4 . Girls are better at reading and writing than boys as early as fourth grade, according to a study, and the gap continues to widen until senior year.

Scientists generally agree that boys and girls are psychologically more alike than they are different. But reading seems to be a(n)________, with growing evidence suggesting a similar ________in writing. The study, published in the journal American Psychologist, provided further ________ to support this view.

David Reilly, lead author of the study, said the study ________the commonly held view that boys and girls start grade school with the same cognitive abilities. “It appears that the gender gap for writing tasks has been greatly________, and despite our best efforts with changes in teaching methods, that does not appear to be ________ over time,” he said.

Factors explaining the results could include learning ________ being more prevalent among boys; the pressure to conform to masculine (男子汉的) ideals and the idea of reading and language being feminine (女性的); and slight________in how boys and girls use their brain hemispheres (半球), the authors believe.

To investigate how ________ levels differed between boys and girls in the U.S., the team studied data collected over three decades in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. This database of test scores on over 3 million students in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades________national and state performances in a range of subjects, and considered such variables such as disabilities or whether children were English learners. Reading and writing was ________according to children’s understanding of a range of different passages and genres.

________, girls were found to perform significantly better in reading and writing tests by fourth grade when compared with boys of the same age. As children progressed to eighth and twelfth grades, girls continued to ________ boys, but the difference was more noticeable in writing than reading. But what caused this difference in abilities? Evidence suggests ________ problems, such as being disruptive（扰乱性的） in class or being aggressive could be linked to neurological conditions. What is known as lateralization (偏侧化) could also play a role. Boys are believed to use one hemisphere when reading or writing, while girls appear to use both. The data did not, however, provide evidence to argue ________ the two genders having different learning styles.

5 . I don’t know why I came to the decision to become a loser, but I know I made the _______at a young age. Sometime in the middle of fourth grade, I _______ trying. By the time I was in seventh grade, I was _______, disrespectful and rebellious.

It wasn’t long after that I dropped out of school. Hard physical labor was the _______ for the choices I made as an adolescent. At the age of 21, I was _______ lost, and using drugs as a way to deal with the fact that I had no education and was _______ in a dead-end job carrying heavy construction materials up a ladder all day.

_______, now I believe in do-overs, in the chance to do it all again. And I believe that do-overs can be made at any point in your life, if you have the right _______. Mine came from a surprising source.

It was September 21, 2002, when my son Blake was born. It’s funny that after a life of _______ responsibility, now I was in charge of something so ________. Over the years, as I grew into the ________ of Dad, I began to learn something about myself. In a way, Blake and I were both learning to walk, talk, work and play for the first time. I began my do-over.

It took me almost three years to learn how to read. I started with my son’s books. ________, I practiced reading books to him until I remembered all the words in every one of them. I knew I wanted to be a good role model, so after a year-and-a-half and a lot of hard work, I ________ my GED test on my son’s fourth birthday. This may not sound like much, and I’m surely not trying to get praise for doing something that should have been done ________.            

It’s funny, growing up I always heard these great turn-around stories of triumph over shortcomings. But I never thought they ________ to me. Now I believe it’s a choice anyone can make: to do it all over again.

7 . 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.”

8 . Many cities around the world today are heavily polluted. Careless methods of production and ________ of consumer demands for environment friendly products have ________ the pollution problem. One ________ is that millions of tons of glass, paper, plastic, and metal containers are produced, and these are difficult to get rid of.

________, today, more and more consumers are choosing “green” and demanding that the products they buy should be safe for the environment. ________ they buy a product, they ask questions like these: “Will this shampoo damage the environment?” “Can this metal container be ________ or can it only be used once?”

A recent study showed that two ________ five adults now consider the environmental safety of a product before they buy it. This means that companies must now change the ________ they make and sell their products to make sure that they are “green,” that is, friendly to the environment.

Only a few years ago, it was impossible to find green products in supermarkets, but now there are hundreds. Some supermarket products ________ labels to show that the product is green. Some companies emphasize that their products are clean and safe in their advertising and have made it their main selling ________.

The ________ for a safer and cleaner environment is making companies rethink ________ they do business. No longer will the public accept the old ________ of “Buy it, use it, throw it away and forget it.” The public ________ is still here, and companies are ________ their act gradually.

9 . Since 1960, considerable scientific researches have been done on chimps in their natural habitats. Astonishingly, scientists have found out that the social _________ of Chimps are very similar to humans. Chimps will _________ in certain ways, like gathering together to protect their land. But beyond the minimum requirements as social beings, they have little instinct (本能) to _________ one another. Chimps in the wild seek food for themselves. Even chimp mothers regularly _________ to share food with their children. Who are able from a young age to gather their own food?

In the laboratory, chimps don’t _________ share food either. If a chimp is put in a cage where he can pull in one plate of food for himself or, with no greater effort, a plate that also provides food for a neighbor to the next cage, he will pull _________ -he just doesn’t care whether his neighbor gets fed or not. Chimps are truly selfish.

Human children, _________, are extremely cooperative. From the earliest ages, they desire to help others, to share information and to participate in achieving common goals. The psychologist Michael Tomasello has studied this _________ in a series of experiments with very young children. He finds that if babies aged 18 months see a worried adult with hands full trying to open a door, almost all will immediately try to help.

There are several reasons to believe that the urges to help, inform and share are not taught, but naturally _________ in young children. One is that these instincts appear at a very __________ age before most parents have started to train their children to behave __________. Another is that the helping behaviors are not improved if the children are rewarded. A third reason is that social intelligence __________ in children before their general cognitive(认知的) skills, at least when compared with chimps. In tests conducted by Tomasello, the human children did no better than the chimps on the __________ world tests but were considerably better at understanding the social world.

The core (核心) of what children’s minds have and chimps’ don’t is what Tomasello calls shared intentionality. Part of this ability is that they can __________ what others know or are thinking. But beyond that, even very young children want to be part of a shared purpose. They actively seek to be part of a “we”, a group that intends to work toward a(n) __________goal.

10 . Hansen and his 10-year-old son Chase search the streets of Salt Lake City every weekend for the homeless to take to lunch. They started Project Empathy(共情)four years ago to ________a meal, listen to their stories and figured out how they could ________ help.

“Just start with a smile, a hello. It really just starts with that. If you do it, you can make a connection. A small gesture can have a ________ impact on others less fortunate,” Hansen ________ in an interview.

Some of these shared meals have turned into stronger ________ .Ward, a homeless, was ________ in a flat. He credited the Hansens with helping him ________the difficult process of moving off the streets. “It is great to have friends who make us feel ________ and I’m impressed with the pair,” Ward said.

Father and son’s ________have developed into a passion project that ________ faith and community, which emphasizes the ________ community members can have in uplifting the homeless. They know they can’t settle the homeless ________ alone. They’re hoping empathy will ________.

“My hope for the future is to ________ more connection across our country. We could and we will succeed ________ we have other people join in and help the homeless,” Chase said.