1 . Today we see writing all around us. We would be _________ without writing.

The earliest people have no _________ of writing. However, writing _________ over thousands of years in different cultures around the world.

_________ writing existed, drawings were used as a form of _________. Rock drawings have been found in many places. One rock drawing in a mountainous area of New Mexico _________ a mountain goat standing up and a man riding a horse upside down. Experts believe that the drawing was a _________ to riders that the road was dangerous.

Modern forms of writing began when people _________ to use symbols, such as letters, words, to stand for _________. At first, they used __________ that stood for words. __________, a picture might show a hunter, the tools the hunter used, and a pair of deer the hunter killed. __________ developments took place in Mesopotamia, where people learned to use the same symbols to stand for different words. The writing used by ancient Egyptians also used __________ known as hieroglyphs (象形文字).

Even greater advances were __________ in China about 3500 years ago. The Chinese used tens of thousands of signs. With their systems, they could __________ new words. This, __________, was a different system. To make writing __________, things had to be simplified in some way. The __________ was the development of alphabets. The Phoenicians (腓尼基人) are __________ considered to have developed one of the first useful alphabets. The Phoenicians alphabet used about 20 or 30 signs. They were well on their way to at least one type of modern writing __________, as we know, the modern English alphabet uses 26 letters.

3 . During World War II, a young nurse, Irena Sendler, risked her life to save over 2,500 children. Back in 2008, she was ________with some of the children whom she had saved. They wanted to ________her face to face for what she did.

Irena was only 29 when the war began, and at the time, she was ________at the Welfare Department of the Warsaw municipality in Poland. This gave her the perfect ________to help Jewish people being targeted by the Nazis.

In the 1940s, the Nazis ________the country’s Jewish population to the Warsaw ghetto. The ghetto was meant to ________Jews from the general population, and inside, Jews had to live in ________conditions. By 1942, nearly everyone in the ghetto had been deported (驱逐) to concentration camps and killed.

When Irena heard that, she decided to ________Jewish people. Using her credentials(证件) as a social worker, she was able to get ________to go into the ghetto. Then, she ________to take as many children out of the ghetto as she could secretly, ________over 2,500 of them between 1935 and 1943.

To get the kids out, Irena and her team would ________them in ambulances, lead them through underground sewer(下水道) networks and passageways, or wheel them out in suitcases or boxes. She eventually became one of the main ________behind Zegota, a secret organization that called itself the Council for Aid to Jews.

The Gestapo(盖世太保) ________what Irena was doing in 1943, and when she learned they were ________her, she wrote the names of the rescued children on cigarette papers, put them into two glass bottles and ________them in a friend’s garden. After the war, these bottles were dug up so that the children could be reunited with their families. ________, most of the families died in concentration camps, so many of the kids ________saw their loved ones again.

The Gestapo ________Irena and wanted to kill her, but finally she was saved by Zegota.

Irena received plenty of ________for her bravery, including the Gold Cross of Merit. Though she died later, we continue to honor her memory to this day.