1 . JESSICA WELLS had always wanted to be a nurse. In 2006, she ________ to the Associate Science of Nursing (ASN) program. ________ her GPA wasn’t high enough to make the cut, so she ________ as a general education student, hoping to improve her academic ________.

Eventually, Wells, who is deaf, blossomed, ________ the accommodations (调和) that the college offered to her, such as volunteer note takers and ________ who accompanied her in class.

After college administrators asked an employee whether Wells, a ________ girl, would make it as a nursing student, the employee reported that “the deaf-of-hearing individual can be ________ as both a medical student and a nurse. ” Wells, then in her mid-20s, was accepted into the ASN program in fall 2007.

On January 22, however, just before the spring 2008 semester began, Wells received a letter from the school, ________ her from the program. The college decided that her “hearing loss would ________ limit (and in some cases completely limit) her ability to safely conduct ________ shifts.” On January 21, 2009, Wells made a protest to the Circuit Court of Greene County. She claimed that her failure to stay in the program ________ the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

“She’d done just fine in her training,” says Wells’s lawyer, Rita Sanders. "The school’s decision had no ________.”

However, the college replied, arguing that the loss of hearing will ________ a direct threat to the health or safety of patients. Faced with such an injustice, Wells resolved to fight for herself and others facing the same ________.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention (《世界遗产公约》), Beijing held     1    event titled “The Next 50 Years: World Heritage Where Challenges and Development Coexist”, during which experts discussed how    2     (make) the sites more accessible and sustainable for future generations.

Since joining the World Heritage Convention in 1985, the number of world heritage sites in China    3     (grow) to 56, including the Great Wall, the Forbidden City and the Grand Canal,    4     (allow) the nation to rank second in the world. And over the past decade, China has added 15 new world heritage sites, six of     5     have been included in the relevant lists of intangible cultural heritage (非物质文化遗产).

Chinese experts said that the 56 listed world heritage sites reflect the country’s abundant heritage and    6    China’s cultural heritage achievements over the past 10 years can be seen in many aspects.

For example, in 2013, the Tianshan Mountains     7     (list) on the World Heritage List. The beauty of Tianshan lies     8     its snow-capped mountains and glacier-capped peaks. It is really an outstanding example of a mountain ecosystem with a    9     (diverse) of landform features and ecosystems.

Experts said that the world heritage application is just a means to perform better protection. We should behave more     10     (responsible) to conserve the heritage of all humanity.

3 . 2023 Illustration Competition

Welcome to enter for the Communication Arts Illustration Competition, most respected and admired in the industry for creativity in illustration. Selected by distinguished professionals, the winning entries will be distributed worldwide in the Communication Arts Illustration Annual and on commarts. com, ensuring important exposure of the creations. Each winner will receive a professionalized Award of Excellence, made from solid aluminum, and an award certificate. Communication Art’s Award of Excellence is one of the most desired awards. If chosen, winning places you in the highest ranks of your industry.

What To Enter With

Any illustration first published or produced from Jan. 2023 to Jan. 2024 is qualified. Entries may originate from any country. Descriptions in English are necessary for the judges to read.

Entries Can Be Submitted In The Following Formats

Digital Images: RGB images in JPG format with a maximum file size of 2 MB. GIF images may be livelier, but would be turned down, and so would the PNG ones.

Illustration Competition Categories & Entry Fees

For more categories, please download the category PDF.

Late Fees

Entries must be registered no later than Jan. 13, 2024. Entries registered after that date will be charged a fee of $ 10 each. No entries can be registered after Jan. 27, 2024.

5 . While rap(说唱音乐)songs are made up of many parts, the verse(主歌部分)is by far the most important.     1    . Writing rap verses is an incredible method of artistic expression, as long as you keep a few tips in mind.

Begin by free-writing lines about your topic. Using your topic as a starting point, start writing outlines of your thoughts, trying to rhyme(使押韵)the last word in each line. Once you’ve exhausted a set of rhymes, start another one and write lines until you run out of ideas. Explore ideas around your topic until you find the ones you enjoy or know best.     2     this first stage is used to create material to build your verse.

Build a rhyme scheme(格式)around your favorite lines. A rhyme scheme is a pattern that gives your verse structure     3    . If, for example, you rhyme the two lines with the word “me”, then the next two lines rhyme with the word “you”, then you have rhyming couplets. For the rest of the verse, you would usually use couplets in all of your rhymes.

Start with a powerful line. The first lines of your verse should introduce the verse and capture the listener’s attention. Ask a question, make an interesting metaphor, or blow the listener away with skillful wordplay.    4    .

Develop a flow, or rhythm, in your rap. Once you’ve got your words on the page, you need to figure out how to say them. Flow is how a rapper delivers his/ her lyrics in along with the beat. Listen again to the beat you are rapping and practice fitting your lyrics to it.

    5    . As you practice your flow, don’t be afraid to go back and rewrite your verse so that it fits the beat better. If you are having trouble fitting all the words in, find a way to shorten your lines. Once you know what the chorus is, you can adjust your lyrics to fit the song better.

6 . The sound that woke Damian Languell at 8:15 am was so loud that he assumed it came from inside his house. As he got up to investigate, he heard another sound, this one coming most definitely from outside. Looking out of his bedroom window, he spied a tree engulfed (淹没) in smoke about 500 yards away. A car was wrapped around the tree’s base, its engine on fire.

Grabbing buckets of water, Languell and his girlfriend ran to the crash site. The wreck looked worse up close. The car, a 1998 Buick, was split nearly in two, and the tree was where the driver’s seat ought to have been, as if planted there. No one should have survived this crash, and yet there was 16-year-old Quintin Thompson, his terrified face pressed against the driver’s side window, in visible pain. Languell tried putting out the fire with his buckets of water with no success. When the flames got into the front seats, he realized he had to get the boy out of there.

In an act that a police report described as showing “complete disregard for his own safety”, Languell opened the Buick’s back door and crawled in. Thompson was struggling to get free, Languell says. “That’s when I noticed how bad his legs were.” Using a pocketknife he’d had the foresight to bring with him, he sawed through Thompson’s seat belt.

Now that Thompson was free, Languell pulled him out a back window of the vehicle, then dragged the teen to safety before the entire car was engulfed in flames.

Although Thompson suffered multiple fractures (骨折) to his legs, spine, and face, a social media post described him as “looking great, smiling, and joking.” Languell thinks about that day often. “My heart goes out to Thompson. When you are that close to that level of hurt, you feel it so directly.”

8 . Population data for European mountain birds have been for the first time combined in a recent study, with worrying results: the abundances of mountain-specialist birds has declined by as much as 10% in the 2000s.

Ecological communities in mountain areas include species not found in any other habitats. These species are also very susceptible to climate change, as global warming is reducing their liveable habitats. In principle, species may relocate further up the mountains, but closer to the top their habitat inevitably shrinks.

According to the new article, the abundance of European mountain birds has in fact declined in line with climate change projections.

The recently released study examined the population trends of 44 bird species in the 2000s in the mountain and fell regions of Fennoscandia, Great Britain, the Alps and the Iberian Peninsula. A decline was seen in 14 of the observed species, while eight of them saw significant increase.

“On average, population decline among the species studied was 7% over the 13-year research period, making the situation of mountain birds distinctly worse compared to, for example, European forest birds, whose numbers did not change during the same period,” explains Aleksi Lehikoinen, an Academy of Finland research fellow at the Finnish Museum of Natural History Luomus (part of the University of Helsinki), who headed the study.

The situation is the direst for species that only inhabit mountain regions and are unable to live in other European environments. For these species, known as mountain specialists, the numbers dwindled by as much as 10% during the monitoring period.

9 . What do you do with a withered orchid (兰花)?____ you’re an expert, you may find that they never ____ for you again.

Everything has a life cycle and orchids don’t ____ forever. I can’t ____ throwing out orchids. I have tried my best, but in ____. After so much ____ and error, I was almost ____ that they have died.____, my wife had other ideas.

Some of the plants were moved to a table in the living room, and others were ____ on the kitchen window.

Actually, everything has its own life cycle. Sure, you can ____ hope. It was easy to believe that those orchids would never flower again—that is, until my wife decided to come to their ____.

My wife kept moving the plants around the house looking for the right light.____, the orchids stayed alive. Tiny new stems (茎) grew from the old ones a year later. And now, nearly all of them are flowering.

Yes, you can ____everything you think is important—your beauty, your wealth, even your family — but as long as you are alive, you can find new life within something you thought was never going to bloom (开花) again. Never lose ____ on finding new life, even if the chance is ____.