1 . We're told that writing is dying. Typing on keyboards and screens   _______ written communication today. Learning cursive(草书)，joined-up handwriting was once _______ in schools. But now, not so much. Countries such as Finland have dropped joined-up handwriting lessons in schools _______ typing courses. And in the U. S. , the requirement to learn cursive has been left out of core standards since 2013. A few U. S. states still place value on formative cursive education, such as Arizona, but they're not the _______•

Some experts point out that writing lessons can have indirect   _______. Anne Trubek, author of The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting, argues that such lessons can reinforce a skill called automaticity. That's when you've perfected a task, and can do it almost without thinking, _______ you extra mental bandwidth to think about or do other things while you're doing the task. In this sense, Trubek likens handwriting to _______.

"Once you have driven for a while, you don't _______ think ' Step on gas now' [or]   Turn the steering wheel a bit'，'‘ she explains. "You just do it. That's what we want children to _______ when learning to write. You and I don't think ' now make a loop going up for the T ' —or ' now look for the letter ' r' on the keyboard. "Trubek has written many essays and books on handwriting, and she doesn't believe it will die out for a very long time, "if ever". But she believes students are learning automaticity faster with keyboards than with handwriting: students are learning how to type without looking at the keys at   __________ages, and to type faster than they could write, granting them extra time to think about word choice or sentence structure. In a piece penned (if you'll pardon the expression) for the New York Times last year, Trubek argued that due to the improved automaticity of keyboards, today's children may well become better communicators in text as __________ takes up less of their education. This is a(n) __________ that has attracted both criticism and support.

She explains that two of the most common arguments she hears from detractors regarding the decline of handwriting is that not __________ it will result in a “loss of historyand a   loss of persona] touch ".

On the former she __________that 95% of handwritten manuscripts can't be read by the average person anyway—"that's why we have paleographers," she explains, paleography being the study of ancient styles of writing一while the latter refers to the warm __________we give to handwritten personal notes, such as thank-you cards. Some educators seem to agree, at least to an extent.

2 . Next week, as millions of families gather for their Thanksgiving feasts (大餐), many other Americans will go without. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, more than 12 million households _________ enough food for everyone in their family at some time during the year — including _________.

Hunger is surprisingly widespread in our country — one of the world’s wealthiest — yet the government estimates that we waste almost 100 billion pounds of food each year, more than one-quarter of our total supply.

Reducing this improper distribution of _________ is a goal of America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization. Last year, it _________ nearly 2 billion pounds of food to more than 23 million people in need.

America’s Second Harvest is a network of 214 inter-connected food banks and other organizations that _________ food from growers, processors, grocery stores and restaurants. _________, the network distributes food to some 50,000 soup kitchens (施食处), homeless _________ and old people’s centers in every county of every state.

A great deal of work is involved in distributing tons of food from thousands of _________ to thousands of small, non-profit organizations. Until a few years ago, America’s Second Harvest lacked any _________ way to manage their inventory (存货). Without accurate and timely information, soup kitchens were sometimes empty while food was left to __________ in loading places.

In 2000, America’s Second Harvest began to use a new inventory and financial-management system — Ceres. It is a __________ designed specifically for hunger-relief operations. It is used by more than 100 America’s Second Harvest organizations to __________ food from donation to distribution.

Ceres has helped __________ the spoiling of food and improve distribution. An evaluation found that the software streamlined (精简) food banks’ operations by 23 percent in the first year alone.

With more accurate and timely reports, Ceres saves time, frees staff members to focus on finding new donors, and __________ more efficient use of donations.

Hunger in America remains a(n) __________ social problem. Technology alone cannot solve it. But in the hands of organizations such as America’s Second Harvest, it is a powerful tool that is helping to make a difference — and helping more Americans to join in the feast.

3 . How Facebook Programmed Our Relatives

Three years ago, on his birthday, a law professor watched his e-mail inbox as usual. But it was filled with Facebook notifications (通告) ________ that friends had posted messages on his wall. The messages made him sad. The blocked inbox was ________, but what really upset him was having disclosed his birth date to Facebook in the first place. It’s not necessary for social networking to comply with (遵守) privacy laws, as some people ________ believe. He hadn’t paid much attention when he signed up—as with most electronic contracts, there was no room for negotiation about terms. He ________ Facebook’s instructions, entered the data and clicked a button.

A few days later, the law professor decided to change the birth date on his Facebook profile to ________ the same situation next year. But when the fake date rolled around, his inbox again was flooded with Facebook notifications. Two of the messages were from close relatives, one of whom he had spoken with on the phone on his actual birthday! How could she not realize that the date was ________?

Our hypothesis (假设): she’d been programmed!

That law professor was one of us, and it confirmed his ________ that most people respond ________ to Facebook’s prompts (提示) to provide information or contact a friend without really thinking much about it. That’s because digital networked technologies are engineering humans to behave like simple stimulus-response machines.

Social media plays a tremendous role in modern life. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have become the primary ways of keeping in touch with friends, family, classmates and colleagues. To date, ________, researchers have not fully explored the degree to which these platforms are literally programming human responses. Social media platforms encode a range of social ________: Facebook notifies us when it is time to wish our friends a happy birthday; LinkedIn prompts us to congratulate contacts on their work anniversaries. As a result, social interactions are often ________ to the click of a button.

Facebook may increase the number of people to whom we wish a happy birthday with a few clicks of a button; it’s not as if we remember the birth dates of that high school classmate or distant cousin. But if it becomes ________ behavior, is it even meaningful? As for people who aren’t on Facebook or don’t post their birth dates publicly, the ________ they exact over their data comes at a cost: they don’t receive scores of well-wishes from far-flung contacts. ________, it’s still nice to be thought of, even if just once a year.

Digital platforms are ________ what it means to be human, and we can’t rely on the platforms to police or research ourselves. In the meantime, when your birthday rolls around, enjoy the warm feelings from friends sending their regards—but remember that they don’t know when your birthday really is any more than you do theirs.

4 . Each stage of life has different major demands mainly because our needs change. As children, a period of deep uncertainty and sensitivity,___ and   family   are   the   top   needs although we may not think of them in those terms. As teenagers, we are__the waters of adult life, preparing ourselves for the exciting unknown and as young adults, we search for a__. The drive to fulfill each stage is so strong that sometimes we have to hold the breath to___.

At each stage, although everyone may___in dreams, we will all try to   take hold of the means to achieve our particular dreams. Some will be driven with   almost   tunnel vision,   others take a(n)____attitude to getting there. Anyway,   without dreams it is   hard to direct   life. If   you   are   fortunate   enough   to   achieve   your   current   dreams,   you   can   move   forward   for___desires and prepare yourself for a new conquest.

For each period of life,   the   needs are   decided by that stage,   and as we grow older, whether we like it or not, we gain___, which, on the basis of former facts and information,   permits us to see a broader view if we are wise enough to take on board what is there. As we mature,   the sharpness of the___of youth, the black and white approach to life, will be tempered by what is possible, kind, just and fair.   Ageing helps us to grow if we allow it.   So often   we___that process, holding on tightly to   rooted beliefs   which do not do us   any favour, yet our needs change and in result we will___be different.

Physically,   even when we stay fit and able, the body cannot deliver in quite the   same way as youth. This comes as a(n)___to most of us who start life in the belief that we are unbeatable and will live forever. Again, coming to terms with this fact helps us to___anxiety, and finally realize the unexpected benefits which come along with___face and slowed body.   What was important when we were young can be seen now in a new light, and a different list of importance emerges. In the end, extreme age can be as demanding and sensitive as babyhood, so while ones need changes through life, it seems to come___.

5 . Technological life is and will be a series of upgrades and the rate of advancement is increasing. If we are honest, we must admit that one aspect of the ______ upgrades and eternal becoming of the technium (技术元素) is to make holes in our heart. One day not too long ago we（all of us）decided that we could not live another day ______ we had a smart phone; a dozen years earlier this need would have ______ us. Now we get angry if the network is slow, but before, when we were ______ , we had no thoughts of the network at all. We keep inventing new things that make new ______ , new holes that must be filled.

Some people are furious that our hearts are pierced (刺穿) ______ by the things we make. They see this ever-neediness as a devaluing of human nobility, the source of our ______ discontent. I agree that technology is the source. The momentum of technologies pushes us to chase the ______ , which are always disappearing beneath the arrival of the next newer thing, so satisfaction continues to retreat from our ______ .

But I celebrate the never-ending discontent that technology brings. We are different from our animal ancestors in that we are not ______ to merely survive, but have been incredibly busy ______ new itches that we have to scratch, new desires we've never had before. This is the trigger for our ingenuity and growth.

We cannot expand our self, and our collective self, ______ making holes in our heart. We are ______ our boundaries and widening the small container that holds our identity. It can be painful. Of course, there will be rips and tears. Late-night infomercials (信息广告) and endless web pages of about-to-be-out-of-date gizmos(新玩意儿)are hardly uplifting techniques, and the path to our ______ is very boring, and everyday. When we imagine a better future, we should factor in this constant ______ .

6 . This is Warsaw, where lunch is usually a slab of meat with a side order of sausage. But at Krowarzywa — which means “cow alive” and _______ the word warzywa, meaning vegetables — no animals were harmed in the making of food. The bestselling “vegan pastrami” is made of seitan, a wheat-based meat _______.

Warsaw has almost 50 vegan restaurants. That does not mean it has all that many vegans. Kassia, a 20-something professional in the queue, says she has no ethical _______ to eating meat. She comes to Krowarzywa because she likes the food. Kornel Kisala, the head chef, thinks that most of Krowarzywa’s clients eat meat, but it does not worry him. “Animals don’t _______ whether you eat a vegan burger because it is fashionable or because it is tasty.” According to the survey, 60% of people _______ say they plan to cut back on meat this year. Eating vegetarian and vegan meals now and then is one of the ways some choose to do so.

Two years ago Eric Schmidt, a Silicon Valley figure, called plant-based meat substitutes the world’s most important future technology, he foresaw them improving people’s health, reducing environmental degradation and making food more _______ for the poor. The founder of the first vegan society said in 1944 that “In time people will view with disgust the idea that men once fed on the products of animals’ bodies.” Ever since the number of people _______ his hope has been increasing. Perhaps their time is coming at last.

If so, it is a _______ coming. Meat consumption worldwide has been _______ consistently by almost 3% a year since 1960, mostly because people get richer. In the early 1970s the average Chinese person, __________, ate 14 kg (31lb) of meat a year. Now they eat 55 kg a year.

In America, Nielsen found in 2017 that 3% of the population called themselves vegans and 6% vegetarians(people who avoid meat, but eat eggs and/or dairy products). But more detailed research by Faunalytics puts the numbers at just 0.5% for vegans and 3. 4% for vegetarians. Fully a quarter of 25-to 34-year-olds in America claim to be either vegan or vegetarian, __________ studies by Faunalyties find the median age of American vegans to be 42. It seems that a fair amount of ambitious self-discipline, terminological inexactitude (术语的不准确) or simple hypocrisy (伪善) is at play.

Overall, though, it seems __________ to say that the number of people sometimes or regularly choosing to eat vegan food is growing much faster than the growth in people deeply __________ to a meat-free life. Patrice Bula, a vice president at Nestle, says that a __________ proportion of the people buying his company’s vegan meals are true vegetarians or vegans. People in this larger group are often called “flexible vegetarians”, who __________ back and forth between omnivorous (杂食的) and vegetable diets. The true vegan trend lies in casual, part time veganism.

7 . 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 ___may be urged 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.

8 . More people are travelling than ever before, and lower harriers to entry and falling costs means they are doing so for _______ periods.

The rise of “city breaks” --48-hour bursts of foreign cultures, easier on the pocket and annual leave balance has increased tourist numbers, but not their _______ spread. The same attractions have been used to market cities such as Paris, Barcelona and Venice for decades, and visitors use the same infrastructure as residents to reach them. “Too many people do the same thing at the exact same time,” says Font. “For _______, the city no longer belongs to them.”

This starts with marketing, says Font, who notes that Amsterdam has started advising visitors to seek _______ outside of the city centre on its official website. “That takes some balls, really to do that. But only so many people will look at the website, and it means they can say to their residents they’re doing all they can to ease congestion.”

But it also _______ a better way, it is called “detourism”: sustainable travel tips an _______ itineraries for exploring an authentic Venice, off the paths beaten by the 28 million visitors who flock there each year.

A greater variety of _______ for prospective visitors ------ ideas for what to do in off-peak seasons, for example, or outside of the city center ------ can have the effect of diverting them from already saturated landmarks, or _______ short breaks away in the first place. Longer stays _______ the pressure, says Font. If you go to Paris for two days, you’re going to go to the Eiffel Tower. “If you go for two weeks, you’re not going to go to the Eiffel Tower 14 times.”

Similarly, repeat visitors have a better sense of the __________, “We should be asking how we get tourists to __________, not how to get them to come for the first time. If they’re coming for the fifth time, it is much easier to integrate their behavior with ours.”

Local governments can foster this sustainable activity by giving preference to responsible operator and even high-paying consumers. Font says cities could stand to be more selective about the tourists they try to attract when the current metric for marketing success is how many there are, and how far they’ve come. “You’re thinking, ‘yeah but at what cost...’.”

He points to unpublished data from the Barcelona Tourist Board that prioritizes Japanese tourists for spending an average of €40 more per day than French tourist as a(n) __________ that fails to take into account their bigger carbon footprint. __________ tourists are also more likely to be repeat visitors that come at off-peak times, buy local produce, and __________ to less crowded parts of the city ------ all productive steps towards more __________ tourism, and more peaceful relations with residents.

9 . Microsoft Corp founder Bill Gates caught people’s eye in a recent interview, when he suggested that robots should be taxed in, order to help humans keep their jobs. Gates is only one of many people in the tech world who have worried about automation and its ________ to workers.

It’s easy to see why the tech world is ________. The rise of machine learning has increased the fear that ________ humans could simply become out of date--________, 3.5 million American truck drivers might soon find their jobs threatened by driverless trucks. Though in the past, technology usually complemented workers ________ replacing them, there’s no law of nature saying the technology of the future will work the same. A few economists even claim that cheap automation has already ________ income from workers to company owners.

Another ________ is that even if the mass of humanity ultimately does find new ways to add value by complementing new technology—to“race with the machines,”as economist Erik Brynjofsson puts it—this transition could take a long time and hurt a lot of people. As Bloomberg View’s Tyler Cowen has noted, wages in Britain fell for four decades at the start of the Industrial Revolution. More ________, we’ve seen very slow and painful adjustment to the impact of globalization. If the machine learning revolution hurts workers for 40 years before ultimately helping them, it might be worth it to ________ that revolution and give them time to adjust.

The main argument against taxing the robots is that it might hold back ________. Growth in rich   countries has slowed markedly in the past decade, suggesting that it’s getting harder and harder to find new ways of doing things. Stagnating productivity, combined with falling business investment, suggests that ________ of new technology is currently too slow rather than too fast—the biggest problem right now isn’t too many robots, it’s too few. Taxing new technology, however it’s done, could make that slowdown worse.

The problem with Gate’s basic proposal is that it’s very hard to tell the difference between new technology that ________ humans and new technology that replaces them. This is especially true over the long term. Power looms（织布机）replaced human weavers back in the Industrial Revolution. ________, people eventually became more productive, by learning to operate those looms. If taxes had slowed the development of power looms, the eventual improvements would have come later.

This is a powerful argument ________ the taxation of automation. Gates is right to say that we should start thinking ahead of time about how to use policy to mitigate（缓和）the unintended consequences of automation. But given the importance of sustaining innovation, we should look at ________ policies.

10 . Everyone in business has been told that success is all about attracting and retaining (留住) customers. It sounds simple and achievable. But,_______, words of wisdom are soon forgotten. Once companies have attracted customers they often_______the second half of the story. In the excitement of beating off the competition, negotiating prices, securing orders, and delivering the product, managers tend to become carried away. They forget what they regard as the boring side of business—_______that the customer remains a customer._______to concentrate on retaining as well as attracting customers costs business huge amounts of money annually. It has been estimated that the average company loses between 10 and 30 per cent of its customers every years. In constantly changing_______, this is not surprising. What is surprising is the fact that few companies have any idea how many customers they have lost.

Only now are organizations beginning to wake up to those lost opportunities and calculate the_______implications. Cutting down the number of customers a company loses can make a big_______in its performance. Research in the US found that a five per cent decrease in the number of defecting (流失的) customers led to_______increases of between 25 and 85 per cent.

In the US, Domino’s Pizza estimates that a regular customer is worth more than $5,000 over ten years. A customer who receives a poor quality product or service on their first visit and_______never returns, is losing the company thousands of dollars in__________profits (more if you consider how many people they are likely to tell about their bad experience).

The logic behind cultivating customer__________is impossible to deny. “In practice most companies’ marketing effort is focused on getting customers, with little attention paid to__________them”, says Adrian Payne of Cornfield University’ School of Management. “Research suggests that there is a close relationship between retaining customers and making profits.__________customers tend to buy more, are predictable and usually cost less to service than new customers. Furthermore, they tend to be less price__________, and may provide free word-of-mouth advertising. Retaining customers also makes it__________for competitors to enter a market or increase their share of a market.