1 . British English and American English have many differences. The difference also exists in the letters of the alphabet (字母表). Or, more specifically (具体地), the last letter of the alphabet. Z is pronounced as “zed” in Britain while in America, it is pronounced as “zee”.    1    It’s what you’ll hear in every English-speaking country, except for the United States.

    2     Many of our modern letters come directly from the Greek alphabet, including a letter which looked just like our “z”. The Greeks called it “zeta”. “Zeta” gradually developed into the French “zede”, which in turn gave us “zed” as English was shaped by Romance languages like French.

“Zee” showed up on the scene in modern English. Dr. Adam Crowley, an associate professor of English in Husson University’s College of Science and Humanities, suggests that the popularity of “zee” grew because it rhymes (押韵) with so many other letters, like B, C, and P.    3     So, again, this makes sense.

After the Revolutionary War, Americans were trying to set up an identity separate from the British, and words and language played a big role in this.    4     He, sure enough, chose “zee” as the “official” American pronunciation.

And then, there’s The Alphabet Song. In the song, z is pronounced as “zee”.    5     Indeed, teachers in England and other countries sometimes have to re-teach children how to pronounce z after they’ve already learned “zee” from hearing the song.

It has been 2,000 years since Chinese     1     (invent) paper, which made China become one of the first     2     (nation) to start producing historical records, maps and literature. Early Chinese scientists discovered     3    they could make something     4     (explosion). Gunpowder led to the development     5    a variety of weapons. Early printing presses were made by carving     6     (wood) blocks with characters. Bi Sheng’s invention made it much quicker     7     easier to reproduce     8     (write) works. The ancient Chinese made the first and simple compasses by     9     (float) small pins of magnetic metal     10    bowls of water.

A decade after America     1     (退出) from Vietnam, the seeds of the often heart-breaking history, A Piece of My Heart, were sown when writer and filmmaker Keith Walker met a woman who had been an emergency room nurse in Cu Chi and Da Nang. She and 25 others       2     (回想) the time they spent in Vietnam as part of the 15,000 American women who volunteered or served as nurses in the military. After working on too many mutilated (截肢的) young     3     (士兵), one nurse talked of wanting to ask her mother to “check around and see if she could find one whole eighteen-year-old”.

Many returned with post-traumatic stress disorder (创伤后精神紧张性障碍). They still felt     4     (惊恐) rising within them. “The one thing Vietnam did for me was that I felt like I could walk on water,” said a nurse.

On 28 July, 1976, one million people ignored the strange things that had been happening in Tangshan and went to bed     1     usual. At 3:42 am, a strong earthquake     2     could be felt in Beijing shook Tangshan,     3     (cause) great damage to the city. The whole city lay in ruins. Two thirds of the people who lived there were injured, and the number of people who were killed or     4     (bad) injured     5     (be) more than 400,000. Not only factories and homes were destroyed, but also almost all hospitals where they could be treated     6     (go).People were shocked.     7     (make) matters worse, another earthquake which was as     8     (strength) as the first one struck Tangshan again later that afternoon. It seemed as if the world were at     9     end. 150,000 soldiers came to Tangshan to dig out those who were trapped and to bury the dead. Workers built shelters for survivors whose homes     10     (destroy).With joint efforts, the city began to breathe again.

9 . It took brave European explorers less than 300 years, between 1420 and 1713, to establish that all the seas of the world formed an enormous and continuous ocean. This discovery encouraged them to _____ into areas which hadn’t been charted until then. With the discovery of new lands, new trade routes were _____. In many parts of the world, colonies and settlements were established and many odd-looking products were brought back to _____, arousing great interest and _____ wealth.

It was probably the irresistible desire for wealth that _____ persuaded Europeans of the fifteenth century to _____ their legendary dangers and explore further out into the open seas. They were also _____ by the love for their countries. Many explorers wanted to serve their kings and countries as well as gain personal _____ from their exploring.

The most effective way of gaining wealth was through _____. Silk, gold, silver and ______ stones, and more importantly spices, such as gingers and peppers, were the most profitable trade goods in Europe. Spices were of the greatest ______ because they enabled the Europeans to make their winter diet of salted meat more delicious. These items were ______ mostly from the East by a difficult overland route. The Italian ______, who bought goods from the Arabs of Alexandria, controlled the trade along this route. Other countries of the Mediterranean ______ the wealth which this trade generated and they were ______ to discover new routes which would allow them to share in it.

On the north bank of Fuxian Lake in Chengjiang County, Yunnan Province sits a straw-hat-shaped mountain     1     (call) Maotian Mountain,     2     a 512-hectare site is praised as a “world-class treasure trove of fossils” by the international scientific community. On July 1,1984, young paleontologists in China discovered a fossil of the arthropod (节肢动物化石) with a long tail in Maotian Mountain. “    3     we had studied in China were just shell of fossils. The arthropods, lifelike fossils with legs, which belonged to fossils of soft-bodied animals, are     4     game changer in the research of China’s paleontology (古生物学)”, Hou Xianguang, a paleontologist said.

Scientists have obtained a large number of research results on Chengjiang Fossil Site. The reason why Chengjiang fauna (动物群) is     5     great significance is that it is closely related to the emergence of the animal tree of life.

Up to now, more than 20 phyla and more than 280 species     6     (record)in the Chengjiang Fossil Site, of which, 80% are new species. On July 1, 2012, the Chengjiang Fossil Site     7     (be) inscribed on the World Heritage List by UNESCO,     8     (become) China’ s first World Heritage Site for paleontological fossils.

The UNESCO evaluation says the Chengjiang Fossil Site is one of the     9     (early) records of a complex marine ecosystem of the early Cambrian communities. The property displays excellent quality of fossil     10     (preserve). It presents an exceptional record of the rapid diversification of life on Earth during the early Cambrian period.