1 . Adding to the achievements of a remarkable year, Taylor Swift has been named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2023.

Already a superstar before 2023, Swift’s career has reached new heights thanks to the beginning of her Eras Tour that brought her 3.5-hour performance to 66 shows in 23 cities across North America, Argentina and Brazil. Promoted by her tour, Swift has been named the most-streamed female artist in the history of Spotify and Apple Music. According to Billboard, the tour made about $900 million (about 6.4 billion yuan) in 2023. In addition, the tour’s movie Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour became the biggest concert movie of all time, taking more than $250

As she was declare a billionaire by Bloomberg in November, a hidden “Taylor Swift economy” also promoted sales for business owners across the US. From soaps to a cruise inspired by her different “eras”, interest in Swift-related products went way up.

Apart from her financial contributions, Swift made a significant cultural impact by taking back control of her music. In 2019, her old record label, Big Machine, sold the master tapes of her first six albums (专辑) to Scoot er Braun. The sale meant that she didn’t have the rights to the albums. In response to this, Swift began re-recording her first six albums, tagging (加标签于) them “Taylor’s Version”. This move stressed her belief that artists deserve to own their work. “It’s all in how you deal with loss,” she told Time. “I respond to extreme pain by resisting.”

Heading into 2024, Swift will start the Eras Tour again in Japan and Australia. As USA Today noted, “Her current top has been a long time coming, but it may also be just beginning.”

Nowadays, it is common that more and more high school students open their own micro blogs on the Internet. For one thing, it can provide a colorful platform to show their talent. For     1    , it is a useful way     2    （release） their pressure. And all these make it more and more popular with high school students.     3     many parents and teachers hold a different view. They think that     4    （manage）one’s micro blog will take a lot of time and energy,     5     should be used to study.

In my view, I am greatly in favor of this activity. Today the Internet is playing     6     important role in our life. Therefore, as high school students of the Information Age, we need to learn to make use of this valuable tool to communicate and display ourselves. What’s more, opening and organizing micro blogs need     7    （vary） abilities such as writing, designing, being skillful at computer and so on. Only if we master those abilities can we make a successful micro blog. As a result, we improve ourselves while     8     （organize） our micro blogs.

In fact, micro blog     9     （it） is of little harm. It is your attitude     10     it that matters. We should take the advantages and avoid some bad effects.

4 . In the rich countries of the West, the electric vehicle revolution is well occurring. Climate-conscious consumers drive Teslas or Polestars for reasons of morality (道德) and fashion. Poorer countries are also experiencing a wave of electrified trend. In Bangladesh, electric three-wheeler taxis, known as tuk-tuks, are rapidly replacing gas-powered ones on the streets. Such electric vehicles are climate friendly, cost effective, and help reduce air pollution.

Yet a glance under the hood (引擎盖) of these vehicles shows a poisonous secret: each tuk-tuk runs on five massive lead-acid batteries (铅酸电池), containing almost 300 pounds of lead (铅) in total. Every year and a half or so, when those batteries need to be replaced and recycled, about 60 pounds of lead leaks into the environment. Battery recycling, often at small-scale unregulated factories, is a highly profitable (高利润的) but deadly business.

Lead is dangerous, and any exposure to it is harmful to human health. Lead that has entered the environment hurts people on an unexpected scale. The numerous ways lead enters air, water, soil, and homes across the developing world and the enormous damage it does to human health, wealth, and welfare cause one of the biggest environmental problems in the world yet receives little attention.

The World Bank estimates that lead kills 5.5 million people per year, making it a bigger global killer than AIDS, malaria, diabetes, and road traffic deaths combined. On top of the shocking deaths, the social burden of lead poisoning is heavy, as is its contribution to global inequality — our research on the cognitive (认知的) effects of lead poisoning suggests that it may explain about one-fifth of the educational achievement gap between rich and poor countries.

But unlike many challenges faced by developing countries, lead poisoning is a problem that can be resolved through financial investment (财政投入). Better monitoring, research, and rules can help protect children all over the world from the unpleasant effects of lead poisoning and reduce the massive global costs it brings.

9 . We always celebrated my Dad’s November birthday on Thanksgiving Day, even after he entered a nursing home. As years went on, these events took on a(n) ______ meaning — a traditional birthday party for Dad, and a personal deep sense of ______ for all that he had done for me in my life.

When we knew that it might be Dad’s ______ birthday, the whole family decided to come together for a huge birthday celebration at the nursing home. It was a crowded party ______ all of us sitting around him.

Dad was a wonderful ______, and here was the biggest audience he’d ever had.

During a quiet moment, I announced that it was now Dad’s turn to ______ stories from us. I wanted everyone to tell Dad ______ we loved about him. One after another, we told stories from our hearts, while Dad listened with wet, ______ blue eyes. However, we ______ all kinds of lost details of the memories — stories about when we were little, stories about when Dad was young and stories that are shared as family ______ . Even the littlest grandchildren couldn’t ______ to tell their grandfather why they loved him. For a man who had been kind to so many people in his life, here was our ______ to honor him.

A few months later, at Dad’s memorial service, we fully realized what we had given Dad that night. Those were the stories people normally tell at a ______. They are told, then, full of tears with the hope that the departed will somehow hear the outpouring of love. ______ we had given those loving ______ to Dad when he was ______, told through laughter, accompanied by hugs and joy. I’m sure the stories and memories ______ over in his mind during his last months and days.

Words do ______, and they are enough. We need to say them, to speak them ______ to the ones we love, for everyone else to hear. That’s the way to ______ love and our chance to honor a person in life.