1 . An elderly bricklayer was ready to_________. He told his employer of his plans to leave the house-building business to live a more leisurely life with his wife and _________his extended family. He would miss the paycheck(工资)each week, but he wanted to retire. They could get by.

The employer was sorry to see his good worker go and asked if he could_________just one more house as a personal favor . The bricklayer said yes,_________over time it was easy to see that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to bad workmanship and _________building materials. It was an unfortunate way to_________a dedicated(献身的)career.

When the bricklayer finished his work, his employer came to inspect the house. Then he handed the front-door _________to the bricklayer and said, “This is your house.--my _________to you.”

The bricklayer was _________!

What a shame! If he had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently.

So it is with us. We build our__________ , a day at a time, often putting __________ than our best into the building. Then, with a shock, we __________ realize we have to live in the “house” we have built. If we could do it over, we would do it much differently.

But, you cannot__________ .You are the bricklayer, and every day you hammer a nail, place a board, or build a wall. Someone once said, “Life is a do-it-yourself project.” Your__________ and the choices you take today, help build the “house” you will live in tomorrow. Therefore, build __________!

2 . A businesswoman got into a taxi in midtown. As it was the rush hour and she was in a ________ to catch a train, she ________ a quick way to reach it. “I have been a taxi driver for 15 years!” the driver said ________. “You don’t think I know the best way to go?”

The woman tried to explain that she hadn’t ________ to annoy him, but the driver kept shouting. She finally realized that he was too annoyed to be ________, so she changed her ________. “You know, you are right,” she told him. “It must seem ________ for me not to think you know the best way through the city.”

________, the driver glanced at his ________ in the rearview mirror (后视镜), turned down the street she wanted and got her to the train on time. “He didn’t say another word the rest of the ride,”she said, “Until I got out and paid him. Then he thanked me.”

When you find yourself ________ with people like the taxi driver, you will always try to ________ your idea. It can lead to longer arguments, lose job chances or even ________ marriages. I have discovered one simple method though extremely unlikely method that can prevent the disagreement or other difficult situations from ________ in a disaster.

The ________ is to put yourself in the other person’s shoes and look for the truth in what that person is saying. Find a way to ________, and the result may surprise you.

3 . One morning,Ann’s neighbour Tracy found a lost dog _________ around the local elementary school. She asked Ann if she could keep an _________ on it. Ann said that she could watch it only for the day.

Tracy took photos of the dog and printed off 400 FOUND fliers and put them in mailboxes. Meanwhile, Ann bought some pet food in the dollar store nearby, and warned her two sons not to _________ in love with it. At the time, Ann`s son Thomas was 10 years old, and Jack, who was _________ from a heart operation, was 21 years old.

Four days later Ann was still _________ the dog, whom they had started to call Riley. When she arrived home from work, the dog _________ itself against the screen door(纱窗门)and barked madly at her. As soon as she opened the door, Riley _________ into the boy’s room where Ann found Jack was _________ a heart attack. Riley ran over to Jack, and as soon as Ann bent over to help him, the dog went _________.

“If it hadn’t come to get me, the __________ said Jack would have died,” Ann reported to a local newspaper. At this point, no one had called to claim the dog, so Ann decided to __________ it.

The next morning Tracy got a call. A man named Peter __________ his dog and called the number on the flier. Tracy started __________, and told him. “ That dog saved my friend’s son,”

Peter drove to Ann`s house to __________ his dog and saw Thomas and Jack crying in the window. After a few moments Peter said, “Maybe Odie was supposed to __________ to you; maybe you should keep it.” (组合规范练 P341)

4 . An act of kindness doesn’t have to be a grand gesture. Even those small acts of kindness can make a difference in someone’s day. That was just the case for Amie Mickey when she ________ a bumper sticker (车尾贴) on her car reading: You Matter.

Amie started to do this several years ago. At first, she wondered if people would ________ it. However, much to her surprise, she began seeing a flood of ________ every time she hit the road. More often than not, people ________ slowly near her car would roll down their windows, raising their ________, waving and smiling. Sometimes, she even found some sticky notes left on her windshield saying things like “You ________ too!” Once while she was driving down the highway, she became ________ when a man driving a sports car at a high speed pulled his car alongside suddenly, waving and mouthing, “You matter!” Though it took her some time to recover from the ________, she still felt happy. Last year, someone ________ her car while she was waiting for her friend in the car by the roadside, saying to her, “It is a(an) ________ sticker. I’ve seen various stickers before, but none of them have touched me as your sticker has done.” The two small words on the sticker seem simple enough, but they really struck a chord with many complete strangers who ________ to catch sight of the sticker.

Stories like Amie’s really ________ the rest of us. Sometimes a kind word or gesture may lift our ________ and it doesn’t cost a thing except for a little extra thought. Maybe it means offering a friend a hug, praising the children when the children ________ well in school, helping someone out or volunteering at nursing homes. Acts of kindness are waiting everywhere. Small as they seem, they can make a ________ impact on the world, and help form general goodness.

5 . Dressed in a pretty long robe (袍服), stylist Xiao Hang walks across the busy Beijing metro, attracting curious glances.

China has been _________ by Western fashion in recent decades, but many young people like Xiao are looking to the _________ for their choices of clothing and wearing traditional hanfu. These historic costumes of the Han ethnic group are _________ a renaissance (复兴) in part because the government is promoting traditional culture to boost patriotism (爱国主义) and national _________. Period dramas have also contributed to the _________ in interest in traditional Chinese clothing — The Story of Minglan, a TV series set in the Song Dynasty _________ more than 400 million viewers in three days.

There is no _________ definition of what counts as hanfu since each dynasty has its own style, but the clothes are _________ by loose, flowing robes, with sleeves that hang down to the knees. “When we were little, we would drape (披) sheets and blankets to _________ we were wearing beautiful clothes,” Xiao said.

“Two-thirds of my wardrobe is hanfu,” said Yang Jiaming, a high school student dressed in a Tang-style robe and black boots at a hanfu gathering. He wears hanfu under his uniform at school and his classmates and teachers have been ____________ of his style.

The support of the government for Chinese culture has given the hanfu community a(n) ____________. In April 2019, the Communist Youth League of China ____________ a two-day conference on traditional Chinese clothing, including hanfu.

Clothes are the “____________ of culture”, said Jiang Xue, a member of Beijing-based hanfu club Mowutianxia, which has received ____________ from the Communist Youth League of China. “If we do not even ____________ our traditional clothes or don’t wear them, how can we talk about other essential parts of our culture?” she said.

6 . That year I was eleven and in sixth grade. In Wethersfield, all sixth-graders are ________ to take part in the R.O.P.E. Program. Its main ________ is to believe your peers(同龄人), work together, and ________ new adventures. These programs including falling backward and ________ peers to catch you, working together to fit into a small circle and something of that kind.

I was ready to take part in these ________. Falling backward and fitting into a small circle were nothing to me. Crossing over a stream(小溪)with nothing holding me up but a rope was daring, but I could ________ it. Finally the day came when my sixth grade class would travel to climb and rappel(绕绳下滑)a mountain in Southington. Those people who were too ________ were allowed to practice climbing and rappelling a smaller area of rocks, but that wasn’t for me. I could climb the big mountain.

Twenty minutes later, my ________ arrived. As I was well ________, I set off at once. I got a quarter of the way up but couldn’t seem to get any ________. I tried and tried. I began to put myself down and cry. There was nothing more ________ than my classmates were looking at me. All I kept ________ was “Lisa, you can do it. Try to fit your foot in there. ________, Lisa. You’re almost there.”

It was then that I thought to myself, “Why am I crying? I can do this.” Almost ________ I went on going up the mountain. Within five minutes I successfully ________ to the top.

7 . S.E. Hinton’s career as an author began while she was still a high school student. _________by the fights of the two gangs in her high school, Hinton wrote The Outsiders, an honest, sometimes shocking novel told from the point of_________of a fourteen-year-old boy.

The Outsiders was_________during Hinton’s freshman year at the University of Tulsa, and was an immediate_________. Today, with more than fourteen million_________ in print, the book is the best-selling young adult novel of all time. The book was also made into a film in 1983.

The Outsiders brought with it publicity and_________. S.E. Hinton became known as “The Voice of the Youth”. This _________success also brought a lot of pressure,       _________a three-year-long writer’s block (瓶颈期). Her boyfriend (now husband)_________helped break this block by suggesting she write two pages a day before going__________ . This finally led to her second __________, That Was Then, This Is Now.

In 1988 she was awarded the first annual Margaret A. Edwards Award, given in__________ of “an author whose book or books, over a period of time, have been accepted by__________adults as an authentic (真实的) voice that __________to light up their experiences and emotions,__________inspiration to their lives.”

8 . Everyone needs friends.There is an old saying: Friends are God’s way of taking care of us. But how do you find real friendship and______it?

The Care and Keeping of Friends by American author Sally Seamans tells young students some ______ways to find friends.

Sally says finding friendship is just like a tree______. You plant the seed and take care of it to _____it grow. First, you should ______a friend. What makes a good friend? It is not ______a person has money or good looks. A good friend should be ______and patient. For example, if you have a bad day, a good friend should ______your complaints (埋怨) and do their______to help. To make a friend, you cannot be too shy. You should make each other happy and ______your lives.

But things cannot always be ______. Even the best friends have fights. What should you do when you have a______with your friend? You have to talk to them. When there is no one around, have an honest talk.

If he or she doesn’t want to______, you could write a letter. Sally says there are three steps to being______again: Tell him or her how you are______; say what your friend has done wrong, and ______why you did this or that.

The______also has advice on some small but important things like celebrating your friends’ ______.______you haven’t had a real friend before, you will start to think of having one if you______ this book. Because the book tells that friendship is the most important thing in your life.

9 . No one is born a winner. People make themselves into winners by their own_________.

I learned this lesson from a(n)_________many years ago. I took the head coaching job at a school in Baxley, Georgia. It was a small school with a weak football program.   

It was a tradition for the school’s old team to play against the_________team at the end of spring practice. The old team had no coach, and they didn’t even practice to_________the game. Being the coach of the new team, I was excited because I knew we were going to win, but to my disappointment we were defeated. I couldn’t_________ I had got into such a situation. Thinking hard about it, I came to   _________that my team might not be the number one team in Georgia, but they were _________me. I had to change my_________about their ability and potential.   

I started doing anything I could to help them build a little_________. Most important, I began to treat them like winners. That summer, when the other teams enjoyed their__________, we met every day and__________passing and kicking the football.

Six months after suffering our defeat on the spring practice field, we won our first game and our second, and continued to__________. Finally, we faced the number one team in the state. I felt that it would be a victory for us even if we lost the game. But that wasn’t what happened. My boys beat the best team in Georgia, giving me one of the greatest thrills of my life!   

From the experience I learned a lot about how the attitude of the leader can__________the members of a team. Instead of seeing my boys as losers, I pushed and__________them. I helped them to see themselves__________, and they built themselves into winners.

Winners are made, not born.

10 . As we all know, a friend in need is a friend indeed. I really didn’t know the meaning of this proverb（谚语）until one day something _________ happened to me.

That morning, I got up late and _________ to school without breakfast. While I was crossing a street, my bike hit a stone and I fell on the ground, with my both knees badly hurt.

I managed with the _________ and continued my riding. On my arrival at school, my teacher took us to the _________ for a basketball match._________ I could hardly walk normally, I joined in the game. When I _________ to pass the ball, I was knocked down and fell down on my back. I could not _________ the terrible pain and cried. My classmates all continued their match without noticing me._________ on the ground alone, hungry and painful, I couldn’t stop crying.

Just at that moment, Jack, one of my teammates,_________ towards me from the other end and helped me. He kept me company the whole day and even send me home after school was over.

It was on that day that I learned and believed the proverb “a friend in need is a friend indeed” to be __________.