2 . Pooja Rani entered the boxing area at age 18 all thanks to her coach Sanjay Kumar. However, even with much _______, Pooja felt shy to wear the boxing gloves. She also knew that her father would not _______ her taking up this “violent” sport. But Pooja went after her interest_______ anyway until one day when _______ came to her father — he discovered the truth and stopped her playing the sport. “My father wasn’t _______ of boxing because he thought it violent. He didn’t _______ me playing other sports but boxing was a _______ no-go zone,” Pooja said. It then took six months of continuous _______ from Pooja and her coach Sanjay to _______ her father to change his attitude.

She won the National Youth Boxing Championship (锦标赛) in 2009, which ________ her career on an upward path. In 2012, she ________ two silver medals at the Asian Boxing Championship and the Arafura Games. Later, she acquired a gold medal at the South Asian Games in 2016, thus making her ________ for the Rio Olympics that year.

Unstoppable as she was, her wins came to a ________ for some reason. During that time, she was ________ by many people. It took her a whole year to get back on ________ with their assistance. And what a comeback! Pooja ________ in an impressive way, winning back-to-back gold medals at the Asian Boxing Championship in 2019 and 2021. This ________ her to be the first woman boxer to ________ the title. Given the long and ________ road she took to get here, for us, Pooja is ________ the “queen of boxing”.

6 . Sitting back in my seat, I can’t quite believe that I’m about to travel along the railway that many foreign experts claimed was “impossible”. The train has been racing along steadily since it left Xining. All this time, the song “Sky Railway” has been_________inside my head. The words “railways like massive dragons are winding among the mountains” seem particularly_________as I travel across the “roof of the world”.

I was one of the people who came from all parts of China to work on this railway._________years to complete, the Qinghai-Tibet Railway is a record of all of our efforts to_________the most difficult engineering challenges. How to_______the delicate ecosystem was among the top concerns.

The first_________to catch my eye is the splendid Qingshuihe Bridge, the world’s longest bridge built over permafrost. Look! A group of Tibetan antelopes is moving under the bridge, with some stopping to eat grass at their_______. Thirty-three passages have been built under the railway to allow the animals to move safely and freely in their natural_________. Wild animals such as these Tibetan antelopes have now been using these_________for years. They seem totally__________that we are speeding past at over 100 kilometres an hour.

To prevent__________to wetlands and grasslands, 675 bridges with__________about 160 kilometres were built between Golmud and-Lhasa. We even moved 140,000 square metres of wetland to a new area in order to protect its distinct ecosystem.

The journey has been flying by, and before I know it, we have reached Tanggula Station.__________at over 5,000 metres above sea level, this is the__________railway station in the world. In locations such as this, the thin air,__________weather and high levels of UV radiation presented perhaps the greatest__________ for railway workers. To make sure we stayed__________, several oxygen-making stations were constructed. We were also able to enjoy__________breaks in lower areas.

As we pass Cuona Lake, I feel a sense of pride and achievement. Using thousands and thousands of sandbags, we built a twenty-kilometre wall along the lake to protect it from construction waste. Cuona Lake is so close to the railway that I want to__________and touch its pale blue mirror-like surface. Water birds playing in the lake, and cattle and sheep wandering the grasslands bring the scenery to life.

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has been attracting people’s admiration for centuries. Now, thanks to our efforts, passengers from all over the country have been enjoying these magical landscapes. I am proud that we built our “impossible” railway, and did so with the care that the environment__________. It truly is an extraordinary “Sky Railway”.

7 . “Hi! How are you?” A woman smiled as she took the seat beside me. She had to lower herself slowly, squeezing her fat body into the seat, ________ all available space. I ________ a little towards the window, feeling worried silently about the long hours of ________ I was going to experience with this monster (巨物) beside me.

She said, “My name is Laura. I’m from Britain. If we’re going to spend six hours side by side on this ________, we’d better be friends.” Then she started a conversation with me and didn’t ________ my unfriendly reactions. She talked ________ about herself and her trip to Hong Kong.

I gave her one-word answers to her questions about me. Not affected by my ________, she nodded as she made ________ about my answers. She was warm and considerate, ________ that I had room to stretch in my seat.

I couldn’t help but let down my ________ slowly. Laura was an interesting conversationalist. During our conversation, Laura ________ to make every crew member on the plane who ________ us walk away laughing at her jokes.

I asked Laura, “Have you ever ________ losing some weight?” “No. I don’t trust the advertisements from slimming centers at all.” “You aren’t worried about the diseases that come with being ________? Not at all. You only ________ the diseases if you’re worried about your weight all the time. I eat ________ and walk regularly; I’m this size ________ I was born to be big! There is more to life than worrying about weight all day long.” She drank her wine. “Besides, God gave me so much ________ that I need a bigger body to hold all of it! Why would I lose weight to lose my happiness?”

________ by her unusual reasoning, I smiled. I suddenly ________ that Laura was the most beautiful woman I had ever met in my life.

9 . Why Some Brilliant Ideas Get Overlooked?

In 1928, Karl Jansky, a young radio engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories, began researching static interference. Five years later, after investigating every possibility, he published his remarkable _______: some of the static was coming from the Milky Way.

Jansky’s theory was eye-catching enough to be published in The New York Times but scientists were _______. Radio signals from outer space? Surely they were too weak to detect. Jansky’s ideas were largely _______ for about a decade. Thankfully, he lived long enough to see his ideas blossom into field of radio astronomy.

Jansky’s story resonates with us: we all like the idea of the researcher who is so far ahead of their _______that it takes years for the rest of the world to catch up. Gregor Mendel’s research into plant genetics is a famous example — published in 1866. It wasn’t taken seriously until 1900.

The stories of Jansky and Mendel hold out some hope to anyone who feels that the world has not quite_______ their brilliance. There is even a name for such cases by Anthony van Raan of Leiden University: “Sleeping Beauties”, scientific papers that are not referred to later for years, before finding wide _______. (Some scholars argue that the term is sexist and prefer “delayed recognition”.)

So what is it about an idea that delays recognition? One view is that brilliant ideas are overlooked when delivered by unclearly expressed messengers. Jansky and Mendel were somewhat off the scientific _______. In 1970, the sociologist Stephen Cole published an analysis arguing that the obstacle tended to lie in the _______ of the idea itself, rather than the reputation of the scientist behind it. Ideas fell asleep for a hundred years because they were confusing.

Two scholars of the field, Eugene Garfield and Wolfgand Glanzel, have argued that such _______ of delayed recognition are so rare as to be hard to analyse. Studying papers published in 1980, they looked for articles that were barely cited (引用) for five years and found just 60 examples cited later in 450,000 cases. Unfortunately, they ________ their work in 2004.

Why, then, is this myth such an appealing one? One explanation is that we all love a story of the underdog (黑马) who succeeds against ________. Immediate and sustained success is as boring as immediate and sustained failure.

Another is that scientists themselves are fond of the thought that their ideas are ________. In an essay on delayed recognition, Garfield notes mildly that one historian of science, Derek Price, believed one of his own papers was suffering delayed recognition.

Delayed recognition is rare. Much more ________ is for people simply to reach their prime late in life. David Galenson is an economist who studies the creative output of musicians, artists, directors and others. Galenson has found that while it is quite possible to ________ as a radical young artist, there are many examples of “old masters” whose later works are more admired than their youthful ones.

We all need to be able to hold on to the idea that the best is yet to come. But we can’t just hope what we have already produced will, one day, be recognized for its brilliance. Good things do not come to those who wait, if________ is all they do. It is wiser to get back to work and make something better.

10 . Sometimes a part of us must die before another part can come to life. Even though this is a_______and necessary stage of our growth, it is often painful or_______if we don’t realize what’s happening. In fact, confusion is often the_______that tells us a change is taking place within us. These changes happen throughout the lives of all humans, as we move from babyhood to_______to teenage years and beyond. With each change from one_______to another, we find ourselves saying_______to an old friend, the identity that we_______in order to move through that particular time.

Sometimes we build these identities in relationships or jobs, and when we change, those areas of our life become_______.Usually, if we take the time to look into the changing surface of things, we will find that a change is taking place_______us. For example, we may go through one whole part of our lives creating a protective shell around ourselves because we need it in________of ourselves. One day, ________, we may find ourselves feeling limited and bored, wanting to move outside the________ we used to need; the new part of ourselves cannot be born within the________of the shell our old self needed.

We may feel a strange________of excitement and sadness as we say goodbye to a part of ourselves that is________and make way for a whole new identity to________ in its place. We may find inspiration in working and studying when we think of the image of an animal who sheds (蜕皮) in order to make________for new skin, fur, or feathers to________. For example, keeping a piece of snake skin, or some other symbols of change, can________us that death and rebirth are simply nature’s way of growing. We can give in to this process, letting go of our past self with great love and gratitude, and________the new with an open mind and heart, ready for our next stage of life.