【推荐2】I was 11 years old when I asked my mom for piano lessons in 2010. We were badly off in the recession (经济衰退). She said a ______ “no”.

That didn’t stop me. I Googled the ______ for a keyboard, drew the keys on a piece of paper and ______ it on my desk. I would click ______ on an online keyboard and “play” them back on my paper one—keeping the ______ they made on the computer in my ______. I spend six months playing without ______ a real piano. Once my mom saw that I was ______, she got into debt to buy me ten lessons.

In the first lesson I was ______ by how real the sound of the piano was. I set my grade one after eight lessons. ______ we couldn’t afford lessons again. I ______ grade three, then grade five, ______ only on my piece of paper. When I was about 13, my mom said she had a ______ for me: it was an electronic keyboard, bought with more ______ money.

My school didn’t offer music A-level. I found the Purcell School for young ______. The tryouts (选拔) were ______. Some of the questions involved a judgment on the composer or when it was written. I felt stuck. To my amazement I was offered a ______. There, I worked as hard as I could to improve my performance and save enough money to buy my _____ piano.

I feel proud: it’s been 10 years since I drew my paper piano, and now I’m at one of the world’s leading music schools. However, the irony（讽刺） is that I ______ doing a lot of my practice away from the piano: what we call ______ practice. The paper piano helped spark my curiosity about how music works, the building blocks that form the pieces.

【推荐3】Figure skating is a vital part of my life. I can still remember my first _______ on ice. I was hooked immediately and desired to learn figure skating. However, I found it was a bit of a _______. Initially, I could only grasp the railings(栏杆) to _______ myself and walk slowly along. Despite constant _______, I just got up again and made much _______: I kept practicing almost all the time except school hours. Gradually, I mastered the skills.

Sometimes figure skating is _______ as an art form rather than a sport, but to me it’s both. The delicate _______ between artistry and athleticism, and the performances with only a pair of thin blades(冰刀) are mind-blowing. Though beautiful and impressive, figure skating is physically _______—the amount of athleticism required is fairly high.

For the majority of my younger years I skated _______, at both local and regional levels. But ________ struck at the near peak of my career—I had a concussion(脑震荡). Though I ________ after continuous treatment, I’d missed the best age for skating. So I transformed it into a hobby.

Out of all the experiences in my life, figure skating has probably been the most ________. It taught me the importance of discipline and self-confidence, and I learned ________, which made me accountable for my own actions and achievements. And thanks to my strict coaches, I learned the importance of constructive criticism and ________ that we should take such criticism with an open mind rather than ________ it.

【推荐1】The team I work in just had 2 new interns （实习生），and I happen to be their supervisor. After today's lunch break, I saw that one of them was reading things on her smart phone, maybe on some social network, I _______ . I went to her and said, "There's another document here _______ translation. Do you have time to finish it for me?" That document was not in her _______ workloads. But I thought I could let her _______ herself a little bit with it, seeing that she seemed to have_______ . "Yes, I do have time. " She said, "but I'm just an intern. " I didn't quite know_______to say back then. After a while I mumbled, "Right. Yes. " And I turned around and left.

I   _______ the time when I was an intern for the first time. I, too, managed to finish my workload so fast, just like her. So, I asked my supervisor "Is there _______ else that I can help?" And she happened to have a plan to make. But she didn't .have time. So she let me do the research and make a draft for her. I was not very familiar with the job _______still tried to carry it out based on my understanding and make it as ________ as possible. And my supervisor was really satisfied with the ________. Later, she told me "You ________ me a lot of time. I didn't need to create it from scratch. " And she told me ________ how I should have done the plan differently. I learned a lot about the operation in the process. After that, she came to trust me completely. I got my current job all because of her recommendation.

Yes, I was just an intern with a low salary, but I ________a better future with my extra labor. Time passing, I got it that there's a kind of ________called short-sightedness.

【推荐2】From the first week of high school, my best friend, Trisha, was always going out with the popular girls. ____ I thought, “It’s okay; she’s just making new friends.” But soon I realized that Trisha wasn’t interested in me anymore. I’d ____ my best friend. It really hurt.

One day, I told Trisha that we should ____ pretending（假装）to be friends when we really weren’t anymore. I wasn’t trying to make her mad, ____ she was. After that, Trisha started talking about me behind my back, telling people that I was ____. Some of our friends ____ with her. I felt like she was taking them away from me.

The more I thought about it, the ____ I got. Finally, I ____ a picture of Trisha and drew lines on her face. I wrote, “I ____ this person” across the bottom. And then I did something I’ll always ____: I put it on a website I thought was ____. I thought people would see it, and it felt good to vent（发泄）.

A week later, Trisha’s mom saw the ____. She called my mom, who made me take it off the website right away. However, it was already too ____. Lots of people had seen it, and I was in a lot of ____.

That whole day, I felt ____. I had to say sorry to Trisha face to face. She said she accepted my apology, but I felt she was ____ angry with me.

Posting that picture was one of the worst ____ I’ve ever made. I realize now I could have found a much better way to deal with my ____. If I’d just told Trisha how much I ____ her, maybe things would have turned out ____. It’s too late for me to change things, but I hope you’ll learn from my mistake.

【推荐1】I must admit I am not a very good listener. But what really ________ me to become a good listener was helping my wife as she ________ from her trachea surgery.

She couldn’t talk for almost a month because of the ________. She had a pad and would write down her thoughts and ________. Of course that was very slow and ________ and I could see the growing ________ each day. I found myself trying to ________ what she was thinking since I knew she didn’t have the ________ to write everything down, so I ________ found myself trying to ________ the world from her eyes.

My wife couldn’t ________, which needed paying closer attention and made me a good listener. Because she couldn’t write out every word she wanted to speak，she had to be more ________ about the words she chose. Because of this，our communication became more ________ and we paid closer attention to what the other ________ had to say.

After this ________ I couldn’t help thinking about how this might help people who are haying relationship problems. I think that if one or two persons ________ the only way they could ________ was writing their thoughts and comments down, I believe it would be incredibly good therapy and help people ________ a lot of problems. Why not give it a shot if you are having any ________ with someone. They don’t have to agree to the no talking ________ because this experiment can be carried out by just one person.

【推荐2】Despite the great progress in medical science, human beings are constantly attacked by cancer, which means death. A woman named Bonnie suffered a _______ of discomforts caused by the treatment of cancer. She didn’t regard cancer as a ________ disease, but a laughing matter. She treated it in a humorous way. To put it in ________ way, she is teaching people that even though cancer isn’t ________, we can treat it in a humorous way.

Her second child was going to be born three months away ________ she was diagnosed with cancer. Suddenly, a ________ mother turned into a helpless woman afraid for her own ________. It was after she had had her baby ________ that she had an operation.________ came chemo (化疗) and her life seemed to be made up of fears and ________. But the ________ moment in her life came after she lost all her hair and a free wig(假发) arrived. She ________ it on as her older son Kyler watched.

“That was when I decided how to ________ it: crying over this bad wig or laughing about it.________ way would make _______ remember it.” Bonnie said. She spent a lot of time looking for anything funny from cancer patients. She got a lot out of collecting ________ stories. She started laughing a lot, finding it the perfect medicine. Using herself as a bald (光头) model, Bonnie ________ to design her own greeting cards and calendars, making fun of the sufferings of chemo.

“To have joy, we badly ________ to laugh,” she said.

Clearly, you can increase your confidence to ________ over any disease and trouble ________ laughing.

【推荐3】In 2019, Thierry Henry, a bus driver, found there was a rise in bike thefts in his city, Reykjavik. Rather than _________ that the bike was gone forever, he decided to take matters into his own _________. He set out to track down the bikes and return them to their _________ owners.

The 44-year-old has helped return hundreds of stolen bikes in the past 4 years. His social media account has over 14, 500 members and helps people track down more than just lost bikes. His page _________ to people who have lost tools, cars and other items of high value. On top of his _________ act, Henry has helped the bike _________ to reform in the process.

Initially, Henry would deal with the thieves with anger. However, over time, he realized that most of the thefts were driven out of _________ and other issues. He went from feeling _________ towards the thieves, to developing empathy (同理心) for their situations. It was very tough at first. But Henry decided to try to _________ them and just talk to them.

From this moment onward, he reached out to the thieves, offering help and __________. After the change in his __________, Henry found that the bike thieves began to often hand back the bikes to him.   __________, some former thieves that Henry helped now __________ him in looking for the stolen bikes.

“It’s like a __________ that has got bigger and bigger,”. says Henry. “It’s not only me. Many times, someone spots a bike hidden in a bush and takes a picture. Then someone else __________, ‘hey, that’s my bike’.”

Thanks to Henry, everyone’s looking out.