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    The Earth is our home; we must take care of it. This means keeping the land, air and water clean. Pollution is a dirty word. To pollute means to make things unfit or unclean to use. Pollution comes in many ways. We see it, smell it, taste it and drink it. Pollution is beginning to threaten (威胁) our health, our happiness and our life. Man has been polluting the earth from the time he first made fire, washed his clothes in the river and threw his waste on the ground. When land was used up or water became dirty, men moved on to another place. At first, the problem was not so serious because there was plenty of clean air, land and water. There weren't so many people then and their wants were fewer. All the dirty things could be absorbed (吸收) by nature and soon covered over. But this is no longer true. The increase of population and the development of industry(工业)have changed that. Man is slowly poisoning (毒害) his environment. Through the use of poison, man has polluted the land, killing the animals. By putting dirty water and chemicals into rivers and lakes we have polluted our drinking water, killing the fish.

    Our increasing population is part of the problem. More people, more waste.

    Where is this all to end? Are we turning the world into a big rubbish dump (堆存处), or is there any hope that we can get rid of (摆脱, 除去) the pollution? Luckily, millions of people have been warned of the danger of pollution. Large numbers of people are now working hard to bring pollution under control.

    No Car Day first started by 34 cities in France on September 22, 1998. People started it to protect the environment. By now, more than 1,000 cities around the world have a No Car Day.

    The first No Car Day in China was in Chengdu in 2001. Other cities, including Taipei, Shanghai and Wuhan, also support(支持) the day.

    In Beijing, more and more people are joining in the program. It asks drivers to leave their cars at home for one day each month and walk or ride a bike to work. It also calls on Beijingers not to use cars on June 5(World Environment Day). The slogan(口号) for the day is, "If we drive for one less day, we can have one more nice day."

    So far, more than 200,000 drivers Show their support. "We can't decide the weather, but we can choose not to drive," said Wu Zhonghua, a car dub manager. Beijing is trying to have 238 blue sky days this year. In the first quarter of 2017, Beijing only had 52 blue sky days. This was 11 days less than the number for the same period the year before.

    We must do more for No Car Day.

Have you ever seen or used a saw, or" ju" in Chinese? Do you know who invented it?

The inventor was Lu Ban. He was born in the state of Lu in ancient China more than2,500 years ago. That is where Qufu lies in the east of Jining.

Lu Ban was the greatest carpenter(木匠) in his time. Once the king ordered him and his team to build a palace in a very short time. They would be punished if they missed the deadline(最后期限). They had only axes, or fuzi in Chinese, to cut the trees and prepare the wood for the palace, so work was very slow.

One day Lu Ban rushed up the hill to see how things were going. Suddenly the sharp teeth of a leaf cut his hand. Then a bright idea came into his head. Soon he made a tool with teeth along the side of a long iron bar(条状物). With this tool, work became much faster, and they completed the work before the deadline.

That is how the saw was invented.

Lu Ban invented many other useful tools for carpenters and interesting toys for children. The Wooden Bird, for example, could stay in the air for three days. That's why he is regarded as the God of Carpentry.

We each have a memory. That's why we can remember things for a long time. Some people have a very good memory and they can {#blank#}1{#/blank#} （easy）learn many things by heart. But others can only remember {#blank#}2{#/blank#}（thing）when they say or do them again and again. 

A good memory. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}（help）one learn a language well. Everybody learns his own language when he is {#blank#}4{#/blank#}small child. He hears the sounds, remembers them, and then he learns to speak. For example, some children are living {#blank#}5{#/blank#} their parents in foreign countries. They can learn two languages easily because they hear, remember and speak the two languages every day. 

As for those children who live in {#blank#}6{#/blank#} （they）home country, they have po chance（机会）to learn any two or more languages easily. They are not {#blank#}7{#/blank#} （live）in a foreign language environment In school it is not easy. {#blank#}8{#/blank#} （earning）a foreign language as well That's {#blank#}9{#/blank#}the students have little time for it and they have to lean a large number of other subjects, too. 

Our memory can get {#blank#}10{#/blank#} （good）if we do more exercises. Do you want to learn a foreign language well? If so, you must do a lot of listening and speaking. 

On December 9th, 3:50 in the afternoon, many students in China watch TV. It is a very interesting science class from the space station(大空站). They all like it very much!

Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping, and Ye Guangfu are the three teachers. And Wang Yaping is the only woman teacher. She is great fun!

First, she says hello to all of the students. Then she lets the students have a look at their "rooms" in the space station. She gets an apple from the fridge（冰箱）．She says, "This apple is in the space station for a long time but it is really fresh. In her class, Wang Yaping helps the students to know much about water in space. She puts a ping-pong ball in the water. The ball doesn't go up but stays in the middle of the water. It is really interesting! Things in the space station are not the same as we know. Many students ask questions about space science. They are happy to help them.

Wang Yaping has a flower. It is from her daughter. She is only five now. She watches her mom in the space class, too! After one hour, the space science class finishes. Wang says, "All of you are flowers of China. One day you can come to space yourselves and find new things about space!"

There is a competition for photographers (摄影师) of wildlife in the Natural History Museum in London every year. This year, the competition had about 50,000 photos.These photos come from different parts of the world. They take us underwater, deep into the woods, and high above cities. All of them show different kinds of life on earth.

In the end, the great prize went to Laurent Ballesta. The French photographer won the prize for his photo of a horseshoe crab. In the photo, the horseshoe crab looks for food in the sea. Three little fish follow it closely. They may hope to eat what the horseshoe crab misses.

Horseshoe crabs are known as "living fossils (化石)". They have lived for at least 445 million years and stayed almost unchanged. They're now in great danger, however. What happened to them? In the 1960s, scientists found something surprising. The blue blood of horseshoe crabs can be used for scientific study. As a result, hundreds of thousands of them are caught each year.

For a long time, Ballesta took photos of horseshoe crabs in the sea. His winning photo took the judges (评委) by surprise. "To see a horseshoe crab so alive and well, in such a beautiful way, was fantastic," said one of them.

Read the passage and answer the following questions.