実戦演習

【Passage A】

At Midori Junior High School, students started a small garden behind the library. They wanted to grow vegetables for the school lunch program. At first, only six students joined the project. They learned how much water each plant needed and made a schedule for taking care of the garden. In June, they picked their first tomatoes. The cook used them in soup, and many students said that the soup tasted better because the tomatoes came from their own school.

【Passage B】

When Aya moved to a new town, she was worried about making friends. One day, she saw a poster for a weekend cooking class at the community center. She decided to join it because she liked cooking with her grandmother. In the class, Aya worked with a boy named Leo. Their first cake did not look beautiful, but they laughed and tried again. By the end of the class, Aya had learned a new recipe and had someone to talk to at school.

【Passage C】

Some people believe that using a smartphone while walking saves time, but city records tell a different story. Last year, a downtown survey found that nearly two hundred pedestrians were involved in minor accidents near busy crossings, and city officers said that more than half of them were looking at their phone screens instead of the traffic lights. The problem is not limited to adults. A survey at three local high schools showed that about forty percent of students admitted to checking their phones while crossing the street on their way to school. To address this growing problem, one train station tried something new: bright blue lights built into the pavement near the ticket gates. These lights turn red automatically when the pedestrian signal tells people to stop, so even someone staring down at a phone can notice the change out of the corner of their eye. In the six months after the lights were installed, the station reported a forty percent drop in near-miss incidents. Even so, the city officer in charge of the project was careful not to call it a complete solution. "Lights on the ground can remind people," she said, "but they cannot force anyone to look up. Technology can support safety, but it cannot replace each person's attention and judgment." Other cities are now considering similar projects, but most safety experts agree that changing habits will take much longer than installing new lights.