【推荐2】Stephen William Hawking (born on January 8, 1942) is an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. As a child, he was enthusiastic about     1     (design) complicated toys but     2     (unfortunate), in his twenties, he suffered     3     a disease that couldn’t be cured,     4     was a great challenge for him. As the condition     5     (progress) over the years, finally he became almost entirely paralysed (瘫痪的) and could only communicate through a speech generating device. However, not only was he positive about the misfortunes, but he also eventually defeated all the     6     (obstacle) and became     7     (absorb) in his research into the universe. In 1988, his best-seller A Brief History of Time     8     (publish), in which he put forward the idea that time     9     (it) has a beginning, and that it will have an end. This book stayed on the British Sunday Times best-seller list for a record-breaking 237 weeks. In     10     (conclude), he has made outstanding contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity.

Xu Lizhen, a 74-year-old lady, has been acting as a tour guide for nearly 20 years in Yang Shuo, Gui Lin,    1    is a city known both in China and abroad for its beautiful landscape.     2     she attended only primary school when she was young, she can now speak approximately 11 foreign languages    3    (fluent).

Since 20 years ago, tourists    4    ( show )affection for Yang Shuo, including a great many foreigners, In order to make a    5    (live), Xu Lizhen began to sell water. However, she could hardly make any money at first because foreigners didn't understand her accent. She tried to imitate the    6    (pronounce) of the foreigners, take notes and learn them    7    heart. If she came across tourists who can speak both Chinese and a foreign language, she would ask them to translate their words many times so that she could remember them    8    (well). It is in this way that the old granny masters 11 languages, such as English, French, Russian, Korean. Now, she has no difficulty at all    9    (communicate) with foreign friends in simple oral English. She is also       10    (refer) to as Mother Moon for her kindness among tourists.

I was in the ninth year when I began to suffer depression. My parents noticed but felt that since I’d always been     1     good child, this was temporary.

    2    (fortunate), it was not to be so. I didn’t have friends. Hardly could I share my problems. Deep worry began to destroy my     3    (confident). Finally I refused to attend classes,     4    (shut) myself in my room for hours.

The examination was approaching, but I simply didn’t care. My parents and teachers were surprised     5     my bad performance. One morning, after a particularly severe lecture from my father, I stood at the school gate,     6    (depress). Then as the other students marched to their classrooms, our headmaster called me. The next forty-five minutes was one of     7    (precious) moments in my life. She said she     8    (notice) a big change in me and wondered why. At first she took my hands in     9    (she) and listened patiently as I mentioned my worries. Then she hugged me as I wept. Months of frustration and loneliness disappeared in her motherly hug.

No one had tried to understand what the real problem was except the headmaster,     10     helped me out simply by listening and hugging.

When I was in high school our physics teacher gave us a challenge     1     involved making a paper airplane of any shape. The only objective was     2    (get) it to fly as far as possible. Standing at the starting line, one of my classmates took a piece of flat paper, crumpled it up, and     3     (throw) it down the way. He beat the class with ease. Some of the students got mad and said that he cheated, but the physics teacher     4     (clear) explained it could be any shape and that a paper ball was indeed a shape.