When Laura Smith was 14 years old, she volunteered at a nonprofit food community organization. As she was filling bags with donated (捐赠) food, she noticed something that didn’t seem right: Canned and packaged goods were plentiful, but she saw nothing fresh or green to give to families in need. She thought it would be great to change that. She wanted to start a garden on part of her parents’ farmland to provide families with home-grown produce.
While being proud of her, Laura’s father expressed worry about the workload involved. Laura had raised rabbits and lambs before, but she had never tried growing vegetables on such an extensive level. However, he soon realized that his daughter was ready. Laura did a lot of research online to find out what worked and what didn’t, which plants needed shade, which needed more water, and when was the best time to harvest each crop.
In spring 2021 Laura planted 15 types of vegetables on a land of 5,000 square meters. When the first green shoots appeared, it was an exciting feeling. Yet, that’s where the real work began. “Our summers are very hot and dry, so I had to water every day,” said Laura. Throughout the summer, she checked her plants daily for weeds and watered them by hand, using two water tanks attached to a farm vehicle to continually refill her watering can.
Laura was soon ready to harvest and weigh her first crops-the first batch weighed 40 pounds. She then packaged them and donated the products to eight local groups. “It felt really good to know that anyone who wanted fresh vegetables could get them,” Laura said.
Over the past two years, Laura has donated more than 8,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables. “Laura’s confidence and generous hand in helping those in need have made a greater impact than she could have imagined,” said Remi Freeman, an official from one of the charity groups. “It helps our mission to end hunger, and also demonstrates the selflessness and kindness that is so wonderful to see in younger people.”
1. What inspired Laura to start a garden?| A．Her interest in gardening. |
| B．Her parents’ expectations. |
| C．Lack of fresh produce in the donated food. |
| D．Poor quality of canned and packaged food. |
| A．The money needed. | B．The amount of work. |
| C．Her farming knowledge. | D．Her working experience. |
| A．Laura’s hard work. | B．Laura’s ambitious plan. |
| C．The poor weather condition. | D．The skills needed for farming. |
| A．A Great Gardening Dream |
| B．A Journey to Green Living |
| C．A Close Study on Organic Food |
| D．A Harvest of Growing Kindness |
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【推荐1】Today, at 28, the young German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter is at the top. “She gives radiance (光辉) to music,” wrote Geoffrey Norris in The Daily Telegraph, London.
Born in Rheinfelden on June 29, 1963, Anne-Sophie grew up in Wehr, a small town just five kilometers from the Swiss border. Her father, Karl Wilhelm Mutter, and her mother, Gerlinde, considered music lessons part of a good education. It came as no surprise when Anne-Sophie said she wanted a violin for her fifth birthday.
Her parents thought she was too young for the violin, and persuaded her to start on the piano. But Anne-Sophie has always had a mind of her own. “I longed to play the violin,” she says, “it seemed to me a much more interesting instrument.” After six months, her parents gave in.
The famous violin teacher Erna Honigberfer, who lived nearby, became Annie-Sophie’s tutor. After only nine months of lessons, she entered the sixyearold in a nationwide competition for young musicians. With Christoph accompanying her on the piano, Anne-Sophie won first prize.
In 1974, Erna Honigberfer died. Anne-Sophie’s new teacher was Aida Stucki. She taught Anne-Sophie to develop her own ideas on how a piece should be played, not just to imitate others. This is one of the violinist’s strongest and most distinctive characteristics today.
Though the Mutters were short of money at times, they limited their daughter’s performances to once or twice a year. “We are glad we went the family road,” says her father. “No outsider can ever have an effect on our daughter’s career or push her into playing more concerts than she wants to.” Later she was allowed to give six to eight concerts a year and make some recordings.
1. Anne-Sophie’s career dates back to .| A．the late 1960s | B．1974 |
| C．the late 1970s | D．her fifth birthday |
| A．limited to twice or three times a year |
| B．accompanied on the piano by Christoph |
| C．highly praised throughout the world |
| D．appreciated by professors in London |
| A．She had two famous violin teachers. |
| B．She has always had a mind of her own. |
| C．She wanted a violin for her fifth birthday. |
| D．Violin seemed to her a much more interesting instrument. |
| A．children should learn music |
| B．money is not everything |
| C．Anne-Sophie was too young to give concerts |
| D．parents have a great effect upon their children |
【推荐2】Jennifer Rocha, who graduated from UC San Diego, said she wanted to thank her parents for their support by taking graduation photos in the fields where she worked alongside them since high school. “I wanted to take those pictures out there, specifically in the field, because that’s what made me go to college,” Rocha said. “That was my dad’s lesson of saying: if you don’t pursue a higher education, you’re going to be working here the rest of your life.” Rocha said her parents encouraged her and her siblings to pursue a higher education.
She started working in the fields with her parents when she was a junior in high school. Each day, she would leave cross country practice to go home and work planting strawberries overnight. “It was tough labor,” Rocha said as she remembered working late nights in the fields. “I was like, ‘You know what? I don’t want to be doing this my whole life.’”
Completing the past four years of college was not always an easy feat for Rocha. While being a full-time student, she also worked at the university’s police department to help pay for her tuition. She worked long hours to fund her education. At times, her work shifts wouldn’t end until 4 or 5 am, leaving only a few hours to spare before the next class. “I have class at like 8 am, and it’s not worth me driving and then coming back,” Rocha said. “So, I would just nap in my car and then go to class after that. It was tough times, but I mean,we got that diploma.”
Rocha hopes her photos and her story will be an inspiration to immigrant families. She said it was important to include her parents in her graduation photos. “I wanted to not just honor them but honor all the migrant skilled workers, because a lot of times they aren’t recognized and we forget about them. My parents being migrant workers were able to have three girls get their college education, and you can do it, too, and your kids can,” she said.
1. Why did Rocha take graduation photos in the field?| A．To thank her parents for their hard work. | B．To memorize her help with parents in fields. |
| C．To show her preference for field work. | D．To show her success in ending field labor. |
| A．Get a higher agriculture education. | B．Stay away from working in fields. |
| C．Devote her whole life to fields. | D．Become a learned field worker. |
| A．Exciting. | B．Boring. | C．Carefree. | D．Difficult. |
| A．To stress the importance of education. | B．To remind others of labor’s value. |
| C．To inspire others to pursue education. | D．To win awards at graduation. |
【推荐3】Kellie Gillespie is in her early 40s. She lives in London. And until a few years ago, she was basically an ordinary person. That was before she took a psychology class with Scott Pious of Wesleyan University. “My life changed after taking Professor Plous’s course,” Kellie says. "And now I’m studying to be a psychologist and counselor.”
Plous’s course was offered online, hosted by the educational platform Coursera. Kellie learned several psychological concepts in the class. One is the rule of mutual benefit: If you’re nice to some people, or you open up to them, they will be likely to do the same with you. She also learned about the power of empathy: When you put yourself in someone else’s shoes, it profoundly changes the relationship you have with him or her.
Now, lots of people learn about ideas in psychology, but Kellie did something unusual. She took in what she had learned in the class, and applied it in her own life.
Kellie was spending a lot of time at the British Library, and she often noticed the same young man on the street nearby. She could tell he was homeless, but he was always smiling and always so pleasant. It started simply, with Kellie giving the man whatever spare change she had. But after several months, she wanted to do more. She learned his name was Simon, and invited him for a cup of coffee. To make him feel comfortable, she told him a bit about her life, and slowly, he opened up about his. He kept mentioning how much he missed his mum. This struck a chord for Kellie—her own mother had passed away a decade before. Kellie helped Simon get in touch with his mother, and finally, put him on a bus heading home.
“Taking the course most definitely opened my eyes to the reasons why people don’t do something to help,” Kellie says. “It’s easy to say ‘I can’t make a difference,’ but everyone can make a difference.”
1. What made Kellie’s life change?| A．Becoming a psychologist. |
| B．Learning psychology online. |
| C．Gaining admission to university. |
| D．Cooperating with Professor Pious. |
| A．The benefit from others. |
| B．The motivation to go ahead. |
| C．The platform for helping people in need. |
| D．The ability to understand others’feelings. |
| A．How Kellie helped Simon. |
| B．How much Kellie missed her mum. |
| C．Why Kellie gave spare change to Simon. |
| D．Why Kellie invited the homeless for coffee. |
| A．Every penny counts. |
| B．Strike while the iron is hot. |
| C．A little bit of kindness goes a long way. |
| D．Healthy mind is the source of happiness. |
【推荐1】It was May 17, 2015, and Brian Koonoon, then 36, had been out of contact since the 13th. He had gone missing in the Arctic.
Brian climbed the hill next to his camp and checked his radio, hoping to catch a signal. He looked back to see that the snow had already covered his tracks. Any search planes would have a hard time finding him — a tiny bit of color in a sea of white snow.
For the first time since losing contact, Brian felt a sense of despair. He thought about his family — his wife and five daughters. Then he made his decision: if he wanted to see his family again, he would just have to start walking.
He was still 40 miles away from Repulse Bay, the closest village. It would be a tough walk, but by this point he had no other choice.
He gathered his stove and tent into his bag, but soon realized that dragging it would be impossible. He made the decision to fill his bag with necessities: his remaining bread, candles, a knife, his radio and GPS. Then he started walking.
Brian made his way about 15 miles until he couldn’t walk anymore. He found a snowdrift against a rock. With his knife, he built a snow cave. He cut enough room for his body. He crawled in, ate and fell asleep. When he woke up a few hours later, Brian felt energetic and ready to walk.
Brian arrived in Repulse Bay at 5:30 am on May 20. He met a woman on the street and explained what he had been through. The woman stared at him. “You’re the guy we were looking for,” she said. Her husband had been part of the rescue operation.
Today, safe at home. Brian still misses the welcome he received. “Everyone was very happy everywhere I went,” he says. He recalls the way the village’s elders came to meet him — the man who had survived in the wild, and the man who had refused to give up.
1. Why did Brian Koonoon climb a hill?| A．To search for a way to the nearest village. |
| B．To find his tracks in the snow. |
| C．To let the airplane see him. |
| D．To receive a radio signal. |
| A．It was the closest way home. |
| B．There was a rescue team there. |
| C．He could turn to others for help there. |
| D．He could keep in contact with his family there. |
| A．A rescue team found him in the end. |
| B．It took him about four days to arrive at Repulse Bay. |
| C．He dragged the bag with the stove and a tent to head for the village. |
| D．He only had 15 miles left to reach the village after a good sleep. |
| A．Brian’s not giving up was respected by the villagers. |
| B．Brian was proud of his courage to survive. |
| C．Brian considered his experience a horrible one. |
| D．Brian was unwilling to take an adventure again. |
【推荐2】It is common to see most livestreamers sitting in front of a desk in a well-decorated room. But Zeng Qinghuan, a 30-year-old from Xinhua County in Loudi, Hunan, has turned her whole village into a livestreaming set. Her goal is to use e-commerce to help her people live a better life.
Known as “Xiangmei Xinbao” on Douyin, Zeng now has more than 3 million followers. One of her videos about traditional ways of planting and harvesting rice has attracted more than 300,000 followers.
Zeng used to study fashion design and has worked in some big cities before. In 2019 she returned to her village to care for her sick grandmother. She then found that she could build a career there-by being a livestreamer with the help of her cousin.
At the beginning, she didn’t make any money. Zeng’s parents didn’t give her any support until she could stand on her own feet and help people sell their products. She has now sold local agricultural products worth tens of millions of yuan, like fermented tofu, preserved pork and dried sweet potatoes.
“I’m a daughter of the great mountains. I can also be a contributor to rural development in this new times,” she said.
Rural revitalization (振兴) is a key part of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan(2021-25), Zong hopes her experience can encourage more young people to return to their rural hometowns and start their own businesses. In 2021, after she became a deputy (代表) of the Loudi Municipal People’s Congress, she put forward a proposal to ensure that “each village has one product and one livestreaming host of its own”, She plans to help cultivate 100 social media influencers from her county within three years, and two villages have taken part in the project. “I believe that the rural areas will become a big stage, and being a farmer will be seen is a respectable job too,” said Zeng.
1. What does Zeng mainly introduce on Douyin?| A．Fashion trends in her village. | B．The education in her hometown. |
| C．Traditional customs of her village. | D．Agricultural products of her hometown. |
| A．It was encouraged by her sick grandmother. |
| B．It inspired more local villagers to follow. |
| C．It brought her a fortune as soon as it was started. |
| D．It was a great success with the help of her parents. |
| A．Invite more young people to her hometown. |
| B．Expand her business to make more money. |
| C．Train more social media influencers in her county. |
| D．Produce more agricultural products to help the farmers. |
| A．Responsible and modest. | B．Gifted and faithful. |
| C．Caring and fashionable. | D．Down-to-earth and ambitious. |
【推荐3】At the age of 14, James Harrison had a major chest operation and he required 13 units (3.4 gallons) of blood afterwards. The blood donations（捐赠） saved his life, and he decided that once he turned 18, he would begin donating blood as regularly as he could.
More than 60 years and almost 1,200 donations later, Harrison, whose blood contains an antibody (抗体) that has saved the lives of 2.4 million babies from miscarriages (流产), retired as a blood donor on May 11. Harrison’s blood is valuable because he naturally produces Rh-negative blood, which contains Rh-positive antibodies. His blood has been used to create anti-D in Australia since 1967.
“Every bottle of Anti-D ever made in Australia has James in it,” Robyn Barlow, the Rh program director told the Sydney Morning Herald. “It’s an amazing thing. He has saved millions of babies. I cry just thinking about it.” Since then, Harrison has donated between 500 and 800 milliliters of blood almost every week. He’s made 1,162 donations from his right arm and 10 from his left.
“I’d keep going if they let me,” Harrison told the Herald. His doctors said it was time to stop the donations — and they certainly don’t take them lightly. They had already enlarged the age limit for blood donations for him, and they’re cutting him off now to protect his health. He made his final donation, with some of the mothers and babies standing around who his blood helped save.
Harrison’s retirement is a blow to the Rh treatment program in Australia. Only 160 donors support the program, and finding new donors has proven to be difficult. But Harrison’s retirement from giving blood doesn’t mean he’s completely out of the game. Scientists are collecting and cataloging（列入目录） his DNA to create a library of antibodies and white blood cells that could be the future of the anti-D program in Australia.
1. What do we know about James Harrison?| A．He saved 2.4 million poor people. |
| B．He is to retire as a blood donor. |
| C．He is a very grateful blood donor. |
| D．He donates blood nearly every day. |
| A．To state Harrison’s decision to continue donating blood. |
| B．To describe how Harrison’s donations come to an end. |
| C．To introduce some babies saved by Harrison’s blood. |
| D．To praise Harrison for his cooperation with the doctors. |
| A．After his retirement, the Rh program will fail. |
| B．New donors are easy to find in a short time. |
| C．He continues to contribute to the Rh program. |
| D．His DNA is kept in a library for future study. |
| A．A Special Man with a Rare Blood Type |
| B．The Blood Saving Millions of Babies |
| C．A Special Blood Type Donor to Retire |
| D．The Man with the Golden Arms |
