【推荐1】Born in America, I spoke English ,not Chinese, the language of my ancestors. When I was three, my parents flashed cards with Chinese _______ at my face, but I pushed them_______. My mom believed I would learn_______ I was ready. But the_______ never came.

On a Chinese New Year’s Eve, my uncle spoke to me in Chinese, but all I could do was_______ at him, confused, scratching my head . “Still can’t speak Chinese? ” He_______ me, “You can’t even buy a fish in Chinatown.”

“Hey, this is America, not China. I’ll get some_______ with or without Chinese.” I replied and turned to my mom for_______ . “Remember to ask for fresh fish, Xin Xian Yu,” she said, handing over a $20 bill. I _______ the words, running downstairs into the streets of Chinatown.

I found the fish ______ surrounded in a sea of customers. “I’d like to buy some fresh fish,” I should to the fish man. But he______ my English words and turned to serve the next customer. The laugh of the people behind increased _____ their impatience. With every _____, the breath of the dragons (龙) on my back grew stronger—my blood boiling— ______ me to cry out. “ Xian Sheng Yu, please.” “Very Xian Sheng,” I repeated. The crowd erupted into laughter. My face turned_______ and I ran back home ______ , except for the $20 bill I held tightly in my pocket.

Should I laugh or cry? They’re Chinese. I should feel right at______ . Instead, I was the joke, a disgrace (丢脸)to the language.

Sometimes, I laugh at my fish_______ , but, in the end, the joke is on _______ . Every laugh is a culture_______; every laugh is my heritage (传统) fading away.

【推荐2】A year ago I paid no attention to English idioms,____my teacher said again and again that it was important.

One day, I happened to_____an Englishman on the road, and soon we began to____. As I was talking about how I was studying English, the foreigner shook his head, saying, “You don’t say! You don’t say!” I was______, I thought, perhaps this is not a_____topic. Well, I’d _____change the topic. So I said to him, “Well, shall we talk about the Great Wall?______the way, have you ever_____there?”

“Certainly, everyone back home will_____me if I leave China without seeing______. It was great.” I said, “The Great Wall is one of the wonders in the world. It is a place of______.” Soon I was interrupted again by his words, “______!” I couldn’t______asking, “Why do you ask me not to talk about it?” “Well, I didn’t ask you to do_______”, he answered, gently surprised.

I said, “Didn’t you say ‘You don’t say’?”

Hearing this, the Englishman_____into laughing. He began to explain , “‘You don’t say’ actually means ‘really?’. It is an expression of surprise.

【推荐1】Among the dozen 15-year-old girls in Tatyana Galtseva’s class at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, one is different. And it’s not just because of her long, swan-like neck.

She is Harper Ortlieb, an American, who_______her small town in Oregon to move to Moscow to follow her_______of becoming a ballerina (芭蕾舞女演员).

The_______academy has 84 foreigners among its 721 students. But few were_______when they were as young as Harper and few are studying the regular Russian program. “She is a very_______girl,”Galtseva said. “When children are talented,_______their nationality, they are alike in_______way in how they feel about what they do.”

The well-known Bolshoi_______Harper during a summer program and offered her a_______at the Moscow academy. She knew her teachers would be________and that it would be a________to be so far away from home. But she was well prepared.

Harper’s mother, Layne Baumann, made two trips to Moscow after she and her husband, Tim Ortlieb, dropped off their only child in September. In February, Baumann________to move to Moscow at least for the rest of the school year. She________an apartment near the academy. It________Harper to move out of the________. At the end of each day, Baumann talks to her daughter about what she learned in class. And they also talk on the Internet, which makes Harper’s father join in the________from their home in Mount Hood, Oregon. It is 11 time zones away.

Besides her________classes, Harper has Russian language lessons every day at the academy. For her other________, she does online classes in the evenings and on weekends. Sunday is her only day________. On that day, she and her mother often________their new city.

【推荐2】Let me tell you a secret. There are no wrong answers when you’re talking about art.

As an art historian, I am interested in_______my love of art to the public. Sometimes art can be difficult to understand. But there is no need to_______. At the heart of every engagement with an artwork is this: Do you like it or not?

_______a lot of art galleries are free, many people are hesitating (犹豫) to visit for_______that they won’t understand the art. There’s a(n)_______that other visitors may be more knowledgeable and that they understand what the artworks mean. But this_______isn’t true. Everyone is_______in front of an artwork and there are no wrong answers.

When talking about the challenges of understanding art, I’m often_______of the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. When the Emperor parades before his_______in his “new clothes”, everyone spoke well of the new clothes-no one dares to__________they can’t see anything. It takes a young child to tell the truth. “Listen to the voice of__________,” shout the Emperor’s people.

__________，in front of an artwork， you should try to look at it innocently (天真地). Contemporary art can be particularly difficult to understand and __________but enjoying an artwork is an instinct (直觉). Do you like it or not? Do you find it __________ or not? If you don’t like it, that’s OK! It doesn’t matter what other people say or think.

An art historian called Ernst Gombrich believes that a viewer “completed” the artwork, and that part of an artwork’s meaning came from the person__________it.

【推荐2】In the college admissions war, we parents are the true fighters. We’re pushing our kids to get good grades, take SAT preparatory courses and build resumes so they can get into the college of their first choice. I’ve twice been to the wars, and as I survey the battlefield, something different is happening. We see our kids’ college background as a _______ demonstrating how well we’ve raised them. But we are _______ to acknowledge that our obsession is more about us than them. So we’ve come up with various _______ that turn out to be half-truth’s prejudices or myths. It actually doesn’t matter much whether Aaron and Nicole go to Stanford.

We have a full-blown prestige(声望) panic: we worry that there won’t be enough prizes to go around. _______ parents urge their children to apply to more schools than ever. Behind the hysteria is the belief that scarce elite degrees must be highly valuable. Their graduates must enjoy more success because they get a better education and develop better contacts. All that is _______ and mostly wrong. We haven’t found any convincing evidence that selectivity or prestige matters. Selective schools don’t systematically employ better _______ approaches than less selective schools. On two measures - professors’ feedback and the number of essay exams-selective schools do slightly worse.

By some studies, selective schools do _______ their graduates’ lifetime earnings. The gain is considered at 2-4% for every 100-point increase in a school’s average SAT scores. But even this advantage is probably a statistical coincidence. _______, a well-known study examined students who got into highly selective schools and then went elsewhere. They earned just as much as graduates from higher-status schools.

_______ count more than colleges. Getting into Yale may ________ intelligence, talent and ambition. But it’s not the only indicator and its ________ is declining. The reason: so many similar people go elsewhere. Getting into college is not life’s only competition. In the next competition - the job market and graduate school - the ________ may change. Old-boy networks are breaking down. Princeton economist Alan Krueger studied admissions to one top Ph. D. program. High scores on the GRE helped explain who got in; degrees from prestigious universities didn’t.

So, parents, ________. The risks have been vastly exaggerated. Up to a point, we can rationalize our pushiness. America is a ________ society; our kids need to adjust to that. But too much pushiness can be destructive. The very ambition we impose on our children may get some into Harvard but may also set them up for ________. One study found that all things being equal, graduates of highly selective schools experienced more job dissatisfaction. They may have been so conditioned to being on top that anything less disappointing.

【推荐3】The virtual world is full of opportunities to share with people around the world. It’s also a place where nothing is _______ and there are no “take-backs.” A lot of what you do and say online can still be found again even if you have _______ it, and it’s often something that is easy for others to access.

Research shows that a high percentage of teens receive _______ messages and requests when they’re online. These can be scary, strange, and even embarrassing. If you feel _______ by a stranger or a friend online, immediately tell an adult you can trust. It is never a good idea to _______. Any response you make is not only likely to make things worse, and might result in you saying something you wish you hadn’t.

If you are eager to let out angry comment on a message board or blog, it’s a good idea to wait a few minutes, _______, and remember that your comments may stay up long after your temper has cooled and you have perhaps changed your mind. You might mistakenly find yourself regulated on social networks and this could _______ mean, insulting, or abusive comments toward someone else. But later you may _______ all that you have done. We’ve all heard of cyber bullying (网络欺凌), but most people think online bullying is something people do _______. But sharing stuff or dropping random comments when we’re not face to face with someone can hurt just as much, if not more. And it can damage how others see you if they find out. ________, a good rule to remember is that if you wouldn’t say it, show it, or do it in person, you probably shouldn’t do it online either.