1 . My phone was an extension of myself. I couldn’t go anywhere _________ it. I scrolled through my friends’ _________ into late night and turned my phone on before my eyes were fully open. I enjoyed having it until that day when I realized that what had started as a useful tool had turned into a(n) _________. So, I made a _________ decision to turn off that smartphone and _________ my old dumb phone out of hiding.

When I was watching TV shows or movies and there was a boring part, I _________ picking up the phone and checking out “what everyone else was doing.” Now I had to pay attention or find a way to _________ myself with my thoughts instead. When I visited New York City, I had to write out _________ and ask people where an intersection (十字路口) was _________ pulling out my phone.

I have welcomed silence into my life with open arms and am enjoying the increased __________ from not constantly having to fight with the __________ to check my phone while I’m trying to get something done. I am allowing my thoughts to speak to me instead of my phone. I am connecting with others in a __________ way that isn’t all about me. Instead of always posting about what’s going on in my __________ perfect life, I am connecting with my friends one-on-one, talking about the reality of our lives and being there for them from a place of __________.

As much as having a smartphone was __________, not having one is freeing on a much bigger level.

2 . More than half of Americans have felt the influence of extreme heat on health, according to a survey. That percentage is even higher in California, where heat is the top problem, reported by 71% of those surveyed. “California does have low levels of air conditioning in homes, maybe because it has cool wind in many parts, but when an extreme heat event comes and there’s no cool air available, you are in trouble,” said David Eisenman, a health researcher. “So you are seeing this higher number.”

Luz Rivas from Los Angeles grew up in a home without air conditioning. “Families like mine have suffered from heat for years,” said Rivas. On hot days, her mother used to take her to the mall to cool down. “Now that these heat waves are getting longer, methods used in the past aren’t going to work as well,” Rivas added.

The California Environment Protection Agency will create a heat wave ranking system to give public warnings. It’s supposed to help the public, especially those outdoor workers, know the seriousness of the heat wave and then learn what they should do. The idea is backed up widely. Many health researchers point out the health risks of heat are worse for outdoor workers, saying that in summer, there’s an 8% increase in deaths on the hottest days.

Lawmakers of California are also considering making indoor cooling a housing right. It can especially help renters like Minerva Contreras, a mother of two living near Bakersfield. Her neighbourhood has seen many days with temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. “It’s very difficult because it’s like not being able to breathe,” said Contreras. Indoor cooling standards are valued by renters but may face a serious fight, and many house owners think the standards fail to consider the variety of climates in the state. For now, the cost of keeping cool for renters mostly falls on them. Contreras doesn’t hold much hope that California will pass cooling standards, saying, “But I would like it very much.”

3 . Germany’s top court (法院) has ruled that parts of the country’s 2019 climate action law must be changed because they don’t do a good job of protecting young people. Nine young people aged 15 to 24 took the government to court over the law. They said that the government’s failure to plan carefully was putting their future lives in danger.

The judges (法官) of Germany’s highest court said climate change will influence young people far more than adults. That’s because climate change will become more serious over time. As young people become adults, they’ll be left to deal with any problems that today’s adults don’t deal with.

In 2019, Germany passed a new law, promising that the country would be producing no more CO2 than the forest can take in by 2050. The law made a plan of action until 2030. But the law didn’t have any plans for climate actions that would be taken between 2031 and 2050.

The court has asked the German government to fix the law by the end of 2022. The climate law will now need to have a plan for the actions that will be taken after 2030.

The German government has said that it will quickly begin working to make the needed changes. One important part of high court decisions like this is that they act as guides or examples for future decisions. This means that in the future, Germany’s lawmakers will be more likely to think about the climate future of young people as they create their laws.

4 . Conflict (冲突) between teenagers and parents happens for a lot of reasons. Sometimes conflict happens between teenagers and parents just because conflict happens between human beings anyway. Humans have different needs, different feelings, different opinions about what they want, and the relationship with people can be really difficult. However, teenagers can cause further conflict because of the hormonal (生理的) changes that are happening and the stage of life that they're in.

Teenagers and parents have different understanding about rules and at times they find it difficult to look into the future. So parents and teenagers will often experience conflict about many things, do chores, homework, whether teenagers speak respectfully or not and about what they're allowed to do.

Before we think about rule boundaries (界线) for teenagers, we need to make sure that we have a really good relationship base. There's no point saying “From now on, you have to listen to me”: if you don't have a positive relationship with your teenager. We need to go back and make sure there is some degree of shared respect, and some degree of positive communication and enjoyment being together. you do that first, it means that rule boundaries are a lot easier to set up.

Often we're dealing with conflict on the fly. This is not the right time to be dealing with it. We really want parents and teenagers to sit down and think about the kinds of things that may happen in the house before the problems come. The more detailed your rule boundaries are for teenagers, the more likely it is that they are going to follow them. So this means we don't have rule boundaries like “Have the bathroom cleaned”. It needs to be “The floors mopped, nothing on the countertop and the mirrors cleaned by ten o'clock every Saturday”: Rule boundaries need to be written down, and set out ahead of time so the teenager knows exactly what's expected.

6 . Julie Kenerson loved taking her two sons Lukas and his brother Jake who used a wheelchair due to his rare illness, to the Charlestown playground in Mayor Thomas M. Menino Park.     1     Lukas and Jake could spin on the carousel (旋转木马) together and slide down slides at the same time. They also loved Martin’s Park in the Seaport District, where they could go on adventures in the wooden fishing boat.

    2     “I’d be sitting there with Jake singing songs because there was really nothing for him to play with,” Julie said about the lack of wheelchair-friendly playground elements at many other town playgrounds.

In 2019, Jake passed away at age 11 from complications of his metabolic (新陈代谢的) disorder.     3     She started with their hometown of Arlington, where Julie worked with local officials to make playgrounds more welcome to kids and caregivers with disabilities.

Over the past decade, playground accessibility has advanced due to more awareness and more options for designers. Parents like Julie are telling public officials and planners that more work still needs to be done to make playgrounds truly inclusive.     4     In Arlington, workers will start construction next month on a new playground design that incorporates Julie’s feedback.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires equal access for people with disabilities in public spaces, was passed in 1990. But it didn’t specifically address outdoor recreation in its original regulations. Updated guidance came in 2010, and any playground that is now built or renovated must be ADA-compliant. But, according to Julie, there is a gap between what she calls “ADA on paper” and “the lived experience of ADA”.       5    

7 . On June 14, 2022, Mia Samolinski was driving a Subaru Outback in the parking lot when she stepped on the gas pedal (油门) instead of the brake (刹车) and drove into the water. It _______ just after 10 pm at Patchogue Bay A brave boy, Anthony Zhongor, _______ the incident and dove into the water after making an emergency call.

Samolinski was at risk of _______. The 18-year-old high schooler was desperately banging (猛敲) on the door and window with all the _______ trying to break the window.

“_______ that got me nervous, scared for her,” said Zhongor, “so I just dove into the water.” He swam to the car, but with no time to spare, he had to _______ how to get Samolinski out of the vehicle. They both tried to unlock the door, but with no _______, they had to find another way. That was when Zhongor realized he could use his own _______. His body successfully made the _______ of the car go deeper into the water, which helped ________ the back end. Samolinski opened the back door and managed to ________. They swam to shore together. Samolinski was so ________ that she couldn’t help crying, but luckily, they both weren’t injured.

“It doesn’t matter who it was, they were in an ________ situation,” said the 17-year-old hero. “I couldn’t watch anybody ________ in front of me.”

________, it turned out they both attended Patchogue-Medford High School, but they had no idea they were schoolmates.

9 . I decided to write the article on British Sign Language (BSL) being taught in school. This is because both of my parents are completely deaf which means they can’t hear at all and another reason I decided to do this topic is because I have realised how much of a problem it has become.

It might come to a surprise to learn that nearly all communication is non-verbal (非语言的) and only a little bit is verbal. Over half of the non-verbal communication is body language. Deaf pupils often struggle (挣扎) in school because they can’t get proper help from their teachers as they might not understand each other.

Sign Language is a language that uses hand gestures and body language. These are different ways of communication that deaf or hard of hearing people use to communicate with people. Some deaf people are what you might call “mute”, which means they use Sign Language but don’t use speech. Other deaf people may use speech, most of whom either use hearing aids or have a cochlear implant (人工耳蜗) which can help them hear.

By teaching BSL it would open doors for the deaf community and it would reduce a lot of language barriers (障碍) between deaf and hearing people. The more people learning BSL through education means that it would give deaf people more options for further education and good jobs. By teaching Sign Language in school it can help deaf awareness (意识). With young people growing up and learning it together there wouldn’t be a problem with getting jobs.

I think that deaf awareness is better than it used to be but it still isn’t good enough. In the end teaching Sign Language will be the best for everyone. There would be less language barriers, which means communication will be easier between hearing people and deaf people.

10 . A good vegan milk (纯素奶) needs to look like milk and taste like milk, whether it contains fat or not. Vegan milk is only one example in the growing types of plant-based alternatives (替代品) to animal products, such as meat, cheese, eggs and fish. Burger King and McDonald’s sell vegan pies. Last year the world’s largest producer of canned tuna, Thai Union, began to sell a plant-based product. Growing sales show the growing taste for this type of food, which means alternative proteins have come a long way since 1980s.

Producing techniques have been improved, resulting in better products and lower prices of them, which meet the needs of a growing number of people. Some vegetarians say no to meat, but yes to fish. Some people are trying to cut fat for health reasons. Fitness lovers want to develop muscular mass and strength without building up fat. Concerns about animal rights and greenhouse gas from raising livestock (家畜) are driving the environmentalists to limit their intake of animal-based proteins. As is reported, producing a gram of beef gives off 25 times the amount of greenhouse gas as producing a gram of tofu.

However, plant-based proteins are a tough sell in giant markets like India, where diets are already plant-rich, or Nigeria, where meat-eating is a sign of being rich. That limits their global popularity. What’s more, animal products, including milk and meat, are better for children’s bone development, though lab-grown meat and dairy are becoming more nutritious.

All this suggests that alternative proteins have far to go to replace the animal kind. Plant-based foods may no longer be only a side dish in diets, but their makers’ place as the main dish is another matter.