I used to watch her from my kitchen window. She seemed so ______ among the tall kids on the playground. The school was ______ the street from my home and I would often watch the kids as they played during a break. She would ______ dribbling(控球) and shooting over and over again.

One afternoon I asked her ______ she always kept playing. She smiled, I want to go to University of California and the only way for me is to get a scholarship. I like basketball a lot. I believed that if I were ______enough to play college basketball, I would get a scholarship. My dad told me if the dream is big enough, the ______don't count. "

Well, she appeared to be very confident. I ______ her from junior into high school.

One day in her senior year, I saw her sitting in the grass ______. I walked to her and asked what was the matter. "Nothing," replied the girl in a ______ voice, "Many people told me that I was too short to play for a top team, ______I should stop dreaming about university."

I asked if she had told her father about it. She said that her father thought they were ______. They just didn't understand the great ______ of a dream. If she truly wanted a scholarship, then nothing could ______ her except one thing—her own attitude(态度).

The next year, because of her perfect ______ in the California Championship game, she was chosen by a college recruiter(招生人员). She was going to receive the college education that she had ______and worked toward for all those years.

It's true: If the dream is big enough, the facts don't count.

I strongly believe that we can have an important effect on anyone we meet. The right words at just the right time could totally change someone's life. That's what happened to me years ago.

When I was a 3-year-old boy, my parents discovered I was totally deaf. After asking many doctors, educational specialists and parents of other deaf children, they decided to put me in a mainstream school. All of my classmates and teachers would have normal hearing.

From the time I started going there in the third grade, I was the only deaf child at Blue Creek Elementary School in the small town of Latham, New York. From almost the first day there, the other kids made fun of me and called me names mainly because of my hearing aid and the way I talked.

I worried throughout Elementary school because, except the problems of "fitting in" with the other students, I also struggled with most of my schoolwork.

Although I seemed outgoing, my self-esteem(自尊心)was quite low. I saw myself as an ugly kid wearing a weird-looking box around his neck who wasn't even smart enough to keep up with the other kids.

Mrs. Jordan, my fifth-grade teacher, changed all of that with a simple three-word phrase. Mrs. Jordan was a large woman with a voice that bounced(反弹)off the walls of her tiny classroom. One morning, she asked the class a question.

I read her lips(嘴唇)and immediately raised my hand. For once I knew the answer. But, when she called on me, I was afraid. I took a deep breath, stood up slowly and answered Mrs. Jordan's question in a low voice.

I will never forget what happened next.

Mrs. Jordan pointed directly at me. With shining eyes and a wide smile she cried: "That's right, Stephen!"

For the first time in my life, I was an instant star. My confidence soared like never before.

I decided right then and there that I would make a place for myself in this world. No matter how many difficulties I might meet in life, I knew I could overcome them. A simple three-word phrase delivered with incredible enthusiasm had totally changed my young life. "That's right, Stephen!"

Everybody knows that Earth spins from west to east. That is to say, it appears to be turning counterclockwise (逆时针) rapidly when viewed from above the North Pole. But what if Earth started spinning the other way?

Scientists from Germany have made a computer simulation in which Earth spins in the opposite direction—clockwise when viewed from above the North Pole. This showed them some interesting things about the weather and geography on Earth, Live Science reported.

As Earth spins in a counterclockwise direction, it shapes certain ocean currents(洋流). The direction of ocean currents, together with winds, produces different weathers around the globe. But a backward spin changes the ocean currents and winds. ▲ Western areas of the lands on Earth cool down as the eastern parts warm up. Winters become even colder in northwestern Europe, while eastern Russia becomes warmer than before. Rain no longer falls on the planet's wettest places.

Another result of a backward spin is that Earth becomes greener. Scientists found that global desert(沙漠) areas reduce from 42 million square kilometers to 31 million square kilometers. This may have something to do with the changing weather. Therefore, you can see rich green landscapes from Central Africa to the Middle East, which are mostly covered with deserts now. More surprisingly, the Sahara Desert becomes an oasis.

However, deserts don't disappear. They just appear in some places in which they never appeared before. Deserts would cover North America, where countries like the United States and Canada lie. Sand dunes would replace the Amazon rainforest in South America.

A backward spin would keep the main features of Earth's geography, such as the size, shapes and positions of lands and oceans. But it would change the interactions between circulating air, ocean and geography lead scientist Florian Ziemen told Live Science.

If you have ever passed the cockpit(驾驶舱) in a flight and tried to understand your pilots' conversation, you probably didn't gain much from them. From terms like "niner" to "Zulu", pilot-speak can sound like its own language.

The special language is called "aviation English". According to the International Civil Aviation Organization(ICAO), pilots on international airlines and air traffic controllers on airlines need to speak "aviation English" when they communicate. Aviation English is necessary all over the world because it is unrealistic for a pilot to know all the different languages of the country to which he or she must fly. In addition, most of the phrases flight crew use were born out of a need for clear communication with a few words over an occasionally fuzzy(模糊不清的) radio transmission. Pilots must make effort to reduce their transmission time.

Misunderstandings between pilots and air traffic controllers can lead to disaster, so they must make sure not to misunderstand one another. To avoid making a mistake about understanding with similar sounding consonants, the ICAO has a standard phonetic alphabet: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot Golf. Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu. These words stand for the letters from A to Z. The pronunciation of numbers should also follow exact standards. For example, zero(0) is always "zero", not "oh". 3 becomes "tree". 4 is called "fower",5 becomes "fife", and 9 becomes "niner".

There are also more colorful phrases that pilots say were produced in the sky and shared widely among them. For example, "Feet wet" warns air traffic controllers when a military aircraft is flying overwater. "Pan-pan" is reserved for communication with air traffic controllers. When pilots notice something unusual with their plane that stops short of an immediate emergency, they use "Pan-pan", a signal of urgency(紧迫) and attention. When pilots use this signal, others on the same radio frequency will "shut up and let you get your message across", allowing air traffic control to provide the suitable aid and prevent a great danger in flight.

When a thought has found words

Poetry (诗歌)is the forgotten child of literature. Few people read it for pleasure. In Western high schools, poetry is s     66    taught because it is considered to be out of date and have little to do with the life of today's students.

In China, however, poetry is s    67     an important part of the curriculum (课程). Recently, the Ministry of Education has i    68    the number of old Chinese poems for students to memorize and recite, from 14 to 72. Why is it important to learn poems?

First of all, poetry is a necessary part of learning traditional Chinese c    69    . It is a path to understanding your history and your society. It is also the key to understanding the thoughts and feelings that are c    70     to everyone but that we may be unable to express—the joy of Li Bai dancing with the moon, for example. Everyone has feelings of joy, love, loneliness, sadness and even anger, and a good poem can put those feelings into w    71    and bring us self-understanding.

Poems can also express beauty. In a few short 1    72     even something common can   become beautiful. Here is a poem called Fog by Carl Sandberg: The fog comes/ on silent haunches (弓腰)/ and then moves on. Yes, fog does move smoothly, silently and like a cat, and Sandberg c    73     that feeling and image (形象),and makes it beautiful.

Of course, to really enjoy poetry, it has to be read aloud. After all, a poem is really just a song without music. Most a    74    poetry, like Homer's Epics (《荷马史诗》)and China's Book of Songs (《诗经》),was spoken for hundreds of years before it was w    75    . The American poet Robert Frost said, "Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."

Stay Home Studying

17-year-old Liu Yu was a high school student in China. She planned to go back to school on February 17 to prepare for the 2020 college entrance examination. However, the Ministry of Education told people in late January that the spring term for all schools would be put off because of the serious disease in China. So Liu Yu, like all the other students, had to stay at home.

However, Liu and her classmates didn't fall behind their plans and began studying full-time again-only from home. It may have become the largest online teaching experiment the country has ever seen.

To go with students' new learning environment, a "cloud platform(云平台)" was started using on February 17. It provided students with education resources covering all school subjects. But some students had difficulty going to the website or using smart phones. A TV channel by China Education Television started airing classes on February 17. So students could have classes and study online or on TV at home.

But the online platform and TV channel don't just offer school knowledge. Students can also learn how to protect themselves from the disease and psychological health during this period, according to the Ministry of Education.

For some students, the chance to study from home has had some unexpected benefits. Yuan Siyi, who lives in Hubei province, used to get up before 6 am on school days, but since starting online courses, she got more hours of sleep every morning. "I like online teaching because I have more freedom at home, "Yuan told TEENS. She began her all-day courses on February 3.

However, online teaching and learning has its weaknesses compared to studying in a traditional classroom. "My motivation(动力)to study is stronger when my classmates are around me and all working very hard," Yuan said.

According to the Ministry of Education, online courses are just a short-time way of learning during the disease. When the new term begins, schools will return to classroom teaching.

81. 2020年新冠肺炎疫情的爆发让我们感受到生命的可贵,意识到健康与文明生活的重要。现学校英文报打算开设"健康生活"版块,请你根据下表的要点提示,用英语写一篇短文,向校报读者介绍健康文明的生活方式。

健康文明的生活方式

A Healthy and Civilized Lifestyle

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus makes us realize the value of life and the importance of a healthy and civilized life. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________