1 . After a two-hour flight from Shanghai and an hour’s drive, I reached my destination: Jielingkou Village in Qinhuangdao City of Hebei Province, China. The tiny and ________ village is home to Shanhai Pass, where the Great Wall finally dives into the sea. During the Ming Dynasty (1368~1644), Jielingkou Village was considered an extremely important part of the Great Wall. But it slowly fell out of ________ and into disrepair—in modern China.

In 2018, an anti-poverty project began in the village, with the ________ of not only fixing the place up, but also ________ the living standards of the 200 people still living there. One of the ________ was to change all of the old homes into modern guesthouses. “This will allow city folks to enjoy the Great Wall in comfort,” said Ge, who was ________ the project.

But gaining the locals’ ________ took a lot of effort at the beginning. “Just two years ago, they weren’t ________ about the project at all,” Ge told me. “Seeing that they had to ________ water from a faraway well every day, we decided to build a water system that would send water to their homes. It’s one of the first, ________ we have made. It really ________ . Now some of those who were strongly against our project are now our greatest ________ .”

Ge said he hopes that as conditions are ________ becoming better in Jielingkou, some of the younger members of the village who left to seek opportunity in the cities will come back. “Already two university graduates who grew up in the village have returned to ________ the guesthouses. I hope more will be ________ by the potentials here soon.”

2 . At the start of every vacation, many parents spend their time wondering: What will the children do? When I was a child in the 1950s, the answer was easy. The children would play. We played feely with other children, in our own chosen ways, away from adults. When we got bored, we found ways to overcome it. We took up _________, took risks, sometimes hurt ourselves, got into trouble, and _________ how to get out of it.

During such play, we acquired knowledge and skills that couldn’t be taught to us in school. We learned how to take _________, make our own decisions, solve our own problems, get along with peers as equals, experience fear and then find ways to manage it, experience anger and then find ways to overcome it. We also discovered our interests, _________ them, and became skilled at them—interests that for many of us later became _________.

Over the past 60 years, however, we’ve seen a huge _________ in children’s freedom and opportunity to play on their own. Over this same period, we’ve also seen a dramatic increase in the rates of _________ and anxiety disorders among young people- five to eight times what they were in the 1950s.

Our children love to play in moderately _________ ways. Through such play, they acquire the physical, social and emotional capacities required for healthy development. They learn to get along with one another by playing socially, and they learn to deal with emergencies by playing in ways that involve risk.

Why is such play so _________? It can cause injury, so why hasn’t natural selection __________ the inner desire for it? We have some clues from laboratory experiments.

Researchers have found that when young rats or monkeys are deprived (剥夺) of play during critical periods in their development, the animals grow up as emotional cripples (跛者). They are __________ disabled when placed in new, slightly frightening environments to which normally raised animals would __________. They repeated between incapacitating fear and inappropriate aggression when placed with __________ peers. So it is no surprise to me that play-deprived human children grow up insufficient in the social and emotional skills required to deal well with life’s inevitable stressors (应激源). They may also grow up __________ the abilities to think creatively, take initiative, and assume responsibility.

We have deprived children of free, risky play, probably for their own good. In the process we have denied them the opportunity to learn how to be __________ by playing in risky ways.

Our children need more freedom, not more adult control.

3 . The future has arrived at a dairy farm(乳牛场). It is _______ time at Woodbourne Creamery in Mt. Airy, Maryland. The cows are standing in line for a _______ at the robot.

The farm _______ John Fendrick. He watches the _______ of the animals by looking at a computer screen. That is all he has to do. The robot does all the work. It uses a laser(激光) to find each teat —— the place on the cow where the milk comes out. The robot then cleans the teat and _______ a milking tube to it.

When the velocity of milk coming out of the cow slows, the machine knows to _______, and sends the cow on its way.

Milking robots are becoming _______ among dairy farmers in the United States, Europe and Australia. John Fendrick says the robots have _______ life on a dairy farm. “You are given your _______back.”

Most dairy farmers must milk their cows two times a day, early in the morning and late at night. But Mr. Fendrick’s cows do not follow such a ________. They stay in the field ________ they want to be milked by the robot.

The cow milking robot is not low-cost technology. Mr Fendrick paid more than $150,000 for it.________ he notes, paying someone to milk the cows is also ________. “However, above all, I don’t have to be the person who’s always ________ to milk. Our cows are able to ________ without us ——to us, it’s well worth the money.”

4 . Imagine, it's Saturday at a busy shopping centre. People are doing all the things you'd _________ expect—chatting on phones, looking in shop windows and so on. Then suddenly, the _________ in front of you stop moving. They're completely _________, frozen in the middle of whatever they were doing. You look around you. There are _________ of these people—perhaps a hundred or so. Other shoppers look just as _________ as you are. Several minutes go by and the frozen shoppers _________ in exactly the same positions. Then as suddenly as they _________, they begin moving again, as if nothing had happened. You've _________ experienced a flash mob!

The definition of a flash mob is “a group of people who meet suddenly in a _________ place, perform an unusual act for a brief __________, then quickly leave”. An American, Bill Wasik,__________ the idea. One afternoon, he emailed 60 friends,__________ them to meet at a small local shop at exactly 7:24 pm. They shouldn't __________ anything to the assistants or each other. They just had to browse (随意观看) for __________ seven minutes and then leave. It would have been the __________ of world's first flash mob. However, someone had warned the police and when Bill and his friends arrived, they were __________.

Bill wasn't __________ by this failure and started planning the next event. Over the next three months, he __________ seven successful flash mobs in shops, hotels, parks and stations all around New York. Before long, stories and videos of these __________ appeared online. Wasik's idea led to creative types of flash mobs everywhere. The flash mob had become part of modern urban culture and the phrase was even __________ to the Oxford English Dictionary.

5 . Is loyalty in the workplace dead?

Just recently, Lynda Gratton, a workplace expert, proclaimed that it was. In The Financial Times, she said that it had been “killed off through _________ contracts, outsourcing, automation and multiple careers.”

It’s sad if this good virtue is now out of place in the business world. But the situation may be more _________. Depending on how you _________ it, loyalty may not be dead, but is just playing out differently.

Fifty years ago, an employee could stay at the same company for decades, said Tammy Erickson, an author and work-force consultant. Many were _________ longtime employment along with health care and a pension.

Now many companies cannot or will not hold up their end of the bargain, so why should the employees hold up theirs? Given the opportunity, they’ll take their skills and their portable retirement accounts elsewhere. These days, Ms. Gratton writes, _________ is more important than loyalty: “Loyalty is about the future - trust is about the present.”

Ms. Erickson says that the quid pro quo (交换物，报酬) of modern employment is more likely to be: As long as I work for you, I promise to have the relevant skills and _________ fully in my work; in return you’ll pay me _________, but I don’t expect you to care for me when I’m 110.

For some baby boomers, this _________ has been hard to accept. Many started their careers _________ that they would be rewarded based on tenure (任职).

A longtime employee who is also productive and motivated is of enormous value, said Cathy Benko, chief talent officer at Deloitte. On the other hand, she said, “You can be with a company a long time and not be highly committed.”

Ms. Benko has seen her company shift its ____________ to employees’ level of engagement - or “the level at which people are motivated to deliver their best work” - rather than length of tenure.

Then there are the effects of the recent recession. Many people - if they haven’t been ____________- have stayed in jobs because they feel they have no choice. Employers may need to prepare for disruptions and turnover when the job market improves.

If the pendulum(摇摆不定的事态或局面) shifts, how will businesses persuade their best employees to stay? ____________ may do the trick, but not always. Especially with younger people, “you’re not going to buy extra loyalty with extra money,” Ms. Erickson said. ____________, employers need to make jobs more challenging and give workers more creative space, she said.

Loyalty may not be what it once was, but most companies will still be better off with at least a core of people who stay with them across decades.

If loyalty is seen as a ____________ to keep workers of all ages fulfilled, productive and involved, it can continue to be cultivated in the workplace - to the ____________ of both employer and employee.

6 . From Oxford’s quads to Harvard Yard and many a steel and glass palace of higher education in between, exams are given way to holidays. As students consider life after graduation, universities are _______ questions about their own future. The higher education model of lecturing, cramming and examination has barely _______ for centuries. Now, three disruptive waves are threatening to shake established ways of teaching and learning.

On one front, a funding _______ has created a shortage of fund that the universities brightest brains are struggling to solve. Institutions’ costs are rising, _______ pricey investments in technology, teachers’ salaries and increasing administrative costs. That comes as governments conclude that they can no longer afford to subsidize universities as _______ as they used to. American colleges, in particular, are under pressure: some analysts predict mass bankruptcies within two decades.

At the same time, a(n) _______ revolution is challenging higher education’s business model. A(n) _______ in online learning, much of it free, means that the knowledge once a lucky few had access to has been released to anyone with a smartphone or laptop. These _______ and technological disruptions coincide with a third great change: whereas universities used to educate only a tiny elite, they are now _______ training and retraining workers throughout their careers. How will they ________ this storm—and what will emerge in their place if they don’t?

The universities least likely to lose out to online competitors are elite institutions with established reputations and low student-to-tutor ratios. That is ________ news for the Ivy League, which offer networking opportunities to students alongside a degree. Those colleges might profit from expanding the ratio of online learning to classroom teaching, lowering their costs while still offering the prize of a college education conducted partly on campus.

The most vulnerable, according to Jim Lerman of Kean University in New Jersey, are the “middle-tier institutions, which produce America's teachers, middle managers and administrators.” They could be ________ in greater part by online courses, he suggests. So might weaker community colleges, although those which cultivate connections to local employers might yet prove resilient (有弹力的).

Since the first wave of massive online courses launched in 2012, an opposition has focused on their ________ and commercial uncertainties. Yet if critics think they are immune to the march of the MOOC, they are almost certainly wrong. Whereas online courses can quickly________ their content and delivery mechanisms, universities are up against serious cost and efficiency problems, with little changes of taking more from the public purse.

Without the personal touch, higher education could become “an icebound, petrified (石化的) cast-iron university.” That is what the new wave of high-tech courses should not become. But as a(n) ________ to an overstretched, expensive model of higher education, they are more likely to prosper than fade.

8 . Teens around the world use social media a lot. But is this a good thing? While you can say nice and _______ things on the Internet, you could also say mean and hurtful things too. When someone says something mean or hurtful _______, it's called cyberbullying (网络欺凌) .

When people say mean things to us, we feel _______, depressed and powerless. These are just some of the possible _______ effects that could affect teens who are cyberbullied. When people are often sad or depressed, they could begin to _______ suicide (自杀) . They think that their lives aren't worth anything or that their lives are too _______ to handle. It's difficult to believe that one person saying mean or cruel things to another person could make him think about _______ himself, but it's true and it does happen. Now, you could _______ everything that was said. You could say that teens can just turn off their computers or their phones. They can just block (屏蔽) the person who _______ them or just simply ignore him. __________ people, especially teens, love going on the Internet and talking to people. It's part of their daily lives. It's __________ to tell teens to turn them all off. In addition, __________ they block someone, the person can just __________ coming back on a different account or as someone else. Also if it's a publicly posted video, picture or message, everyone can see it and __________ report or share it. It's impossible to block everyone.

And finally no one can just __________ so many mean words that are being said to them.

Overall, cyberbullying is a terrible thing that people do. There should be laws to protect people from cyberbullying.