The nicotine in tobacco is     1     (harm) to people's lungs.     2    , my father used to smoke cigarettes far too often, which disturbed me greatly. One day I spoke to     3     health consultant at my school. He said my father should make a monthly plan     4     (smoke) less, otherwise he may need surgery in the future. I'm so glad my father agreed to make a plan and break this bad habit!

Sivert is $1, 800 richer, and all it took was for him to stay away from social media during most of his teenage     1     (year).

When the boy was 12, his mom, Lorna, told him if he didn’t use social media for the next six years, she     2     (give) him $1, 800 on his 18th birthday. Sivert happily accepted the offer. “I thought it was awesome.”

Sivert held up his end of the deal, and on his     3     (eighteen) birthday, his mom presented him with $1, 800.     4     the distraction of social media, Sivert was able to focus more on sports and getting good grades, while also     5     (avoid) “all the unnecessary drama that was on the social media.”

He’s not sure     6     he’ll spend his money on, but Sivert did figure out how to break his social media dry spell: he got an Instagram account. There’s “    7     (definite) a learning curve,” he said. “I see my friends fly through their social media apps and I can’t do that quite yet.”

Lorna is glad her son appears to have     8     “different perspective” on social media. “We are certainly not against social media, but it’s the     9     (health) using of it that matters,” she said. “It’s about not letting yourself get weighed down by it, or     10     (addict) to it, or affected by things that people post.”

Almost 200 years ago, my great-grandmother’s great-grandmother was trying to survive yet another     1    (freeze) Russian winter when she heard about a new invention     2    (call) a “samovar”,     3    means “self-boiler” in Russian. In her family, they could only boil water on their big stove. The new samovar could make hot water much    4    (easy) and could be transported anywhere, not to mention that it required much less fuel.     5     they were poor, they decided to use their savings     6    (invest) in a samovar. So early one cold winter, she set out to     7     distant town. After four hours of struggling through snow, she found the town and     8    (quick) bundled her new samovar into her sack and     9    (hurry) home. The samovar was then proudly placed in her main room and     10    (be) in use by my family ever since.