1 . The Ouray Ice Park sits at the mouth of a narrow box canyon sculpted by the Uncompahgre River. As we picked our way up the canyon, Davis, operations manager at the park, pointed out the various projects his staff were rushing to complete before opening day. There was signage to build, a new bridge to check, and of course, lots of ice to grow.

He showed. me the lines of water pipes and sprinklers (洒水器) located along the cliff edge. There are more than 200 of these sprinklers, which spray water directly onto the rock, creating walls of ice containing 100-plus climbs. Starting in November when the temperature drops, the ice farmers wet the rock with water to cool it, essentially building a canvas for the waterfalls. They use existing features on the rock to grow a variety of routes for all skill levels. Though the job involves much labour in freezing weather, Davis described growing ice as a kind of art form. If half an ice farmer’s job is creation, the other half is upkeep. Exposed water pipes in the mountains are easy to freeze and break and it is up to those farmers to fix them.

This winter has been unusually warm and temperatures, even in December, were not cold enough to make sufficient ice. It even rained a day before the park was set to open, destroying 30% of the ice farmers’ efforts. “Winter climate is less certain due to the warming of our planet,” said Heidi Steltzer, a professor of environment and sustainability. “Human-made ice may not be possible every year, but in years when it is, the ice park offers joy, a gathering place and opportunities of earning money to sustain rural mountain life.”

2 . Third grade was the worst year ever. My parents split up that year, and my dad moved out. I know that every divorce is different, and I’m told that not all of them are as painful as ours was. Ours was cruel.

There were other difficult things happening, too. I was epileptic and had a brain tumor. So I had to leave he classroom sometimes, to go to the nurse’s office to take pills or to head to the hospital for blood work, an EEG, or a CAT scan. Not fun.

And I turned, as kids often do, to books. Books were doorways out of my cold house, to imagined ands, full of magical creatures and wishes-come-true. I read from sunup to sundown. I read at breakfast, and I read late into the night. I devoured books.

Originally, in that terrible year, I sought out books that distracted me from my pain. I loved Half Magic; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Mary Poppins, books where regular kids encountered magic in the world around them. I was eager for something unexpected to happen and radically alter my world, so those books were many of my favorites. But they were not my only favorites.

The other books I loved were the books that made me cry. My brain is still full of so many perfect painful moments. Beth, dying in Little Women. I read Oscar Wilde stories in which all hearts were broken. The Nightingale, dead from love.

I’ve thought a lot about why these books mattered so much. And I think it was because I was very alone in my sadness. Lonely, I sought company, the best way I could. Books were company. And though Half Magic was one kind of company, a distracting, cheerful friend ——that wasn’t enough.

So sometimes you need a friend who is also struggling, a friend who is sad in the very way that you are sad, and so makes you feel normal. For me, sad books were that friend. After a sad book, I slept easier.

3 . “Students with a good mastery of foreign languages need to accumulate (积累) knowledge in other aspects so that they can better ___________ national development, the Belt and Road Initiative, and other major initiatives to help build a community with a shared future for humanity,” said Chen Lin when he was 96 years old. With a “life is to give, not to take”   ___________, Chen devoted his whole life to the ___________ of foreign language education in China.

Born in 1922, Chen worked in foreign education for more than 70 years. In 1949, he ___________ teaching at Beijing Foreign Studies University. At the university, Chen was known for his nickname of “Three UP Professor”, since he always ___________ “standing up” and “speaking up” when teaching. Also, when class was over, he would instantly “shut up”.

Since China’s reform and opening-up in the late 1970s, Chen broke new ground (打破常规) by ___________ one of the country’s ___________ English-language TV programs, which introduced a brand-new way of language learning to China. To help students learn English more effectively, Chen advised providing ___________ English-learning material for students at different levels. In the 1980s, in most English classes, teachers did most of the ___________, while students mostly only listened. But Chen ____________ students to speak and practise more.

In 1999, Chen ____________ experts to develop English curriculum (课程) standards. ____________ that, English teaching ____________ from primary to university had not been connected. But the standards ____________ the situation, making English education work like “one package”.

In 2023, Chen Lin ____________ in Beijing at the age of 101. Chen once said that his lifelong dream was to he 100 years old and still teaching. It was a dream that came true for the senior educator.

5 . Some people can begin a conversation with anyone ——even complete strangers.     1    . This can be particularly stressful if you have social anxiety disorder (SAD). But even if social small talk is hard for you, possibilities exist to improve your conversational skills and make you feel more comfortable talking with strangers.     2    .

A great way to start a conversation with the people around you is to simply comment on your shared surroundings.     3    . For example, if you are sitting in a lecture hall and notice that your professor looks familiar, you could say to the person next to you, “Doesn’t he look a bit like Harry Potter?”

Keep your comments positive——never mean-spirited or critical. You want the other person to feel comfortable getting in on the joke with you. You could follow up on your previous comment about your professor with something like, “I wonder where Hedwig is?”

    4    , which means using this method to start a conversation can be risky. However, if you do find someone who shares your sense of humor, it can be the start of a great friendship.

If you don’t receive a positive response from one person, the method might work with someone else.     5    . With time, you’ll become more confident and won’t need to rely on tricks to get a conversation started and keep it going.

It’s common to see a barista (咖啡师) create coffee art (咖啡拉花). However, it’s a whole different ball game doing same thing with tea. Over the past several years, Han Zheming, a 40-year-old Shanghai resident,     1       (manage) to perfect the skill, creating tea art in cups, or dian cha in Chinese. “It is similar     2     the foam (泡沫) on top of a cup of coffee, except that it is made of tea rather than milk. ”

Chinese tea culture started to enjoy     3       (popular) during the Tang Dynasty. After hundreds of years of evolution, it thrived throughout the Song Dynasty,     4       tea had become a necessity for almost everyone, just like other items as rice, oil and salt. In the eyes of people of that time, good tea should be white and fine. The better the tea, the whiter it should be, and the     5     (long) the foam should last.

Han is curious about the patterns     6     (create) on the tea foam and he often goes to museums to observe Song paintings. “    7     (usual), it takes a year of practice for one to fully grasp tea-whisking.” It is through trial and error that Han gets going. Now, he can deliver a piece of tea-whisking art in “one take”.

“It’s like     8     (add) bells and whistles to tea and giving people     9     stronger sense of occasion, so drinking tea is more fun,” Han says. It’s also his intention     10     (bring) the old ritual (礼仪) and culture back for more people to appreciate.

7 . While writing, we may always ask ourselves “Are there any better expressions to convey what we mean?” In a writing class, a teacher tells a golden rule of writing.

Teacher: Show but don’t tell, class. This is the golden rule of creative writing. You need to show the reader (the person who is reading) what you want to say, not tell him, or her.

David (student):     1    ? Writing is about words, right? We can only tell things using words. How can we show them? We’re not painters!

Teacher: Stop laughing, everybody, and listen carefully. I’ll give you two examples: ‘He was feeling very worried.’ Now I will say the same thing in a different way: ‘He was biting his fingernails and sweating.’     2    ? Which part shows the reader how he was feeling?

Anne(student):The second example, the one about the fingernails and the sweating.       3    

Teacher: Yes! Excellent! Well done, Anne. You’re a brilliant student.

David: I don’t understand.

Teacher: And here, everybody, we see a very good example of both showing and telling. Not only has David told us that he doesn’t understand, he’s also shown us: with that silly look on his face.     4     Well done!

David: Stop laughing! It’s not funny! Be quiet, Anne!

Teacher: David! Don’t shout at Anne. She’s done nothing wrong. Now, everybody, let’s play a game:     5     . OK? Right, let’s go. ‘She was very sad.’ Now, who’d like to speak out your sentence?

8 . Since her retirement, an old family friend has begun visually journaling her travels. She isn’t an “artist”, but that doesn’t reduce her joy in her experiences or the truth and appeal of her sketches (素描). It was inspiring and I took it as a good idea for later. When I saw the recent Van der Weel and Van der Meer study about handwriting and cognitive activation (认知激活), I thought about my friend, the passage of time, and aging and realized that it was time to hunt up all my media ( pens, pencils, watercolors, bound journals, and sketchpads) and shift some activities from keyboard to paper as an investment in brain health.

Van der Weel and Van der Meer found writing by hand (rather than tapping away on your keyboard) increases brain connectivity. It may be time to consider deleting some of those list-making and journal apps from your phone and return to paper and notebooks. Healthy media use of any kind is, after all, about balance. I realized that I write very little by hand but if doing so activates the whole brain, then it may join the list of activities, like doing crossword puzzles and learning a new language, which help delay cognitive decline.

Writing helps people process life’s emotional ups and downs through sense-making—the greater the cognitive effort to find meaning, the greater appreciation of the benefits and improved mood. Meaning and positive emotions are central to well-being.

However, I had never considered the physical act of handwriting as a brain health aging activity. The greater brain activity from handwriting compared to typing is thought to explain why handwritten notes are linked to increased learning among students. Learning and memory are both cognitive functions. Learning describes how we gain new skills and knowledge. Memory is how we store and bring back what we learn. Aging messes with both and can prevent new learning as well as the memory of what you just learned. However, social, physical, and cognitively challenging activities have been shown to reduce the negative effects of aging on cognitive function and increase cognitive reserve (认知储备).

9 . Passive learning and active learning are two totally different patterns of learning in the world of teaching. Traditionally, learning has been mostly passive in nature. However, in the last 2-3 decades, there has been a push to encourage active learning in the classroom. Passive learning refers to learning in which the student does little to acquire knowledge. The most common form of passive learning is direct instruction. In passive learning, the student is viewed as an empty container of knowledge that the teacher must fill with his or her knowledge. Freire called this pattern of learning banking education as the student serves as an account in which the teacher or banker places knowledge or money. There’s a heavy stress on memorizing information or knowledge. The student should take notes and be ready to repeat what the teacher has said. The teacher is the wise man on the stage.

Passive learning always sounds bad but sometimes it can be beneficial. When people have no former knowledge of a subject, passive learning can provide a foundation for future active learning activities.

Active learning is learning in which the student is actively involved in the learning process. Common examples of this learning pattern include any form of discussion in the classroom.

Active learning encourages students to use their current knowledge to build new understanding. There’s a reduction of lecturing in an active learning classroom. Rather, students interact with each other and the teacher to develop their understanding of the content. Active learning also faces some challenges. One is that active learning is time-consuming. Developing activities and leading discussions can force the class to move slower. If the course covers a large amount of content, this can be challenging for teachers.

In conclusion, there’s room in the world of education for both passive and active learning. But too much reliance on either one will probably be a disadvantage for students.

10 . Natural disasters can cause people’s fears at any age.     1    , but you do have lots of influence on how your children may face the possible disasters. Let’s see how to talk to your children about natural disasters correctly.

● Be honest

When there is information about natural disasters, try not to hide it.     2    . They may want to know more about where the natural disaster is and the path that it is on. Give proper explanations or even check books out from the library.

●    3    

Ask your children what they are nervous about so that you can solve their concerns. Deal with any of their fears, big or small, and provide some kind of comfort. Whether these disasters are happening far away or close to home, they need to know that you will keep them safe.

● Make a plan for your family

There is no place on Earth that is free from possibly suffering some type of natural disaster. All families should have a disaster plan and emergency supplies at home. Create a family safety plan, and share it with your children.     4    .

● Talk about the helpers

    5    . The idea that firefighters, paramedics (护理人员), and other disaster service workers will be there to help in case of an emergency helps children take away some of the anxiety.