【推荐2】Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.

Free to soar

One windy spring day, I observed young people having fun using the wind to fly their kites. Multicolored creations of varying shapes and sizes filled the skies like beautiful birds darting and dancing in the heady atmosphere above the earth. As the strong winds gusted against the kites, a string kept them in check.

    1     blowing away with the wind, the kites arose to achieve great heights. They shook and pulled, but the restraining string and the awkward tail kept dragging them,     2    (face)upward and against the wind. As the kites struggled and trembled against the string, they seemed to say, “Let me go! I want to be free!” The kites soared beautifully    3     they had to resist the imposed restriction of the string. Finally, one of them succeeded in     4    （break）loose. “Free at last.” it seemed to say. “Free to fly with the wind.” Yet freedom from restraint simply put     5     under the control of an unsympathetic breeze. “Free at last” fluttered ungracefully to the ground and    6    (land) in a mash of wells with its string against a bead bush. It was free to lie powerless in the dirt,     7    (blow) helplessly along the ground, and to stick lifeless against the first obstacle.

We may be reluctant to admit    8     we are like kites sometimes. Life gives us adversity, restrictions and rules     9     we can grow and gain strength from. Restraint is a necessary counterpart to the winds of opposition. Some of us tug at the rules so hard that we never soar to reach the heights we might have obtained. We keep part of the rules and never rise high enough to get our tails off the ground.

Let us each rise to the great heights life has in store for us. Recognizing that some of the restraints that we    10     be annoyed at are actually the steadying force that helps us ascend and achieve.

【推荐3】A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a box by his feet. He held up a sign     1     (read), “ I am blind, please help.”     2     were only a few coins in the box. The boy felt sad. A man was walking by. He took out a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the box. Then he took the sign, turned it around and wrote some words. He placed the sign     3     it had been so that everyone who walked by would see the new words. Soon the box was full     4     coins. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy.

That afternoon, the man, by     5     the sign had been changed, came to see how things were. The boy    6     (recognize) his footsteps and asked, “Are you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?” The man said, “ I     7     (simple) wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a     8    (difference) way.”    9     he had written was, “ Today is a beautiful day     10     I cannot see it.”

【推荐1】阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

There once were a goat and a donkey that lived on a farm.     1     donkey worked the hardest so the farmer fed it the most food. Sometimes the donkey     2     (give) more food     3     it could eat. This made the goat so jealous     4     it began plotting against (谋划对付) the donkey.

"Hey, donkey," the goat said one day. "I think you do too much work on this farm. You carry such heavy things from morning to night. Why don't you pretend (假装)     5     (get) sick so you can take a day off ''

The donkey     6     (think) the goat had a great idea. So the next morning, the donkey lay in the stable（畜栏）on its side with its eyes     7    （close）.

Right away, the farmer called the doctor. After     8     (look) at the donkey, the doctor said it needed a special medicine made     9     the heart of a goat. So the farmer killed the goat and gave the donkey medicine made from     10     (it) heart.

【推荐3】短文填空,阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容（不多于3 个单词）或括号内单词的正确形式。
Chinese proverbs are rich and they are still widely used in Chinese people’s daily life.    1    these proverbs there are often interesting stories. For example, the proverb, “plucking up a crop     2    (help) it grow”, is based on the following story. It is said that a short-tempered man in the Song Dynasty (960—1279) was very anxious to help     3    rice crop grow up quickly. He was thinking about     4    day and night. But the crop was growing much slower than he expected. One day, he came up with an idea     5    he would pluck up all of his crop a few inches. He did so the next day. He was very tired     6    doing this for a whole day,     7    he felt very happy since the crop did “grow”    8    (high). His son heard about this and went to see the crop. Unfortunately, the leaves of the crop began to wither. This proverb is saying we have to let things go in their     9    (nature) course. Being too anxious to help an event develop often    10    (result) in the contrary to our intention.