Woman: Our design class is really interesting. Don't you think so?

Man: Yeah, I like Professor Vargas, {#blank#}1{#/blank#} sometimes he goes too fast, and I feel like I'm missing something. There's a lot we have {#blank#}2{#/blank#} (remember).

Woman: True. There are a lot of details about all the different styles.

Man: Yeah, there are Art Nouveau, and Art Deco, and Art Moderne... I have a hard time {#blank#}3{#/blank#} (keep) it all straight.

Woman: I know what you mean.

Man: For example, it seems to me {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Art Deco and Art Moderne are the same things.

Woman: Well, it's somewhat confusing. They were both popular in {#blank#}5{#/blank#}1930s although Art Deco came a little before Moderne. I think Professor Vargas {#blank#}6{#/blank#} (say) Art Deco started at an exhibition in Paris in 1925. Let me check out my notes. Right, Art Deco was a popular international art design movement from 1923 until the 1940s, {#blank#}7{#/blank#} (affect) the decorative arts such as architecture and {#blank#}8{#/blank#} (industry) design, as well as the visual arts such as fashion, painting, the graphic arts and film.

Man: So, they were about the same time. It's one thing that gets confusing. {#blank#}9{#/blank#} thing is, they seem so similar that it's hard to see why they're {#blank#}10{#/blank#} (consider) different styles.

    The giant vending machine (自动售货机) is a new village shop

Villagers have long been used to facing a drive when they run out of basic supplies. However, help is now nearer at hand in form of the country's first automatic push-button shop. Now residents in the Derbyshire Village of Clifton can buy groceries around the clock after the huge vending was installed outside a pub in the village this week.

    Peter Fox, who is{#blank#}1{#/blank#}electrical engineer, spent two and a half years working on the project. The machine {#blank#}2{#/blank#} (equip) with securing cameras and alarms and looks like a mini shop with a brick front, a grey roof and a display window.

    Mr. Fox said he hoped his invention,{#blank#}3{#/blank#} is set to be installed in other villages in the area over the coming months, will mark a return to convenience shopping for rural communities.

He said:“ I had this idea a few years ago but I couldn't find a manufacture who could deliver what I wanted, so I did it by{#blank#}4{#/blank#} The result is what amounts to huge outdoor vending machine. Yet I think the term “automatic shop” is far {#blank#}5{#/blank#} (appropriate)

    In recent years, the commercial pressure from supermarket chains{#blank#}6{#/blank#} force village shops across the country to close. In 2010, it was estimated that about 400 village shops closed,{#blank#}7{#/blank#} (urge) the local government to give financial support to struggling shops or set-up new communities stores.

    Hundreds of communities have since stepped in and opened up their won volunteer-run shops, but Mr. Fox hopes his new invention will offer a solution{#blank#}8{#/blank#}these villages without a local shop.

    There is a tradition in my school that when the College Entrance Examination is less than a month away, students in the {#blank#}1{#/blank#}(low) grades, from Senior 1 to Senior 2, all gather together on the ground in front of the teaching building and cheer on the Senior 3 students who are standing upstairs. It wasn't until I {#blank#}2{#/blank#}(person) took part in the activity that I understood the real{#blank#}3{#/blank#}(mean) of it.

I was in Senior 2 at the time. {#blank#}4{#/blank#}that special night, all the Senior 3 students stood in the corridors (走廊) and looked down at the younger students below. {#blank#}5{#/blank#}(vary) cheers started to resound throughout the school, wave after wave. "Believe in yourself! You deserve to win！"

    {#blank#}6{#/blank#}(see) everyone's smiling faces around me, I thought of {#blank#}7{#/blank#}famous quote from the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau: What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.

    Soon it will be my turn to {#blank#}8{#/blank#}(bless) in this way, {#blank#}9{#/blank#}also means I will have to say goodbye to my school. Sad as it will be, being cheered on by so many students will still be one of the brightest{#blank#}10{#/blank#}(time) of my life.

    A film, {#blank#}1{#/blank#} (release) in Chinese cinemas next month, tells the story of a former British secret agent named Johnny English, who has now retired to be a middle school history teacher. However, after a series of cyber attacks on the UK government, all the active secret agents {#blank#}2{#/blank#} (expose), which leaves the mission of catching the bad guys {#blank#}3{#/blank#} Johnny English.

    But {#blank#}4{#/blank#} films such as Mission Impossible and Kingsman (《王牌特工》), in which agents are all masters of high-tech tools, Johnny English is an old-fashioned hero, {#blank#}5{#/blank#} (suspect) of modern technology and not even willing to use a smartphone. That puts him in various dangerous situations.

    This wouldn't come as a surprise if you know that Johnny English {#blank#}6{#/blank#} (play) by Rowan Atkinson, who is best known {#blank#}7{#/blank#} playing his character Mr. Bean.

    Johnny English and Mr. Bean do have a lot {#blank#}8{#/blank#} common. As Atkinson once told the Guardian in an interview, "The essence of Mr. Bean is {#blank#}9{#/blank#} he's self-centered and doesn't actually acknowledge the outside world. He's a child in a man's body."

    And this is {#blank#}10{#/blank#} (probable) why people all around the world can relate to Atkinson's humor. They want to be just as self-centered as his characters. And they don't want to care what the outside world thinks of them. They want to be different.

    As we all know, Columbus was a great explorer. He left Spain in September 1492,{#blank#}1{#/blank#} (look) for gold. Native Americans greeted him, offering gifts of corn. Columbus found little gold on that trip, but he collected many {#blank#}2{#/blank#} (plant), including corn, to bring back to Spain.

    Columbus didn't know it, but the corn was much {#blank#}3{#/blank#} (valuable) than gold. Farmers from Europe to Asia accepted it {#blank#}4{#/blank#} (immediate). They grew it on cold mountainsides and in rainforests. So it {#blank#}5{#/blank#} (feed) millions of people all over the world today.

    On his second trip, Columbus brought back a few chocolate beans to make chocolate. Europeans and Asians loved this new drink, and soon they were paying a great deal of money for the beans. Chocolate beans became so valuable in Central America {#blank#}6{#/blank#} they {#blank#}7{#/blank#} (use)as cash for 200 years.

    Tomatoes and potatoes took some time to become popular. Eventually, {#blank#}8{#/blank#}, they became the basis of a lot of popular foods. {#blank#}9{#/blank#} is hard to imagine life without fried potatoes or chocolate. Thanks{#blank#}10{#/blank#} native American culture, many people are able to enjoy lots of tasty food.