1 . Louie, a pet parrot, saved a whole family. He __________ the sleeping Klein family in the middle of the night as flames swept through their home.

“Louie is a true __________,” Barbara Klein recently told news agency South West News Service (SWNS). “If it hadn’t been for him, I probably wouldn’t have been __________ at that time. He started shouting ‘Fire’. He had never said that word before in my __________. When I woke up, the fire was starting to spread across the living room floor.” Unluckily for the family, Louie didn’t __________. Barbara said, “He was like our babies, so it’s __________.”

Barbara took her five-year-old granddaughter __________ and ran out of the house. Her husband Larry also made it out, but was severely wounded when escaping from the burning building. “He ran to the kitchen and tried to __________ the fire out with water,” Barbara told SWNS. “After we left, he ran back into the house and insisted on __________ the pet but with no __________.” The Kleins suffered great __________ in the fire. Their house was in __________ along with its contents and the parrot Louie passed away.

“People have __________ with clothing and someone donated an apartment for three months,” Barbara said. “The man who donated the apartment also __________ us with a baby parrot. We call him Louie Jr to __________ Louie.”

2 . Glen Edwards became a hero when he rescued a construction worker trapped on the top of a 16-story burning building.

As a crane (吊车) _________ working on a construction site, Edwards _________ found himself in a life-saving mission when a fire broke out. He recalled how he _________ the trapped worker from his crane’s cabin (驾驶舱), and how he came up with the idea of saving the man by lowering a cage to him to let him _________.

However, his attempt to _________ the cage before the man was by no means an easy job, as each gust (阵) of wind threatened to throw his crane off balance. Besides, the smoke and flames also added to the difficulty. _________ the great challenges, Edwards refused to give up and fought to _________ control. Luckily, someone on the ground offered _________ on where to land the cage through a radio. Edwards _________ the crane’s movements, inch by inch, until the cage hovered (盘旋) just inches from the edge of the __________. With determination, Edwards successfully landed the cage.

Eventually, Edwards watched the cage __________ the man away from the horrible fire below and lowering him to safety. The crowd __________ a big round of applause, a tribute (致敬) to the courage and skill __________ by Edwards. He knew that his quick thinking and strong __________ had made all the difference between life and death in the face of disaster.

A GoFundMe page has now been set up to raise money for him—with organizers __________ people to “buy Glen a beer” for his life-saving efforts.

3 . I was ready to pay for my bananas at the grocery one night when fear seized me. My wallet was gone. I could only have left it on the G9 bus, which was now speeding in the dark to some _________ station.

The _________ moment was quickly followed by mental math. How much time and money would it cost to replace the _________ of that little wallet? The credit cards, the driver’s license, the cash, all lost to the bus.

Two hours later, back at my house, I heard a knock on the door. My husband _________ it while I was on the phone in the dining room. “Does Jennifer live here?” I heard a lady say. In my husband’s hand was my wallet, with not a penny _________. She left before I could even make it to the door to offer my thanks.

After sharing the story online, I heard from someone, who _________ the lady as Erin Smith. Without delay, I called to thank her. She said she _________ my wallet on a bus seat. She calculated that going to a stranger’s house was a _________ move, but she decided to take the chance. “If I were in that _________, I would want someone to try to find me,” she said.

This one stranger responded beautifully to my small __________, but she actually wasn’t the only one. Right after Erin __________ my wallet on the bus, she posted a picture of my driver’s license to an online forum (论坛), trying to see if anyone knew me. No sooner did she leave my doorstep than I had __________ from two women whose kids go to my son’s nursery and who recognized my face. I’ve never __________ words with those moms beyond small talk, but they wanted to help. I read that people are more divided than ever, but that’s not how the people I __________ tend to act.

Looking back, I feel blessed someone had wanted to help a stranger. Erin had gone beyond what almost anyone would have done, finding my house on a bitterly cold night, and for that I was extremely __________.

4 . People often say that “failure is the mother of success.” This cliché (陈词滥调) might have some truth to it, but it __________ tells us how to actually turn a loss into a win, says Emmanuel Manalo, a professor of educational psychology at Kyoto University in Japan. As a result, he says, “we know we shouldn’t give up when we fail—but __________, we do.”

Manalo and Manu Kapur, a professor of learning sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, put together a special issue of the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity last December on __________ failure. The issue’s 15 studies provide teachers and educational researchers with a guide for __________ success. One study reported, for example, that the sooner and more often students fail at a task, such as building a robot, the sooner they can __________ and improve. Another confirmed that feedback on failures is most __________ when the giver comes across as caring, and the receiver is prepared to weather negative emotions.

Manalo and his co-authors also contributed their own study focused on overcoming one fundamental, everyday form of failure: not __________ a task. They asked 131 undergraduates to write an essay about their school experiences. Half of the students received __________ for structuring their writing, and half were left to their own devices. All, however, were __________ prior to finishing. Afterward the researchers found that those in the structured group were more motivated to complete their essays, compared with those who lacked guidance—even if the latter were __________ to being done. Knowing how to finish, __________, was more important than being close to finishing.

The researchers dubbed this finding “the Hemingway effect,” for the author’s self-reported __________ to stop writing only when he knew what would happen next in the story—so as to avoid writer’s block when he returned to the page. Manalo believes that learning how to fail temporarily can help people avoid becoming __________ failures at many tasks, such as completing an essay, learning a language or inventing a new technology.

Demystifying failure and teaching students not to __________ it make goals more attainable, says Stephanie Couch, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program, a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing and supporting inventors. Couch, whose work was also featured in the special issue, __________ that we “should really be thinking of failure as part of a process of going forward toward success.”

7 . In the first class of college, our teacher gave us a special task — get to know someone we didn’t know before. When I looked around, I found a wrinkled, little old lady _________ me. She said, “Hi, my name is Rose. I’m eighty-seven years old.” “Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?” I asked _________. “I’m here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids...” she replied. “No seriously,” I asked. I was _________ what may have motivated her to be taking on this _________ at her age. “I always dreamed of having a college education and now I’m getting one!” she said.

From that day on, we became _________ friends. We left class together and talked nonstop. I was always _________ to listening to this “time machine” as she shared her wisdom and _________ with me.

At the end of the term, Rose was invited to _________ a speech. I’ll never forget what she taught us. “The secret of staying young _________ being positive and pursuing dreams persistently. You’ve got to have a dream. When you lose your dreams, you die,” she went on. “Anybody can grow older. That doesn’t take any __________ or ability. The elderly usually don’t have __________ for what they did, but rather for things they didn’t do. The only people who __________ death are those with regrets.”

Finally, Rose finished the college degree successfully. A month after graduation Rose died __________ in her sleep. Thousands of college students attended her funeral (葬礼)__________ the woman from whom we can learn a __________ that it’s never too late to be all you can possibly be.

8 . My first care giving experience involved driving 2 hours every day to see my grandmother who was terminally ill. I was certainly _______ as the weeks turned into months, but the desire to _______ my grandmother in her last days was overwhelming (无法抗拒的).

Years later, my 87­year­old father required more _______ skills than I could provide. As he lived 700 miles away from me, I deeply _______ that I couldn’t take care of him myself, but I thought my nightly phone calls, filled with laughter and family news, provided him with _______ support.

Then, _______ , because of cancer, I became the one who needed _______ . Friends provided meals, house cleaning, and rides to appointments. The gratitude I felt for these acts of _______ was beyond words. It was also because of their thoughtfulness that I could focus all my energy on healing (治愈) my body and mind. Soon afterwards, in trying to find a meaningful purpose, I _______ the idea of offering help to other caregivers. I was ________ with both sides of the experience, and this ________ me to pay it forward for the incredible amount of support I had received.

A(n) ________ came when a caregiver I knew for years was unable to travel to her winter home in Florida. While recovering from surgery, she was ________ to drive. When she asked me to be the driver, I didn`t ________ , so we headed south on an adventure together.

Now, due to the pandemic (流行病), I have to put off the program, but I look forward to ________ my journey of caring for caregivers soon. I welcome the chance to lift the burden off their shoulders, even if it’s for just a minute.

9 . Jenna, a popular girl from West Wood Middle School, had graduated first in her class and was ready for new _______ in high school.

_______, high school was different. In the first week, Jenna went to tryouts for cheerleaders. She was competing against very talented girls, and she knew it would be _______ for her to be chosen. Two hours later, the _______ read a list of the girls for a second tryout. Her heart _______ as the list ended without her name. Feeling _______, she walked home carrying her schoolbag full of homework.

Arriving home, she started with math. She had always been a good math student, but now she was _______. She moved on to English and history, and was _______ to find that she didn’t have any trouble with those _______. Feeling better, she decided not to ________ math for the time being.

Later in math class, Jenna devoted herself to figuring out the problems that had given her so much ________. By the end of class, she understood how to get them right. As she gathered her books, Jenna decided she’d continue to try to ________ at her new school. She wasn’t sure if she’d succeed, but she knew she had to ________. High school was just as her mom had said, “You will feel like a small fish in a big pond ________ a big fish in a small pond. The challenge is to become the ________ fish you can be.”