1 . Four Cool Languages

Chinese

Around 1.4 billion people speak Chinese. Chinese is a tonal (声调的) language, meaning that changing the tone of just one syllable (音节) can affect a word’s meaning. Chinese writing has ancient roots, which is thought to have developed starting around 2000 B. C.

Arabic

Over 370 million people speak Arabic. Written Arabic uses a cursive-style font (连笔) that looks more like artworks than writing. Arabic is written from right to left rather than left to right, making it different from many other languages.

English

Around 379 million people speak English as a native language. It’s an official language in a huge number of other countries.

English is the most widely spoken second language, with over a billion people speaking it as a non-native language. That means around twice as many people speak English as a second language than people who speak it as a first language.

Italian

Nearly 68 million people speak Italian. If you play music or sing, chances are that you already know a lot of Italian because many familiar musical terms are actually Italian.

Not only will learning Italian help you pick up vocabulary, but it will also help you understand the meanings of musical terms in greater depth.

Emojis are widely used in our daily lives and have become     1     important way of communication. The first emojis were created in 1999 by Japanese designer Shigetaka Kurita,     2     worked on a mobile Internet platform     3     (call) i-mode. Kurita attempted to develop a simple way for people     4     (express) emotions in short text messages.

As emojis gained     5     (popular), they faced a significant technical hurdle (障碍) : early emojis could not     6     (send) across different mobile platforms, since there was no standardized encoding (编码). This issue was resolved in 2010 by the Unicode Consortium, an organization responsible     7     maintaining a standardized encoding of text and symbols across platforms. This allowed for cross-platform communication and continued expansion in emoji usage worldwide.

Given     8     (they) origins in Japan, many early emoji characters were reflective of Japanese culture. As they’ve spread     9     (global), new characters have been added to account for cultural differences and provide a more universal means of communication. Users must also consider cultural sensitivities when     10     (communicate) via emojis, as certain symbols can have hugely different meanings across different cultures.

I walk into Prince’s Hot Chicken, and order hot fried chicken legs. “Oh, enjoy it,” says the hostess. Her reply is a commonly     1     (hear) Southern expression.

My chicken arrives and is too hot     2     (touch), but I don’t care about it. As I take a bite, the taste hits my mouth. It’s     3     (horrible) spicy. There’s sweetness before the heat hits. The taste is surprisingly amazing, as the spices dance inside my mouth. Although I’m sweating (出汗), I can’t stop     4     (eat).

How does a dish so challengingly hot become well-received? Like so many Southern foods, fried chicken has a long history. Hot chicken first appeared in the 1930s, when a man     5     is named James Thornton Prince     6     (begin) serving it at his BBQ Chicken Shack.

After a few years,     7     restaurant moved close to the Ryman Auditorium, where it became popular     8     the city’s country music stars. In the following years, Prince relocated his restaurant several times around the city, eventually changing     9     (it) name to Prince’s Hot Chicken in 1980, when André Prince Jeffries, his great-niece (侄女), took over.

These days, you’ll find hot chicken all over the city. I feel at home with the     10     (taste) food as it is a symbol of the city’s culture.

8 . Their father passed away, their mother is laid off, and the family has no heat in their house as the winter sets in. This is just one of the _________ stories that social workers in Northwest Suburban High School District 214 have _________.

Sometimes the solution is _________, like paying for a couple of nights’ stay at a local hotel, or providing a gift card to buy _________. When social workers are able to _________ that good news, there’s a sense of relief (宽慰), and usually tears from students and their parents who are _________ difficult times. “It’s things that we wouldn’t even think of, but for the family it is a big _________,” said Raymundo Galarza, a social worker with 214 Cares.

_________ in District 214 three years ago, 214 Cares is here to stay, now addressing _________ needs of students and their families, from helping pay the rent to putting food on the table. But the needs have __________, so social workers are trying to __________ the 214 Cares fund (专款) by calling on people to donate (捐赠) money.

“There have been other needs that have come forward, like medical costs for students,” said Michael Happ, the program’s director. “So there’s a real __________ for us to have a fund, which is trustworthy, and __________ by the community. People know they can give __________ to 214 Cares and it will go to help those kids and their families __________ in our community.”