1 . My wife and I moved into our home two years ago. We had a yard with a lot of ________. Very often when we have flowers, Denise or I would plant some between the rocks, just to add some ________ to the area.

Last summer, I found a tiny little plant in the yard that I could not immediately identify. I knew I didn’t plant it and Denise said she didn’t either.

We decided to let it ________ growing until we could find out what it was.

Weeks passed and as I made my way back to the ________ plant, it appeared to be a sunflower. I decided to ________ the weeds (杂草) around it. As I pulled rocks from the area to get to the weeds, I noticed something ________.The sunflower had not ________ where I saw it begin. It actually had begun under a big rock and grown under and around it to reach the ________.

That’s when I ________ that if a tiny little sunflower didn’t let a big rock stand in its way of developing, we too have the ability of doing the same thing. If we ________ ourselves like that little sunflower, we can reach where we ________ to go and get what we need for growth.

We need to believe in ourselves knowing we have the ________ to achieve our goals. Like the sunflower, it knew it had the ability to get over the rocks because it had ________ in itself that it would succeed. Stand tall like the sunflower and be ________ of who and what we are, and then the environment will begin to ________ us. We will find a way to go under or around any “rocks” in order to reach our goals.

3 . You can tell a lot about a man by how he treats his dogs.

For many years, I enjoyed living with my dogs, Tilly and Chance. Their _______ was nearly enough to keep my loneliness at bay. Nearly. Last year, I started dating, but with _______. When I first dated Steve, I _______ he had a dog, Molly, and a cat, Flora. While I was _______ that he was an animal lover, I _______ that three dogs were perhaps too many, and my dogs might attack _______, the cat.

The next week we _______ our dogs together. It was a hot day. When we paused to catch our _______, Steve got down on one knee. Was he proposing (求婚)? I liked him too, but so _______? He poured water from a bottle into his hand and offered it to my dogs. ____________, I began to fall for him.

We ____________ to date, though neither of us brought up the future. And then in late November, Tilly had an operation on her ____________. I took the dogs out four times a day, and I worried that Tilly ____________ climbing the stairs could reopen the wound. Then Steve ____________ his house. All worked ____________. The three dogs formed a pack that, with coaching, ____________ Flora’s space; Steve and I formed a good team ____________ for Tilly. We made good housemates.

A year later, much to my ____________, this man produced a little box with a ring and proposed to me. He did not kneel (跪) down, nor did I ____________ him to. That’s only for giving ____________ to the dogs that brought us together.

4 . Do you think you have what it takes to be a successful scientist? A successful scientist is generally a good observer. He makes full _____of the facts he observes. He doesn't accept ideas which are not___on obvious facts, and therefore__ to accept authority as the only truth. He always checks ideas__ and makes experiments to prove them.

The rise of modern science may perhaps be considered to__ as far back as the time of Roger Bacon, the wonderful philosopher of Oxford, who lived between the years 1214 and 1292. He was probably the first in the Middle Ages to __that we should learn science___observing and experimenting on the things around us, and he himself __many important truths.

Galileo (1564－1642),___，who lived more than 300 years later, was the greatest of several great men in Italy, France, Germany, and England, who began to show how many important ___could be discovered by observation by degrees. Before Galileo, learned men believed that large bodies ___more rapidly towards the earth than small ones, __ Aristotle said so. But Galileo, going to the ___of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, let fall two __ stones and proved Aristotle was wrong. It is Galileo's __ of going direct to nature, and proving our __ and theories by experiment, that has____all the discoveries of modern science.

What __ those people good scientists? From the example of Galileo, we know clearly that ___scientists are those whose observations have___ better results.

5 . I was walking home from school one day and it happened to be a particularly cold and windy day. It was _____and I was crazy enough to forget my hats and scarf. You can imagine my cheeks were rosy _____ and my hands were as numb as they can be.

All of a sudden, an old lady _____ up beside me and asked if I would like a ride _____. At first, I said it was OK and her _____smile melted(融化) away the thought that I should never talk to _____! We had an amazing chat and she was just _____ a good woman. She told me her ________and she dropped me off.

I didn’t see her or talk to her for about a month and one night as I_____ her kind gesture, I decided to return the favor. So, I made a lot of _____ and walked down to her house with my friend. At first I was a bit _____she wouldn’t remember me or think that I was a bad man who poisoned cookies but luckily, I was _____ wrong. She was so happy, and she hugged me and kissed me and seemed so _____ that someone would do something like that!

When I got home my mom told me that she _____and told my mom on the phone that she _______because she was so touched. She said she would never _____ the kindness that was given to her! That filled me with such _____! There really is nothing else joyful like helping _____and making someone’s day _____!

Let us never forget the joy we get ______ giving others a hand!

6 . The day that I will always remember is when I ran my first 10km.While putting my toe on the starting____, I felt my heart drop to my stomach. However, I would____my heart, because in running, when you run out of your____, you just run with your heart.

That day the____was cool and fresh, and my courage had____. The race was about to start. Bang! The____of the starting gun ran into the air. I took off running,____like the wind. I knew it would be a really great____for me. In the first four miles, I felt like a cheetah (猎豹). I felt____and forceful in my pace.

I saw the finishing line and I felt like an Olympic____who was about to win the race. I had____been happier, and felt proud too when I had my____put around my neck. As the saying goes, “Running is the greatest metaphor (比喻) for life,____you get out of it what you put into it.”

7 . The True Story of Treasure Island

It was always thought that Treasure Island was the product of Robert Louis Stevenson’s imagination. ______, recent research has found the true story of this exciting work.

Stevenson, a Scotsman, had lived ______ for many years. In 1881 he returned to Scotland for a ______.With him were his American wife Fanny and his son ______.

Each morning Stevenson would take them out for a long ______ over the hills. They had been ______ this for several days before the weather suddenly took a turn for the worse. Kept indoors by the heavy rain, Lloyd felt the days ______.To keep the boy happy, Robert asked the boy to do some ______.

One morning, the boy came to Robert with a beautiful map of an island, Robert ______that the boy had drawn a large cross in the middle of ______. “What’s that?” he asked. “That’s the ______ treasure,” said the boy. Robert suddenly ______ something of an adventure story in the boy’s ______.While the rain was pouring, Robert sat down by the fire to write a story. He would make the ______ a twelve-year-old boy, just like Lloyd. But who would be the pirate (海盗)？

Robert had a good friend named Henley, who walked around with the ______ of a wooden leg. Robert had always wanted to ______ such a man in a story. ______ Long John Silver, the pirate with a wooden leg, was ______.

So, thanks to a ______ September in Scotland, a friend with a wooden leg, and the imagination of a twelve-year-old boy, we have one of the greatest ______ stories in the English language.