2 . It happened on a rainy Saturday morning last month. My wife Catherine and I were driving along what some people called moose (麋鹿) alley. It was so ______ that there were few cars on the road. ______, something happened. A moose jumped out across our path. I had been driving for years and was good at driving. In order to ______ knocking into the moose, I made a quick turn to the other lane. If I had not done that, the moose might have been killed, and my wife and I might have got ______, too. A few seconds later, when I ______ and looked back in my rear view mirror, the moose was getting up and then ran into the bush. Shaken but ______, we both looked at each other with a surprised expression.

From then on, I often thought about the relationship between humans and ______ . We know that animal species have appeared and disappeared ______ since life began on the Earth. This is a(n) ______ phenomenon. However, animal species have been ______ at a much faster rate for about a century now ______ human factors such as pollution.

Certain philosophers and scientists keep repeating that if we don’t save animals, how we will be able to save ourselves. A better ______ of animals gives us a better understanding of our own species. The ______ to protect animals and nature in general ______ the value of a society. And all animals play roles in nature and have a right to ______. Therefore, I think we should try our best to save endangered animals, because humans cannot live on the Earth alone.

4 . A man was visiting a zoo. As he was passing the _______, he suddenly stopped, confused by the fact that each of these _______ creatures was being held by only a small _______ tied to their front leg. It was _______ that the elephants could, at any time, break away from their _______ but, for some reason, they did not.

He saw a _______ nearby and asked why these animals just stood there and made no attempt to _______. “Well,” the trainer said, “when they were very _______, we would use the same size rope to _______ them. At that age, it’s enough to hold them. As they grow up, they still believe the rope can still hold them ________ they never try to break free.”

The man was ________. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds, but because they believed they couldn’t, they never ________ to escape. Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging on to a ________ that we cannot do something, simply because we failed in it once before? ________ is part of learning. We should never give up the ________ in life.

5 . The psychological aspect of sports is often overlooked. Athletics is 90 percent _________ and 10 percent physical, and mindsets make a huge _________ in competitions.

“The physical aspect of the sport can only take you _________,” said Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Shannon Miller. “The mental aspect has to _________, especially when you’re talking about the best of the best. In the Olympic Games, everyone is talented. Everyone _________ hard. Everyone does the work. What _________ the gold medalists from the silver medalists is simply the mental game.” Many athletes have used the _________ of mental imagery, or visualization, to perform at their best. Research on the brain patterns of _________ found that the patterns activated by lifting heavy weights were activated _________ when they simply imagined lifting and some studies have suggested that mental __________ can be almost as effective as physical training.

Mental imagery about the event __________ on many cognitive (认知的) processes in the brain: motor control, attention, perception, planning, and memory. So the __________ is getting trained for actual performance during visualisation. And it’s been found that mental practices can prepare your brain for success. __________ visualising is more than just thinking about an upcoming event. “During visualisation, the athlete incorporates (整合) all of his __________ into the experience.” sports psychologist Dr JoAnn Dahlkoetter wrote in a blog post on The Huffington Post __________ a speed skater she works with. “She feels her forefoot pushing off the track, she hears her skating splits, and she sees herself racing ahead of the competitors. She experiences all of the elements of her race, for example,before executing (完成) her performance.”

6 . Todd and Donna woke up early one day to take pictures of the sunrise. While walking along the shoreline and enjoying the sights, Todd suddenly ________ down. Donna thought her husband was ________ . However, she quickly realized this was no laughing matter. Todd’s heart stopped beating and he turned ________ . Immediately she screamed for help.

Tyler Volpe, a ________ , was in the water when Todd came down. Volpe is also a physician assistant. He heard Donna’s cries for help. “I knew it wasn’t a ________ scream,” he said. “I came flying out of the water.”

Volpe started chest compression (按压) while Roy, another surfer, breathed into Todd’s mouth. Then, they switched ________ with each other. “I really thought he was ________ ,” Donna said. As Roy and Volpe continued CPR, Todd breathed ________ a few times.

The tide was starting to come in. Other surfers used their boards to form a ________ between the rescue effort and the water. “They kept him ________ until the ambulance got there,” Donna said. “It could have been two minutes or 10 days. I was watching my life ________ with his.”

Doctors used a defibrillator (除颤器) to shock his heart and ________ his heartbeat. On the second shock, he regained his feel.

Todd and Donna planned to drive back home to New Jersey that morning, but decided to first take a walk on the beach. “It is lucky we didn’t ________ because it would have happened while we were driving home,” Donna said.

Donna ________ a message asking if anyone knew the surfers who helped her husband — they wanted to ________ them.

7 . My wife and I moved into our home two years ago. We had a yard with a lot of ________. Very often when we have flowers, Denise or I would plant some between the rocks, just to add some ________ to the area.

Last summer, I found a tiny little plant in the yard that I could not immediately identify. I knew I didn’t plant it and Denise said she didn’t either.

We decided to let it ________ growing until we could find out what it was.

Weeks passed and as I made my way back to the ________ plant, it appeared to be a sunflower. I decided to ________ the weeds (杂草) around it. As I pulled rocks from the area to get to the weeds, I noticed something ________.The sunflower had not ________ where I saw it begin. It actually had begun under a big rock and grown under and around it to reach the ________.

That’s when I ________ that if a tiny little sunflower didn’t let a big rock stand in its way of developing, we too have the ability of doing the same thing. If we ________ ourselves like that little sunflower, we can reach where we ________ to go and get what we need for growth.

We need to believe in ourselves knowing we have the ________ to achieve our goals. Like the sunflower, it knew it had the ability to get over the rocks because it had ________ in itself that it would succeed. Stand tall like the sunflower and be ________ of who and what we are, and then the environment will begin to ________ us. We will find a way to go under or around any “rocks” in order to reach our goals.

9 . My daughter and I were swimming in our pool one summer day. This day was like any of the other days, so I had no way of knowing that this one would go down in our family history as a________we cherish(珍惜)and still________from time to time.  

The sun was setting and the night was________approaching. My daughter________it first—a spider was spinning(纺织) her web at the bottom of the freshly painted blue fence(篱笆)that________our pool. It surprised me that she saw this, and it surprised me even more that she wasn’t________of the spider.  

Instead, she________watched as the spider busied herself in the cycle of life. As we both watched this wonder of nature, a very simple thought________me. I had lost the track of________. I honestly didn’t know how long we had been just staying there and________that spider making her web. But, regardless of whatever amount of time had passed, the truth was that we were________having fun.  

What we had done was to spend time together and________the simple things in life. We talked about how precious our________amount of time is on this planet and how we should________to enjoy the simple things in life like the flight of a bird. The simple things are the ________things in life, even when they include spiders and webs.