Alia Baker is a librarian in Iraq. Her library used to be a_______place for all who loved books and liked to share knowledge. They discussed various matters all over the world. When the war was near, Alia was_______ that the fires of war would destroy the books,   which are more _______to her than mountains of gold. The books are in every language- new books, ancient books, even a book on the history of Iraq that is seven hundred years old.

She had asked the government for _______to move the books to a_______ place, but they refused. So Alia took matters into her own hands. _______, she brought books home every night, filling her car late after work. Her friends came to help her when the war broke out. Anis who owned a restaurant _______to hide some books. All through the night, Alia, Anis, his brothers and neighbours took the books from the library, _______ them over the seven foot wall and _______them in the restaurant. The books stayed hidden as the war ________. Then nine days later, a fire burned the ________ to the ground.

One day, the bombing stopped and the________ left. But the war was not over yet. Alia knew that if the books were to be safe, they must be ________ again while the city was ________. So she hired a truck to, bring all the books to the houses of friends in the suburbs (郊区). Now Alia waited for the war to end and ________peace and a new library.

We’re told that writing is dying. Typing on keyboards and screens _______ written communication today. Learning cursive (草书的), joined-up handwriting was once _______ in schools. But now, not so much. Countries such as Finland have dropped joined-up handwriting lessons in school _______ typing courses. And in the US, the requirement to learn cursive has been left out of core standards since 2013. A few US states still place value on formative cursive education, such as Arizona, but they’re not the _______.

Some experts point out that writing lessons can have indirect benefits. Anne Trubek author of The history and Uncertain Future of Handwriting, argues that such lessons can _______ a skill called auto-maticity. That’s when you’ve perfected a task, and can do it almost without thinking, granting you _______ mental bandwidth to think about or do other things while you’re doing the task. In this sense, Trubek compares handwriting to driving.

“Once you have driven for a while, you don’t _______ think ‘Step on gas now’ or ‘Turn the steering wheel a bit,’” he explains. “You just do it. That’s what we want children to _______ when learning to write. You and I don’t think ‘now make a loop going up for the ‘I”-or “now look for the letter ‘r’ on the keyboard’. Trubek has written many essays and books on handwriting, and she doesn’t believe it will die out for a very long time. _______, she believes students are learning auto-maticity faster with keyboards than with handwriting: students are learning how to type without looking at the keys at earlier ages, and to type faster than they could write, granting them extra time to think about word choice or sentence __________. In an essay for the New York Times last year, Trubek argued that due to the __________ automaticity of keyboards, today’s children may well become better communicators in text as handwriting takes up less of their education. This is a view that has attracted both criticism and support.

She explains that two of the most common arguments she hears from __________ regarding the decline of handwriting is that not protecting it will result in a “loss of history” and a “loss of __________ touch.”

On the former she __________ that 95% of handwritten manuscripts can’t be read by the average person anyway-“that’s why we have paleographers (古文字学家),” she explains, paleography being the study of ancient styles of writing-while the __________ refers to the warm associations we give to handwritten personal notes, such as thank-you cards. Some educators seem to agree, at least to an extent.

For a decade, Xie Jincheng has been buried in his duties at the National Library of China (NLC) in Beijing. When asked how old he was, the 37-year-old had to pause for a few seconds to _________.

Each working day, he sits at a desk and focuses on handling ragged yet _________ pieces of paper in front of him. As one of 17 restorers of _________ books at the NLC, he shakes off centuries of old dust to _________ the works he deals with.

Xie doesn’t require a large _________ to use his skills. Using glue, scissors, tweezers (镊子), brushes and several other simple _________, he skillfully restores the pages in front of him.

It’s estimated that the NLC _________ more than 3 million ancient Chinese books. The world’s biggest _________ of its kind, it comprises about 10% of such books in the nation. In China, the term “ancient books” _________ works before 1911.

Xie, who majored in chemistry at college, __________ to cultural relies conservation at graduate school, realizing that there was a __________ of restorers of ancient books in China.

It took Xie more than two yeas of __________ his tutors and developing his talent before he was formally assigned to __________ his first page.

Restoration of books is like seeing a doctor. If the doctor is good, your illness will __________ immediately following treatment. But if not, you may die taking the medicine. So if you cannot see a good __________, you’d better keep your item as it is.