【推荐2】Paul O’Sullivan sat around his Baltimore apartment one evening, feeling bored. ________ like people with nothing better to do, he ________ his computer and logged onto Facebook to find out just how many others on the social network ________ his name. Moments later, Paul O’Sullivans were popping out, ________ his screen. The then-human-resources-employee decided to send friend ________ to them all.

Many of his fellow Paul O’Sullivans ignored him, but a few felt too ________ to pass up his invitation. ________ Baltimore Paul O’Sullivan looked through the other Paul O’Sullivans’ profiles, he ________ something that four of them had in common: they were all ________ . Like Baltimore Paul, Rotterdam Paul sings. Paul in Manchester plays the guitar. And Paul from Pennsylvania is a drummer. Four men with the same name who all love making music? Baltimore Paul had an idea. ________ they formed a band called the Paul O’Sullivans? Great, they all agreed. And so they did. ________ love for music brought them together.

Starting a band across different time zones ________ to be tough, but the Paul O’Sullivan Band managed to ________ its first original song, “ Namesake, ” in March. It’s a passionate track about long-distance relationships. Not romantic ones, of course, but like the friendships they had ________ developed.

Life is hard sometimes. When you have an opportunity to generate ________ , you have to put aside other stuff.

【推荐2】Many years ago, I was living with my best friend and we had many happy moments together. But there was one night that ________ our lives forever.

On the night of November 25, 2011, I got into a fistfight with my best friend in our kitchen. It all started because I was trying to help him. He was drinking a lot, arguing with everyone and ________ himself from others by keeping silent most of the time. This had been going on for weeks and finally I decided it was time for a(an) ________ I told him that he needed to stop drinking so much and tried to ________ his alcohol and he got angry and started ________ with me. It was scary, but by the end of the night, we were able to calm down and talk to each other.

I thought alcohol ________ was his main problem. But he was just using alcohol to ________ himself through. He was lonely, heartbroken and struggling to connect with people. So during the Christmas season a few weeks later, I gave him a ________ that I didn’t even know I had.

That Christmas my friend didn’t have any place to go, so I invited him home to my parents’ house in Lancaster. They ________ cleaned up our guest room for him and even bought him some Christmas gifts. I’ll never forget the night we arrived at my home. My parents were already ________, but my mom had prepared dinner for us, baked some cookies and left us a note. My parents are known for their ________, so I wasn’t surprised by this warm welcome. But when my friend read my mom’s note and saw all that she had prepared, he broke down and cried. That’s when I ________ how much I took my loving family for granted.

That year my friend and I both received gifts that we would ________ forever. I gave him the gift of a warm, loving, safe place to spend Christmas. And he gave me the gift of a new ________ on life. If I hadn’t shared my home with him, I wouldn’t have understood how ________ I am.

【推荐3】A stand-up comedian is, supposed to be, a fluent communicator who is also good at using body language to _________ jokes.

However, for 27-year-old comedian Zhang Jiaxin, it takes a great effort to _________ pronounce the sounds of each character and sentence and be _________ on the stage. At birth, the oxygen _________ to his brain was curtailed (限制，削减), which _________ later problems with speaking and walking. The other long-term impairment is the loss of full use of his right hand.

It was two years ago when Zhang first performed stand-up comed yon the stage. At the time, he worked for the new media operation department of a company _________ in Xiamen, Fujian province, and had to prepare for a performance at the company’s year-end party.

He didn’t know much about stand-up performance. _________, as someone who likes to watch and be amused by entertainment shows from a very young age, he decided to give a humorous monologue at the party to amuse and _________ his colleagues.

It opened Zhang’s door to a colorful world of stand-up comedy.

He started to pay attention to the stand-up comedy live shows in Xiamen and got the _________ of a woman who worked at a local stand-up club.

“She sent me some videos of Drew Lynch (an American stand-up comic who developed a(an)__________ stutter (结巴) due to a sports injury earlier in his life) and told me that my defects are what make my appeal special,” he says. “That __________ me to have a go.”

After he read through a manual for writing and performing stand-up comedy, he started to __________his daily life to identify humorous __________ that could be used as jumping-off points to launch into stories.

Once he walked onto the stage, the audience __________ noticed his differences.

“__________, they were kind of walking on eggshells to spare my feelings. As I gradually opened myself to them, the atmosphere turned to be relaxing,” he says.

Wows and claps resounded. His jokes went down well as he worked the room with his humor.

【推荐1】The world is forever full of smart people who have made great achievements in many fields. But for one reason or another they are unwilling to take a chance on something _________ that turns out to be big.

Despite all his _________ success and great wisdom, in 1906 George Bernard Shaw made one of the biggest_________ an author can make in the play-writing business. After the highly successful _________of his 1894 comedy, “Arms and the Man,” a couple of Viennese writers approached Shaw for the purpose of _________ the rights to turn his play into an operetta (轻歌剧). Leopold Jacobson and Rudolf Bernauer would _________ its words based on Shaw’s work. Relatively _________Viennese composer Oscar Straus would write the music.

Shaw considered the _________ to be a shame of his masterpiece, which _________ him from seeing the possibilities the new business presented. He allowed them the adaptation rights but proudly ____________ a royalty (版权使用费) they offered. “The Chocolate Soldier”, as the operetta was named in English, quickly ____________Oscar Straus as one of the most distinguished composers of operetta’s so-called Silver Age. The operetta was produced ____________in London and on Broadway and its tickets were sold out quickly so that its ____________ made a fortune in royalties except Mr. Shaw.

The cost of opportunities missed out of ____________ can be immeasurable indeed. Be careful who you say ____________ to. You may miss the next Oscar Straus.