【推荐1】Recently, I was diagnosed （诊断）with an incurable illness. And after that, I gave up _______ . Although I was able to pass my test last year, I stopped _______ when I turned 90.1 thought that it was finally the right time.

Needless to say, my family and my doctor were _______ to hear my decision. As I handed over the keys to the car to my son, I thought of all the cars my wife and I had _______ over the years. A car is _______, independence, and an extension of your personality. Without one, you feel like less of a person. Now, my son often drives me to the city centre and my neighbours also offer me _______ when I'm on the way to the market. But after a lifetime of independence, the idea of being dependent on other people is hard to _______ . With my own car, I could go anywhere in no time. But now, my horizons （眼界）have _______ and I must plan ahead for everything. _______ , I've learned to face it and change and I found a（n） ________ to some of those problems. Last year, I ________ to buy a nice new four-wheel electric scooter （轻便摩托 车）,which made my route free from ________ and noise, with trees and green plants ________ cars and street signs.

Giving up something is hard, and some of us never accept the loss. For me, however, it was just the ________ result of a long and lucky life. Life in the slow lane (车道)turned out to be so much fun and so much ________

【推荐2】For years, I followed the materialistic standards around me. I thought that without the purses, shoes, and all the other “_________” things, I would not be as pretty, smart, or important as others of my age.

As a freshman (新生) of my high school, I thought top social status could be gained by doing everything to fit in. So I became a(n) _________ and bought fake (伪造的) designer purses. I felt popular and important, and I loved it.

But, my parents couldn’t understand my strong _________ to be someone just to impress others. They tried endlessly to convince me that I was hurting myself, but I wouldn’t listen. I felt _________with this way of my life until one day I looked at myself in the mirror and saw someone with makeup and the product­filled hair wasn’t me. That person was _________.

So I quit cheerleading and _________swimming again, something I had loved for eight years before high school. I also attended my school’s top vocal (声乐) performance group, and _________ myself whole­heartedly to community service.

I wrote articles in my school newspaper that questioned the materialistic _________of many students at my school. I started _________my limits academically, which I previously considered less important than improving my social status.

I found a new group of friends who ____________me, unlike my old friends. I found I no longer needed to impress others materialistically. Starting over was ____________. My classmates looked at me as if they didn’t know me.

I am to ____________ the materialistic culture. I am confident, talented, and optimistic. I know who I am. I’m motivated to explore even more of my ____________as a student and a member of my community.

I took one of the worst ____________ in my life but I turned it around and ____________ something beautiful－a life that fits me, with meaning and happiness.

【推荐1】It was an afternoon in September. When I was _______ eighteen, I stood in front of a six-story high, red brick building. It was my first day of _______ and I was a bit _______ but a bit excited at the same time. I had two suitcases and a bag with me. They were _______ with all of my clothes and everything else I bought I would need. I _______ them up the five stairs to my room and looked around, _______ what life was waiting for me.

It was another afternoon in September twenty-five years later. My daughter and I were standing in front of the _______ building at the same college. As I helped her carry her things up to her room, I _______ that she seemed to have much more _______ than I did years ago. What’s more, she looked more worried than I ________ being on my first day there.

Last night I had a ________ that I was back in that same room wondering what classes I would take. I often wondered what this dream ________ but when I woke up this morning it became clear to me. We are sometimes teachers in life, but we are always ________ in it. We are here taking the most ________ class ever and it takes a lifetime. What we carry with us through this life isn’t important at all either. It is what we carry inside of us when we leave this life that ________.

【推荐2】The measure of a man's real character is what he would do if he knew he would never be found out.

—Thomas Macaulay

Some thirty years ago, I was studying in a public school in New York. One day, Mrs Nanette O'Neill gave an math test to our ________ . When the papers were graded, she discovered that twelve boys had made exactly the same ________ throughout the test.

There is nothing really new about cheating in ________ . Perhaps that was why Mrs O'Neill didn't ________ say a word about it. She only asked the twelve boys to ________ after class. I was one of the twelve.

Mrs. O'Neill asked no questions, and she didn't ________ us either. Instead, she wrote on the blackboard the above words by Thomas Macaulay. She then ordered us to ________ these words into our exercise-books one hundred times.

I don't know about the other ________ boys. Speaking for myself I can say it was the most important single lesson of my life. Thirty years after being ________ to Macaulay's words, they still seem to me the best yardstick（准绳）, because they give us a way to ________ ourselves rather than others.

Few of us are ________ to make great decisions about nations going to war or armies going to battle. But all of us are called upon daily to make a great many personal decisions. Should the wallet found in the street, be ________ into a pocket or turned over to the policeman? Should the extra change received at the store, be forgotten or returned? ________ will know except yourself. But you ________ live with yourself, and it is always better to live with someone you ________ .

【推荐3】By the end of the 20th century, TV show producers had begun to turn to the cheapest performers available-their audience. It seemed that anyone who wanted________ could get it. And some people wanted it far too much.

Richard and Mayumi Heene, for example, ________ a large balloon 2,000 metres into the air and then called a TV network to say that their 6-year-old son, Falcon, was inside it. Planes were re-routed and Denver International Airport was briefly________. However, Falcon was later found to have been hiding in the family’s garage the whole time. The “balloon boy” incident turned out to be a hoax (骗局) and the Heenes were________ of doing it in the hope of landing their own reality TV shows. Instead, they got a fine and a short________ each-but they were certainly famous for a while.

So do we want fame? Research suggests that a large number of us do. According to one recent survey, 30% of adults regularly daydream about being famous and 40% of us expect to________ some kind of fame in our lifetimes. Perhaps a better question is: Should we want to be famous? Do we really want every aspect of our private lives exposed in newspapers and________ on television? Some people, such as talent show contestant Susan Boyle, seem ill-equipped to deal with this kind of________, despite their talent. Boyle gained international fame for her extraordinary singing voice after appearing on TV talent show Britain’s Got Talent and her first album became the fastest-selling of all time in the UK. But the sudden fame didn’t seem easy for her at first, and after the final of the show, Boyle was________ to a private psychiatric clinic.

Furthermore, people who achieve fame often don’t seem to like it once they have it. A survey of celebrities found that they worry about the press, critics, threatening letters, the lack of privacy, and the________ on their children. These are hardly worries that________ people have to deal with. They also, ________, worry about what would happen if they were no longer famous. And there are plenty of people to ask about that. Take, for example, Donato Dalrymple, a fisherman who rescued a boy from the sea and enjoyed the media________ for several months afterwards. When it ended, however, he returned to his job as a fisherman. “I know I’m a nobody,” he said when the attention had________.

“When the person has to go back to everyday life, there’s a sense of________, loss and being cheated out of something,” says Dr Robert Cancro at New York University School of Medicine.

【推荐1】I’m an ocean lover. Living in Montreal , far away from the ocean , makes it even more a dream land for me. And I_________to visit the ocean at least once a year and I’ve been doing it for at least twenty_________

When I was younger , I would_________shells and rocks and bring them back home and ended up _________tons of them on my shelves , floors , desks , etc. But as I _________the ocean more and more , I started picking up the _________ left by careless people , picking up less _________treasure. I was beginning to question my _________ and one day , in California , I just had this idea.

I realised that a stone you find in the ocean has a ( n ) _________ colour that makes you pick it up but then , when it __________ you won’t find it as lovely anymore , so why pick it up in the first place ? Anyway , I just __________ then that natural things are nice in their natural __________ and that if everybody picked up every shell from the ocean , and __________the wastes out there , the beach would become something not so nice very __________

So I decided that day , when I was probably 28 or 29, that I would just “__________” things from the ocean , and bring them back after a while , since that__________of shells does so much good for me.

I __________ the quantity and keep it to the smallest amount. So if you’ve seen a __________ lady picking up rubbish and __________ shells back into the ocean , from a box or a bag , on a beautiful sunny day , it was __________me.

【推荐2】I’m Grace, 13 years old and in seventh grade in Florida. I was in the six grade last year. That school year was _______. My family and I spent that year _______ all over Europe, seeing amazing places, meeting all kinds of people, understanding different cultures, and getting _______ in the process.

When my _______ decided to travel to Europe, we were excited. _______ we had a problem. We couldn’t rent a car that had enough _______ to work for our five-member family, so my dad bought a bigger one. It became our new _______ during the trip. I had to leave a lot of my things behind because so little of it would _______ into my tiny new room. We had to be careful to save our water. And we were doing homeschooling, _______ worked out great. We lived in a (n) ________ home, but my family ________ got along really well.

No matter what, I made sure to ________ my window every morning, because the view was ________ every day--- England, then France, Italy, Greece … each special in its own way. We toured around country after country, tried to pick up little bits of the local ________, but that didn’t help us much. Luckily, we kept ________ people who knew some English. Everywhere we went, we saw the most amazing things. I love reading about places, in my text-books and then getting ________ our car midway to look right at them. I can’t pick a favorite one, because every place we were at seemed to be the ________.

After our ________ ended, we moved back to Florida. But it makes me ________ that my family had this great year long ________ together. I’m thankful for that.