【推荐3】Instead of cruising in on a hover board, I rode my bike to the office today. The bicycle was invented in the 19^th century. Instead of taking a pill for breakfast, I had a bacon roll, cooked using gas. Science fiction has _______ to us.

Making predictions is tricky, especially about the future, as physicist Niels Bohr joked. In science fiction, you can’t escape that _______ though. Since its birth in the 19^th century, writers have _______ imagined the things to come: devices that humankind will invent to make life easier. But in so many instances, those promises have not come to pass. The biggest _______ are in travel-jet packs, hover boards and flying cars are not to fill the skies. Air travel has become significantly cheaper and wide-reaching, but only using distinctly 20^th-century technology: commercial aeroplanes are much the same as they were 50 years ago.

_______ is what science fiction frequently delivers, but its arrival in the real world has been unpredictable. Domestic robots with a degree of intelligence haven’t been _______, though robotic vacuum cleaners are commercially available-even if they are fairly hopeless. Video calls have now arrived-sort of-but conferencing on Skype is still dissatisfying. In mobiles, video call technology is now available, so when your dad rings to update you on his vegetable patch, he’ll be able to _______ your look of boredom.

The truth is that we quickly _______ the astonishment of invention: our wonderment is soon replaced with the feeling of nothing new. We should try to stay in that period of _______. It is astonishing that the contents of every book over written can be stored in a small box. Or that you can carry 10,000 albums on an object kept in your pocket. Or that almost all the information in the world can be accessed almost anywhere at any time. All these ________ are dependent on the emergence of the microchip and its place in computers. Yet sci-fi didn’t ________ the dominance of the computer in running our lives.

But the real area where ________ far outstrips (超过) predictions is medicine. Sure, fiction would describe humans as ‘disease-free’ but without going into detail. “Disease-free” humans are still absent, but the progress made in ________ life is breathtaking. With relative ease, we can sequence anyone’s genome, giving a read-out of our entire genetic code. This means we can find out the underlying genetic cause of thousands of diseases in minutes.

Photosensitive implants now exist that can replace damaged cells in the retina and can thus ________ sight to the blind. While the inventions of science fiction can show great ideas we’d like to happen, nothing ________ the inventiveness of people in the real world.

【推荐2】I can still remember when for the first time I came to realize that people were frightened of my brother. I was 20, and my boss at the time was telling me about how several days earlier he had taken his little girl down to the local playground. My brother, who loves _______ alone and is severely autistic (患自闭症的), was already there. “I was frightened he would _______ my little girl,” my boss told me.

I’m still not sure why he told me this. Perhaps he was admitting his own weakness, but to me it felt like an _______. It made my heart hurt that my _______ brother should inspire fear like that. It made me angry that this man felt his ignorance was worth _______. I imagine the anger and hurt I felt then is something _______ to how the parents of another kid with autism were feeling.

Their autistic son, Faruk Ali, was _______ in the street by two police officers as he was outside his house, helping to collect rubbish. Collecting rubbish probably made him happy. Many autistic people _______ organizing and systematizing something. But his simple enjoyment of this _______ was interrupted in such a seemingly violent way simply because he looked “suspicious”, which must have hurt him _______. Disabled people and their relatives must realize the fear and _______ that the general public may have. That this can sometimes turn into violence is absolutely terrifying.

Andrew Young, another man with autism, was _______ after he pointed out that cycling on the pavement was dangerous. Some people with autism believe following _______ is very important, but the killer said telling someone so can be considered as “threatening”.

Clearly, life is not just _______ for those with autism, but also for people with mental illness and mobility problems, and _______ for anyone whose behaviour might not fit the majority definition of “normal”.

【推荐3】Working on holidays has always presented something of a class divide. From the 1870s through the 1920s, middle-and-upper-class Americans often lived with “the help”—mostly women of color whose job was to cook and clean and care for others, day and night. While shows like Dowton Abbey seek to give ________ to servants, they also sanitize (粉饰) what was a cruel, back-breaking existence. It was common for a housemaid’s day to begin well before the family rose and extend until after they ________ for the evening. They did so seven days a week: working more than 80 hours a week - more than the 65 hours most factory workers worked at the time. While we often imagine that these women were young and single, Evelyn Nakano Gleen’s research on such care providers has shown that over 30% of them were married many with children. As they worked very hard for families not ________, they left their children, parents, siblings and husbands behind. Thanksgiving or Christmas was no doubt one of the hardest times of the year, and their own families felt their ________.

The labor movement was ________ to changing this sorry state of affairs. Unions raised wages, lowered hours, instituted worker protections, guaranteed a minimum wage and ________ holidays off for workers. Those who did have to work on national holidays were guaranteed overtime pay. When unions were strong, such benefits even ________ to non-unionized workers.

But as unions have ________, part-time work has increased. And this has meant lower wages and greater ________. Working at $11 an hour for 25 hours a week means making 14,300 a year. For most retail workers, that’s one of the better jobs that are available. And ________, it’s a job without health insurance, or a retirement plan, with constant scheduling changes that make it hard to take additional ________. Most of these workers wish they could work more, but employers would rather hire other part-timers. So when the boss says, “Can you work Thanksgiving?” workers have no real choice but to be ________.

Today, working on holidays carries no guarantee of extra pay, and not working can mean losing one’s job. Some workers are ________; Walmart employees have planned over 1,000 Black Friday strikes because of unchanging wages and health care premiums (保险费) that will soon triple. Americans have a choice of helping these workers regain the ________, or walking past them in order to shop more. And that is the irony to the trend of stores opening on Thanksgiving. On the same day that we give thanks for all we have, why must we also rush out to buy more? Observers might say, “It’s just the logic of the market!” But the logic of the market is not some mystical process. It is the result of the ________ that we make.

【推荐1】Many animals move from one place to another at certain times of the year. This _______ movement is called migration (迁徙). They migrate to _______ food, or in search of warmer weather. One of the most wonderful migrations in nature is that of the North American monarch butterfly.

Every _______, millions of these beautiful insects with fine black and orange wings begin a long and _______ journey. Somehow they manage to _______ around 4,000 kilometres _______ and find their way to California or Mexico. _______, until recently no one knew how they did this. A team of scientists led by Professor Eli Shlizerman at the University of Washington has now found the _______. They have found out that the monarch is able to _______ the time of day. It uses its eyes to measure the ________ of the sun. These two pieces of information allow the ________ to determine the way to go. ________, it manages to reach where it will spend the winter.

The solution to the mystery of the monarch’s amazing ability comes at a time when it is in serious trouble. Its ________ has crashed by as much as 90 per cent in the last few years. ________, human activity is the main reason why the number of monarch butterflies is falling. The research on the monarch’s ________ has however led to a greater awareness of this creature.

【推荐2】How many people can speak English? Some experts estimate that 1.5 billion people—around one-quarter of the world’s population—can communicate reasonably well in English.

Never in recorded history has a language been as __________ spoken as English is today. The reason why millions are learning it is simple: it is the language of international business and __________, the key to prosperity. It is not just that multinational companies conduct their business in English; it is the language in which Germans speak to Indonesians.

David Gtaddol, the author of English Next, says it is tempting to view the story of English simply as a victory for its native speakers in North America, Britain and Ireland, and Australia— but that would be a __________ . Global English has entered a more complex stage, changing in ways that the English-speaking countries cannot control and might __________ .

An important question one might ask is: whose English will it be in the future? Non-nativespeakers now __________ native English speakers by three to one. The majority of __________ in English today take place between non-native speakers. According to David Graddol, many business meetings held in English appear to run more __________ when there are no native English speakerspresent. This is because native speakers are often ___________ at ensuring that they are understood in international discussions. They tend to think they need to avoid longer Latin-based words, but in fact __________ problems are more often caused by their use of idioms, metaphors, and phrasal verbs. On one occasion, at an international student conference in Amsterdam, conducted in English, the only British representative was asked to be “less __________” so that the others could understand her.

Professor Barbara Seidlhofer, Professor of English at the University of Vienna, records spoken English __________ between speakers of the language around the world. She says her team has noticed that non-native speakers are __________ standard English grammar in several ways. Even the most fluent speakers sometimes omit the "s" in the third person singular. Many omit definite and indefinite articles where they are __________ in standard English, or put them in where standard English does not use them. Nouns that are not plural in native-speaker English are used as plurals by non-native speakers (eg, “informations”, “knowledges”, advices”). Other variations include “make a discussion”, “discuss about something”, or “phone to somebody”.

Many native English speakers will insist that these are not variations, they are mistakes. “Knowledges”and “phone to somebody” are simply __________. Many non-native speakers who teach English around the world would agree. But language changes, and so do ideas of grammatical __________ .