1 . With smiling eyes, quick minds and good humor, Jia Ling seems like a natural crosstalk performer (相声演员).

Jia Ling was born _______ April 29th, 1982 in the city of Xiangyang, Hubei Province. Having studied acting _______ she was 11, Jia Ling entered the nation’s top drama college — The Central Academy of Drama at the age of 19, but she _______ to learn crosstalk there.

Jia Ling is not an overnight success. After graduation in 2003, she was living in a basement (地下室) that was just eight square _______ and without a bathroom. However, Feng Gong, who is one of the top crosstalk performers in China, opened the _______ to her success. He provided her with chances to perform. Jia Ling seized (抓住) the chances and worked hard to improve her skills.

As an excellent performer, the young lady first _______ the Spring Festival Gala in 2010. With her unique style and great sense of humor, Jia Ling _______ by many people. Since her crosstalk is unique, fashionable and attractive, she becomes _______. Besides _________ as a crosstalk performer, Jia Ling is also a talented actress. She has ______________ acted in several TV series. “My acting experience has given my crosstalk more ideas and creativity,” Jia Ling ______________.

Now, Jia Ling has become one of the top crosstalk performers in China. She is trying hard so that crosstalk can ____________ to more people. She has set up her own club called New Laughter Inn. There people can enjoy traditional or ____________ crosstalk performances. She hopes it can influence her generation and even the next generation and ____________ more and more people love crosstalk.

Jia Ling ____________ being a crosstalk performer and she says she is confident about the future of crosstalk because people will always want to laugh.

2 . Most artists have to wait decades for their talents to be recognized. Some, like Dutch painter Van Gogh, only achieve _______ after they die. But this is not the _______ for Andres Valencia. The 11-year-old boy has already _______ millions selling his contemporary paintings to art collectors.

Andres’ parents are art lovers and collectors. They began _______ Andres to modern paintings when he was just a kid. The young boy soon began _______ famous artworks with great accuracy. His father, Lupe, says, “When he was 4 or 5, my wife and I would _______ him paint and do sketches(素描), and we were really surprised at what he would do.”

By age six, the _______ artist was selling his watercolor paintings to family and friends for $20 a piece. Over time. Andres began creating large-scale paintings with a _______ of oil stick and oil and acrylic paints. His masterpieces were all _______ contemporary artists like Picasso.

Bernie Chase, a family friend and owner of an art gallery, recognized Andres’ __________ from the start. He bought the young boy’s artwork every time he __________ and even paid $5,000 for one. In 2022, the young boy held his first __________ at Chase’s gallery. The 35 paintings __________ were sold for between $50,000 and $125,000 each.

When not painting, Andres is a __________ fifth-grader with math homework. “My son is an artist, but he is a __________ first.” His mother said. “He is a child, not a celebrity.”

3 . Najma Hashi (also named Nujuum) is a respected female artist, whose paintings are winning a global following. But Nujuum is not your _________ next-generation rising star. Nujuum, 26, grew up in Somalia, where new artists, especially female ones, are _________ from pursuing art.

This young artist grew up in a _________ living environment, which she has _________ to watching a horror movie: war, drought, poverty and hunger. Since Nujuum was seven, _________ Nujuum went, she felt moved to paint. As a child, on her way home from school, she would sit by the _________ and draw pictures in the sand. “I was thinking of creating my own little world, getting away from the _________. Art has always been a form of _________ for me.” As she went through school, she drew a whole city on her bedroom wall using her school pencils.

However, Nujuum was _________ that art isn’t a respected profession in her country. “Art, __________, in the Somalian community is not a good thing to do,” she says. Her mother did not share her dreams, nor did her neighbors who considered them __________.

This __________ made her give up art for a while. However, she realized that she had a __________: “Either I continue drawing and painting and create a beautiful life or I stay unhappy for the rest of my life.” Finally, Nujuum turned her __________ in art into something she could make a living from.

She __________ opening a school one day for other talented local artists, enabling them to choose art as a career too.

4 . Beethoven was a great musician. One evening, young Beethoven was out for a walk. As he was passing a wooden house, he ________ someone inside practicing one piece of his music. He stopped to listen, and a girl said that she wished she could hear a real ________ play it.

Beethoven went into the house, ________ the young lady at the piano was blind. A young man stood beside her. Beethoven asked ________, “Would you mind me playing for you?” ________ they didn’t know who the stranger was, the lady and the man said yes happily. Beethoven sat at the piano and began to play. He played so well that all of them lost themselves in the beautiful music. Even when the lonely candle in the room ________ and the moon shone brightly through the window, he was ________ playing!

When Beethoven left the house, the moon seemed even ________ in the night sky. He was deeply ________ by the young lady’s love for his music and was greatly encouraged by the beautiful night. He rushed back home ________ and spent the whole night writing down the music that he had played at the blind girl’s house.

This is a story of “Moonlight Sonata”, one of the classics in the history of music.

5 . About the year 1900, a small, dark-haired boy was often seen waiting outside the back entrances of theatres in London. His name was Charlie Chaplin. He looked thin and hungry but his blue eyes were determined. He was hoping to get work in show business(娱乐界).

When Chaplin couldn’t get_________, he wandered about the city_________. He found food and shelter(栖身之处)_________he could. Sometimes he was sent away to a home for children who had no parents. He was cold and miserable there and the children were beaten for the_________fault.

By the time he was thirty, Charlie had been the greatest, best-known and best-loved_________in the world. Chaplin’s films have_________a large audience in various countries. Anyone who visited the cinema_________must have seen some of Charlie Chaplin’s funny films. People everywhere who have seen them would_________until tears run down their faces. Even people who don’t understand English can enjoy Chaplin’s films because they are mostly_________. It isn’t what he says that makes people laugh. It depends upon little____________that mean the same thing to people all over the world.

Having lived in America for 40 years, Chaplin____________to Switzerland. There he died on Christmas Day of 1977. He once described himself____________a citizen of the world, rather than of any____________country.

He once wrote, “You have to believe in yourself. That’s the____________of success. Even when I was in the children’s home, when I was wandering about the streets trying to find enough food to____________to keep alive, I still thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world.”

6 . Confucius was a great philosopher, educationalist as well as the founder of Confucianism. He was born in 551 BC in Shandong province of China. His beliefs _______ the importance of having a good moral (道德的) character and personal ethics (伦理). They have a great _______ on the majority of Chinese culture.

Confucius has left many _______ sayings, which are still remembered and followed _______. For example, his quotes, “He who learns but does not think is lost” “He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger”, are well known to all.

Although Confucius is _______ for his great thoughts, did you know that he is also known for his sense of _______? There is evidence that he was very humorous. His _______ were very amusing and uplifting and he often used humor to make his students _______ and take interest in the teachings.

One time Confucius was _______ along with his students when they came across a man who was ________ in the river. His students were hesitating but Confucius jumped into the river without ________ and saved the man in time. Then, he ________ to his students and joked, “I suppose none of you ________ that he was wearing a valuable jade ring!”

This story serves as a reminder that even the most serious figures in history ________ their share of lighthearted moments. It is possible that wisdom and humor both ________ hand in hand with joy!

7 . Steve Jobs made technology _________. The co-founder of Apple died at the age of fifty-six. He had _________ for years against cancer. Mourners gathered outside his house in Palo Alto, California, and Apple stores around the world.

Tim Bajarin, president of a high-tech research and consulting company, said “If you actually look at a tech leader, they’re really happy _________ they have one hit in their life. Steve Jobs has the Apple Ⅱ, the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad and Pixar.”

Steve Jobs was a college dropout. He was adopted by a machinist and his wife, an accountant. They supported his early _________ in electronics.

He and his friend Steve Wozniak started Apple Computer-now just called Apple-in 1976. They stayed at the company until 1985, _________ Steve Wozniak returned to college and Steve Jobs left the company _________ a dispute (分歧) with the chief executive.

Steve Jobs then _________ his own company, called NeXT Computer. He rejoined Apple in 1997 after it bought NeXT. He helped remake Apple from a business that was in bad shape then to one of the most _________ companies in the world today.

Steve Wozniak, speaking on CNN, _________ his longtime friend as a “great visionary and leader” and a “marketing genius”.

The former president Obama said in a statement, “By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he __________ the spirit of American ingenuity (独创性). By making computers __________ and putting the Internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only __________, but intuitive and fun.”

David Carroll is a professor at Parsons School of Design in New York City. He says Steve Jobs not only revolutionized technology, he also revolutionized American __________. “The fact that he was able to redesign American commerce top to bottom and across is really __________. He probably will be considered an industrial giant on the scale of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, so one of the Great of all time.” David Carroll said.

Steve Jobs stepped down as Apple’s chief executive in August because of his health. He died a day after the company released a new iPhone version that __________ limited excitement.

8 . Pablo Ruiz Picasso’s family moved to Barcelona in the autumn of 1895, and Pablo entered the local art academy, where his father had assumed his last post as professor of drawing. The family hoped that their son would achieve success as an academic _____ , and in 1897 his eventual _____ in Spain seemed assured; in that year his painting Science and Charity, for which his father modelled for the doctor, was _____ an honourable mention in Madrid at the Fine Arts Exhibition.

The Spanish capital was the _____ next stop for the young artist intent on gaining recognition and _____ family expectations. Pablo duly set off for Madrid in the autumn of 1897 and entered the Royal Academy of San Fernando. But finding the teaching there _____ , he increasingly spent his time recording life around him, in the cafes, on the streets, and in the Prado, where he discovered Spanish painting. Works by those and other _____ would capture Picasso’s imagination at different times during his long career.

Picasso fell _____ in the spring of 1898 and spent most of the _____ year convalescing(逐步康复) in the Catalan village of Horta de Ebro in the company of his Barcelona friend Manuel Pallares. When Picasso ______ Barcelona in early 1899, he was a changed man: he had put on weight; he had learned to live on his own in the open countryside; he spoke ______ ; and, most importantly, he had made the decision to break with his art-school training and to reject his family’s plans for his future. He even began to show a ______ preference for his mother’s surname, and more often than not he signed his works P. R. Picasso; by late 1901 he had dropped the Ruiz altogether.

In Barcelona Picasso moved among a circle of Catalan artists and writers whose eyes were turned ______ Paris. Those were his friends at the café Els Quatre Gats (“The Four Cats”, styled after the Chat Noir (“Black Cat”) in Paris), where Picasso had his first Barcelona exhibition in February 1900, and they were the ______ of more than 50 portraits in the show. In addition, there was a dark, moody “modernista” painting, Last Moments (later painted over), showing the visit of a ______ to the bedside of a dying woman, a work that was accepted for the Spanish section of the Exposition Universelle in Paris in that year. Eager to see his own work in place and to experience Paris firsthand, Picasso set off in the company of his studio mate Carles Casagemas (Portrait of Carles Casagemas, 1899) to conquer, if not Paris, at least a corner of Montmartre.

9 . Recently, an article written by China’s first ______ , Yang Liwei, describing his one day in space, aroused numerous discussions on social media platforms, with many marveling at the country’s ______ advancement in space technology.

Entitled “One Day in Space”, Yang’s article was recently included in the seventh-grade textbook in Chinese middle schools, and it was ______ on Sina Weibo on Saturday, drawing tens of thousands of views within the first few hours. Many Weibo users were astonished at Yang’s ______ . “As the first person to go into space and live through so many unknowns, he must have a great will,” said one netizen.

Yang was 38 when he became the first Chinese person to go into space on the Shenzhou V, on October 15, 2003, making China the third country—after the US and Russia—to ______ manned space capabilities.

In his article, Yang ______ several breathtaking moments when he thought he would not make it back alive. “ ______ the rocket lifted to a height about 30-40 kilometers above the ground, I felt it begin to vibrate violently, and it was extremely ______ ,” he said. Vibrations in the spacecraft below 10 Hz can damage the internal organs, and even threaten a person’s life, Yang explained.

The near-deadly moment lasted for 26 seconds. When it was finally over, Yang felt like he had been reborn. When ground control finally saw Yang blink his eyes through the surveillance camera, his colleagues ______ crying, “He’s blinking! Yang is alive!”

In the article, Yang also described “ ______ knocking sounds” from outside the craft. He still does not know where they came from. He also described what the Earth, his country, and his city looked like ______ space.” I flew over Beijing and saw the mountains in daytime and sparkling lights at night. And there live my comrades and my loved ones.”

Yang shared another interesting experience in the ______ . After several ______ from his cabin, he could not see the Great Wall, which many believed was the only man-made structure on the Earth that could be seen from space. “The Shenzhou VI and VII astronauts couldn’t see it either,” Yang wrote.

Eighteen years after his ______ trip to space, Yang said with a smile that he “envied” a lot that his fellow spacemen who now have such ______ space accommodations, which shows how China’s space programme has grown.

10 . Ada Lovelace was the daughter of a romantic poet, Lord Byron. She earned her place in history as the first computer _________ —a full century before today’s computers _________. And she became an idol(偶像)for women in _________ industry today. She couldn’t have done it without British mathematician Charles Babbage. Their _________ started in the early 1830s. Babbage had _________ plans for a detailed and complicated machine he called the Difference Engine—actually, a giant mechanical calculator.

In the middle of his work on it, Ada _________ Babbage at a party. It was mathematical _________ at first sight. The two struck up a working relationship and eventual close friendship that would _________ until Ada’s death. Babbage used his Difference Engine to brainstorm a new Analytical Engine. He then _________ an incomplete prototype(雏形)of this machine. Ada saw that engine’s true __________. The Analytical Engine was more than a calculator. When the user __________ its commands, the engine could __________ nearly any mathematical task ordered. Ada even wrote instructions for __________ a complicated math problem. Many historians would later consider those as the first computer program and Ada as the first programmer. The second Tuesday in October has become Ada Lovelace Day, on which the __________ of women to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are__________.