1 . When I was a teenager, I was invited to a formal dance party. I was _________, but also nervous about what to wear. Mom suggested I wear high heels (高跟鞋).

“Mom, I don’t know if I can wear these,” I said, feeling _________. “Don’t worry, sweetie. Just take small _________ and keep your weight centered,” she suggested.

As I arrived at the party, I tried to be _________ and act like everything was fine. But _________ struck when I stepped onto the dance floor. I _________ my own feet, falling to the ground in front of everyone.

I quickly got up and laughed it off, pretending like it was _________. But deep down, I felt like a tomato, wanting to _________.

My friend Lilly helped me _________ that incident and managed me another high heels as a support so that nobody would understand my hesitation. But a little bit __________ continued in my mind.

When I returned home, I told Mom I felt like a complete __________ at the party. “It’s okay. You tried something new, and it didn’t go as __________. But that’s how we learn and grow. Don’t be too __________ on yourself and wear what you feel __________ in,” Mom said, giving me a hug.

From that day forward, I stuck to flat shoes. I learned to __________ my true self and not worry about what others thought.

3 . Ice cream can’t cure cancer or bring back a lost love, but it can make one feel better for a while. About 18 months ago, my father was in hospital recovering from a major lung operation. My mother had recently_________ , and my father had taken the loss of his partner of 55 years very hard and had lost interest in ________. Trying to get him to_________ each day was quite a chore (苦差事) as he didn’t want anything. The one thing,_________, that he would ask us to bring him was ice-cream. One evening, to our ________, he refused to eat the ice-cream,_________ I placed it in a staff room freezer (冰箱). A little while later, my son decided he wanted it, so I ________ it for him. As I passed another ward (病房), a ________ asked, “Are there more ice-creams?” When I explained the ________, she apologized. She then said that she had cancer and could eat very little,_________ the occasional ice-cream. The next evening, I decided to buy two ice-creams. On the way to Dad’s room, I stopped in at the ________ woman’s room, and ________ her the ice-cream I’d bought for her. She was ________ stunned (大吃一惊) that I had thought of her, and ________ the gift with tears in her eyes. I spoke with her for a few minutes,_________ what was happening in my family and listened to her ________ story of pain and suffering. It was apparent that she did not ________ many visitors, and the ice-cream and our short chat meant a great deal to her. I ________ the gesture (举动) a few days later, and this time was_________ with a huge hug. I never even thought to ask her name, and never saw her again, but it made me realize that an act of ________ can be more rewarding when you give it, rather than receive it.

4 . I had worried myself sick over Simon’s mother coming to see me. I was a new ________ and I gave an honest account of the students’ work. In Simon’s case, the grades were awfully low. He couldn’t read his own handwriting. ________he was a bright student. He discussed adult subjects with nearly adult comprehension. His work in no way reflected (反映) his ________.

So when Simon’s mother entered the room, my palms (手掌心) were sweating. I was completely ________ for her kisses on both my cheeks. “I came to thank you,” she said, ________ me beyond speech. Because of me, Simon had become a different person. He talked of how he________ me, he had began to make friends, and for the first time in his twelve years, he had ________spent an afternoon at a friend’s house. She wanted to tell me how grateful she was for the ________I had nurtured (培养) in her son. She kissed me again and left. 

I sat, stunned (惊呆), for about half an hour, ________what had just happened. How did I make such a life-changing ________ to that boy without even knowing it? What I finally came to ________ was one day, several months before, when some students were ________ reports in the front of the class, Jeanne spoke ________, and to encourage her to raise her voice, I had said, “Speak up. Simon’s the expert on this. He is the ________one you have to convince, and he can’t hear you in the ________of the room.” That was it. From that day on, Simon had sat up straighter, paid more attention, ________ more, and became happy. And it was all because he ________to be the last kid in the last row. The boy who most needed ________was the one who took the last seat that day.

It taught me the most ________lesson over the years of my teaching career, and I’m thankful that it came ________ and positively. A small kindness can indeed make a difference.

5 . Are parents rational (理性的) about their children? No. Parents aren’t rational because _______ isn’t rational. Young people can understand this about romantic love, but they find it hard to _______ this element (元素) in parental love.

My eldest daughter’s _______ the other day brought this up. “Let me ask you something, Dad,” she began in a tone of patiently controlled _______ that every experienced parent knows.

“I sailed around the Mediterranean in a yacht (游艇) when I was seventeen,” she said. “I hiked through the Pyrenees from Spain to Paris. I’ve done rock climbing and deep-sea diving and slept in rainforests in the jungle of Indonesia. Right?”

“Right,” I said, “So _______?”

“So this,” she went on. “When I go to the corner drugstore to pick up some shampoo, why do you always tell me to be _______ when I cross the street?”

There is no _______ answer a parent can give to this.

All I could mumble (嘟囔) in _______ was that when I was 50, my mother would _______ me not to drive too fast. If I were 80 and she were still alive, I would be getting the ________ warning. No matter the ________, a child is a child.

There is something else, too, that children find it hard to ________ . When they are far away, there is nothing we can do about their ________ . They are in the hands of the gods. Parents try not to ________about it.

But when the children are ________ , the old protective urge quickly comes back, and it doesn’t ________ how far they have been or what experiences they have got through.

Most ________ happen around the corner, not in the rainforest. The most instinctive (本能的) act of almost every creature is to ________ its young, and with humans this ________ stays for a lifetime.

In the parent’s mind, a child ages but does not ________. Rational? No. But if we were rational, would we want children at all?

6 . Jimmy is an automotive mechanic, but he lost his job a few months ago. He has good _________, but always feared applying for a new job.

One day, he gathered up all his _________ and decided to attend a job interview. His _________ was at 10 am and it was already 8:30. While waiting for a bus to the office where he was supposed to be interviewed, he saw an _________ man wildly kicking the tire of his car. _________ there was something wrong with the car. Jimmy immediately went up to lend him a hand. When Jimmy finished _________ the car, the old man asked him how much he should pay for the _________. Jimmy said there was no need to pay him; he just helped someone _________, and he had to _________ for an interview. Then the old man said, “Well, I could take you to the office for your interview. It’s the __________ I could do. Please. I insist.” Jimmy __________.

Upon arrival, Jimmy found a long line of __________ waiting to be interviewed. Jimmy still had some grease (油垢) on him after the car __________, but he did not have much time to wash it off or have a change of shirt. One by one, the applicants left the interviewer’s office with __________ look on their faces. Finally, his name was called. The interviewer was sitting on a large chair facing the office window. __________ the chair back and forth, he asked, “Do you really need to be interviewed?” Jimmy’s heart __________. “With the way I look now, how could I __________ pass this interview?” he thought to himself.

Then the interviewer __________ the chair and to Jimmy’s surprise, it was the old man he helped earlier in the morning. It turned out he was the General Manager of the company.

“Sorry I had to keep you waiting, but I was pretty sure I made the right decision to have you as part of our workforce __________ you even stepped into the office. I just know you’d be a trustworthy worker. __________!” Jimmy sat down and they shared a cup of well-deserved coffee as he landed himself a new job.

8 . My wife and I moved into our home two years ago. We had a yard with a lot of ________. Very often when we have flowers, Denise or I would plant some between the rocks, just to add some ________ to the area.

Last summer, I found a tiny little plant in the yard that I could not immediately identify. I knew I didn’t plant it and Denise said she didn’t either.

We decided to let it ________ growing until we could find out what it was.

Weeks passed and as I made my way back to the ________ plant, it appeared to be a sunflower. I decided to ________ the weeds (杂草) around it. As I pulled rocks from the area to get to the weeds, I noticed something ________.The sunflower had not ________ where I saw it begin. It actually had begun under a big rock and grown under and around it to reach the ________.

That’s when I ________ that if a tiny little sunflower didn’t let a big rock stand in its way of developing, we too have the ability of doing the same thing. If we ________ ourselves like that little sunflower, we can reach where we ________ to go and get what we need for growth.

We need to believe in ourselves knowing we have the ________ to achieve our goals. Like the sunflower, it knew it had the ability to get over the rocks because it had ________ in itself that it would succeed. Stand tall like the sunflower and be ________ of who and what we are, and then the environment will begin to ________ us. We will find a way to go under or around any “rocks” in order to reach our goals.

9 . The expression, “Everybody’s doing it,” is very much at the center of the concept of peer pressure. It is a social influence applied on an individual in order to get that person to act or believe in a(n) ______ way as a larger group. This influence can be negative or positive, and can exist in both large and small groups.

People are social creatures by nature, and so it is hardly ______ that some part of their self-respect comes from the approval of others. This instinct explains why the approval of peers, and the fear of ______, is such a powerful force in many people’s lives. This instinct drives people to dress one way at home and another way at work, or to answer a simple “fine” when a stranger asks “How are you?” even if it is not necessarily true. There is a(n) ______ aspect to this: It helps society to function efficiently, and encourages a general level of self-discipline that ______ day-to-day interaction between people.

For certain individuals, seeking social acceptance is so important that it becomes a(n) ______: in order to satisfy the desire, they may go so far as to ______ their sense of right and wrong. Teens and young adults may feel forced to use drugs, or join gangs that _______criminal behavior. Mature adults may sometimes feel ______ to cover up illegal activity at the company where they work, or end up in debt because they are unable to hold back the desire to buy a house or car that they can’t afford in an effort to ______ the peers.

However, peer pressure is not always negative. A student whose friends are good at contests may be ________ to work harder and get good grades. Players on a sports team may feel driven to play harder in order to help the team win. This type of ______ can also get a friend off drugs, or to help an adult take up a good habit or drop a bad one.

Although peer pressure is sometimes quite obvious, it can also be so ______ that a person may not even notice that it is affecting his or her behavior. For this reason, when making important decisions, simply going with a(n) ______ is risky. Instead, people should seriously consider why they feel drawn to taking a particular action, and whether the real ______ is simply that everyone else is doing the same thing.

10 . After their business trip, John and Mary returned, eager to see their lovely children. As they drove into their hometown feeling glad to be back, they noticed ________, and they went off their usual route to see what it was. They found a ________ in flames. Mary said, “Oh, well, it isn’t our fire, let’s go home.”

But John ________ closer and screamed, “That home belongs to Fred Jones who works at the plant. He wouldn’t be ________ work yet, maybe there is something we could do.” “It has nothing to do with us,” Mary ________.

But John drove up and stopped and they were both horror-stricken to see the whole house in ________. A woman on the lawn was screaming, “The children! Get the children!” John ________ her by the shoulder saying, “Get a hold of yourself and tell us where the children are!” “In the ________,” cried the woman. “Down the hall and to the left.”

In spite of Mary’s disagreement, John ________ for the basement which was full of smoke and ________ hot. He found the door and two children. ________ he left he could hear some more sobbing. He ________ the two badly frightened children into ________ arms and started back asking how many more children were down there. They told him ________ more and Mary grasped his arm and screamed, “John! Don’t go back! It’s ________! That house will fall down any second.”

________ he ran into the smoke-filled hallway and at last he found both children. As he climbed up the ________ stairs, the thought went through his mind that there was something strangely ________ about the little bodies next to him, and at last when they came out into the ________ and fresh air, he found that he had just ________ his own children.

The baby-sitter had left them at this home while she did some shopping.