A

About 70 million Americans are trying to lose weight. That is almost 1 out of 3 people in the United States. This means they eat less of certain food, 【小题1】 fat and sugar. Other people exercise, take medicines, or even have 【小题2】.

Losing weight is not easy, and it can cost a lot of money. But why do so many people in the United States want to lose weight? Many people want to look young. Others 【小题3】 their health.

Doctors say being overweight is not healthy. Almost 30 million Americans’ weight is 【小题4】 20% more than their ideal weight. In fact, the United States is the most overweight country in the world.

B

Nowadays, more and more people are getting glued to the 【小题5】 of their mobiles and laptops. Not only youth but the older generation is also getting addicted to the Internet.

Traditions connect people. It’s up to us to what degree we want to save our traditions. For example, human labor has been replaced in factories or industries to 【小题6】 traditional clothes. It’s just that with advancement in technology, the production has become easier.

Yes, many traditional skills and many traditions are 【小题7】. But technology and traditions can go hand in hand. Technology has surely erased many traditions but it is impossible to 【小题8】 make tradition die out.

The cashless times (无现金时代)

Spending a day 【小题1】 cash or bank cards is perfectly unbelievable in China. With the 【小题2】 of the QR code, online or offline payments are connected deeply. Mobile payment platforms WeChat Pay and Alipay have developed the cashless society in China.

People use mobile payment, whether to pay utility (水电费) bills, travel short or long 【小题3】, make appointments at hospital or go shopping.

We enjoy the convenience of a cashless society, but we should care about the 【小题4】 and privacy of payment.

Hello, guys! Today we’re entering the world of emojis—the small characters people use 【小题1】 feelings in texts and emails. Do you have a favorite emoji? Do you know where they are from? Let’s see together!

When we talk with someone face to face, we use 【小题2】 gestures (姿势) like smiling, laughing or nodding to show the other person how we feel. But these feelings sometimes get lost in written communication because of the lack of gestures. That’s where emojis come in—they add feelings and emotion to 【小题3】 messages like QQ and WeChat. There are different kinds of emojis, 【小题4】 facial expressions, places and types of weather, animals and so on.

The first emoji was 【小题5】 in 1999 in Japan and then became popular among Japanese mobile phone users. But they were 【小题6】 used in the western world until 2011 and then was used by Android and other operating systems. Now there are over three thousand emojis that can be 【小题7】 from. They help people put back some of the human feelings that are 【小题8】 in written texts and emails.

However, not everyone is an emoji fan. Some people believe that 【小题9】 choosing words is the best way of expressing yourself, and using emojis too often will lower our ability to put feelings into words. But they possibly 【小题10】 the nature of communication. Emoji is important. In fact, it offers more ways to communicate in the digital (数字) age. What’s your opinion?