Every Saturday, 73-year-old Zhao Guihua takes a special course. In a classroom located in a residential community in the city of Hefei, Anhui, Zhao and her classmates, all seniors, most     1    (wear) reading glasses, learn how to shop on their smartphones.

“We offer a course     2     teaches seniors how to use their smartphones to scan(扫描)health-tracking QR codes(二维码), buy things online, register for hospital visits, and shoot short films,” said Liu Li, who is the     3    (found) of the e-course.

Liu has been providing services for the elderly for 10     4     (year). After learning that many old people don't know about the use of digital devices(设备) in their daily lives, she     5     (start) the smartphone course in August last year to help them cross the digital divide.

Official data show that by the end of 2019, some 150 million seniors at or above the age of 60 in China hadn't had the opportunity     6    (use) the Internet.

“During COVID-19, scanning a health-tracking QR code     7     (need) when we go to a supermarket or take a bus,” said 63-vear-old learner Liu Shaomin.

Instructor Huang Zhen said the course started with the basics of smartphones and that the learners were all crazy about it. Over several months. The number of learners grew rapidly, with ages ranging     8     60 to 90.

“Now I can read news, buy train tickets and book tickets for tourist attractions on my smartphone,” Zhao said     9     (proud). “Scanning health tracking QR codes is now     10     piece of cake for me.”

2 . Kumar is ten years old and works with his father in New Delhi. Every morning, while carrying plastic bags on his shoulders, he runs into children walking to school, ashamed at not being in a school uniform like them. Kumar is one of India’s five million school dropouts. These are the children of villagers who moved to New Delhi but end up living in slums (贫民窟). Many of them, like Kumar’s father, can’t afford to send their children to school. Others are not able to provide birth certificates for their children, which are necessary for school admission.

However, two yellow buses — equipped as mobile schools with teaching materials such as books, whiteboard, pens and toys are helping them. They are part of the government’s project which started in 2003. The books and school bags are free. Every morning, the yellow bus mobile schools arrive near selected slums. “If the children can’t go to school, we have to take the school to them, to their doorstep,” said Sharma, a mobile school teacher. Sharma said that at first parents hesitated to send their children to the mobile school because they were afraid that their children would be cheated. It took the teachers a long time to build their confidence.

Financed by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) in India, the mobile schools project has helped reduce the number of dropouts from 25 million to 5 million. The children are proud because the mobile school comes specially for them. It has changed their lives and given them hope. After joining the bus school, eleven-year-old Meena is very happy with her new life. Although she is young, she understands that education is the key to escaping the poverty. So impressed by her progress, other mothers were convinced to let their daughters attend the mobile school.

The mobile school teachers provide children with primary education to get them up to the level and then they go on with their studies in public schools.

Sometimes it     1     (take) specially designed methods and approaches to let kids learn things which might not naturally come to them. Likewise, the first step in teaching     2    child to play football is letting her become familiar     3     the ball. Trainers at child football classes question them     4     (repeat) "what do we use in football"   and kids answer "feet".

Next, they should     5     (allow) to become confident with the ball. For this, you ask her to keep the ball under one foot and then do it with the other one. Subsequently, you gently roll it forwards and backwards by supporting the kid's foot on it. It lets her know that she can control the ball and that too without hands.

Progressing gently, you can start showing the     6     (difference) paths the foot can follow to stop and control the ball. You roll the ball towards her and let her control the ball. Followed by this comes the fun part,     7     you teach your kid to kick the ball properly. Teach her to kick with the top of the foot with the laces part and not let her get stuck at     8     (kick) by the toe-end.

After having her equipped with these basics, you can continue gradually teaching     9    (they) dribbling (带球)，some trickery and advanced football skills. It takes a lot of     10    (patient) and time, but eventually, the joy the kid will find in the sport is worth all of it.

4 . Audiences may be ready to return. Will they have anything to watch? It is turning out to be a long pause.

Cinemas across the West closed in March and, despite attempts to reopen in the summer, the box office has not recovered. From October 9th Cineworld, the world's second-largest chain, will temporarily shut its 536 Regal theaters in America and its 127 British ones. AMC, the biggest, will cut the opening hours at some Odeon cinemas in Britain.

Early in the pandemic the problem was audiences. In March Disney's "Onward" closed as people refused to breathe the air with a crowd of strangers. Business got harder when governments ordered theaters to shut.

As countries have cased （解除）restrictions and audiences prepared to return, cinemas are finding little to show them. In China, where Covid-19 seems under control, studios have resumed pumping out hits. But Hollywood will not risk premiering （首映）costly blockbusters （大片）while many markets, including New York and California, remain closed, and cinema-goers cautious. Most big titles have been postponed.

Nine months without income would be disastrous （灾难性的）.America's National Association of Theatre Owners predicts that seven out of ten small or medium-sized cinema companies will go bust （破产）,which it has urged Congress to approve.

Both AMC and Cineworld are likely to stop a contract or file for going bust, believes Moody's, a ratings agency; AMC could run out of cash by January. Share prices of Western operators have dropped sharply this year, and are now worth a fifth as much as five years ago. Chinese ones have done better.

5 . Baby Yoda Joins Oregon Firefighters in Battling Wildfires

“Because of all these photos, people are now seeing the human faces behind the wildfires," Tyler Eubanks excitedly told the Washington Post. "It is giving firefighters a huge confidence which is something that's really needed right now."

Sasha agrees, "It's a wonder how one small gesture can create a wave of kindness." She says Carver is excited that everyone likes Baby Yoda and happy that the first responders-many of whom have been unable to see their families for weeks-have a “little friend" to give them a comfort.

The toy, along with a note saying, "Thank you, firefighters. Here is a friend for you, in case you get lonely. Love, Carver," was handed to volunteers on September 12th, 2020. The thoughtful gift brought tears to their eyes. "The fires were close to us, and everyone was really high on emotion," says Tyler Eubanks. "We were all really touched that Carver wanted to give a companion to the people who were out there risking their lives to fight the wildfires.”

Eubanks delivered the toy to a group of firefighters working to contain a 25-acre flames in Colton, Oregon. She had originally intended to take a few pictures of the Baby Yoda in action for Carver, and then bring back the toy to the donation site. However, the firefighters decided to hold on to the doll and share it to lift the spirits of firefighters across the state.

"He's been a really big encouragement” said Jaebyn Drake, a firefighter with the Oregon Air National Guard. "A lot of the people on my crew, I showed them the note and everything, and they just loved it. A couple of people broke down in tears ... It just really meant a lot to us, and it was really emotional for a lot of people.”

6 . 2020 was a really tough year. It affected our lives in many ways and made other serious issues even more difficult to address. There was also social and political unrest in the United States and other places around the world.

All of this added up to some big, stressful year called 2020. In fact, 2020 is a song filled with low, depressing notes.

In English, “low notes” are unpleasant things that happen during an event, any event. So if something ends on a low note, it ends in an unpleasant way. For example, once I took a fun vacation. But it ended on a low note. On the last day, all my money was stolen. Then my flight home was delayed. So, I had to sleep in an airport for two days!

However, we also have another phrase-- a “high note”! In English, a “high note” is something pleasant or gratifying.

So, to end something on a high note is to end it with something pleasant. It can also mean to end something at the best possible point -- for example, at the point when something is most successful.

Anything can be a high note, if you choose it to be. For example, 2020 was a disaster. But for me it ended on a high note. One cold night in late December, I saw on owl in a tree near my house. I love owls but had never seen one so close before! That was a high note for me.

Hopefully, all of us were able to end 2020 on a high note.

Hunting is part of the culture in many countries around the world,    1    (include) right here in the European Union. Recently, some African countries    2    (criticize) for allowing tourists to kill lions. In cases    3    the animals are endangered, almost everyone agrees that this type of hunting should be banned.

Hunters want to increase    4    number of white-ailed deer they're already allowed to shoot. Animal rights groups say that deer-related accidents are actually caused by hunters who scare the deer    5    roads. While that claim is hard    6     (confirm), this one isn't: the number of deer-related car accidents can't compare with the 200 hunting-related human    7    (dead) every year. Finally, these groups believe that animals should be able to live freely in    8    ( they) environment, without having to worry about    9    (kill).

    10    (fortunate)，this last point is hard to argue when so many cows, chickens, and pigs are killed for our dinners. The truth is that hunting is unlikely to stop anytime soon.

10 . On June 9, 2015, Mark Joseph Peredo was riding high on his way home from landing an important client for his marketing business, but he never made it back to celebrate with his family. Instead, a car traveling on the opposite side of the highway crossed over，and crashed into Mark's car. Doctors later told Mark that his foot had been shattered (粉碎). The surgeries left him unable to walk normally for a year, and Mark was forced to abandon his plans to be a successful business owner.

Little did Mark know that Luke Hutchins , the driver of the other car, was suffering, too. The reason he had lost control of his vehicle was because he had an epileptic fit (癫痫发作) - his first, but not his last. Mark knew none of this. Instead, he was still furious with Luke, who had cost him his career. After his foot had mostly recovered, Mark decided to walk the 500-mile Camino de Santiago, a rough path that begins in France，continues through the Pyrenees Mountains, and ends in Spain.

One year later, Mark finished his trip and was still curious about the accident, so he decided to do one more thing: Meet Luke. The two were nervous about speaking to each other, but once Mark learned that Luke was not at fault for the incident and that he had been similarly struggling to recover, Mark knew that Luke needed to walk the Camino de Santiago too—and they needed to do it together.

In 2017, Mark and Luke embarked on (开始) their tip, which was hard on Luke at first. As time progressed, Luke became stronger both physically and mentally. During their 40-day trip, the two men kept encouraging each other and had many heart-to-heart talks. And they came to realize that unless you let go of the past, you cannot move forward.