【推荐3】I lost my sight when I was four years old by falling off a box car in a freight (货物) yard and— ________ on my head. Now I can still ________ the brightness of sunshine. It would be wonderful to see again, but a ________ can do strange things to people.

Life, I believe, asks a continuous series of ________ to reality. The hardest lesson I had to learn was to ________ myself. I am not talking about the kind of self-confidence that helps me down an ________ staircase alone. But I mean something bigger: the confidence that I am, ________ being imperfect, a real, ________ person; that there is a special place where I can make myself fit.

It took me years to discover and ________ this confidence. It had to start with the simplest things. Once a man gave me an indoor baseball. I thought he was teasing me. “I can’t use this,” I said. “Take it with you,” he urged me, “and roll it around.” The words was ________ in my head. “Roll it around!” By rolling the ball I could hear where it went. This gave me an ________ how to achieve a goal I had thought impossible: playing baseball. At Philadelphia’s Overbrook School for the Blind I ________ a successful variation of baseball and I called it ground ball.

All my life I have set ahead of me a series of goals and then tried to ________ them, one at a time. I had to be clear about my ________. It was no good trying for something I knew at the start was ________ out of reach since that only invited the bitterness of failure. I would fail sometimes anyway but on average I made progress.

【推荐1】At the age of thirteen I became a gardener. My early _____________ of gardening may not have come from my love for nature. It was to _____________ my parents.

At that time, we had a big yard in which a beautiful maple tree stood. But my mother often looked with _____________ at this work of natural art. Those golden leaves seemed like tons of rubbish to her, “something else to clean up!” Seeing the neighbors busy with gardening, my father even thought it a waste of time.

At that age, I always did something ___________ to whatever my parents did! If gardening were something they found _____________, I would plant a garden!

I planted some lily seeds in the yard. But they failed to come up. I continued to plant sunflower seeds and roses.Wild _____________ joy, I found the first rose bloom (开花). One by one, the flowers bloomed their heads off. ___________, I was touched by this land of wonder.

However, my parents showed no interest in my garden. My father even _____________ at me because he found it _____________ to move around my garden to the driveway. To my mother’s ________________, I put in her vase my real roses which, in her eyes, were simply weeds rather than flowers.

Despite their ________________, I kept on planting my garden and ________________ to enjoy the pleasure of gardening. Plants make such good companions: they breathe, they bloom, they ________________ to care and love.

It has been many years since I made my first garden out of my desire to ________________   my parents. Today I become known as Mrs.Greenthumbs, teaching gardening and hosting a gardening show which makes my parents feel very proud. And now I could say it is my affection for ________________ that makes me a real gardener.

【推荐2】Yesterday, a salesman called me by phone, on behalf of a telecommunication company, to sell his phone plans. I was at work and while I usually don’t _________to spend time with those conversations, I _________ myself that I couldn’t talk yet and proposed him to call me back one hour later, at 6 pm.

That’s what he did. So we _________ 15 minutes. He explained to me his different phone plans, which he stated to be better than my_________one. While listening to him, sometimes I was lost in my thoughts. I gave several “hmm hmm”, as a _________of approbation (赞同) and to_________ to him that I was still there. Sometimes, I felt a bit_________, especially as he had a bit of difficulty in correctly talking in French. But I stayed calm and _________ until the end of the discussion.

At the end of the conversation, he_________the following to me: “Thank you, Olivier. You are the first person in a long time, with whom I had a(n) __________     conversation. Usually, people__________at us, insult us, and treat us as thieves. Today, since 10 am, I hadn’t had a(n) __________ without an offense. I know you had a long day at work and you could have __________ in front of your TV or done something else. Instead, you listened carefully to me. I am __________ and I sincerely thank you. I wanted to tell it to you.”

I thanked him for this revelation. I realized how much he could have been the subject of verbal __________ , all through his working days. Yet, he was only doing his job. I hope he will have a good weekend.

【推荐3】While in the army there was nothing I dislike so much as the map reading course, for the simple reason that I always feel     _________ even with a map in my hand. For weeks I had_________awake at night thinking of the practical_________I would have to face at the end of the course.

At last, the day arrived. It was my responsibility to_________a small group of soldiers back to camp from the middle of_________. We were driven out in a closed truck and_________in a ploughed (犁地) field with_________to get back to camp as quickly as possible.

Well knowing my weakness, the soldiers smiled as they saw me_________the map and they made all sorts of helpful suggestions. I said that we would_________east. After walking for over an hour we came to a wide stream. Hopelessly, we sat down in the cool__________and I feel like__________the map into the water. Fifteen minutes later, a boat passed and I asked the boatman if he could give us a__________to the nearest village. I__________that we had been out for a walk and__________ got lost. Not long afterwards, we__________that boat and, following the boatman’s instructions, took a bus into the village and got back to camp.