Directions: Listen to the following passage and choose the correct words for each blank.
 
This unit begins with an article on science. Before you read it, let me tell you something about its author, Stephen Hawking.Stephen Hawking is perhaps the most well-known scientist since Einstein. Like Einstein his work __1__ the big questions, questions such as how did the universe begin? Why is the universe the way it is? And how will it end? He is now working on what is sometimes known as the ‘theory of everything. ____2____, this promises to explain what caused the Big Bang that started the universe. But it is not simply the power of Hawking’s mind that has led to his __3__. For what many people find most striking about him is the ___4__ between the strength of his mind and the weakness of his body. For for many years Hawking has suffered from an illness that has left him unable to move and to speak ___5__.Born in England in 1942, Hawking had a normal childhood, and it was not until he was a student at university that his illness started to __6__ him. Hospital tests showed he was suffering from a disease that ___7__ control over the muscles. The disease gets worse with time and there is no known cure. But Hawing did not ___8___. As he says, ‘although there was a cloud hanging over my future, I found to my surprise, that I was enjoying life more than before. I began to make progress with my research, and I got engaged to a girl called Jane Wilde. That engagement changed my life. It gave me something to ___9__.’Hawking started research at Cambridge and went on to hold the same __10___ that another great scientist, Newton, once held. Over the years his condition has worsened, but even when he finally lost the ability to speak, he managed to ___11__ the problem. He now uses a computer that enables him to __12___ words which are then turned into speech. ‘The only trouble,’ the English scientist says, ‘is that it gives me an American accent!’ A.
tackles  B.
takes