1 . 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.

2 . 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?

3 . 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.

4 . Auri Katarina used to be a service manager at a cleaning company in Finland. In 2021, _________ to her family and friends, she quit her job. She decided to follow her unique passion.

Auri has always _________ cleaning things, and she began posting cleaning videos online two years ago. Then one day, a single mother asked her for help because she was _________ so much with three children always making a mess at home. Auri, who is “in heaven” whenever she is doing cleaning, was _________ to help. So she went on a weekend and _________ her home for two days. Auri didn’t ask for any _________ for her service; it was the _________ in the house and the family, which her work resulted in, that made her really happy.

Since then, Auri has gone as far as the USA and UK to help people in desperate need of cleaning. She gets _________ online but chooses only the _________ homes belonging to people most in need. For the first six months she __________ all travel and product expenses herself, about 300 euros per visit. __________ her popular videos of cleaning tips, a corporate sponsor has reached out to her. She still never __________ a penny.

Now, Auri goes to clean homes of __________ once a week, for two days, and creates __________ for her social media channels, including lists of some of her top tips. Her dream is to clean for free all over the world, helping people while doing something she absolutely __________.

5 . 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.

6 . Jenny was a little girl who was not very confident. She always lowered her ________ because she didn’t think she was beautiful enough all the time. One day she went to a shop to ________ a green bow (蝴蝶结). The shopkeeper constantly praised she looked very beautiful with it. Though she didn’t ________ that, Jenny was so ________ that she couldn’t help raising her head.

Jenny happened to meet her teacher when she went into the classroom. “Jenny, it’s ________ beautiful when you ________ your head,” said the teacher.

That day Jenny got the ________ from many people. She ________ it must be because of the bow. When she looked in the mirror (镜子), there wasn’t any ________ on her head. She must have ________ it when she went out of the shop and bumped against(撞到)someone else.

Self-confidence is originally (本来) a kind of ________, but many people ________ so much about their appearance (外表) that they lose a lot of ________. Poor or ________, pretty or plain, as long as you, raise your head, it can make you ________.

7 . 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. She bagged back-to-back medals and was qualified for the Rio Olympics later. Unstoppable as she was, her wins came to a____________ for some reason. It took her a whole year to get back on ____________. Pooja returned in an impressive way, winning gold medals at the Asian Boxing Championship in 2019 and 2021. This ____________ her to be the first woman boxer to ____________ the title. Given the road she took to get here, for us, Pooja is ____________ the “queen of boxing”.

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 . When I started learning German some time ago, I realized the power of stories and storytelling in my own life.

I was ________ memorizing my first few German words. And I quickly ________ that this time, my native Italian and the other languages I’d learned would not be of much ________ .

While it was quite ________ to memorize words similar to English, like gut, muss, Ende, and Freund, there were many words for which I had no reference to ________ . Among them were Schatz (treasure) and Insel (Island). And yet I learned these two words easily. How? The ________ is simple. Without even ________ it, I had already memorized these words through a story.

One day, when I was a kid, I was with my father at a flea market (跳蚤市场) and we ________ a beautifully illustrated (有插图的) children’ s book. The cover and pictures were so great that I almost ________ to notice that the ________ was not in Italian. “Luca, we can buy it, ________ the book is in German,” said my father. I read the title out loud, with some ________ : “Die Scha... tz... ins ... el.”

Once home, my father explained that it was a German translation of the famous book “Treasure Island” . He________me the Italian edition (版本) and suggested that I ________ it while turning over the pages of the illustrated one. Thanks to the story I read, I passively (被动地)________ two words in German (Schatz and Insel) which are usually quite difficult words to learn, at least for Italian speakers.

10 . I took my six-year-old son Robert to a restaurant to celebrate his birthday. We just left the shopping center and Robert _________ his new shoes with joy. We walked towards the counter (柜台), where Peter, the waiter, _________ us with noticeable warmth.

“Welcome,” he said. “Wow, you look happy, little boy.” “I got new shoes,” Robert said with _________. He then lifted (抬起) his right foot in the air. “Smell it,” Robert asked. “Robert,” I said, trying to stop his _________ request, while Peter brought his nose to the shoe. “It smells amazing,” Peter said gladly. “Thank you for sharing your _________ with me. Now what does the birthday boy want to drink? It’s _________ me.” Robert jumped in _________ since sweet drinks were not usually allowed in our home. He considered the many _________ and decided on soda at last. Then Peter followed us as my son spent a great amount of time _________ a perfect table. He __________ held our drink until we were seated. I was __________ that the man gave my son special care.

After that, I often visited the restaurant. I found that although Peter had a(n) __________ job, he served everyone he met with love. In life, we often __________ people by their jobs. However, personal __________ actually comes from how they __________ others.