It was going to rain while I was walking in the park near my neighborhood. Even so, I didn’t want to go home. I had a terrible _______ with my mom and ran out just ten minutes earlier.

“Can you play with me?” A little girl came _______ me with a ball in her hands. I agreed and the ball was handed to me with a sweet _______ .

When it began to rain, _______ of the children at the lakeside went home with their parents. “Where are your parents?” I asked the girl.

“My mom is the woman who sells fruit outside the park. She _______ takes care of me,” the girl explained. “And my dad is _______ than her. I usually play alone here. It’s OK.”

“But it’s raining,” I said. “You’d better not be here alone when it’s dark.”

“It’s no problem. Mom won’t leave me alone, _______ she seldom cares for me,” the girl replied. A 5-year-old girl taught me to love and _______ in my mom. Should I listen to her and say sorry to my mom?

In the end, I took the little girl to her mom’s vending cart (售货摊) and then ran home quickly. Opening the door, my mom was _______ to tears. “Where have you been? I’ve looked for you ________ ! See how wet your clothes are!” She shouted, but I knew she wasn’t angry anymore.

Jane, a reporter, is collecting information for the local newspaper. She is interested in the following things introduced in a magazine.

	Smart Schoolbag Forget to pack the books you need into your schoolbag in the morning rush? A schoolboy aged 11 has invented a schoolbag. It tells you which books to pack. A small computer and a scanner(扫描装置) are fixed in the bag. As each book is put into the bag, it is checked by the scanner. If any book is missing, a message will be shown on the computer screen to remind you.
	Weather Sweets Can you eat weather? A university makes that happen. It uses a 3D printer to create sweets based on the weather information of a certain day. The shapes of the sweets are influenced by wind speed. The colors of the sweets are decided by temperature. The sweets act as a weather record of the day when they are made.
	Sunrise Bed It’s hard for you to get up in the morning, isn’t it? To help you get up, a company has created a “tool”—a sunrise bed. It wakes you up as a sunrise does. Lights built into the bed turn on and start to get brighter and brighter. When the lights are fully on, soft music will begin to play. It will be louder and louder until you turn it off.

Electric cars may seem like a recent invention, but they’ve been around for years. In the early 1900s, there were more electric cars on the road than there were petrol（汽油）cars. At that time, petrol was expensive compared with other fuels（燃料）. When petrol prices dropped and new technologies were developed, electric cars went out of fashion. Instead, petrol cars became more popular because they could travel longer distances without stopping.

During the 20th century, petrol cars got bigger, heavier and faster. They needed more fuel, and it caused more air pollution. For years, car makers didn’t worry about pollution. They didn’t worry about the amount of petrol cars’ use, either. But when people began to realize that there was not enough oil on the earth, they asked car makers to produce more efficient（高效能的）and less polluting cars.

One method of solving the problem was a “hybrid” car（混合动力车）, one that ran partly on petrol and partly on electricity. Hybrid cars became popular in the 2000s when petrol prices went up and the prices of hybrid cars went down.

An all-electric car uses no petrol. The problem, however, is that car batteries（电池）need to be recharged（再充电）. That makes electric cars not so useful for long journeys.

Many people are not pleased with it. The government and car makers are working together to develop safe, cheap and useful electric cars. When people have these cars in the future, a petrol station may be a thing of the past.

It is not possible to tell the importance of forests in just a few words. Forests influence our daily lives in so many ways, even in the centre of a busy noisy city.

Forest products are used in our daily lives. 1. Almost every activity has something to do with forests. Some are easy to point out, and others are less obvious（明显的）. They can not only help make our lives more convenient, but also make our Earth more beautiful and comfortable.

Forests help protect the sea, and the earth is in good health because of them. Over the past 50 years, about half the world’s forests have been lost. 2. The most important reason for that is polluting the environment and cutting down trees.

As this goes on, it’ll be harder and harder for us to survive on the Earth.

Letters play an important role in history. When we write a letter, it is common for us to use an envelope（信封）to protect the letter. But do you know the     66     of the envelope? In fact, the history of the envelope is probably a little       67     than you think

It is believed that the envelope first appeared over 4,000 years ago.    68    , the early envelope was nothing like what we use today. It was made from clay and looked     69     a ball. After the message was put into it, more clay would be added     70     the “envelope” to make the message safe. To read the message, one had to break the clay envelope.

The idea for the stamp was introduced for the     71     time in 1837. It was invented by a     72     businessman. The early paper envelopes looked very simple. They were simply pieces of paper that would be wrapped（包裹）around the letter. Then official paper envelopes were created in 1837. At first, the envelope was made     73     by hand, which took a lot of time and effort. Later the envelope producing process improved greatly. Russel Hawes invented an automatic（自动的）envelope maker in the 1850s. The machine     74     produce about 12,500 envelopes at that time every day.

Since then, emails and text messages     75     more popular than handwritten letters. However, billions of envelopes are still used around the world every year.

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 against poverty. Besides giving money to poor people, it has tried to provide people with education to lift themselves out of poverty. Common people play a big role in the fight.

When Mao Xianglin started to work as the Party secretary of his village, there was only one way 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 through some apps. By the end of 2019, 269 villagers had been lifted out of poverty. The per capital income（人均收入）reached 12,670 yuan, 40 times more than in the 1990s.

Over the last few years, 98.99 million people have been lifted out of poverty. Many Party secretaries like Mao Xianglin are lifting the poor people out of the poverty. China has been responsible for reducing 70 percent of poverty worldwide since the late 1970s.

Friendship is a very important human relationship and everyone needs good friends. There are times in our lives such as when we have recently moved into a new town, or changed our jobs or schools. Such changes often make it difficult to make and keep friends.

Be cheerful. Here are some helpful suggestions.

Connect with others

The first step to make friends is connecting with other people. You can go to public places to meet new people. Besides, you should make yourself known by becoming an active member of such places.

Do things together

Choosing friends with common interests is important because these interests would always bring you and your friend together. Hanging out together will always be a pleasant experience.

Let it grow

It is a good thing to stay in touch. However, try not to press your new friend with calls or messages and finally you may lose your friend. So you will need to give your friends time to react(反应) to you. The best friendships are the ones that grow naturally.

Enjoy your friendship

The best way to enjoy your friendship is to allow your friends to be themselves. Try not to change them from who they are to what you want them to be.