Peter was a driver. He drove a ________ for his friend John, a rich businessman. He drove John to work every day. He worked hard. But he couldn't work ________he drank too much. And once he almost lost his life in the traffic accident after he got drunk. John got very ________ and worried. But he really wanted to help Peter. He was poor and he had a big family to hold. He promised to stop ________ at once. John told him to be careful next time, ________ he had to leave.

One Monday morning, Peter________ into the office with two badly burnt ears.

“What happened to your ears?” asked John.

“Well,” said the man. “I went to watch a football ________ yesterday while my wife was ironing （熨）clothes. She put the iron （熨斗）________ the telephone when she went to cook supper. Our team lost the game and I felt sorry for it. Then I went into the sitting room, the telephone rang and I ________ the iron!”

“And what happened to ________ ear?”

“When I put the iron down on the table, the telephone rang again! ”

Many have heard of shark fin soup. This famous and expensive dish is especially popular in southern China. But do you realize that you’re killing a whole shark each time you enjoy a bowl of shark fin soup?

When people catch sharks, they cut off their fins and throw the sharks back into the ocean. This is not only cruel, but also harmful to the environment. Without a fin, a shark can no longer swim and slowly dies. Sharks are at the top of the food chain in the ocean’s ecosystem. If their numbers drop too low, it will bring danger to all ocean life. Many believe that sharks can never be endangered because they are the strongest in their food chain. But in fact, around 70 million sharks are caught and traded in this industry every year. The numbers of some kinds of sharks have fallen by over 90 percent in the last 20 to 30 years.

So far, no scientific studies have shown that shark fins are good for health, so why eat them? Help save the sharks!

Wang Xiangjun is the first blind student to take gaokao in Anhui. She went to a music college in Tianjin in 2015. It’s never an easy thing for blind people to do that.

Wang was blind when she was born. At the age of eight, she started to learn to play the piano. The first problem for Wang was to find the keys. She had to listen to the melody （旋律）again and again, keep it in mind and then practice playing it over and over again. She worked very hard and played better and better. Music made her confident and happy.

“Many kind people helped me over the past years. I wish to pass on the love and kindness to more blind children by working as a teacher. ” said Wang after she graduated from college in 2019.

Her dream came true soon. She became a piano teacher in the Hefei Special Education Center that year. Now Wang lives a busy but happy life. “All of my students are so lovely. I know their difficulties in learning. I can teach them with my experience and let them know there is hope and a bright future ahead, ” said Wang.

Salt in the soil has always made it impossible to grow crops. But that’s now changing.

Famous agriculturalist （农学家）Yuan Longping said they would grow a special rice. They would turn 100 million mu of saline-alkali （盐碱的）land into farmland in the country over the next 10 years.

In 2017, Yuan’s team successfully grew rice on the saline-alkali land in Jiangsu Province. It is called sea rice. Now they have made great progress. Both China and many other countries around the world have large saline-alkali land. If all of it can be used to grow rice and grain, it is very important for food security （安全）. And it will help the UN zero-hunger goal come true.

Yuan Longping was named as “Father of Hybrid Rice”. He helped China make a great wonder—feeding nearly 20% of the world’s population with less than 9% of the world’s farmland. Then Yuan had a much bigger dream—to save the world from hunger. The world is seeing China’s sea rice as a way to fight food insecurity.

“I had a dream. Rice was as high as sorghum （高粱）；ears （穗）were as long as brooms; grains were as big as peanuts （花生）. I could actually enjoy the cool under the rice crops.” Yuan said of his childhood dream. And he was one step closer to his dream.

“I’m confident in the future of my country, and I want to do more for my motherland.” said Yuan.

   Imagine using your coat to look through the internet, send and receive messages, and even read a map. Yes, you read that correctly—your coat.

It may sound silly, but it’s something scientists are working on. Researchers at Shanghai’s Fudan University have made a new type of cloth that can be used as a digital display （显示屏）.

Professor Peng Huisheng and his team have spent 10 years trying to make “digital cloth”. After testing different combinations, they chose two materials that worked: a silver-plated yarn （镀银纱）that can light up and a kind of thread （纺线）that conducts （传导）electricity.

The results have been admirable. It’s not only wearable and foldable, but also washable. After being put through 100 wash-and-dry cycles in a washing machine and folded 10, 000 times, the cloth remained almost unchanged.

Peng believes that the new cloth could be used for many things. For example, it could allow a driver to view a GPS map on their arm while they drive around. It could also help people communicate better if they have language barriers （障碍）or disabilities.

In one test, Peng’s team collected brainwaves from volunteers who had either been playing a game or meditating. The waves were then translated into messages like “anxious” or “relaxed” and shown on the cloth. This could help deaf-mute （聋哑的） people “talk” to each other in the future.

“We hope that new materials will shape next-generation electronic devices by changing the way we interact with them, ”said Peng.

When talking about the Chinese food going abroad, you can’t forget luosifen. To make it, people should
56． rice noodles with sour bamboo shoots （竹笋）, dried tofu skin, fresh 
57． and peanuts in river snail soup. The special taste mostly comes from the sour bamboo shoots.

In the 1970s, luosifen was
58． a street snack in Liuzhou. People outside of the city knew little about it. It became an intangible cultural heritage （非物质文化遗产） of Guangxi in 2008. Now luosifen has become more and more
59． across China. And even people 
60． other countries like America, Australia, Germany and so on can also enjoy the food.

弘扬红色文化，传承红色基因。上周你校举办了“经典红歌传唱”歌咏比赛，你班以《我的祖国》为参赛曲目并获得了第一名。假如你是李华，你的英国笔友David想了解这首歌及你对它的感受，请你根据以下提示用英文给他写一封电子邮件。

1. 这首歌乔羽作词，刘炽作曲。其歌词雄壮、旋律激昂，它首唱于电影《上甘岭》中（write, great lyrics, music, be sung on the film Battle On Shangganling Mountain）

2. 你十岁时观看了电影《上甘岭》，电影中这首歌带给受伤的战士希望及力量。 那一刻，你被深深地感动了（see, bring, the wounded soldiers, hope and strength, be moved）。

3. 无论你何时听到这首歌，你都为祖国感到自豪。它激励你努力学习，今后你将尽力为祖国作贡献，并祝愿祖国。（请写出一至两点）（whenever, feel proud, encourage, devote myself to our motherland）

How’s everything going? I’d like to tell you something about the song My Motherland.

All in all, I like the song very much. What do you think of it? Look forward to hearing from you!

Li Hua