?

Change your focus

You should stop worrying about what you may be missing out on. Instead, try to focus on the good things you have already been doing. Use your spare time to do things you enjoy, such as painting or playing soccer.

Keep a diary

By keeping a personal diary, you will learn to be more grateful for the great things you have in your life. You will realize that you are the only one who has control over your life, not the Internet. ….

Build up real connections

When you feel lonely, why not meet up with people in real life? Talking with your family or taking part in a group activity can help you feel better.

As long as you live in the moment, you’ll never miss out on anything in your life!

   假如你是李华, 你的英国笔友Lisa发来邮件, 询问你的暑假安排。请你根据图片提示, 用英语给她写封回信。

I’m glad to hear from you. Now let me tell you something about my holiday plan. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Best wishes!

Yours,

Li Hua