13． 　　I gave my first performance when I was ten. I'd been playing cello (大提琴) for two years at that point, as part of the music program. It was lucky that my school even had a cello, a very expensive instrument. When I told Mom and Dad that I was going to be a cellist, they both burst out (1)      . Once they'd realized I was serious, they immediately put on supportive faces. I was eager to get a cello at that time, but they could only rent (租) one for me.
　　But their reaction still hurt me — in ways that I'm not sure they would've understood even if I had. Dad sometimes (2)      that the hospital where I was born must have accidentally exchanged babies because I look nothing like the rest of my (3)      . They are all blond and fair and with dark eyes. But as I got older, Dad's hospital joke took on more meaning than I think he meant.
　　Then, it came to my first performance. Standing backstage, listening to other kids play the violin and piano, I'd almost (4)       out. I'd run to stage door and hid outside. My teacher flew into a minor panic (惊慌) and sent out a search party.
　　Dad found me. "You okay, Mia?" he asked, sitting down next to me on the steps.
　　I shook my head, too (5)       to talk.
　　"What's up?"
　　"I can't do it." I cried.
　　Dad put a gentle arm around my shoulder. "You know that I used to get super nervous before a show."
　　I looked at Dad, who always seemed completely sure of everything in the world. "You're just saying that."
　　He (6)       his head. "No, I'm not. I was the drummer, way in the back. No one even paid any attention to me."
　　"He got wasted." Mom interrupted. "He dropped his drumsticks and puked (呕吐) on stage."
　　Now I was laughing. I was still scared, but it was somehow (7)       to think that maybe stage fright was something I got from Dad. I wasn't just some foundling (弃儿), after all.
　　"What if I mess it up?What if I'm terrible?"
　　"I've got news for you, Mia. There's going to be all kinds of terrible things there, so you won't really stand out."
　　So I went on. I didn't shine through the piece. I didn't achieve a huge success, but I didn't mess it up, either. And after the performance, I got my present. It was sitting in the passenger seat of the car, looking as human as that cello I'd been (8)       to two years earlier. It wasn't a rental. It was mine.

14．　　Do you dream of becoming a lawyer, dentist or perhaps a librarian one day? Or would you like to consider one of these more unusual jobs?
　　Waterslide tester
　　Employed by the UK-based holiday company First Choice, Tommy Lynch travels the world checking the height, speed and water quality of the company's waterslides. According to Tommy, he had always wanted to work in the holiday industry, but he hadn't ever dreamt of getting paid to test waterslides! Tommy loves seeing the world and meeting new people, though he has to be willing to work hard — he travels over 43,000 kilometers each year.
　　Golf ball diver
　　Jeffrey Bleim's job is to try to find lost golf balls. In fact, he's very good at it — he typically picks up more than 5,000 a day! Wearing scuba gear, he dives into ponds to get the lost balls, which he later sells to a recycling company. What personal quality does a golf ball diver need to have? Jeffrey thinks you must be used to working outdoors. Also, since you don't have a boss, it's important to be self-motivated.
　　Performance artist
　　Wai Shui-kwan is a master of the art of face-changing or bian lian. Wai had been an actor in Sichuan opera for some years before he decided to try enlarging his performance field to include bian lian. Now he can switch coloured masks at lightning speed – over fifty within a five﹣minute performance without stopping to rest! Although there is no magic involved (涉及) in this ancient art, says Wai, he needs to have the skills of a magician.

15．Unexpected friendship
　　There's a small brick house I visit from time to time. It's not the house that is special, but rather the person who lives inside.
　　I met Miss C about 45 years ago when she was my sister's kindergarten teacher. I remember looking into her classroom wishing I was her student. Miss C created a safe place where we could be whatever we wanted to be in that moment. My parents reassured (安抚) me I could start school when I was 4. Though, when I turned 4 in the spring, I couldn't understand why I had to wait until September.
　　For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a teacher. When I graduated, I couldn't wait to invite Miss C to my classroom. She arrived one day, and I saw joy on my students' faces singing the same songs I sang with her as a child. As a new teacher, I was amazed by how she connected with children. For years, Miss C volunteered in my classroom.
　　Over the years we have shared in each other's ups and downs. She asks me for updates about my family and friends, and she tells me about hers.
　　I am here for her now as the time to sell her house is near. I bring up boxes from her basement. We go through every painting a student has given her, every thank﹣you note a parent has written and her teaching aids (教具).
　　I find papers featuring the letters of the alphabet. I find my own name printed in green marker. Suddenly, my mind goes back to Room 3.
　　More than 40 years ago, Miss C sat on a chair while my classmates, and I sat on the carpet (地毯) at her feet. We learned about the letters and their sounds. Now, Miss C sits on her rocking chair (摇椅), and I find myself sitting at her feet. Over tea, we talk for hours. I listen intently because I know I still have more to learn from her.
　　Our friendship is one that neither one of us expected.
　　Educators know teaching is a profession devoted to the development of young individuals. The lucky ones get to see what their students have done with their lives. The exceptional ones never leave their students' hearts.

16．　　A research lab called Deep Mind has created an artificial intelligence (AI) program which has largely solved a complicated (复杂的) puzzle that has challenged scientists for 50 years. The success could lead to huge advances in health care.
　　DeepMind is a London-based research lab which has made the news several times before. Its computer systems have beaten human experts at games like Go, chess, and the video game StarCraft. But this challenge was completely different.
　　The new puzzle solved by DeepMind is "protein folding"(蛋白质折叠). Proteins are tiny, strangely﹣shaped chains of molecules (分子) called amino acids (氨基酸). Proteins make up the bodies of all living things.
　　A protein starts as a long, thin chain that looks a little like a piece of string. But then, based on the amino acids in the chain, it folds into a certain 3 D shape. Scientists have found over 200 million different kinds of proteins, but they don't know what shape most of them take.
　　The shape of a protein controls how it acts. Based on their shapes, some proteins join together like puzzle pieces. In living things, proteins serve many purposes. Some proteins are used for building, others for carrying messages, others for causing chemical reactions.
　　Knowing how these proteins are formed is important. The shape can make the difference between something that's helpful and something that can make you sick. Many medicines work by targeting the shape of a protein that is causing the illness. But uncovering the secrets behind how proteins fold has been slow and difficult. In some cases, it has taken years for scientists to learn how one simple protein folds.
　　Now DeepMind's AI has shown that it can often do that same job in just a few days.
　　To complete this, the scientists created a program called AlphaFold using an AI method known as "Deep Learning".
　　In deep learning, computer programs sort deeply through huge amounts of information, allowing them to find patterns that humans are often unable to notice. These patterns can then be applied in new and surprising ways.
　　AlphaFold was trained by feeding it information about the makeup of 170,000 proteins and how they folded. Still, AlphaFold is a huge advance and will lead to big changes in science and medicine. DeepMind says it plans to publish a paper on AlphaFold, and is working on ways to share the technology with other researchers.
　　Once AlphaFold was trained, DeepMind entered it in a contest for solving protein folding challenges. AlphaFold did much better than other computer systems. And on two-thirds of the proteins, it did about as well as real scientists do in the lab.
　　The idea that a computer can quickly figure out how a protein folds is surprisingly good news. In the future it could allow scientists to quickly learn about the causes of some diseases, and come up with medicines and other tools to fight these diseases.
　　Though AlphaFold can figure out the shape for a wide variety of proteins, it's not perfect. It's likely that there will be many proteins that AlphaFold, with its current abilities, won't be able to handle.

17．　　Is imagination more important than knowledge?
　　Berlin, 1929. The superstar physicist, Albert Einstein talked about how he accounted for his discoveries. "I'm enough of an artist to draw freely on my imagination, which I think is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
　　Knowledge versus imagination. Einstein's aphorism (格言) reflects a repeated theme in human thought. The ancient dichotomy (对立) between what we know and what we imagine is found in every field of human intellectual achievement. Imagination often belongs to artists and geniuses, while knowledge, which results from a brush with reality, is black-and-white, logical — the field of people like accountants. Our view of which is more important depends on our personality.
　　Like many dichotomies, this one is an oversimplification. We know that the brilliance of many great artists was grounded in years of hard training;and that excitingly imaginative museums and highly creative accountants do exist. In fact, we have always relied on a blend of imagination and knowledge. Both are valuable. What then is the relationship between them?
　　Knowledge is often considered a stepping stone to imagination. It is a stored and shared treasury of publicly acceptable thoughts, many frozen into physical symbols (written or spoken). Knowledge coded, stored and expressed using symbols can be broken up and put together again in various new combinations (结合). It is this act of recombination which underlies the power to imagine. Our imagination is and must be grounded in our knowledge. The more memories we gain, the more material we have to work with, the richer are the fruits of our imagination.
　　Another way of thinking about the balance between imagination and knowledge is to consider each as private or public, individual or group. Knowledge strengthens group bonding, but the rise of new knowledge, for example, in the sciences can put a group's very existence (存在) at risk. Imagination can challenge rules and traditions;yet shared acts of imagination can also help to strengthen intra- group bonds. The greatest acts of imagination — from Bach's Cello Suites to Star Wars movies — require not only creation but admiration:they depend on being heard, seen and understood within a cultural environment.
　　In today's world, we seem increasingly to prefer imagination, but that preference is culture﹣dependent. Imagination flourishes when its products are highly valued. In other words, the better people's lives are, the more freedom to creativity. However, during times of difficulty or danger, shared knowledge, also known as "culture" or "tradition", may be valued more. Resources previously put into artistic creativity may be channeled (输送) into efforts to make things better, leading to reduced artistic output. This brings us to another view of the relationship between knowledge and imagination: its dynamic nature.
　　So was Einstein right?Is imagination more important than knowledge?It depends on whom you ask, what you ask about, and when.

18．　　Today, the bully (欺凌;欺凌者) fight have moved to a new field — cyberspace. Using emails, instant messages, websites, and cell phones, cyberbullies harm or threaten others on purpose. With their identities (身份) hidden behind computer screens, cyberbullies can be harder to catch.
　　Bullying by the Numbers
　　Criminal — justice professors Justin Patchin and Sameer Hinduja surveyed 1, 500 kids aged 10 to 17. They reported that about one-third of the kids claimed to have been cyberbullied. Sue Limber and Robin Kowalski, researchers and teachers at Clemson University in South Carolina, recently finished a study of 3, 767 students in grades six through eight. They found the most popular method of cyberbullying is instant messaging. Unkind messages in chat rooms, emails, and on websites were close behind. Limber and Kowalski also found that girls were twice as likely as boys to be the victims (受害者) of attacks.
　　That's -Nough!
　　Several states either have laws or are working on laws that require school districts to stop cyberbullying and punish students who are involved.
　　Finding out the identity of the bully and getting kids to report a problem cause additional problems. "It is difficult for someone who is being cyberbullied to know who is doing it because identities can often be hidden or wrong," Limber says. If you are a victim, she advises, ask an adult for help.
　　Ways to avoid bullies
　　Here are the top three skills kids need to develop in order to avoid school bullies. First, appear confident. Bullies look for kids that show fear and low self-esteem. How victims reply, how they hold their head, whether they stand tall, even the tone of their voice can signal that a kid might make an easy target (目标). Second, develop friendships. Bullies look for kids who lack connections or who are alone and target them. Even one good friend at school can greatly help you out. Third, Be away from bullying places. Make sure you know that there are some areas at school where bullying is more likely to happen.

19．根据中文和英文提示，完成一篇不少于 50 词的文段写作。文中已给出内容不计入总词数。所给提示词语仅供选用。请不要写出你的校名和姓名。现在，某英文网站正在开展以“一次后悔的经历”为主题的征文活动。假如你是李华，请用英语写一篇短文投稿。谈一谈一次令你后悔的经历，主要内容包括：发生了什么令你后悔的事情，你为什么后悔，以及你得到了什么教训。
提示词语：confident, laugh at, unnecessary, lose, prepare
提示问题：
1. What was your regrettable experience?
2. What have you learnt from the experience?
A regrettable experience
　　We have experienced a lot since we were born.______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________