As a player, Lang Ping brought honour and     1     to her country. As a coach, she led the China women’s volleyball team to     2     at world championships and the Olympics. As a person, Lang Ping is loved by fans     3         4         5         6    . When the Chinese team was preparing for the 2015 World Cup, her determination was     7    . The team that Lang ping had built was     8         9    . One of the best players had been     10    , and the team captain had to leave     11         12     heart problems. Losing two important players was a big     13    , but Lang Ping did not     14         15    . She had faced difficulties before, and she knew that her young players could win if they     16         17     as a team. Two weeks later, they were world champions! Then in 2016, Lang Ping led her volleyball team to Olympic gold in Brazil.

[Hot Snake]

... This morning, however, a fireman accidentally discovered the cause. He noticed the remains of a snake which     1     of a 16,000-volt power line. In this way, he     2    . A bird had snatched up the snake... When it did so, it sent sparks down to the ground and     3    .

[Running and Fitness]

As people often say, any exercise is better than none, but long-distance running     1    .

... Besides, anybody who is feeling down can go for a run to cheer themselves up. Even a thirty-minute run will     2     that you may be suffering due to stress.

[Your Life Is What You Make It]

... Besides teaching, Zhang Tian also brought changes to the village. He contacted charity organizations about     1     and helped the villagers sell local products online.     2     was great, so he became very popular among the villagers and they treated him as one of them.

There are various reasons why people compose poetry. Some poems tell a story or describe a certain image in the readers’ mind. Others try to convey certain f    1     such as joy and sorrow. The distinctive characteristics of poetry often include economic use of words, descriptive and v    2     language, integrated imagery, l    3     devices such as similes and metaphors, and arrangements of words, lines, rhemes, and rhythm. Poets use many different forms of poetry to e    4     themselves. Now we will look at a few of the simpler forms.

Some of the first poems a young child learns in English are nursery r    5    . They are usually the traditional poems or f    6     songs. The language of these rhymes, like Poem A, is to the p    7     but has a storyline. Many children enjoy nursery rhymes because they rhyme, have a strong rhythm, and often repeat the same words. The poems may not make s    8     and even seem contradictory, but they are easy to learn and r    9    . By playing with the words in nursery rhymes children learned about language.

One characteristic of hybrids is that they usually a    1     a higher yield than c    2     crops. However, whether it was possible to develop a hybrid of self-pollinating plants such as rice was a matter of great d    3    . The common a    4     then was that it could not be done. Through i    5     effort, Yuan o    6     enormous technical d    7     to develop the first hybrid rice that could be used for f    8     in 1974. This hybrid e    9     farmers to e    10     their output greatly.

Just like spoken language, body language v    1     from culture to culture. The c    2     thing is using body language in a way that is a    3     to the culture you are in. For example, making eye contact — looking into someone’s eyes — in some countries is a way to display interest. In other countries, by c    4    , eye contact is not always approved of. For example, in many Middle Eastern countries, men and women are not socially permitted to make eye contact. In Japan, it may demonstrate r    5     to look down when talking to an older person.

The gesture for “OK” has different meanings in different c    6    . In Japan, someone who w    7     another person employing the gesture might think it means money. In France, a person encountering an i    8     gesture may interpret it as meaning zero. H    9    , you should avoid making this gesture in Brazil and Germany, as it is not considered p    10    .

But hope was not lost. Soon after the quakes, the army sent 150, 000 soldiers to Tangshan to dig out those who were     1     and to     2     the dead. More than 10,000 doctors and nurses came to provide medical care. Workers built     3     for survivors whose homes had been     4    . Hundreds of thousands of people were helped. Water and food were brought into the city by train, truck, and plane. Slowly, the city began to     5       again.