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【完形填空】Cloze: The Teacher Who Stayed
On a Monday morning, a ship left Port Kells without a single passenger. The (1) of Ilan was nobody's plan. A storm had damaged the ferry, and he found himself stuck on the island.
Ilan was a biology teacher of modest background. He had come to the island to study plants that grow on land. The grant was small, the work was hard. Yet he loved the (2) of moss and fern. He would bend down for hours, (3) his students with details. "Every leaf," he said, "has a part of the whole." He was (4) to such sudden ideas.
The stranding changed his (5). He could not leave, so he began to conduct a survey of the island's plants, purely for his own pleasure. The work was slow but (6) to thought. He would get up at dawn and fill his notebook with sketches. Local farmers watched him with mild suspicion.
Then a girl named Ree asked to join. She was fifteen, literate beyond her years, and full of questions. Ilan was (7) to refuse. Instead he said, "Come along. But no talking until noon." They became a team. Ree's instinct for pattern was sharp. She could (8) one fern from another at a glance. Together they found a strange rust on the ferns. This was a critical find. It could disrupt the island's whole crop. The rust seemed to (9) from a chemical used widely on the mainland. Therefore the farmers had a stake in the matter. Some grew angry. One opponent of the survey tried to hamper it. He called Ilan a spy. The accusation was tragic and false.
Ilan did not retreat. He gave a (10) at the village hall. Attendance was poor at first. He spoke of the underlying cause: the runoff from a new detergent plant. He kept his tone humane. He did not want to detract from anyone's livelihood. "We can fix this," he said. "The answer is attainable if we act prior to the spring rains." His speech began to crystallize a plan. The farmers were sceptical, but Ree's father, a tribal elder, stood up. He said the land was a substance to be shared, not a commodity to be sold. That turned the room. A vote followed. The plant agreed to filter its waste. The rust receded.
By autumn, Ilan could have gone home. He did not. He had come to recreate a life, and here it was. The island had given him a second chance. He would stay, teach, and write. Ree would go to the mainland for university, then return. The two would reunite each summer. The story is not heroic. It is only what happens when a man stops moving and starts to look.
Choices
(1) A. landing B. stranding C. standing D. understanding
(2) A. attitude B. abundance C. attendance D. audience
(3) A. bores B. boring C. bored D. bore
(4) A. possible B. prone C. likely D. probable
(5) A. scope B. slope C. scrub D. scrap
(6) A. conducive B. conclusive C. conductive D. constructive
(7) A. tempted B. attempted C. tempted to D. attempting
(8) A. differ B. differentiate C. distinguish D. discriminate
(9) A. stick B. stem C. stop D. steam
(10) A. speech B. surface C. preface D. service