1 . Breath of Life

As Norwood drove through St. Petersburg, Florida, the laughter from the four teenage girls inside her car ______gave way to screams. They were hit by another car and ______ into a tree.

Then smoke ______ from the car. A bystander shouted, “It's about to ______! Get out!” Norwood immediately crawled out. Along with two of her friends, who'd also managed to ______ themselves, she ran for her ______.

But halfway down the street, she realized that her best friend, Simmons, wasn't with them. Norwood ran back and found Simmons stuck in the back ______. “She wasn't ______,” Norwood told Inside Edition. She ______open the back door and pulled her friend out. She dragged Simmons a few feet to safety and laid her on the ______. “I checked her pulse and put my ______ against her chest.” No sign of life. “That’s when I started CPR (心肺复苏术).”

______ on the lawn and looking down at her dying friend, Norwood started ______ Simmons's chest. She breathed into her friend's mouth in hopes of filling her lungs with the ______ of life. Fortunately, Simmons began coughing and breathing for air.

Soon, paramedics (医务人员) arrived and rushed Simmons to hospital. When she heard how Norwood had saved her life, “I wasn't ______,” Simmons said. “She always backs me up.”

Yours,

Li Hua

5 . Last week, my friends and I got together to eat delicious Asian chicken wings in our college town in the evening. We hadn’t _________ each other for a long time, so it was good having a _________ and sharing summer plans with each other.

Such _________, however, does not allow for deep conversations, especially if someone is uncomfortable when_________ personal troubles in a large crowd. After _________, I prepared to go but I _________ that my friend, Jack, was uncertain about what to do. He didn’t _________ to leave as if he needed our _________ with him at that time.

During dinner, he had also said that his second year at college was _________ difficult, so I asked him about his __________ again. This time the flood gates of feelings __________, and he shared with us problems of mental (精神的) health that he had been __________ throughout the year with his studies and his nervous __________ with his classmates.

My best friend said he was ready to __________, but I asked my friend if he could stay and __________ to Jack with me. We spent another 30 minutes listening to Jack’s story of __________ : mental health, pressure, worry and sadness.

After our talk, Jack sent both of us __________ on his mobile phone later that night. In the text messages, he expressed his thanks for our spending time with him and lending a(n) __________. This experience showed me that __________ a friend doesn’t mean giving him a(n) __________ gift. Time to listen and care may sometimes be the best gift of all that is not about money.

At the end of the class, Mr. Smith announced our assignment for the next Monday was to talk about someone we were grateful to instead of a book report. Upon hearing it, I couldn’t help complaining to Mareya that I was so nervous about having to talk in front of the whole class.

“ Arizona ,you’ve been in at least three plays ,” Mareya pointed out.“ If you don’ t get stage fright in front of those big audiences, why are you bothered by a few kids in our class ?”

It was true, but in a play you were part of a group. I shook my head. Plus, there were so many people I was grateful to. There was no way I could possibly pick just one. Plus, even if I picked one I’ d have no idea what to say. Plus, even if I figured out what to say, I was a million- percent positive I’ d mess up if I tried to say it out loud! I’ d be standing there with everyone staring at me, waiting for words to come out of my mouth.“ Oh , my goodness !” I pulled my sweatshirt hood ( 兜 帽 ) over my face, put my hands over my ears and said,“ I don’t want to talk about it !”

But one thing about really good friends who knew you really well was that they didn’ t always do exactly what you asked them to. Mareya could be pretty pushy talking of being helpful. She scribbled(潦草地写) something on a piece of paper , lifted my hood, and smiled. She’ d drawn a funny elephant (named Franky) with the word BREATHE coming out of its trunk .

“ This is Franky, the ‘everything is going to be all right’ elephant ” Mareya giggled. She held the picture up to her ear and asked, “What’ s that you say, Franky? You think my friend Arizona should come over to my house this weekend so we can work on our talks together?”

Paragraph 1. And that was exactly what happened.

Paragraph 2 .On Monday morning, however, I decided to talk about Mareya.

7 . Hundreds of friends on Facebook can’t replace a handful of close friends in real life, a study has found. In a recent study, researchers discovered that people with only a few friends were at least as happy as those with far more if many of theirs were online.

Social media, the researchers said, has encouraged younger people to have larger but more impersonal networks of “friends”. But instead of trying to amass friends, they added, a better cure for loneliness might be spending time with those you’re closest to.

Scientists from the University of Leeds did their study using data from two online surveys on 1,496 people by a non-profit research organization. People taking part in the study showed their ages, the make-up of their social networks, how often they had different types of social interactions, and their own feelings of well-being. They included details of how often and how they interacted (交流) with families or neighbors, and whether they included people who provided services to them in their networks.

The number of close friends someone had appeared to be the only thing which influenced how satisfied they were with their social life.

“Loneliness has less to do with the number of friends you have, and more to do with how you feel about your friends,” said Dr Wändi Bruine de Bruin. Actually, it's often the younger adults who admit to having a bad opinion of their friends.

If you feel lonely, it may be more helpful to make a positive connection with a friend than to try and seek out new people to meet.