Everyone Can Change the World

    What can we do to help protect the environment? It seems useless to just pick up a piece of trash, but what will happen if you keep doing it every day? Tommy Kleyn, an ordinary man from the Netherlands, may give you the answer.

    Tommy Kleyn walked past a polluted river on his way to work every day. It used to be a beautiful view, but the trash on the bank made it dirty and smelly. So Tommy decided to pick up the trash along the river a little bit at a time after work. "It took me about 30 minutes to fill one garbage bag with trash, but one garbage bag didn't seem helpful in a place as polluted as this. I decided to fill one bag of trash each day as I passed by," Tommy said. Every day, Tommy took pictures of the river and shared them on his Facebook page. To his surprise, in just six days, he had made great progress with his cleanup effort. He felt happy and kept doing it. Gradually, more and more people knew about Tommy's story. Other people in the community began following in his footsteps and cleaning up trash on their way home, too.

    "The idea is to encourage people to fill one garbage bag with litter each day. It only takes 30 minutes, but it really makes a difference and you will be amazed at how good you feel afterwards," he said.

    People from all over the world have been moved and inspired by Tommy's story. No effort is useless if we keep doing it every day. Ordinary people like you and me can also make a difference to the world we live in if we take actions right now.

    Wendy is manager of customer service at ABC Products. She received the following letters from customers. Read the letters and answer the questions.

    Fun or kind? Old or young? Let's see what these students say about their favourite teachers?

Zhao Dan

    My favorite teachers are learned(博学)teachers because they can make their lessons easy and interesting. And in class, after learning what is in the book, we hope to learn more.

Wang Jianing

    My geography teacher Mr. Todd is kind to students. His class is interesting. All of the students want to learn and do their homework.

Wang Peng

    We boys and girls often have questions. We really want to talk about these questions with teachers and make friends with them. I don't like old teachers because they can't understand(理解)us!

Lu Hongfei

    Ms. Li is my English teacher. She always wears purple clothes. It is her favorite color. She often teaches us to sing English songs.

    A mouse was surprised to discover that the farmer and his wife had a mousetrap(老鼠夹)in the house. It ran to warn everyone, "There is a mousetrap in the house!"

    A hen raised its head and said, "Mr. Mouse, this mousetrap is only for you. I won't be worried about it. "The mouse turned to a pig." I am sorry, Mr. Mouse, but the mousetrap has nothing to do with me, either! "the pig said. Then the mouse turned to a cow. "It sounds like you have a problem, not me," the cow said. The mouse returned to the house with its head down and it was very sad because no one would help.

    That night the farmer's wife heard a loud sound and she rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness she could not see that it was a snake. The snake bit(咬)the farmer's wife. The wife caught a bad fever and the farmer thought the best way to treat a fever was having chicken soup. So the farmer killed the hen for the soup. The wife got worse and her friend came to visit her. The farmer had to kill the pig to feed them. But the wife didn't get better and died. Her friends came and the farmer had to kill the cow to feed all of them.

    So remember when any one of us is in trouble, we may be in trouble.

    Robots were something in science novels and movies. Now there are many robots working in factories. In fact, most working robots are not like humans at all, some are more like strange machines. They do most of dirty or dangerous jobs over and over again. Robots never get bored or tired but humans will if they do the same jobs. Scientists believe there will be more new robots everywhere, but it may take hundreds of years. They will have different shapes. They will look like humans or animals. In India, scientists made robots that look like snakes. They can help find people inside fallen buildings.