Everywhere    1     looked, there was nothing but ruins. Nearly everything in the city was    2    . About 75 percent of the city’s factories and buildings, 90 percent of its homes, and all of its hospitals were gone.     3     covered the ground like red autumn leaves, but no wind could blow them away. Most bridges had fallen or were not safe to cross. The railway tracks were now useless pieces of metal. Tens of thousands of cows, hundreds of thousands of pigs, and millions of chickens were dead. Sand now    4     the wells instead of water. People were in    5    .

A good joke can be hardest thing to understand when studying a foreign language. As a recent report in The Guardian newspaper (卫报) noted, “There’s more to understanding a joke in a foreign language than     1     vocabulary and grammar.”

Being able to understand jokes is hard for a language learner to     2     friends with native (说母语的) speakers. “I always felt that humor was a ceiling (天花板) that I could never break through.” Lina Brown, a public relations manager in London, told The Guardian, “I used to study in Japan. I could never speak to Japanese people on the same level as I would speak to a native English speaker. I was almost a boring person     3     all I could talk about was facts.”

In fact, most of the time, jokes are only funny for people who share a cultural background (文化背景) or understand humor in the     4     way. Chinese-American actor Joe Wong found this out firsthand. He had achieved huge success in the US, but when he returned to China for his first live show in Beijing, he discovered that people     5     think his Chinese jokes were as funny as his English ones.

In Australia, many foreigners find understanding jokes about     6     to be the biggest headache. Let’s take rugby (橄榄球) as an example. “The hardest jokes are related to rugby because I know nothing about rugby and few people play it in China” said Zhang Xiao, a doctor in a hospital in Beijing. He was     7     a student in Australia. He added, “When I heard jokes I didn’t get, I just laughed along.”

In the other two major English-speaking countries, the sense of humor is also different. British jokes seem to be more subtle (微妙的) and dark, while American jokes are more obvious (明显的) with their meanings, a bit like Americans     8    .

4 . Lesson 26: My sister is only seven, but she always tells me     1     my pictures are good or not…She looked at it     2     for a moment. 'It's all right,' she said, 'but isn't it upside down?'

Lesson 27: Late in the afternoon, the boys put     3     their tent in the middle of a field…The boys felt tired so they put out the fire and     4     into their tent.

Lesson 28:Now he has put     5     ugly stone head over the gate． It is one of the     6     faces I have ever seen.

Lesson 29: Since then, Captain Fawcett     7     passengers to many unusual places. Once he landed on the roof of a     8     of flats and on another occasion, he landed in a deserted car park.

Lesson 30:I turned to look at the children, but there weren't any in     9    ; they had all run away! The man laughed when he realized     10     had happened.

Six months ago, 19-year-old Xie Lei said goodbye to her family and friends and     1     a plane for London. It was the first time that she had left China. “I was very     2     but also quite     3    . I didn’t know what to expect,”Xie Lei     4    .

Xie Lei is studying for a business     5     at a university in China and has come to our university on a year-long     6     programme.“I     7     the exchange programme because I wanted to learn about     8     business and improve my English. My     9     is to set up a business in China after     10    ,”she explained.

This four-day walking tour will take you on amazing    1     through the Andes Mountains on the way to the city of Machu Picchu. After reaching your     2    , you will have a day to     3     and be amazed by this ancient city. Especially amazing is the Incas’ dry stone method of building. Inca builders cut stones to     4       sizes so that nothing was needed to hold walls together other than the perfect    5     of the stones.

Landscaped Gardens — Suzhou Gardens in east China’s Suzhou City, attracting a c    1     flow of visitors from both home and abroad, have been suffering much damage for some reasons in the long history. Fortunately, thanks to the c    2     effort of the locals and the Chinese government, they manage to survive and are officially r    3     as the World Heritage.

Such heritage sites are not only the w    4     to the historical development of the city but also an important basis for historical research. Therefore, we can not lay too much stress on the s    5    of protecting and p    6    them. Our government should strive to launch c    7    to raise people’s awareness of the preservation. Besides, every Chinese citizen is supposed to behave a    8     and respectfully at tourist destinations. C    9     to the conservation of heritage sites, we are sure to make great achievements. Otherwise, we will suffer the c    10    .

Do you help your parents with housework at home? Can you cook for your family?

To stress (强调) the importance of hard-working spirit education among students, the Chinese government recently calls for students to respect labor work. Students should learn basic life     1     and develop good working habits through such education.

The government has been trying to stress the importance of hard-working spirit education. But this has been overlooked (忽视) in recent years. Many teens do not value the importance of working hard and are not interested    2     doing so.

According to a study of nearly 3000 students that was done in March, only 22% of primary and middle school students help with everyday housework at home. Schools and families play an    3     role in teaching students about the value of working hard.

Primary and middle schools should    4     students with hard-working spirit classes every week. School can also hold activities to give students real-world work experience. For example, schools can teach children    5     to plant trees on Tree-planting day.

At the same time, as children’s first teachers,    6     should also encourage children to know how to do housework at home. Students should master one    7     two life skills every year. These skills can include cooking,     8     their own clothes and tidying their rooms.