More Than a Winner

When I was 13, my only purpose (目标) was to become the star on our football team. That meant beating Miller King, the best player at our school.

The football season started in September, and all summer long I _________ my football everywhere for practice. Just before September, Miller was knocked down by a car and lost his right arm. I went to see him after he came back from the hospital. He looked very _________, but he didn’t cry.

That season, I _________ all of Miller’s records while he watched the home games from the chair. We went 10-1 and I was named the best player, _________ I often had crazy dreams in which I was to blame (负责) for Miller’s accident.

One afternoon, I saw Miller in great trouble when going over a short wall — which wasn’t hard to climb if he had both arms. I was sure I was the last person he wanted to accept _________ from. However, he agreed. To my surprise, he moved slowly over the wall with my help. When we were finally safe on the other side, he said to me, “You know, I didn’t tell you this during the season, but you did _________. Thanks a lot!”

His words freed me from my bad _________. Disabled but not defeated (被击败的), he was _________ the most excellent one. To me, he was more than a winner.

Have you ever read an English book? Have you noticed its contents(目录)? If you have done so, I think you can understand the contents below. Study the contents page of the book below and choose the right answer to each of the following questions.

¹When did you last say “I love you” to your father? If you can’t remember, then you should get the chance on the next Father’s Day, the third Sunday of June.

²Generally compared to a mother’s gentle love, a father means something like independence, confidence (信心), courage and adventure. Also, a caring father can help his children get along with others, according to a study on Live Science. Fathers not only help their children get into their social circle but also teach them how to act and control their feelings.

³For example, Bill Gates, one of the Microsoft founders, was quiet and didn’t like to talk with others when he was a little kid. So his father often held family parties and let Bill play games with family members. “Games like soccer and swimming seemed to be silly at that time but they improved my ability of communicating and getting along with others,” Gates once said in an interview with US Fortune magazine.

⁴US actor Will Smith learned important lessons from small things taught by his father. His father once planned to pull down a wall of their shop and rebuild it. But little Will thought it was impossible. After a year and a half, they did it. “You don’t try to build a wall. You are going to lay a brick (砖) every day. And soon you will have a wall,” he said on the TV show Charlie Rose (《查理·罗斯访谈录》).

⁵“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters,” British poet George Herbert (1593-1632) once said. Do you agree?

Katy’s Book Report

It was Monday afternoon. Pointing to the blackboard, Mr. Hayes reminded, his students, “You should hand in your book report next Monday.”

Katy said in a low voice, “I haven’t started yet.”

Tom looked surprised, “I’ve already finished reading mine.”

“We still have a whole week,” Katy said, “There’s plenty of time. I will start reading it tonight right after the soccer practice.”

But Katy was too tired to read after the soccer practice. “I’ll start the book tomorrow,” she told herself.

Tuesday came. Katy watched TV for a few hours, and then worked on her coin collection until bedtime. “It’s too late to read now,” Katy decided. “Tomorrow, I’ll start it for sure.”

On Wednesday, Tom warned her not to leave things until the last minute. “It’s not the last minute,” Katy told him. “I still have four whole days left.

Unfortunately, she had to clean up her messy room first. Then, she was too tired to read. So Katy put off starting her book until Thursday.

Katy finally began reading her book on Thursday. It was so hard that she had read only a few pages by bedtime.

On Friday night, Katy gave up watching her favorite video, for she had to read her book. Then on Saturday morning, she went on reading it.

“At least I have the whole weekend,” she thought. However, she forgot her soccer game! So she lost several hours to read, which made her even more worried.

Katy read for the rest of Saturday, and she thought to herself, “I wish I’d started it earlier, like Tom!”

Katy finally finished reading her book on Sunday morning and stayed up writing her book report until midnight. She looked tired and nervous, thinking to herself, “I think this project has taught me an important lesson.”

Astronaut Ellen Ochoa shows that with a good education and hard work, you can reach for the stars. Ochoa is the first Hispanic (西班牙后裔) astronaut woman to fly into space.

As a child, Ochoa didn’t know what she wanted to be when she grew up. But her mother always told her to stay in school and study hard. She listened to her mother. When she was 13 years old, she won a spelling contest. In high school, Ochoa spent many hours each week studying for all her classes. She finished with the best grades in her class. After high school, Ochoa went to college. One day in college she heard that the U.S. government had chosen six women to become astronauts. At that time, Ochoa decided to become an astronaut, too.

Her many years of hard work paid off at last. She was asked to be an astronaut in 1990. In April, 1993 in the space shuttle (航天飞机) named Discovery, she made history by becoming the first Hispanic woman to travel to space. Ochoa and the other astronauts had many jobs while on the Discovery. One of her tasks was to use the shuttle’s robot arm to move large objects. Ochoa used a computer to make the arm pick up a satellite and put it into space. A satellite is a kind of ship that moves around the earth or some other objects in space. Satellites can take pictures and gather information about planets and stars. During her second trip in 1994, she used the robot arm again. She used the arm to pull in a satellite from space. The satellite had been used-to study the air around the earth. Then Ochoa went to two more shuttle trips. Altogether, she spent a whole month in space. That’s more than 700 hours.

Ochoa knows that she is a hero to many young people. She often tells them the same thing her mother told her when she was a little girl. “Get a good education and believe in yourself,” says Ochoa.

Car Times Have Come to China

In late April, 33-year-old Li Yang climbed into her new car, a home-made Suzuki Alto and headed west. She “just kept going to see how far I could get by myself”. Six days and 2,575 kilometers later, she arrived in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. Happy and tired, she wrote an article and put it on the Internet after she had a good sleep, talking about her travel experience to Lhasa with photos.

As people become richer and richer, new car prices are falling down quickly, and the government builds new ways, many Chinese people think it is enjoyable to have their own cars instead of bicycles. The large number of cars has started a new cultural revolution (革命), changing the life and society just like what happened in America 50 years ago.

In Shanghai, more and more cars have appeared on the roads since 2002. The roads here are getting busier and busier. At rush hour, a taxi ride from one side of Huangpu River to the other can take more than an hour. Although the government has done a lot to make the traffic condition better and prevent more traffic accidents from happening, the number of cars on the roads is multiplying (成倍的增加).

Private cars have brought about a new class of society, who drive to their offices from large, modern homes in the suburbs (郊区). “I enjoy the drive,” says a big company manager, of the 30-minute-trip to his office in the centre of Shanghai. “I know the cost of driving is much higher than travel by bus,” he said. “But this way, I feel more comfortable and it is much faster.”

40. 收到来自家人、朋友、老师甚至陌生人的礼物，可能是一件物品，也可能是一个鼓励。Teens杂志推送出新的英语栏目Story。本期的Story要求读者分享一件自己最特殊的礼物。假如你是一名初中二年级学生李华，请你根据杂志的要求写一篇短文。

内容包括：

（1）简单介绍你的礼物；

（2）描述礼物背后的故事；

（3）谈谈你的感想。

A Special Gift

I have received many gifts in the past few years…