【推荐1】Christmas 2020 was shaping up to be a heartbreaker for Melanie Lee. A few weeks earlier, her 33-year-old son had lost his_________with cancer. Then her car, in its disrepair,_________. And much to her sadness, she had no means of_________for it to be fixed.

Lee told Frank McClary, “Now I don’t have my baby, now I don’t have_________. How am I supposed to stay active in my grandchildren’s_________?”

Eliot Middleton, the owner of a restaurant and former auto mechanic who in his free time_________and gives away used cars. He’d heard about Lee’s _________from her nephew Frank. On Christmas morning, Middleton arrived at Lee’s home with a_________: a white car.

“I was so surprised. He handed me the_________and didn’t ask for anything. Now I can__________my grandchildren.”

Middleton__________on Facebook an offer to trade his restaurant food for broken vehicles.__________, friends and strangers have dropped off more than 100 cars in__________states of disrepair. Many sat in Middleton’s yard waiting to be fixed and__________. Yet, the list of people who needed the cars still__________.

“I think Eliot Middleton is an angel.” Lee told the Washington Post.

【推荐2】Cruz Genet, 11, and Anthony Skopick, 10, couldn’t agree. Was the bird out on the ice a duck or a goose? There was only one way to find out. So on a chilly January evening last year, the two friends _______ onto the frozen pond near their homes in Frankfort, Illinois, to get a _______ look. First they threw a rock onto the ice to _______ it, Cruz told NBC 5 Chicago. “Then we stepped on it.” _______ the ice would support their weight, Anthony took a few steps, then ... FOOMP. He crashed through the _______ frozen surface. “There was no sound, no crack,” he told ABC7 Chicago. “I just fell through instantly.”

Cruz rushed to help his _______ friend. FOOMP—the pond swallowed him too.

Cruz managed to _______ himself out of the freezing cold water and onto a more _______ section. He then _______ worked his way toward Anthony. But the ice didn’t ________, and he fell in again. This time, he couldn’t get out. The boys were up to their ________ in icy water and quickly losing feeling in their limbs (四肢). Any possibility of their freeing themselves was ________ away. Cruz was sure he was going to die.

Anthony’s older sister had seen the boys fall through the ice and started screaming for help. John Lavin, a neighbor ________ nearby on his way to the grocery store, ________ her. He quickly pulled over. Seeing the boys, he grabbed a nearby buoy, ________ off his shoes, and ran into the slushy water, ________ his way through the ice with his free ________. “It was kind of a ‘Hulk smash, ’” Lavin told NBC 5 Chicago.

Lavin made his way to Cruz and Anthony and hauled them back to ________. They were taken to the hospital, where doctors discovered that their five-minute ________ in the water had lowered their body temperature nearly ten degrees.

Fortunately, the boys have fully recovered, though they are still a little awestruck by their ________ neighbor. “Just to think,” says Cruz, “if he wasn’t there, I could have died.”

【推荐3】Last month, Mr. and Mrs. Walter moved to a small town because they both _________ from work and wanted to _________a peaceful life. After being there _________ a short time, Mrs. Walter complained(抱怨) to her next-door _________. She told him about the poor service _______ she received at the local convenient store. She was hoping the neighbor would repeat her _________to the store owner.

The next day the newcomer went to the store._________ greeted her with a big smile. He told her how _________ he was to see her again, and said he hoped she liked their _________. He also offered himself as a resource to Mrs. Walter and her husband as they got settled. Then he took care of her order________.

Mrs. Walter was very __________. When she got home, she reported the big ________ to her neighbor. “I suppose you told him how poor I thought the __________was,” she guessed.

“Well, no,” the neighbor said, “__________ —and I hope you don’t mind—I told him you were amazed at the way he had __________this small town store, which was no easy job, and that you thought it was one of the __________stores you’d ever seen.”

Mrs. Walter’s neighbor __________ that all people want to be __________. Actually, most people will do nearly anything for you __________you treat them respectfully. That means making it clear to them that their feelings are ________, and their opinions are precious.

【推荐3】However objective we believe ourselves to be, most of us do not judge a product only on the basis of its advantages, we don’t only _________its quality, value or style before making a decision _________, we are easily influenced by the people around us.

There is nothing_________with this. It is probably a smarter way to make decisions than relying on only our own _________. But it does make life _________for companies. They have long understood that groups of friends and relatives _________ to buy the same products, but understanding the _________ has been tricky. Is it because they are so similar with _________ to how much money they _________ and what television ads they watch that they ____________ arrive at the same decision? Or do they ____________one anther, perhaps out of envy or perhaps because they have____________information about the products?

Research in Finland recently found good ____________that neighbours have a big influence on buying ____________. When one of a person’s ten nearest neighbours bought a car, the ____________that that person would buy a car of the ____________ brand during the next week and a half rose by 86 percent. The researchers argued that it was not just a matter of envy ____________cars seemed to attract neighbours even more. This ____________that people were not trying to keep up with their neighbours, they were eager to ____________them. Since second-hand cars are less reliable, people are more likely to consider others’____________before buying.