【推荐1】It took about three weeks for me to become mute. In 2007. I visited a client as a financial adviser and _____ a virus. I had a sore throat. My doctor ________ me it would soon return to normal.

________, it got worse. I could no longer make phone calls and started carrying a little whiteboard to write everything down. I tried to work with people I already knew, who were likely to be more________with me, but explaining financial details to ________ investors with a marker pen was a big challenge. At home my wife and teenage sons ________ the best they could. Soon I was using a computer that read out phrases typed into it.

My situation ________ when I was offered a tuition-assisted place at Iowa State University. I ________myself by accepting a job in the Student Services office. Forced to________ with people face to face, I started to have fun with computer voices.

In 2010, I read a news story about a waitress who’d had her voice ________ with the help of a doctor in Cleveland. It had to be worth a ________. Dr. Milstein ________ me to do some vocal exercises to stretch the muscles in my neck and to my astonishment I started to make ________. It was the first time I’d heard my voice in three and a half years.

Then I did more exercises, my voice becoming more_________ Milstein asked me to go over to the window and   ________ the friends across the street. I was________ at first that I would damage my voice, but he kept ________ me. Friends at university heard my voice for the first time and even when I was alone, I talked to myself.

I don’t regret those years of________. I spent more time with my boys and had time to________where I’d gone wrong as a husband and parent. That time ________ my rough edges. I prefer who I am now.

【推荐2】One of my fellow volunteers, a girl from Tanzania, seemed a bit sad, so I asked what the problem was. She told me she had a friend back home, who was, really________with her university studies. It was beginning to look like financial difficulties, which would make it________for her to complete her course.

So this friend of mine had done something________: she had sent all her pocket money for the month to Tanzania to________her friend! This meant that she didn’t have much food to eat, no money to go________outside the village, no money to buy any clothes, and so on.

I was so________that she did this for her friend and I felt I had to do something. So,________ my next trip to one of the nearby towns I walked into the fair trade shop to buy some food. I didn’t have much money________myself but I thought I’d buy her an extra box of the muesli we both liked and some rice. I started talking to the woman________in the shop, who was also a volunteer and________told her about my friend.

The woman looked at me,________ “Does she eat pasta? she asked. “Yes,” I replied. She immediately started________a bag with pasta, cookies, more muesli, sweets and other things until the bag was full. “Give her this for me. It’ s my________!” I couldn’t believe it but cried with________.

I left the shop to go home with my________bag of food, I asked the woman her name. “Just Gloria! God________both of you!” she said.

Imagine my friend’s face when I________the gifts on my kitchen table. I have never seen her so happy! A few weeks later, she found Gloria in the shop and thanked her________. These two________women really showed me what true kindness and compassion is, and the________will stay with me for the rest of my life!

【推荐3】Katie Ortman Doble suffered from a rare form of cancer. Doctors said she had 16 months to ________. But her father, who was a physician himself, was ________ to find a clinical (临床的) trial that could ________ her life.

So Katie flew to New York to see if she would ________ for the trial. She had been there for two days. ________, it was time for her to meet with the doctor to find out if she was qualified for the ________. As she went through a series of tests, she found herself ________ her mom, who passed away when Katie was a teenager. On particularly ________ days, her mom would offer what she called an “energy ________”.

As she ________ in waiting room after waiting room, Katie ________ one of those special hugs. At that time, she ________ a girl who looked to be about her age ________ her head in her mother’s lap (大腿). Soon, a nurse came out and ________ the girl to get her test. And when Katie turned her head back around, the ________ was standing right in front of her. She said to Katie, “You look like you want a mom hug.” With ________ in her eyes. Katic nodded and said ________.

“It was just one of those moments in life when somebody ________ and gave you something that you ________,” she recalled. In the summer of 2023, Katie and her family celebrated her first anniversary (周年纪念) of being ________ free.

【推荐2】What are the basic elements (要素) of good manners? Certainly a strong sense of justice is one; courtesy is often _______ more than a highly developed sense of fair play. A friend of mine once told me of _______ along a one-lane（单行道），unpaved mountain road. _______ was another car that produced clouds of choking _______ , and it was a long way to the nearest _______ highway. Suddenly, at a _______ place, the car ahead pulled off the road. _______ that its owner might have engine trouble, my friend stopped and asked if anything was wrong." _______ ,"said the other driver, "but you've endured (忍受) my dust this far; I'll _______ with yours the rest of the way."

Another element of courtesy is empathy, a ________ that enables a person to see into the mind or heart of someone else, to understand the pain or ________ there and to do something to minimize it. A man  ________  alone in a restaurant was trying to open the cap of a beer bottle, ________he couldn't do it because of badly injured________. He asked a young busboy to help him. The boy took the bottle, turned his back________ and loosened the cap without difficulty. Then he ________ it again. Turning back to the man, he ________ to make great efforts to open the bottle without success. ________ he took it into the kitchen and returned shortly, saying that he had managed to loosen it-but only with a pair of pliers (钳子).

Yet another element of politeness is the ability to treat all people ________, in spite of all status or importance. ________when you have doubts about some people, act as if they are worthy of your best manners. You may also be astonished to find out what they really are. Courtesy is the key to a happier world.

【推荐3】I was doing well as a department head in a Mumbai firm, but my relationship with the boss had become strained (紧张的). Not wanting to ________ this, I resigned rather impulsively (冲动地). But with no other job offer in hand, I soon became ________.

Then, one morning, a Situations Vacant ad I spotted ________ a person like me. So, carrying my ________ typed CV (简历) in an envelope on which I had written both “To and From” ________, I took a train on a Monday morning to get to the post office, where I could have it weighed, stamped and ________. Getting off the train, I ________ the crowd of office-goers out of the station and on to the street. Suddenly, I noticed my envelope was ________!

I rushed back to the ________. The train was still there. A ________ of the compartment in which I travelled ended up with nothing. I waited ________ for the train to pull away. It hadn’t fallen on the tracks either.

The ________ thing to do was to go home, sit at my typewriter, make a new CV and covering letter and mail it. But losing the envelope was like a bad ________, so I gave up.

Three weeks passed. I ________ a letter that referred to my “lost” job application and inviting me for a ________ with the company’s managing director, I was ________.

I soon got the job, and ________ there as deputy general manager until I took voluntary retirement.

I still think about my application ________ its addressee (收信人). I imagine someone found it. He or she might have asked others on the train. Realizing it would be ________ to a fellow citizen, the finder took it to a post office, stuck the stamps and mailed it. To that ________ friend, I want to say: Thank you for a little act that proved to be so big for me.