She used to sleep on the sidewalk of the Fifth Street Post Office. I could smell her before I came close. She wore ________ clothes and her mouth was nearly toothless. I didn’t see her talk with ________ often. If she was not asleep, she talked to herself. I always felt sorry for her. What a poor lady! She must be hopeless and hungry.

One Thanksgiving, we had lots of food left. I thought about the old lady. She might be still hungry. So I ________ the food up and drove over to the Fifth Street.

It was a cold night. There was ________ anyone out. But I knew she would stay at the same place and that I would find her ________.

There she was, squatted (蹲着) against a fence (围栏) near the post office. She was dressed ________ she always was. I drove my car over to her, rolled down the window and said, “I brought you some food. Would you like some turkey and apple pie?”

However, the old woman didn’t seem to be very ________ about this. She looked at me and said quite clearly, “Oh, thank you very much, but someone gave me food earlier and I’m quite full now. Why not take it to someone else who ________ it?”

Her words were ________ and her manners were polite. Soon her head sank into her arms again. I was the only person who didn’t ________ what to say. An old lady who was clearly down on her luck still thought about others. Why don’t more of us do that?

La’eeb, the mascot (吉祥物“拉伊卜”) of the 2022 Qatar (卡塔尔) World Cup in Doha (多哈), with its special look, is popular all over the world. La’eeb may be an idea born in the Middle East, but it grows up in Dongguan, Guangdong.

The design of La’eeb is a kind of traditional clothing of Arab, with a snow-white body, traditional headgear (头饰), and red printed Qatari patterns at the corner of the cloth. When it runs after a football, it looks like a jumping dumpling.

La’eeb’s special shape made the toy design slow and hard. The production of La’eeb faced two challenges: one was to make La’eeb, a mascot with no arms and legs, stand up. And the other was to make the toy fly freely. Double Train Culture, a company from Dongguan took the order. They decided the shape of La’eeb, then 3D printed the toy and improved it, and finally made a model.

The first toy was made in 2020, and the company improved it many times. Finally, La’eeb was accepted by Qatar 2022 Local Organizing Committee and FIFA after eight changes. With La’eeb’s popularity, the Chinese town Dongguan is successful in getting a place in World Cup history.

Have you ever heard of an avalanche (雪崩)? The avalanches is a kind of sudden natural disaster like earthquakes. During an avalanche a lot of snow and ice rush down the mountains. As they rush, the snow and ice move faster and faster. In fact, snow from an avalanche can move as fast as two hundred miles an hour. That is three times faster than a car on a highway!

Most avalanches happen after big storms. In the mountains like the Alps and the Himalayas, there is snow and ice all year round. After big storms, new snow puts more pressure (压力) on the snow that is already in the mountains. It can make the old snow rush down.

Avalanches are very dangerous. Heavy snow moving down the mountains may pull trees and rocks along. That can cause great damage, such as pushing down houses and killing people. Luckily, no one lives in the mountains where avalanches are easy to happen. So not many people die from avalanches each year.

Most people who may lose their lives in avalanches are ski lovers. It’s important for them to stay safe while having fun in the snow mountains. Scientists can usually tell whether an avalanche might happen or not. If you are a ski lover, remember to pay attention to scientists’ warnings before you go skiing.

A tree has roots. People have roots too. If you get to the root of a problem, you will solve it. It’s the same thing with words. Dig deeply into a big, unfamiliar word and you will understand where it came from.

As readers, especially those reading in a second language, we need to deal with the text as if we were detectives (侦探) looking for information to unlock the unknown. Like any good detective, the first thing to do when meeting a new and difficult word is to learn about the situation, to look at everything that is known and see if it helps us to understand what it means.

As you know, prefixes and suffixes can be added to the beginning or end of words to change the meaning. Know them, and you will have the word building power. But root words are the key. Take time to learn a few of these, put them in your memory, and you will become a master word detective.

Let’s look at one common root word used in English. “Alter” from the Latin word means “other”. When you meet this root word, you know that the bigger word has something to do with “other”. Examine the word “alternate”. Can you find the Latin root in it?

Learn as many root words as possible in the language you are studying. Then use your “rooting for words” skills. Like any new skill, practice and hard work are always paid back.