【推荐1】Sweetest Day is always the third Saturday in October.This holiday is much more important in some regions than in others (Detroit,Cleveland and Buffalo being the biggest Sweetest Day cities).It is a holiday that is gaining in popularity every year throughout the country.

Sweetest Day is celebrated on the third Saturday in October as a day to make someone happy.It is an occasion which offers all of us an opportunity to remember not only the sick,aged,and orphaned,but also friends,relatives and associates whose helpfulness and kindness we have enjoyed.

Over 60 years ago,a Cleveland man,believing that the city's orphans and shut-ins too often felt forgotten and neglected,formed the idea of showing them that they were remembered.He did this through the distribution of small gifts.With the help of his friends and neighbors,he distributed these remembrances on a Saturday in October.During the years that followed,other Clevelanders began to participate in the celebration ceremony,which came to be called "Sweetest Day".In time,the Sweetest Day idea of spreading cheer to the poor was broadened to include everyone,and became an occasion for remembering others with a kind act or a small gift.And soon the idea spread to other cities all over the country.

Sweetest Day is not based on any single group's religious belief or on a family relationship.It is a reminder that a thoughtful word or deed enriches life and gives it meaning.Because for many people remembering takes the form of gift-giving,Sweetest Day offers us the opportunity to show others that we care,in a practical way.

【推荐3】Mother's Day is a holiday that celebrates and honors mothers in the United States. It is celebrated on the second Sunday in May. It became an official holiday in the country at the start of the 20th century as a way to honor mothers whose sons had died in war.

The holiday is celebrated in a number of ways. People give mothers gifts like flowers, cards, and jewelry to thank them for all their hard work. A popular symbol of the holiday is the flower called carnation. This is because when the holiday first began in the U.S. people were encouraged to wear a red carnation if their mother was alive or a white carnation if their mother was dead. Many people take their mothers out for a special meal. In fact, Mother's Day is the most popular date in the U.S. for people to go out and eat and it is estimated that people spend billions on meals and gifts. Mother's Day is also the most popular day to make long distance calls in the U.S. It is the second most popular gift-giving day after Christmas.

Since its establishment, Mother's Day has been criticized for becoming highly financial. In fact, the founder of the U.S. holiday, Anna Jarvis, began protesting the holiday and was even arrested for disturbing the peace for a public march. Jarvis's own mother started the campaign to establish a mother's holiday during the American Civil War.

Mothers are not the only people celebrated on this day. All mother figures including grandmothers, great-grandmothers, stepmothers, and foster mothers are honored on the holiday. In schools many students make special gifts, including handmade cards. While widely recognized, Mother's Day is not a federal holiday. Many other countries around the world have their own version of Mother's Day.

【推荐1】To find out how effective language learning applications allow mobile users to study a new language anywhere and anytime, Shawn Loewen, a professor at Michigan State University (MSU), recently conducted a study focusing on a popular language learning app and e-learning platform first launched in 2007, to see if it really worked at teaching a new language.

“Despite the fact that millions globally are already using language learning apps, there is a lack of published research on their effect on speaking skills, ” Loewen said. “Actually there are no other studies that have researched mobile language learning apps in this way. Therefore, this study makes an important contribution to the field. ”

In the study, which is published in Foreign Language Annals, 85 undergraduate students at MSU used the app for 12 weeks to learn Spanish. At the beginning of the study, the students took a pretest to examine their existing oral proficiency (熟练),vocabulary and grammar in Spanish. After 12 weeks, the 54 students who completed all study requirements took the same test again to see how much knowledge they had gained.

The study showed that nearly all the students improved in their Spanish language knowledge and ability to communicate. “The result proves that using the app can advance the development of oral communication skills and not just grammar and vocabulary, as a previous study had shown,” Loewen said.

As one might expect, learning gains were related to the amount of time students used. The more time the learners used, the more progress they made. Also, no matter how convenient and effective a language learning app may be, what might be the most important is that learners stick with it.

【推荐2】In August 2020, Kate Wilson, a 16-year-old from Shrewsbury, posted on the social media video platform TikTok a series of sentences from books she had read. Set to a piece of soft music, the short video plays out as Wilson holds up copies of the books. “You have been the last dream of my soul.” from A Tale of Two Cities. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,” from Wuthering Heights. It has been viewed more than 1.2 million times.

These posts, called BookTok, can attract millions of views, and light an appreciation of books in young readers again. “I started reading again after six years when I came across BookTok for the first time last October,” says Mireille Lee, 15.

Adam Silvera’s 2017 novel They Both Die at the End is one of the books to have benefited from the BookTok effect. In March, it shot to the top of the teen fiction charts, selling more than 4, 000 copies a week. The book has sold more than 200, 000 copies in the UK after thousands of posts about it.

Publishers are watching with interest. Publisher Horrox says, “There’s something about the fact that it is under a minute. People who are consuming this content watch a 32-second video and someone’s like: ‘This book has romance, and it’s really heartbreaking. Thankfully, it’s only a fiction.’ And then the viewers think: ‘Oh, OK, those are all things that I’m interested in. I’ll go buy it.’” By December 2020, Wilson was being contacted regularly by publishers, who had realized that TikTok “really does sell books”.

Jenny is 22, and says, “I thought TikTok was ridiculous last year before the first lockdown. I really did think it was just for 14-year-olds, but BookTok is such a lovely community. There are people who like the same books as me, and I can talk about the books that I like. It just seems a little bit magical.”

【推荐3】It’s been a hard time for rhinos (犀牛) lately. Recently the International Union for Conservation announced the western black rhinos had died out in the wild. It was last seen in western Africa in 2006. Now, those who work to protect the animals are trying to make sure that won’t happen to other rhinos.

19 south-central black rhinos in South Africa were driven to an area nearly 1,000 miles away, which was said to be the gentlest and quickest way to transport the animals. They were taken to a new home that would keep them safe from hunters.

Though it is not allowed to hunt rhinos, many are still killed for their horns, which can sell for as much as $30,000 each. Most of them are used to make drugs as traditional medicines in Asian countries. Some people believe that the horns work well in treating pain, fever and even cancer. However, there is no medical evidence yet.

Black rhino population began falling rapidly in the second half of the 1900s because of poaching. In fact, some people still hunt the animals at the risk of being put into prison. And many of the places where the animals used to live in were destroyed when people started building farms on the grasslands. Until the 1960s, about 65,000 black rhinos lived throughout most of Africa. Today, fewer than 5,000 are left — most of them in zoos and wildlife reserves.

South Africa has the largest population of rhinos in the world. Poaching is an especially big problem in that country. So far, more than 340 rhinos have been killed there. Since 2003, the Black Rhino Expansion Project has been helping the south-central black rhinos in South Africa. The group works with landowners to find areas where rhinos can live safely away from hunters.

So far, the group has successfully saved about 120 rhinos. Leaders of the project say the south-central black rhinos have seen a rise in numbers. It is hoped that, with continued support, these rhinos can escape the unfortunate result of the western black rhinos.