1 . Every artist knows in his heart that he is saying something to the public. Not only does he want to say it well, but he wants it to be something that has not been _______ before. He hopes the public will listen and understand—he wants to teach them, and he wants them to learn from him.

What _______ artists like painters want to teach is easy to make out but difficult to explain, because painters translate their experiences into shapes and colors, not _______. They seem to feel that a certain _______ of shapes and colors, out of the countless billions possible, is exceptionally interesting for them and worth _______ to us. Without their work we should never have noticed the _______ shapes and colors, or have felt the _______ which they brought to the artists.

Most artists take shapes and colors from the world of nature and from human bodies in _______ and repose(静止); their _______ indicate that these aspects of the world are worth looking at, that they contain beautiful ________. Contemporary artists might say that they ________ choose subjects that provide an interesting pattern, that there is nothing more in it. Yet even they do not choose entirely without ________ to the character of their subjects.

If one painter chooses to paint a gangrenous(坏疽性的)leg and anther a lake in moonlight, each of them is directing our attention to a(n) ________ aspect of the world. Each painter is telling us something, showing us something, ________ something-all of which means that, consciously or unconsciously, he is trying to ________ us.

2 . You’re walking down a quiet street and suddenly you hear some footsteps. _______ , it means that there’s someone around. But have you ever wondered why it _______ to us that it’s someone else’s footsteps rather than ours?

According to a new study published in the journal Nature in September, this phenomenon results from a function in our brain to _______ the noises we make ourselves.

In order to _______ how our brain does this, a group of scientists from New York University in the US carried out an experiment with mice at Duke University. In the experiment, researchers _______ the sounds a group of mice could hear, reported Science Daily.

During the first several days, the mice would hear the same sound each time they took a step. This was just like “running on a tiny _______ with each key playing exactly the same note”, senior study author Richard Mooney, a professor of neurobiology at Duke University, told Live Science.

Scientists found that their auditory cortex(听觉皮层)—the area of the brain that processes sound—became active at first but _______ its response to the sound after two or three minutes when the mice became familiar with it.

“It’s almost like they were wearing special headphones that could _______ the sound of their own movements,” David Schneider, an assistant professor at the Center for Neural Science at New York University, told HuffPost. But once the sound changed, their auditory cortex was _______ again.

This suggests that the “sensory filter” in a mouse’s brain could help it detect ________ sounds or abnormal noise in the environment easily after tuning out familiar sounds, according to Science Daily.

“For mice, this is really important,” said Schneider. “They are prey(猎物)animals, so they really need to be able to ________ for a cat creeping up on them, even when they’re walking and making noise.”

As important as it is for mice’s survival, the ability to ignore ________ noises is also useful for humans when it comes to complex tasks, such as playing an instrument.

According to Schneider, “The ability to ignore the ________ consequences of our movement gives us the extra-cool ability to detect when we’ve got it wrong. So if I play the piano just right, I hear it, but my auditory cortex is pretty silent. But when I play it wrong, I get a(n) ________ response.”

So, our ________ could be telling us, “Hey, that didn’t sound right, maybe I should move my fingers a little differently next time,” Schneider told HuffPost.

3 . The expression, “Everybody’s doing it,” is very much at the center of the concept of peer pressure. It is a social influence applied on an individual in order to get that person to act or believe in a(n) ______ way as a larger group. This influence can be negative or positive, and can exist in both large and small groups.

People are social creatures by nature, and so it is hardly ______ that some part of their self-respect comes from the approval of others. This instinct explains why the approval of peers, and the fear of ______, is such a powerful force in many people’s lives. This instinct drives people to dress one way at home and another way at work, or to answer a simple “fine” when a stranger asks “How are you?” even if it is not necessarily true. There is a(n) ______ aspect to this: It helps society to function efficiently, and encourages a general level of self-discipline that ______ day-to-day interaction between people.

For certain individuals, seeking social acceptance is so important that it becomes a(n) ______: in order to satisfy the desire, they may go so far as to ______ their sense of right and wrong. Teens and young adults may feel forced to use drugs, or join gangs that _______criminal behavior. Mature adults may sometimes feel ______ to cover up illegal activity at the company where they work, or end up in debt because they are unable to hold back the desire to buy a house or car that they can’t afford in an effort to ______ the peers.

However, peer pressure is not always negative. A student whose friends are good at contests may be ________ to work harder and get good grades. Players on a sports team may feel driven to play harder in order to help the team win. This type of ______ can also get a friend off drugs, or to help an adult take up a good habit or drop a bad one.

Although peer pressure is sometimes quite obvious, it can also be so ______ that a person may not even notice that it is affecting his or her behavior. For this reason, when making important decisions, simply going with a(n) ______ is risky. Instead, people should seriously consider why they feel drawn to taking a particular action, and whether the real ______ is simply that everyone else is doing the same thing.

6 . The past 10 months has been the most influential months of my life.

As a junior, I left my comfortable home in Illinois and ________going to the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona. There I attended a local poorly­equipped school and ________ for an adventure. I experienced so many________ when I arrived, fighting each day to ________ in a new social environment—overcoming racial differences, handling social ________...

During the summer vacation I ________to be a counselor (顾问) at an Easter Seals camp for people with ________ needs who require assistance because of disabilities and improve their ability to do things alone. It was the most tiring work I'd ever experienced but the most________. I knew that I'd helped improve over 850 campers'________.

As the new school year began, our department had a renovation (翻新). I offered to help clean up all the ________books. Instead of recycling hundreds of those books, I________the department that the books could serve a higher ________. This simple act resulted in an all－out book drive benefiting the schools in Arizona.

The 10­month experience in Arizona________me greatly. It made me become a person with patience, appreciation, determination, and ________enthusiasm. I trust that it is through enthusiasm, ideas and action that all changes can ________.

8 . A brave ICU nurse, who suffered a breakdown after working through the COVID-19 pandemic, ran the London Marathon for charity on October 3, 2021, hoping to beat the Guinness World Records as the fastest man to run a marathon dressed in a pint of beer costume.

Joan Laplana, a dad of three kids, ______ running after he was diagnosed(诊断) with post-traumatic stress disorder. He had been a nurse for 23 years and was ______ as a lead nurse. His mental health suffered when he lost a patient, who was the same age as him, with daughters the same age as his and had no underlying(潜在的) health conditions. Despite suffering from ______ attacks and anxiety, Joan still wanted to ______ his work in ICU when the second wave ______ the country.

But he went to pieces during it and was diagnosed with PTSD. His mood would often change quickly and he couldn’t slept through the night. He started getting counselling. Since his new fitness plan, Joan said he wasn’t ______ medicine anymore, and for the first time in 18 months he had ______ slept through the night. He said, “In March I joined a running ______ and on days when I can’t motivate myself, my friends from the club will message me. I knew I had to get ______ about my running when I got an email saying I got a ______ for the London Marathon. I am very proud of myself after everything that I have been through. Running has ______ my mental health. It helped with my ______, reduced my panic attacks and improved my mood changes.”

In July 2021, Joan ______ to the top of Snowdon, a mountain in northern Wales, dressed in a pint of beer costume also for ______. Though his first attempt at beating the Guinness World Records at the London Marathon failed last year, Joan will once again try to ______ the record at the 2022 London Marathon.

9 . Every Saturday morning Phoenix Young would take piano lessons with a family friend when he was a child. “At that time we would_______around and take all morning just to have a lesson,” Phoenix_______. “And I loved it.”

But when Phoenix was 12, his teacher proposed that he need better_______.So his mother took him to a music school in the Bronx, and signed him up for classes with a teacher named Bade Simon, experienced bit known for being _______. And she quickly lived up to that _______.Phoenix found the stressful life was_______like his lighthearted Saturday mornings with his former teacher, so it wasn’t long before he_______that he would quit.

One day, however, Bade_______him and said something surprising: “I have_______in you. Keep going. Then the reluctant (不情愿的) student did something surprising ________: he said, “Okay.”

“It was as if all I wanted was just a________from her that she cared about me,” Phoenix said.

That moment________their relationship. Within a few weeks, they were having________during lessons. And within a few months, she was teaching him things about music that he’d never known before. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship.

“I went into________and became a piano teacher, a career I have been doing for 50 years,” Phoenix said. “And I ________it all to that precious moment with my unsung hero, Bade Simon.”