2 . Making it to the Scripps National Spelling Bee (a spelling competition) is an amazing achievement for any kid, but for 11-year-old Neil Maes, being born deaf made his journey especially unlikely.

After receiving cochlear implants (人工耳蜗) in both ears as a baby, he had to train his brain to understand spoken words. It took countless hours of speech therapy (疗法).

“We didn’t even know that he’d be able to talk,” said his mother, Christy Maes.

Now the soft-spoken kid from Belton, South Carolina is officially one of the nation’s top young spellers. He earned the right to take the stage in the final rounds of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Neil’s parents have always given him a tip, coaching him to always ask the pronouncer for the meaning of a word, so that he can be sure he heard it correctly. Most contestants do this anyway.

“He’s able to spell very difficult words. You tell him, ‘Spell this word,’ and he’s able to actually imagine what that sounds like in his head and spell the word. It’s actually quite impressive,” said Dr. Michael Hoa, who performed Neil’s cochlear implantation. “There’s a lot that goes into training your brain to do that.”

Neil’s parents didn’t know he was taking part in a spelling bee with his third-grade class until he came home and told them he had won. He made it all the way to his regional (地区的) bee that year, finishing second. Now a naturally shy fifth-grader, Neil is already worn out from the busy bee-week schedule, but he seems happy.

“Our main hope out of all of this was to encourage people that are going to be facing what we had to face,” Christy said.

But Neil said coming to the bee has motivated (激发) him to study even harder, so he can return next year.

“It’s just fun and I want to do it again,” Neil said.

3 . Fathers’ Day, a day for people to express gratitude to their fathers. Many movies show and honor a father’s love. Here we have selected a few classic films themed on fathers. Take a look!

The Pursuit of Happyness

The Pursuit of Happyness is a famous movie that shows us the importance of hope and belief, as well as love. In this film, the protagonist Chris is bankrupt and becomes a single dad. Although he is reduced to extreme poverty and faces tons of difficulties, he still works hard and tells his son to be positive. Finally, he becomes successful and pursues happiness with his son. Based on a true story, this movie always brings strength to audiences and extols fatherhood.

Dangal

Dangal is an Indian movie centered on female wrestling champions. The father in the movie was once a national wrestling champion of India. He discovers his daughters’ wrestling talent unexpectedly and decides to train them, for which they have to break the tradition and make painstaking efforts. At last, the girls win the competitions for their lives, as well as become role models inspiring numerous women.

Looing Up

Looing Up tells a story about the influence of a father’s education. Ma Haowen, the father, always tries to educate his child in his unique way, creating a relatively relax environment for his son. The only one requirement he has for his son is to never stop thinking. He hopes that his child can think independently and follow his heart to face the world bravely. With the encouragement and love of the father, his son achieves his dream of becoming an astronaut.

I am Sam

I am Sam tells a story about an unusual father and his daughter. Sam is a disabled person with mental disability. Although his intelligence is just as same as a seven-year-old, he loves his daughter with all his heart. When his daughter is taken away from him, he does his utmost to fight for custody.

4 . In China, people in different areas have their own ways to celebrate the Spring Festival. Especially between Northern China and Southern China, there are many differences.    1    

One is about the food on the night before the Spring Festival. In Northern China, people usually eat dumplings during this time. For luck, people may put sugar in dumplings.    2    People in the south usually eat Niangao or Tangyuan on New Year’s Eve. Both foods are also considered to bring a better life. There are many causes. For example, Northern China grows lots of wheat (小麦) while Southern China grows lots of rice.    3    People in Northern China usually love food made by wheat.

    4    In Northern China, people often put up paper cuttings on windows to wish for happiness of the coming year. In many parts of the south, people no longer put up paper cuttings for the Spring Festival. Instead, they decorate their house with a kumquat (金橘) tree bearing fruit.

It’s true that Northern China and Southern China have differences in celebrating the Spring Festival.    5    After all, many Chinese are moving from one place to another. When reaching a new place, they also bring their customs there. So now many people in Northern China also eat Tangyuan.

7 . Future football stars

Football academies were set up by leading football clubs so their coaches could run trials to discover and train talented boys from as young as eight as potential players for their first team.

This means that in Britain there are at least 9,000 boys at any one time attending academies after school who think they are going to be a famous footballer.     1     One eight-year-old was selected for Chelsea Academy and he went from being top of his class at school to being the boy who was messing around at the back. His mother asked him why he wasn’t trying hard at school any more. His reply was that he was going to be a footballer and be rich, so he didn’t need to. In the end, he only lasted a year in the academy.     2     And he wasn’t so discouraged that he never played football again.

    3     Any sport where only a few can get to the top has many talented failures. These people are very good and do their best but finally it will not pay off because they are just not outstanding enough. In football, this effect is big because the number of players chosen by academies is so huge.     4    

This doesn’t put off all the boys who are spotted by the big football clubs and are desperate to join the academies.     5     They get to play as much football as possible. The skills become part of them, as they are with professional players, so they are automatic and the boys don’t have to think about them when they’re on the football field.

8 . This year’s flu season is shaping up to be a bad one. The new type of flu virus is more severe than most. In addition many people find the vaccine this year to be less effective, and others are wondering if they should still get a flu shot. The answer is yes.

Each summer, scientists try to make a best guess on which variants (变体) are going to be more common in the coming year. They look at data from other countries, and then they make the shot to match.

Sometimes a vaccine doesn’t work well because some variants change too much. That’s why in any year, even when you’re vaccinated, you can get the flu. The shot is about reducing your risk, not getting rid of it.

“Less” and “more” effective are relative terms, so we need to focus more on absolute risks. In 2010, researchers published an in-depth analysis of all flu shot studies. They showed that when a vaccine was considered effective, 1.2% of vaccinated people had the flu, while 3.9% of unvaccinated people had the flu. That’s an absolute risk reduction (ARR) of 2.7 percentage points. In studies in which the flu shot was considered ineffective, 1.1% of vaccinated people had the flu compared with 2.4% of unvaccinated people. The ARR was 1.3% points.

Let’s say this year’s flu vaccine is even worse than we think. Maybe the ARR will be as low as 1 percentage point. That’s still not that bad. Given the millions who are likely to suffer from flu and the thousands of deaths each year, this is a big payoff in public health. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that 9 million to 36 million people become ill with the flu each year in the United States. Somewhere between 140,000 and 710,000 of them require hospitalization, and 12,000 to 56,000 die each year.

No vaccine is perfectly protective in any year. But to minimize your chances of illness, yes, you should still get the flu shot this year, and any year.