Public­square dancing is now very popular with the elderly people in China. In fact, many Chinese ladies, mostly women in their fifties or sixties,     1     (take) up square dancing as a regular form of exercise over the years. Every day after supper, they gather on the square dancing. They think that square dancing is     2     great benefit. Besides helping them keep fit, it also provides them with a good chance     3     (improve) the relationship with neighbors. Also, such dance actually enriches their     4     (culture) life on the whole.

    5    , public­square dancing has also caused some social concerns. The music of square dancing tends to be very noisy,     6     of course disturbs the normal life of people living nearby. Besides,     7     (expose) to such loud noise may do harm to the dancers’ health in the long run.

Square dancing is no doubt     8     good form of exercise and enjoyment, but dancers should take their neighbors’ needs into     9     (consider). They should choose a right time and turn down their music a bit so that they will cause little trouble for others. Only in this way can they dance     10     (happy) and live in harmony with their neighbors.

As a parent, I’m torn by society’s love affair with phones. On the one hand, it’s awesome to be able to know that our kids have a means of     1     (keep) in touch with us in an emergency. On the other hand, I know I somehow managed     2     (survive) my childhood as well as the majority of my life to date without a 24/7 means of communication.

So I often think whether kids     3     (real) need to have phones at school. During the past year, schools     4     (try) to carry out a “no electronics” policy but have met with strong disagreement from parents     5     want their kids to have access to a phone in case of an emergency (紧急情况). However, a 2015 study found kids did better in school when mobile     6     (device) were banned (禁止).

According to     7     study, teen’s test scores increased by 6 percent after phone bans were applied. The results were even     8     (good) for kids who were struggling academically, whose scores improved by 14 percent after the ban.

So what’s your opinion? Ban phones and leave kids without a means of communication,     9     allow their grades to suffer because     10     the unavoidable distraction (分神) of technology?

Today’s Teens in No Hurry to Start Driving

The legal age to drive a car in the United States is 16. Obtaining a driver’s license on the day you turn 16 has long been     1     major life event for many young people in America.

But interest in driving among today’s teenagers     2    (drop) sharply over the past 35 years. In 1983, 80 percent of 18-year-olds in America had a driver’s license. By 2018, that number had reduced to 61 percent. Among 16-year-olds, the number decreased from 46 percent in 1983    3     25 percent in 2018. Those    4    (figure) come from the U.S. Federal Highway Administration.

Young people say they have many reasons for delaying or avoiding     5    (get) a driver’s license. Some choose more environmentally friendly transportation choices. Others find driving     6    (stress). And some     7    (simple) do not care about cars at all.

Carmakers want to make their vehicles more appealing to young people. They seek to make cars more interesting to a generation     8    (bring) up on technology. Some believe a big screen is     9    today’s teen drivers want. The vehicle is an    10    (extend) of their iPhone or their screen device.

Many college students are seeking help for mental health issues. In fact,     1     number of college students, struggling with anxiety, depression or other mental health issues, has risen a lot over the years.

David Reetz, a famous psychologist, has ideas about     2     young people are having such a hard time. Reetz says the current generation of people in their 20s — often called “millennials”, are faced     3     the pressure of succeeding and worrying about what they would do after     4     (graduate). Many of them cannot cope with problems in the way that former generations     5     (do). They often lack the ability to solve interpersonal conflicts.

“Millennials are not     6     (blame),” Reetz says. “Parents of millennials spend more time supervising (监督) their children than other parents did. As a result, these young people have fewer chances to learn how to take risks or solve conflicts by     7     (they).”

Experts say they are     8     (please) that more young people are seeking help for mental health issues. “Once     9     (realize) they might have a problem, they ought to know there is nothing wrong with asking for help. The earlier they seek help, the     10     (soon) their problems will be solved,” said Reetz.

The US national farm-to-school movement     1    (grow) so fast recently that it is challenging traditional notions (概念) of city planning, and a preschool in the state of Georgia is at ground zero in the conflict.

The Little Ones Learning Center in the city of Forest Park has a nationally     2    (recognize) garden-based education program.

The primary goal was to influence food     3     (prefer) of children and their parents, but the preschool also wanted to give residents in the surrounding neighborhood access     4     eat many fruits and vegetables. In2018, Little Ones started farm stand to sell produce to parents and neighbors. The produce grown in the school’s garden     5     (bring) in from nearby farms.

    6     in August 2019, City Hall shut the program down.     7    turns out that Little Ones is in a residential area and is not zoned for farm stands.

Little Ones owner Wande Okunoren-Meadows believes the law needs     8     (change). She went to a city council meeting in early September last year to say so. The city refused to change it.

She isn’t worried just about her school. She wants a law     9     allows other preschools to follow her lead and expose     10    (many) residents to the taste of organic kale, sweet peas and watermelon.

Recently some Western companies, including H & M and Nike, have come under fire due to their boycott(抵制) of cotton     1     (produce) in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

A statement based     2     false information from H & M made Chinese people angry. They argued that these large companies profit off of Chinese     3     (consumer) while defaming(诋毁) the country. Such arguments led to the     4     (create) of “I support Xinjiang cotton” campaign popular on Sina Weibo. On China’s major e-commerce platforms including Taobao and JD.com, all products and search results related to H & M     5     (clear). Wang Yibo,     6     was previously a brand ambassador(大使) for Nike, has pulled out of his deal. And he’s not alone. Many     7     celebrities(明星) joined him to voice the objection.

China is the world’s second-largest cotton producers     8     Xinjiang accounts for nearly 90% of the country’s cotton output.     9    , the increase in China’s cotton production and the     10     (grow) textile industry are making some in the west nervous, said Xinhua.

Why do people make their banks in the shape of a pig? Pigs have nothing to do with money. They don’t store food like squirrels. So how did we end up     1     (use) a pig as the style of a bank?

During the fifteenth century, metal was very expensive. Dishes and pots were made from a type of orange clay called “pygg”,     2     was pronounced just like “pig”. At the time, there weren’t banks like we have today, so people would store their money at home. When     3     (housewife) had extra coins to save, they would place them in clay jars or pots. Since the type of clay was called “pygg”, people     4     (refer) to the jars as pygg banks. Over time this evolved into piggy banks.

    5     a few hundred years, people forgot that the word “pygg” was associated with the clay the banks     6     (make) from. The English language was also changing and the word “pig” was more     7     (common) used than before. So when English potters began to get request     8     piggy banks, they assumed their customers were asking for banks     9     (shape) like pigs, not banks made from pygg.

Today piggy banks are made from all kinds of materials, and they also come in a     10     (vary) of shapes and animals. But the term “piggy bank” is still used to refer to these adorable containers for loose change.