泽熙美文Cloze Test
“Packaging” A Person
A person, like a commodity, needs packaging. But going too far is absolutely undesirable. A little exaggeration, however, does no harm when it shows the person’s unique qualities to their advantage. To display personal charm in a casual and natural way, it is important for one to have a clear knowledge of oneself. A master packager knows how to integrate art and nature without any traces of embellishment, so that the person so packaged is no 1 but a human being, lively and lovely.
A young person, especially a 2 , radiant with beauty and full of life, has all the favor 3 by God. Any attempt to make up would be 4 . Youth, however, comes and goes in a moment of 5 . Packaging for the middle-aged is primarily to conceal the 6 ploughed by time. If you still enjoy life’s exuberance enough to 7 self-confidence and pursue pioneering work, you are unique in your natural 8 , and your charm and grace will remain. Elderly people are 9 if their river of life has been, through plains, mountains and 10 , running its course as it should. You have really 11 your life which now arrives at a complacent stage of 12 indifferent to fame or wealth. There is no need to 13 to hair-dyeing—the snow-capped mountain is 14 a beautiful scene of fairyland. Let your looks change from young to old 15 with the natural ageing process so 16 to keep in harmony with nature, for harmony itself is beauty, 17 the other way round will only end in unpleasantness. To be in the 18 company is like reading a thick book of de luxe 19 that fascinates one so much as to be reluctant to 20 with.
As long as one finds where one stands, one knows how to package oneself, just as a commodity establishes its brand by the right packaging.
1.
正确答案：
commodity
2.
正确答案：
female
3.
正确答案：
granted
4.
正确答案：
self-defeating
5.
正确答案：
doze
6.
正确答案：
furrows
7.
正确答案：
retain
8.
正确答案：
qualities
9.
正确答案：
beautiful
10.
正确答案：
jungles
11.
正确答案：
lived
12.
正确答案：
serenity
13.
正确答案：
resort
14.
正确答案：
itself
15.
正确答案：
synchronizing
16.
正确答案：
as
17.
正确答案：
while
18.
正确答案：
elder’s
19.
正确答案：
edition
20.
正确答案：
part
“History doesn’t repeat itself,” argued Mark Twain, “but it does rhyme.” In this instance, history’s echo could scarcely be more depressing. In 1993 Jamie Bulger, a two-year-old boy, was abducted, tortured and murdered by two ten-year-olds. The gruesome details of the Bulger case shocked the national psyche.
Yesterday two brothers were sentenced to an indefinite period of detention for torturing two boys in Edlington last April. Aged 10 and 12, they beat, strangled and sexually degraded their victims, before putting a plastic sheet over them and setting it on fire. It was only tiredness that caused them to abandon their victims, they presumed, to die. It was a chance blessing that a passing walker stumbled across one of the boys alive.
It is impossible to 21 shock and desperation. But there is nothing new about children committing 22 . In 1748 the ten-year-old William York killed the five-year-old girl who shared his 23 . There has always been a strand of evil that courses through humanity.
But in two respects the Edlington case may 24 a critical moment. First, is Britain prepared to accept that it does 25 have a violent underclass, a problem that successive governments have 26 to ameliorate? And will David Cameron succeed in his argument 27 the Edlington case confirms his claims about “broken Britain”?
The social context of the Edlington case is as 28 as the crime itself. The court heard that brothers had a “toxic 29 life” marked by “routine aggression, violence and chaos”. One brother watched 30 violent movies. He also drank routinely and smoked cannabis grown 31 his father’s allotment.
There was also a chronic failure by the social services. A leaked 32 by local care authorities—to which the judge was denied access—reveals 33 there were 31 occasions on which nine different agencies failed to take action 34 the brothers’ behaviour.
Broken Britain? The phrase is an oversimplification. But 35 does have a depressingly static underclass. The most telling detail 36 the case was one torturer’s explanation of his actions. He was 37 . “There was not
