缺词填空
It was a r______ day. I was on my way home. I hadn’t been back for weeks.

When I got home, to my s_______, I found my mother wasn’t busy doing her housework as she u_____ to be. She was reading i______. And I saw some books on her desk . Some years ago, there were no books in my home except my textbook. I took one of the books from the desk. It was about h______ to raise chicks. At supper time, my father came home. After supper he told me he was going to learn English because he w_____ to run chicken farm. He said that he must learn something more from foreign countries. He also told me that one could do n________ without knowledge. It was late. The light in my parents’ room were still o________. I was l_______ in bed. l________ to the drops of rain outside, as if they were saying, “ You must study harder than before.

Thinking is something you choose to do as a fish chooses to live in water. To be human is to think. But thinking may come naturally without your knowing how you do it. Thinking about thinking is the key to critical(批判性的) thinking. When you think critically, you take control of your thinking processes（过程）. Otherwise, you might be controlled by the ideas of others. Indeed, critical thinking is at the heart of education.
The word “critical” here has a special meaning. It does not mean taking one view against another view, as when someone criticizes another person for doing something wrong. The nature of critical thinking is thinking beyond the easily seen--beyond the pictures on TV, the untrue reports in the newspapers, and the faulty reasoning.
Critical thinking is an attitude as much as an activity. If you are interested in life and want to dig deeper into it, you are a critical thinker. If you find pleasure in deep thinking about different ideas, characters, and facts, you are a critical thinker.
Activities of the mind and higher-order reasoning（推理）are processes of deep and careful consideration. They take time, and do not go hand in hand with the fast speed in today’s world: fast foods, instant coffee, and self-developing film. If you are among the people who believe that speed is a measure（尺度）of intelligence（智慧）, you may learn something new from a story about Albert Einstein. The first time Banesh Hoffman, a scientist, was to discuss his work with Albert Einstein. Hoffman was too nervous to speak. But Einstein immediately made Hoffman feel comfortable by saying, “Please go slowly. I don’t understand things quickly.” 
【小题1】Critical thinking is important to us because if we do not think critically, _______.