2 . My teacher held up a piece of broken glass and asked, “Who broke this window?”

Thirty boys tried to think about not only what they had done, but also what the teacher might have found out. She seldom became angry, but she was this time.

“Oh,” I thought. I was the one who broke the window. It was caused by a naughty throw of a baseball. If I admitted guilt, I would be in a lot of trouble. How would I be able to pay for a big window like that? I didn’t even get an allowance. “My father is going to have a fit as a result of it,” I thought. I didn’t want to raise my hand, but some force much stronger than I was pulled it skyward (朝向天空). I told the truth, “I did it.” It was hard enough to say what I had done.

My teacher took down a book from one of our library shelves and I had never known my teacher to strike a student, but I feared she was going to start with me.

“I know how much you like birds,” she said as she stood looking down at my guilt-ridden face. “Here is the field guide about birds that you are constantly checking out. It is yours now. It’s time we got a new one for the school anyway. You will not be punished, but remember that I am not rewarding you for your misdeed (恶行), but I am rewarding you for your truthfulness.”

I couldn’t believe it! I wasn’t being punished and I was getting my own bird field guide — the very one that I had been saving up money to buy.

The lesson my teacher taught me stays with me every day, and it will echo forever.

Last year when Tom graduated from school, he came to Sydney. He didn’t like to work on his father’s farm and hoped     1    (find) a job in a big city. He went from one company to     2     but no one wanted him. With little money     3    (leave), he got to the station, sad and     4     (tire). All he wanted to do was go back to his small town. It was very late at night and the station was full of people. They were waiting to buy tickets of     5     last train. He bought the last ticket, and he was very happy.

At that time, a woman with a     6    (cry) baby walked to him and asked him to sell her the ticket. He gave her the ticket because he thought they needed it more than he     7    (do). After the train left, he sat on the bench and didn’t know where to go.     8    (sudden), an old man came and said, “Young man, I have seen     9     you did to the woman. I am the     10    (own) of a big company. I need a good young man like you. Would you like to work for me?”

4 . It has been known for a long time that obesity tends to run in families, but it was not until about 20 years ago that scientists started to discover that changes in specific genes can have very large impacts on our weight even from early childhood.

One of these genes MC4R makes a protein that is produced in the brain where it sends signals to our appetite centers, telling them how much fat we have stored. When the MC4R gene does not work properly, our brains think we have lower fat stores than we do, signaling that we are starving and need to eat.

A new study, led by scientists from the University of Cambridge and the University of Bristol, has found that around one in every 340 people may carry a disruptive mutation (变异) at MC4R. People who carry these mutations were more likely to have a greater weight from early childhood and, by 18 years of age, they were on average 17 kg heavier, with the majority of this excess weight likely to be fat.

These results were found by studying the MC4R gene in a random sample of around 6, 000 participants born in Bristol. Whenever a mutation was found, the researchers went on to study its frequency and effects in the laboratory.

Based on the frequency of mutations in this study, it was estimated that around 200, 000 people in the UK carry a substantial amount of unexpected fat because of mutations in MC4R.

Professor Stephen O’Rahilly, one of the researchers, said, “Parents of obese children are often blamed for poor parenting and not all children obtain appropriate professional help. Our findings should encourage a more sympathetic and reasonable approach to overweight children and their families—including genetic analysis in all seriously obese children.”

Though the MC4R gene is a striking example, this is only one gene of many that affect our weight. “In the longer term, knowledge of the brain pathways controlled by MC4R should help in the design of drugs that help restore people to a healthy weight,” Stephen added.

5 . A star athlete at the college where I work recently stopped by my office. After committing a few unforced errors during a weekend match, she was tom apart by self-criticism. “I can’t stop beating myself up,” she told me. “I’m at peak fitness, and I practice hard. How is this happening?”

Many students I teach, like this athlete, believe that all-nighters in the library and hours on the field should get them exactly where they need to go. When they fall short of what they imagine they should accomplish, they are crushed by self-blame.

We talk often about young adults struggling with failure because their parents have protected them from discomfort. But there is something else at play among the most privileged in particular: a false promise that they can achieve anything if they are willing to work for it.

Psychologists have sourced this phenomenon to a misapplication of “mind set” research, which has found that praising children for effort will increase academic performance. But a recent analysis found that while praising effort over ability may benefit high-risk or economically disadvantaged students, it does not necessarily help everyone.

The cruel, messy reality is that you can do everything in your power and still fail. Instead of allowing our kids to beat themselves up when things don’t go their way, we should all question a culture that has taught them that feeling anything less than overwhelmed means they’re lazy, and that where they go to college matters more than the kind of person they are. It’s suggested that parents and teachers spend time helping students find purpose, or goals they genuinely love to pursue and that make an impact on the world, which may help them gain greater life satisfaction and become more psychologically mature.

The point is not to give our kids a pass on working hard. But we would be wise to remind our kids that life has a way of sucker-punching us when we least expect it. It’s often the people who learn to say “stuff happens” who get up the fastest.

6 . How similar are language and music?

Language is part of our daily lives, no matter where we live in the world.     1     Both language and music play a huge role in our culture and here are some of their similarities.

Both language and music have a writing system.

In English we record language using the alphabet, which is a collection of letters. Similarly, we use notes (音符) to keep a record of music. Musicians read notes and create meaning in the form of music.     2     By writing pieces of text or music, we are able to share experiences through time. We can read the ideas or hear the composition (作品) of someone who lived hundreds of years ago.

    3    

You can make a good guess at where someone is from by listening to the language he uses. In the same way, we know that styles of music are different around the world, giving us the opportunity to explore many different cultures through their music and providing us with music for every situation.

Both share emotion.

    4     Of course you may be able to see it in my face, but you will know for sure through my words. Similarly, music can sound angry, sad or happy. Music can show you exactly how the composer was or is feeling, and allows us to share that emotion. When you feel happy, you might want to sing and dance to a happy song to celebrate your happiness.     5     I think we have all used music to express or process our emotions, often combining it with language in the form of song lyrics (歌词).

9 . The phone rang, but I was annoyed to answer it. Seeing the _________number, I supposed it was the endless_________ to sell me something I had absolutely no _________ in.

“Daddy.” It’s Alyce, my 12-year-old daughter. “Mommy was just in a car accident.” My heart _________ and then began pounding. A deep _________ came, “I’m all right, but Mommy...”

I sprinted(全速跑) a few blocks to what looked like a shoot (拍摄) for a _________ movie. Fire engines, police cars, and ambulances were randomly(随意地) parked in the street; helicopters(直升飞机) _________above. A bus was on the wrong side of the road. In front of it were the _________ remains of Susan’s car. Susan was _________ under the dashboard (仪表盘). It__________ she had broken nearly every bone, and she spent three months in the __________.

Two years later, we were attending an event in __________ of Martin Luther King when Alyce took a __________ look at a woman, rushed to and returned with her. She told us she lived in the building by where the __________ had happened. That night, she rushed to the street, still in her bathrobe and saw Alyce standing by the wrecked car, __________. She approached her, hugged her and took Alyce’s hand to her chest, saying, “Let’s pray together.” Alyce’s phone was out of __________ inside the car. So the woman lent Alyce her phone.

When saying goodbye, we realized we hadn’t been formally __________, so I told her my name was Douglas. She paused, __________ she hadn’t heard me. So I __________. She looked at us and said, “Wait, your name is Susan?” Susan __________. The woman put her hand over her heart, saying, “My name is Susan Douglas.”