【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。

As centuries pass,     1     (historian) are still able to remember the achievements attained by the first emperor of unified China. We have to acknowledge that the successes QinShi Huang had were     2     (last) and helpful for the future of China.

When Qin Shi Huang first came into power in 220 BCE, China     3    (divide) into many kingdoms. In order to unify China, he launched a war    4     the other six major kingdoms. By 221 BCE, he was able to unify China under his rule.

Qin Shi Huang had    5    profound impact on China’s culture. He helped dig canals and build roads    6     (facilitate) travel. He started the national road system and created fast roads. He was    7     (extreme) influential in China’s government. Qin declared that the round coin with a square-shaped hole in the center as the currency of China. He named it ban-liang coin. The first emperor was able to create a unified measuring standard for weight, volume and     8     (long).

He asked his Prime Minister, Li Si, to unify the eight calligraphic (书写的) styles     9     were promoted in other states and absorb some     10     (simplify) characters to create the standardized Qin. This was China’s first thorough character standardization movement led by the central government, and the uniform calligraphic style had great significance in pushing forward the development of Chinese characters.

【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.

Thoughts of a great mind

To you, Kart Marx (1818-1883) might be the man with a bushy face who watches over you in a frame in your classroom, usually alongside another, bushy-faced man named Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). But     1     the world, Marx is a philosopher, economist, historian, and revolutionist. This year     2    (mark) the 200^th anniversary of Marx’s birth, so maybe it’s time for you to learn more about him. Indeed, he’s a man who helped us understand     3     the world works in more than one way.

Marx was a philosopher. We use his theories all the time, even though we may not realize it. For example, he believed that a cause would always lead to a result, which urges him     4    (think) twice before making a move. He also discovered the rule     5     when many small changes built up, they finally lead to a big one, good or bad,     6     reminds us of the importance of details even if they don’t seem to matter at the time. But Marx himself didn’t seem to think it was enough to simply be a philosopher. “The philosophers     7    (interpret) the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it,” he once wrote. So he did.

With his The Communist Manifesto (《共产党宣言》)    8    (publish) in 1848 in London, Marx expressed his ideals on communism and how a fairer society could be built. He also delved into (探究) the fact that the world’s wealth wasn’t equally distributed, with 10 percent of the world’s population possessing most of it while the other 90 percent owned almost     9    . Now that 150 years have passed, the world is still pretty much how Marx described it.

But no matter if he was a philosopher, revolutionist of economist, all in all, Marx was a man who wanted to change the world for     10    (good).