【明報專訊】Ed Sheeran, an award-winning English singer-songwriter, visited Liberia (利比里亞) with Comic Relief, a British charity, for a fundraising project. He paid for a group of Liberian children to stay in a safe place after witnessing their way of living. A representative of Comic Relief later released a statement confirming the youngsters were given the help they needed.
Ed met a boy called JD, who longed to go to school and dreamed of becoming president but was sleeping rough and struggling to survive. Ed found he could not leave JD and his friends behind, so he pleaded to rehouse them for the night. Ed said, "My natural instinct is just to put them in a car and just take them, and just put them somewhere in the city, and put them in a hotel until we can get them sorted."
Many Liberian children lost their parents in the devastating Ebola (伊波拉) outbreak that hit the West African country two years ago. Ed had earlier been reduced to tears after meeting a young girl who lost her father to Ebola.
(sources: BBC, Daily Mail, The Telegraph)
■Photo Story
An emotional Ed was lauded when he refused to leave the Liberian street boys. View his journey by scanning the QR code above.
■Quiz
Answer the follwoing questions.
(Answers on next text)
1. Is the following sentence true or false?
Liberia is a country in Asia.
(True/False)
2. Find in paragraph one a word that is similar in meaning to "observe". Give its bare infinitive.
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3. "A young girl who lost her father to Ebola" (in paragraph three) means
a. a young girl who died of Ebola
b. a young girl whose father died of Ebola
c. a young girl who and whose father died of Ebola
d. none of the above
4. How did Ed Sheeran help JD and his friends?
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■English highway﹕ reduce ... to tears
To reduce somebody to tears means to make someone cry.
e.g. The bride's speech at her wedding reduced the guests to tears.
■Glossary
fundraising (adj) 募款的
plead (v) 請求
outbreak (n) 爆發
laud (v) 讚美
[Smarties' Power English Vol 185]
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