1 . In language learning, it is not easy to find a balance between accuracy and fluency. When I was in my early 20’s, I _________a job teaching English in Japan. Although I had never studied Japanese or lived in Japan, I did have _________learning other languages and living in other countries.

When I arrived in Kyoto, I _________two other English-teaching colleagues—also new to Japan. We soon realized that we needed to take language classes, so as summer break approached, we _________in intensive Japanese classes. It was very interesting to watch our different _________to learning and using our new language.

One weekend, we decided to take a day trip to Ryoanji, a famous rock garden, but from the train station we had to ask directions to the garden.

One friend was very _________about speaking correctly. She would spend several minutes quietly _________to herself, checking her dictionary, and planning how to ask the question. Five minutes passed before she would even open her _________!

Another friend was very outgoing and rather _________to language structures. She __________the first person she could find, and asked him for directions. The __________was that he had difficulty understanding what she was saying. When he finally understood, he __________the directions, but then she didn’t understand everything he said, so she asked again and again for him to repeat the directions. Several minutes passed and she was still not clear on the directions and he was trying to find a way to __________!

My approach was different. I considered what I was going to say, and then asked the nearest person for directions. __________my Japanese was only good enough to grab some information. But I followed the directions I heard and I simply asked a new person for the next set of __________. And so I continued until I finally made it to Ryoanji!

2 . Ben was bothered every time he went through the kitchen. It was that little metal contain on the shelf above his wife Martha’s cook stove, which he had been repeatedly _________ never to touch. The reason, she said, was that it contained a “secret _________” from her late mother, and since she had no way of ever _________ the container, she was _________ that if Ben picked it up and looked inside, he might accidentally drop it and spill its _________ contents.

Ben never saw Martha cook a dish without taking the container of the shelf and sprinkling (洒) _________ a little of the contents over the ingredients. Whatever was in that container, it surely _________ Anyone who ever ate at their house felt Martha was the best _________ in the world. Looking into that container became increasingly _________ for Ben, but he never allowed himself to do so.

Then one day Martha became ill and was kept overnight in the hospital. Feeling lonely and bored in the house after returning home, Ben __________ the kitchen, and then the container on the shelf immediately came into view. It __________ his eyes like a magnet, and he quickly looked away, yet his curiosity brought him back again. He carefully took the container off the shelf, and opened it. Ben became __________ when what was inside came to I his sight. The container was empty, except for a little folded slip of paper at the bottom. He carefully picked it up and slowly __________ it under the kitchen light. Ben immediately __________ the handwriting as that of Martha’s mother. Very __________ it said: “Martha to everything you make, add a dash of love.”

3 . Camping is a rite of passage (成人仪式) if you grow up in Canada. It’s a child’s first_________of what living in the wild really means. But growing up as an immigrant from India, I thought it was ___________ .

Then I __________26 and started trying new things. I had been __________mental health issues for quite some time and I discovered being out in nature helped me calm down._________, I decided to try camping.

Then I overheard a(n)__________ between my father and mother. “Why does she have to do this? Doesn’t she know she can just stay at home?” my father asked. “This is what Canadian kids do, it’s okay, she’ll be fine!” my mom__________ . My parents had no___________in me surviving one night in the wild.

My friends and I___________our campsite in the woods. As the day went on, we ate, played by the water and met our camping neighbors. Time felt like it __________; life felt gentler and easier. As the day turned into night, the stars came out and I was amazed by all the__________lights above me. Morning came. I didn’t even realize I was __________ to leave until we started packing everything up.

I wasn’t just leaving, having accomplished something I ___________thought I would do. I was leaving with a real sense of community, a real sense of __________for what the great outdoors had to offer, and a completely different __________ to an activity that I had thought strange for so many years.

4 . Growing up in Mauritius, I love nature. Behind my house, there is a mountain named Le Pouce, where I spent much time _________the forest as a kid. However, my instinct (天性) for exploration _________at the water’s edge. Even though Mauritius is an island country _________ by the Indian Ocean, the thought of entering the ocean made me scared.

When I was about 10, this started to _________. I began learning about the _________ climate change presented to island countries, and I started_________ an interest in protecting the environment. I watched nature documentaries,_________ the steps I could take to change the world,_________ I still didn’t know how to effectively achieve it. Later, I took the National Geographic Society’s Exploring Conservation courses, which set me on a path to helping start and_________, The Oceanic Project, an organization dedicated to helping people understand the ocean and enhancing people’s__________ of protecting the ocean.

Gradually, I realized how much humans __________ the ocean for its natural resources and that it was not as __________ as I had imagined. My fear was rooted in a(n) __________ of falling into a river in my childhood. Determined to__________ it, I became a certified diver last year.

Diving plays a big part in my life now, and I work to__________ the protection of the underwater environment. I helped run a summer camp for young divers. During that time, I led a beach cleanup to help the participants understand how human litter could end up in the ocean. I got encouraged by the__________ of the activity when a parent told me her son insisted on __________ plastic items in their home with bamboo alternatives after returning home.

Protecting the ocean is very__________ and I’ll keep dedicating myself to it. And I__________ hope more people will join me. Only with everyone’s effort can we make the world a(n)__________ place for human beings.

5 . Memories always die hard. True! Thirty years ago, I was a second-year medical student practicing at a near-by hospital. My university’s philosophy was to get students seeing patients early in their education. Nice as it is, it _______one detail: second-year students may know next to nothing.

Assigned to my team that day was a fully-occupied doctor and he told us to start small. Along with me were two guys just as _______ as I was, but in a scarier way: they had recently graduated from medical school as MDs (medical doctor).

The day began at 6:30 am. We did a quick check of our three patients and later we were to _______our findings to the doctor, which we supposed was a piece of cake.

But when I arrived in the room of 70-year-old Mr. Adams, he was sitting up in bed, sweating and _______heavily. He’d just had a hip operation and looked terrible. I listened to his lungs with my stethoscope, but they _______clear. Next I checked and found his heart rate had been _______ , but his temperature was steady. It didn’t seem like heart failure, nor did it appear to be pneumonia. So l asked Mr. Adams what he thought was going on.

“It’s really hot in here, Doc”he replied.

So I concluded that his condition resulted from the stuffy room and told him the rest of the team would return in a few minutes, _______ him it was OK. He then _______ a smile and waved goodbye weakly.

Back to my office, still _______ about Mr. Adams, I checked my textbooks and notes. I ________when seeing his symptoms on the page: heavy sweating and shortness of breath ________ clear lungs — that’s pulmonary embolism (肺部栓). Obviously, I made a silly mistake and________consumed me.

“Code Blue Room307!”, however, I instantly called the doctor,________to the room.

________, he was still fine and received the immediate operation.

This incident has been in my mind for 30 years. What if I hadn’t read that chapter in the textbook? What if I was too scared, too insecure, and too ________ to ask the real doctor for help?

6 . Dr. Smith of New York works at a center for children who can’t learn well. One day a father brought his son to him for________ at his office.

The father told Dr. Smith about his son. “My son has ________ in learning and can’t even play baseball. He isn’t doing well because he doesn’t try. I have done everything for him. I have even shouted at him. But nothing ________. ”

After Dr. Smith tested the boy, he ________ his father. He asked the father to sit in front of a ________ and then gave him a pencil and a piece of paper. There was a ________ on the paper. He asked the father to look only in the mirror and ________ the lines of the star with the pencil. The father made the same ________ anyone makes. Every time he ________ the pencil, it went the wrong way. The father’s face became red.

At this ________ the doctor shouted at him, “Hurry up! Why are you ________ so long? You can’t do such an ________ thing! You don’t know left from right!” These ________ made the father very angry.

“Now you can ________, can’t you?” The doctor said to him. “Your son has felt just like that all the time. You scolded (训斥) him too often, so he didn't try any more. He was afraid of making mistakes. ”

________ the father understood everything. He put his face down. Now he felt so sorry.

7 . In the back of my closet, there is a small cardboard chest that has followed me to every one of my new addresses. Until now, the only _________ contents in it are three wrapped _________ marked in my mother’s tidy handwriting: “Engagement”, “Wedding” and “First Baby”.

When I was three, my mother learned that she had advanced breast cancer. When I was seven, she had begun _________ a gift box for me. Inside, she packed presents and letters for the _________ of my life she was going to be missing — driver’s license, graduation, and every birthday until the age of 30.

My mother died ten days before our _________ birthday. That morning, when I turned 12 and she would have turned 49, I woke up early and opened the package _________ “12th Birthday”. A white card curling around the present _________: “I always _________ a birthstone ring when I was a little girl. Your Granny finally bought me one and I loved it more than I can say. I hope you like it, too.” I put on the ring and _________ her writing with my fingertip.

On the morning of my high school graduation, a __________ of pearls appeared as I opened the wrapped present. Her note read: “There seemed to be a __________ in my family that when girls graduated from high school, they received pearls.” I wore the pearls that afternoon as I took the stage to accept my diploma.

Year after year, my mother __________ forward in time to meet me. When I was a child, opening the next package felt like a treasure __________. As I grew older, her message met me like guideposts in a dark forest. If her words couldn’t point the way, at least they offered the __________ of knowing that someone had been there before and that I have been __________, wildly loved.

8 . In my first year as a junior doctor, I worked in a stroke department. There were rooms of the department which were _________ for special patients. Their strokes had been so _________ that there was no _________ of recovery. Outside of the rooms, I sometimes heard the doctors cruelly called these patients “the cabbage patch”, because they were considered little more than vegetables.

One such patient was Mr. Roberts. He was in his fifties and had been _________ to the hospital after a terrible stroke which had left him entirely paralyzed. He could not communicate at all. And the doctors thought he was _________ dead. They discussed the very poor disease with his wife over his motionless body, _________ he wasn’t there.

Later that day I returned to take some blood from his _________ arm. His head was on one side. As I knelt down, I met his gaze. There seemed to be some sort of _________. It was as if he was _________ me to do something. I instinctively held his hand and smiled as __________ as I could, though he made no response. I couldn’t forget what happened there even after I left the room. The idea that he was __________ there, a living hell on earth, troubled me until he died two weeks later.

This event __________ great changes in my life. When I take care of those __________ patients, I always introduce myself and explain what I am doing to them, just in case there is part of them that is still aware.

And years later, when my grandmother was lying dying, I still spoke to her and __________ her. In matters __________ this, you just never know.

9 . Does life seem to be full of impossible problems? How many times do you find yourself saying things like “I really don’t understand this maths problem”? Maybe it’s time to introduce yourself to the _________ of yet. By adding this simple word, you can change everything, “I really don’t understand this maths problem yet.” Suddenly, the _________ becomes possible.

I read about a school that has _________ the way it _________ its students’ exams. The school recognized that the old pass/fail system wasn’t helping students’ _________. If you passed, then great, but those students who didn’t pass often felt like _________. So now students who don’t get the score they need to pass, don’t see a big red “F” for “fail” on their exam papers; _________ they see a “Not yet”. That way the students feel that they are on a journey. They haven’t reached the _________ , but they know that they are going the right way.

This kind of _________ is part of what experts call “having a growth mindset”. People with a growth mindset don’t __________ failure. They aren’t worried by not getting things right the first time and are __________ to keep trying until they do. They enjoy the __________ and believe they can change. __________ , people who just focus on failure have what the experts call “a fixed mindset”. These people are always worried about failure and are happy to __________ when things don’t go right. __________, it is better to have a growth mindset than a fixed mindset.

10 . My sales career was almost cut short by my parents. I was 11, a member of the Girl Scouts, and preparing to sell our first Thin Mints. Our goal was to sell at least 50 boxes each, which would make us qualified for the _______. I considered knocking on strangers’ doors and hoping to win them over.

But when I_______ my parents the permission paper to do this, they_______handed it back unsigned. They thought it was _______ that their child would ask neighbors for _______. I defended my case: The _________want delicious cookies!

Finally, they _______, and I hit the streets. Door after door, I found that the _________ basically sold itself and all I had to do was adding some extra charm with my silk ribbon. The Girl Scouts_________ me with a cup that had a thumb printed yellow smiley face on it. I felt __________ .

I went on to have a long career in sales. Now when I__________ that first adventure, what I see is a young girl who instinctively__________the most important thing about selling. It’s about __________ a service—bringing them the things they want and need, so that, in the best of situations, any product__________ itself as well as the cookies did. That’s why I still have that cup, which I keep as a ____________