Thailand has several unique holidays. One of them is King’s Birthday, which is a national holiday. On this day, each city is decorated with bright colored lights, and in the evenings the Thai walk around together looking at the decorations. Traditional dishes and family favourties are eaten, and meals always include steamed whole chicken with hot pepper dipping sauce and sliced roast pig’s head.

New Year’s Day is also important in Thailand. Brown eggs are boiled and then cooked in soy sauce, sugar, fish sauce and five spices. These eggs represent good life in the coming year.   The Thai will also eat special egg rolls, dipped in namplaprig, a sweet and sour sauce. Decorations for the New Year include fruit like bananas, coconuts, pineapples and papayas.

Songkran is a three-day water festival that comes in April. For this holiday, people douse each other and everything they have with water in thanks for rain and in the hope of good luck. April is the hottest month in Thailand, so this festival is refreshing and fun. The celebrations also include a big dinner, at which curries, usually yellow ones, and long noodles are eaten. These noodles symbolize long life.

Loy Krathong is a November holiday that involves making bamboo boats and putting lighted candles into them. As these little boats float down the river, they are supposed to carry away sin and pay honor to the spitits of the water. After watching the boats, people eat a large meal that includes grilled chicken, fish, coconut and egg yolks. No matter what they are celebrating, Thai holidays always include family and good food.

An eight-year-old girl heard her parents talking about her little brother. All she knew was that he was very sick and they had no money. Only a very expensive operation could save him now and there was no one to lend them the money.

When she heard her daddy say to her tearful mother, “Only a miracle can save him now,” the little girl went to her bedroom and pulled her money from its hiding place and counted it carefully.

She hurried to a drugstore with the money in her hand.

“And what do you want?” asked the salesman.

“It’s for my little brother,” the girl answered. “He’s really, really sick and I want to buy a miracle.”

“Pardon?” said the salesman.

“My brother Andrew has something bad growing inside his head and my daddy says only a miracle can save him. So how much does a miracle cost?”

“We don’t sell a miracle here, child. I’m sorry,” the salesman said with a smile.

“Listen, if it isn’t enough, I can try and get some more. Just tell me how much it costs.” said the girl.

A well-dressed man heard it and asked, “What kind of a miracle does your brother need?”

“I don’t know,” she answered with her eyes full of tears. “He’s really sick and mum says he needs an operation. But my daddy can’t pay for it, so I have brought all my money.”

“How much do you have?” asked the man.

“$1.11, but I can try and get some more,” she answered.

“Well, what luck,” smiled the man.“$1.11, the price of a miracle for little brother.”[

He took up the girl’s hand and said, “Take me to where you live. I want to see your brother and meet your parents. Let’s see if I have the kind of miracle you need.”

That well-dressed man was Dr Carlton Armstrong, a famous doctor. The operation was successful and it wasn’t long before Andrew was home again.

How much did the miracle cost?

The fiddler crab (蟹) is a living clock. It indicates(=shows) the time of day by the color of its skin, which is dark by day and pale by night. The crab’s changing color follows a regular twenty—four hour plan that exactly matches the daily rhythm (节奏) of the sun.

Does the crab actually keep time, or does its skin simply answer to the sun’s rays, changing color according to the amount of light strikes it? To find out, biologists kept crabs in a dark room for two months. Even without daylight, the crab’s skin color continued to change exactly on time.

This characteristic (特性) probably developed gradually in answer to the daily rising and setting of the sun, to help protect the crab from sunlight and enemies. After millions of years it has become completely regulated (受控制) inside the living body of the crab.

The biologists noticed that once each day the color of the fiddler crab is especially dark, and that each day this happens fifty minutes later than on the day before. From this they discovered that each crab follows not only the rhythm of the sun but also that of the tides (潮水). The crab’s period of greatest darkening is exactly the time of low tide on the beach where it was caught!

America is a mobile society. Friendships between Americans can be close and real, yet disappear soon if situations change. Neither side feels hurt by this. Both may exchange Christmas greetings for a year or two, perhaps a few letters for a while — then no more. If the same two people meet again by chance, even years later, they pick up the friendship. This can be quite difficult for us Chinese to understand, because friendships between us flower more slowly but then may become lifelong feelings, extending (延伸) sometimes deeply into both families.

Americans are ready to receive us foreigners at their homes, share their holidays, and their home life. They will enjoy welcoming us and be pleased if we accept their hospitality (好客) easily.

Another difficult point for us Chinese to understand Americans is that although they include us warmly in their personal everyday lives, they don’t show their politeness to us if it requires a great deal of time. This is usually the opposite of the practice in our country where we may be generous with our time. Sometimes, we, as hosts, will appear at airports even in the middle of the night to meet a friend. We may take days off to act as guides to our foreign friends. The Americans, however, express their welcome usually at homes, but truly can not manage the time to do a great deal with a visitor outside their daily routine. They will probably expect us to get ourselves from the airport to our own hotel by bus. And they expect that we will phone them from there. Once we arrive at their homes, the welcome will be full, warm and real. We will find ourselves treated hospitably.

For the Americans, it is often considered more friendly to invite a friend to their homes than to go to restaurants, except for purely business matters. So accept their hospitality at home!

What do you do in a situation like this? You’re eating dinner with friends at a nice restaurant. You’re having a great time when a phone rings at the table next to you. A man takes out his phone and starts talking loudly about problems he’s having with his girlfriend. He talks for almost ten minutes!    21    

Many people find cell phones useful in their daily lives. But we’ve all sat next to someone talking too loudly on a cell phone. You may want to tell the loudmouth to end the conversation, but let the management take care of those noisy customers.           22    Here are a few rules:

▪ Off means off!     23    If a sign says “turn off cell phones”, don’t use your phone.

▪     24     Speak softly and for a short time. Try to move away form other people.

▪ Lights off, phone off! Never make calls in a theater or at the movies.

▪     25     Talking on a cell phone while driving is dangerous. And watch where you’re going when you’re walking down the streets and talking on the phone.

As more people use cell phones, things are only going to get worse. So, the next time you’re getting ready to make a call, stop and consider the people around you.

A man came home from work late again, tired and annoyed, to find his 5-year old son waiting for him at the door.   "Daddy, may I ask you a question?"   "Yeah, sure, what is it?" replied the man. "Daddy, how much money do you make an hour?"   "That's ____ of your business. What makes you ask such a thing?" the man said angrily.   "I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an hour?"   "If you ____ know, I make $20.00 an hour."   "Oh," the little boy replied, head bowed.   Looking up, he said, "Daddy, may I ____ $10.00 please?"   The father was angry. "If the only reason you wanted to know how much money I make is that you can borrow some to buy a silly toy or some other nonsense, _____you go straight to your room and _____. Think about why you're being so selfish. I work long, hard hours everyday and don't have time for such ____ games."

The little boy ____ went to his room and shut the door. The man sat down and started to get even ____ about the little boy's questioning. How dare he ask such questions only to get some money. After an hour or so, the man had _____down, and started to think he may have been a little ____ on his son. Maybe there was something he really needed to buy with that $10.00 and ____ , he really didn't ask for money very often. The man went to the ____of the little boy's room and opened it.

"Are you ____, son?" he asked.   "No, daddy, I'm awake," replied the boy.

"I've been thinking, maybe I was too hard on you earlier," said the man.

"It's been a long day and I took my anger out on you. Here's that $10.00 you asked for."

The little boy sat straight up, "Oh, thank you daddy!" he yelled (大声喊) .

Then, reaching under his pillow, he ____ out some more crumpled up (皱的) bills. The man, ____that the boy already had money, started to get angry again. The little boy slowly counted out his money, then looked up at the man. "Why did you want ____ money if you already had some? " the father complained.

"Because I didn't have ____ , but now I do," the little boy replied.

"Daddy, I have $20.00 now. Can I ____ an hour of your time?"

____ $20.00 worth of time with someone you love...just a short reminder to all of us working so hard for our living. _____, let us not let time slip through our fingers without having spent some quality time with those who really matter to us.

Keeping a diary in English is one of the effective ways to improve our English writing ability.

Compared with other forms of writing, it is shorter and takes     46     (little) time. It can help us to develop the habit of thinking in English. If we persist in this practice, gradually we’ll learn how      47    （express）ourselves in English. In keeping a diary in English, we certainly run up against many      48     (difficult). In the first place, it often happens that we have trouble in      49    (find) appropriate words and phrases to give expression to our mind. Secondly, there      50    (be) many idiomatic ways of saying things in Chinese. And it is     51     (extreme) hard for us to put them into English properly.

As far as I am      52    (concern), my suggestion is      53     we should always have a notebook and a Chinese-English dictionary within easy reach. Whenever something beats us, we can first put it down in our notebook and then consult our dictionary. We can also ask our English teacher      54     help, if necessary. In short, I believe that it is of great use to keep a diary in English for      55     development of our writing skills.

2．只允许修改10处，多者(从第11处起)不计分。

Once a man asked a painter to painting a picture for him. He told the artist he didn't want any shadows in the picture, just sunshine, but the artist did so. When the man   saw the finishing picture, he was disappointing. Without shadows, everything in the picture looks flat and unreal. The point of the story is that we need both shadows and sunshine to have a completely picture, just as we need both rain and sun to have living world. People, too, needs both sadness and happiness. We often learn important lesson during sad times. So when we feel sad, we should try to stop and think about that we might learn from the experience.

1．有利于查找资料；

2．浏览新闻,了解信息；

3．作为高中生，我们正在形成自己的判断能力（judging ability）

1.信的开头和结尾已给出；

2.可以适当增加细节，使内容连贯；

3.100词左右。

I am writing to you to apply to reopen the Internet in the classroom.________________________________

Best regards！

Yours sincerely,

Li Hua