广东省广州市白云区2023-2024学年九年级英语上册 Un...

—That's a good habit. It's a good way to ____ what's going on around the world.

—Dear, I believe you can. 

Liu Wei is a disabled pianist from Beijing. He won the first series of China's Got Talent by playing the piano 1 his toes.

When Liu was ten years old, 2  accident happened to him. When he 3  up after 45 days, he found that both of his arms 4 . His parents told him he should learn 5  to take care of himself, 6  no one could help him. His mother kept telling him that he is not different from 7 . In the hospital, he met an armless painter 8  encouraged him to learn to use his feet to write, brush his teeth and eat. 

9 he was very sad, but he knew life wouldn't stop for him. He focused 10 what he could do instead of what he 11 . He started playing the piano at 19 12 his music dream come true. His first teacher left as he considered 13 impossible for someone to play without fingers. However, Liu didn't give up. He practiced even 14 , more than seven hours a day. Finally, he proved himself to be a talent.

15  excellent man he is!

Einstein and the little girl

One afternoon Einstein was walking home from work. At the same time, a 12-year-old girl was walking home from 1 . They were soon walking side by side. The girl looked at him 2  from time to time. 

"3 me," the girl said, "but you look just like Albert Einstein. "

"That's 4 I am Albert Einstein!" Einstein said.

"I don't believe you," the girl said. "Everyone knows that Einstein is a 5 . But you're wearing your sweater 6 , so you can't be very clever. "

Einstein began to laugh. "You're the 7 person to be so honest with me," he said to the girl. "It's a pleasure to hear someone tell me the truth about my 8 . "

After that day, the girl often went to visit Einstein's house after school. One afternoon, the girl's mother went to visit Einstein. She asked him why he spent so much time with her daughter.

"Our 9 is easy to explain," Einstein said. "Your daughter tells me the truth about my look and brings me cookies. In 10 , I help her with her Maths homework. "

On a June afternoon in 1752, the sky began to get dark over the city. As the storm broke, most people surely hurried inside, but not Benjamin Franklin. He decided it was the perfect time to fly a kite. Franklin had been waiting for a chance like this. Franklin had been waiting for a chance like this. He wanted to show the connection between lightning（闪电）and electricity, and to do so, he needed a storm. 

He walked in to a field, and flew a kite with a piece of rope tied to it. A key was tied to the rope. The lightning hit the kite, and electricity passed through the rope to the key. Franklin then touched the key with his finger and got an electric shock（电击）. This, he said, proved（证明）the electrical nature of lightning. 

For many years, schools have taught the story of Franklin's experiment. Millions of schoolchildren have been amazed by his courage and his scientific spirit of looking for the truth. However, new research suggests that the story may be fiction instead of fact. Although Franklin's experiment took place, more than one scientist has questioned what really happened. It's true that he did the experiment with the rope and the key. But scientists all agree that if Franklin had actually touched the key, he would certainly have died from the electric shock.

Scientists often question accepted ideas because they want to find out the facts. Some have even questioned the story about the apple that fell on Newton's head. Many reports suggest that although the falling apple certainly provided ideas, there is nothing to show that the apple actually hit him on the head.

In fact, fiction is often more interesting than the truth. People have been more encouraged by Franklin's spirit than by the facts themselves. But in science, facts should be tested by experiments and research, and we should not always believe everything we read or hear — even if it is a great story.

Bob Butler lost his legs in 1965 in Vietnam. A year later he returned to the US and began his life in wheelchair（轮椅）. One day, he was working in his yard when he heard a woman calling for help. He began moving towards the woman's house, but something on the ground stopped his wheelchair going through the back door. So he got out of his wheelchair and started to crawl.

When Butler got through the back door of the house, he found there was a little girl in the pool. She had no arms and couldn't swim. Her mother was calling for help crazily. Butler got into the pool and pulled the little girl out of the water. Her face was blue, and she was not breathing.

Butler did CPR（心肺复苏术）on her right away. As Butler continued doing CPR, he talked to the mother, "Don't worry," he said. "It'll be OK. I was her arms to get out of the pool. I am now her lungs. Together we can make it. "

Soon the little girl coughed and began to cry. The mother asked Butler how he knew it would be OK. "I didn't know," he told her. "But when my legs were blown off（炸掉）in the war, a little girl in Vietnam said to me in broken English, "It'll be OK. You will live. I'll be your legs. Together we can make it. " Her kind words brought hope to me and I wanted to do the same for your little girl. "

When Liberia was my home, they called it sweet. Sweet was the word I remembered most during the war. When I was five, my father, two sisters and I fled from Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia, and headed north on foot among panicked masses of criers — a journey that ended in a village where we hid from flying bullets（子弹）. Every dawn, my sisters and I joined my father and covered the pages of his small journal with words. My favorite word to write was "sweet", one that had the power to numb the reality of our 6-month abandonment（抛弃）by peace and civilization.

Eventually, we were considered the lucky ones: part of the wave of refugees who left Liberia in1990 to settle in America. My mother studied at Columbia University at the time, and we made our new home in her dormitory while awaiting her graduation. My father who left early in the mornings looked for work or news of a possible return to Liberia, only to return home with nothing to give us but new words to write in notebooks. He quickly found that the education received in Liberia was not good enough for an engineering job in the United States. So he took whatever job he could find to make sure we always had food on the table and books. 

In 2011, I founded a children's book publishing company: One More Book. It provides children's literature for the children of countries with low literacy（识字）rates and underrepresented cultures by publishing culturally relevant books that have something meaningful to say to them. My hope is to give children the peace I was given through the words of my father, by allowing them to see themselves in literature. I also think it is important to provide books about foreign countries to children in the United States, to increase the overall awareness of the world outside them.

I will never be able to give my father back the twenty years he spent working to educate us, or the home and life in Liberia he lost. I repay his sacrifice（牺牲）by honoring the education he fought for and offering my art to the world, with stories that make the histories of my people come alive, and with words to live by. 

The early 1500s were an exciting time of exploration and discovery. During this time, a young nobleman named Ferdinand Magellan became excited over the idea of exploring new lands. 

Magellan told King Charles Ⅰ of Spain his plan to look for the Spice Islands. . On September 21, 1519, Magellan and 240 men sailed from Spain in five ships: Concepcion, San Antonio, Santiago, Trinidad, and Victoria. . He sailed along the coast of South America looking for a place to sail through to the other side of the land. He found a passage near the tip of South America. This passage led from the Atlantic Ocean to another ocean. Today this passage is called the Strait of Magellan. Magellan named this other ocean the Pacific Ocean, because the waters were so calm. 

, he had only three ships left. The San Antonio had recently sailed back to Spain. The Santiago had been wrecked in a storm. 

Magellan expected to find the Spice Islands soon after entering the Pacific Ocean. But the three ships sailed west day after day. Many sailors died of hunger or disease. Finally, they reached the Philippine Islands. . 

, he is known as the first person to sail around the world. It was his voyage that first proved that the Earth is round. 

She    the dress she bought just now. 

When she heard the bad news, her face  . 

He dreams of being a lawyer to protect the good people and  the bad ones  . 

He got the lesson  . 

If you ask me when to leave, I   . 

He works very hard because he doesn't want to .

This novel is    I want to read it again. 

This summer holiday, I listened to some works by Sinn Sing Hoi. I enjoyed them very much and I'd like to let you know more about him.