1 . Our family owned a store in our town. Each of the seven children in our family worked in our father’s store. _________we worked and watched, we learned that our work was more than making a_________and making a sale.

One lesson stands out in my mind. It was shortly before Christmas. I was working evenings, cleaning up the toy section. A little boy, five or six years old, came in. He was wearing a brown worn coat with dirty sleeves (袖子). His shoes were scuffed (磨损) and his one shoelace was worn. The little boy looked poor to me — too poor to_________to buy anything. He looked around the toy section, picked up this item and_________, and carefully put them back in their place.

Dad came down the stairs and walked over to the boy. His clear blue eyes_________and the dimple (酒窝) in his cheek stood out as he asked the boy what he could do for him. The boy said he was looking for a Christmas present for his brother. I was impressed that Dad treated him with the same respect as any adult. Dad told him to take his_________and look around. He did.

After about 20 minutes, the little boy carefully picked up a toy, walked up to my dad and said, “How much for this, Mister?”

“How much you got?” Dad asked.

The little boy held out his hand and_________it. His hand was creased (起皱) with_________lines of dirt from holding his money too tightly. In his hand_________only two pennies and 27 cents. The price on the toy plane he’d__________was $3.98.

“That’ll just__________it,” Dad said as he__________the sale. Dad’s reply still__________in my ears. When the little boy walked out of the store, I didn’t notice the dirty, worn coat or the__________torn shoelace. What I saw was a happy child with a__________.

2 . 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.

3 . My father was a strong fisherman. He loved the sea and would stay out until he caught enough to ______ the family.

When we met ______ weather, he would drive me to school with his old track. And after we arrived, he would bend over and give me a ______ on the face and then tell me to be a good boy. I always felt very shy in front of so many other ______. I was already a twelve-year-old young man, but my father still kissed me goodbye!

Then on a rainy day I ______ to tell him my feeling. When we stopped at the school gate, the ______ big smile appeared on my father’s face. I ______ what would happen next. I ______ put my hand up and for the first time said “No” to him. The smile on his face immediately changed into a ______ look. He looked at me for a long time, and tears began to appear in his eyes. I was shocked. I had never ______ him cry! Then he said, “You’re right. You are a big boy... a man. I won’t kiss you anymore.”

Not long after that, my dad went to the sea on a bad day. Most of the ______ stayed at home, but not Dad, because he had a big family to feed. But after that day, be ______ came back. Later his boat was found with its nets half in and half out. He must have ______ a strong wind and was trying to save the nets.

How I wished I hadn’t ______ my father’s kiss! And from this I have learnt that we should take every chance with our family and friends as the last one in our lives. We can have ______ regrets(遗憾)by doing this.

4 . The universal use of technology has resulted in a constant current of information interrupting the “flow” of our life. This ________ pattern was initially marketed as “call-waiting” for our phones. But now our eyes, ears, and fingers are glued to our technology 24/7. We are ________ by emails, texts, or the news on our Facebook pages. My friend Ron refers to this technology as “weapons of mass distraction.”

But how is this mass distraction ________ us? According to a 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation report, children from eight to eighteen spend an average of seven hours and thirty-eight minutes a day using entertainment media. In addition, a study found that exposure to ________ media was associated with attention problems in a sample of 210 college students.

The ________ is just part of the larger picture. Dealing with a crowd of daily text messages and emails makes it difficult for us to be by ourselves when all that activity stops. Although a sense of ________ is natural at times, our addiction to the nonstop interaction afforded by technology deepens that feeling when access to the technology is unexpectedly ________. Just think how you feel when you lack cell phone or web access. Is it possible that our obsession with continually checking our emails and text messages has contributed to our ________ to genuinely relate with others?

Apart from the effects of technology on our ________ and our ability to be at ease without technology, let’s examine how interacting with our devices ________ the development of our fundamental communication and social skills. Many researchers observe that everyday conversation between human beings is becoming increasingly ________.

Many of today’s children are growing up with a built-in dependence on devices, making it difficult for them to feel ________ in everyday social situations. Often they find it ________ to make eye contact or deal with even the simplest face-to-face interactions without the aid of technology as an intermediary (媒介).

Over time these children forget how to relate with each other because they have become habituated to using technology to ________ direct contact with others and life itself. ________, some neuroscientists believe that use of the internet actually rewires our brains.

5 . 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.

6 . Every year I’d read over 2,000 college applications from students all over the world. It is quite _______ to choose whom to admit. _______, in the chaos of SAT scores and recommendations, one _______ is always irresistible in a candidate: kindness.

The most surprising _______ of kindness I’ve ever _______ came from a student who had excellent scores and a supportive recommendation from his college counselor (顾问). Even with these qualifications, he might not have _______. But one letter of recommendation caught my eye. It was from a school security _______. Letters of recommendation are typically written by people like former presidents, celebrities, and Olympic athletes.

The security guard wrote that he supported this student’s admission because of his _______. This young man was the only person in the school who knew the names of every member of the guard staff. He turned off lights in empty rooms, consistently _______ the hallway monitor each morning and tidied up the classroom after his peers left school ________ nobody was watching. This student, the security guard wrote, had a(n) ________ respect for every person at the school, regardless of position, popularity or power.

It gave us a ________ onto a student’s life in the moments when nothing “counted”. That student was admitted by unanimous (一致的) vote of the admissions committee.

Next year there might be a flood of security guard recommendations ________ this essay. But if it means students will start paying as much ________ to the people who clean their classrooms as they do to their principals and teachers, I’m happy to help start that ________.

8 . I was once a dropout.I know how powerfully a_________can influence the life of a person who does not_________herself. I quit school at sixteen to work. Years later, I had a(n) _________ and couldn’t work for months.I felt depressed.With an unemployable father and a mentally ill mother to support, I couldn’t_________to give up.

Searching the ads, I found a notice that our local community college offered free work_________.One requirement was a high-school diploma or GED certificate. Years ago, I got my GED certificate, but with_________scores. I felt certain that I had little to_________other than a willingness to_________.After my physical injury healed, I went to meet Ruby Martin, the advisor who would_________me.

I sat__________waiting while Mrs.Martin looked over my score sheet.I was__________to hear her blame me for wasting her valuable time.She looked at me for a long moment__________ she spoke.

“Why did you apply for this__________?” she asked.“Why aren’t you applying to college?” With my face burning with__________, I could only whisper, “Because I am stupid.”

She explained how the GED scores are based on, and that my numbers were very high indeed. I would make an excellent candidate for the training program.

I regained my__________.Later, I got a bachelor’s degree and became a teacher just like her.