When I was seventy-one, my granddaughter Crystal’s husband Peter lost his job. Despite his efforts, he struggled to find a new job. He seemed to lose confidence in himself.
When I visited Australia, I aimed to support them through this challenging time, but Crystal wanted me to have some fun. She suggested snorkeling (用通气管潜泳)along the coral reef, convincing me that I would love the experience.
I had swum only in pools where my feet could touch the bottom. Previously in Hawaii, I had tried snorkeling and panicked in the deep water, but this time, I wanted to try again. My dream of exploring the coral reef and the desire to boost Peter’s spirits motivated me.
Crystal patiently taught me snorkeling in a pool. With great efforts, I finally mastered the skills, which excited me and amazed Peter. “We can overcome our challenges,” I smiled. Seeming to know I was encouraging him, Peter smiled back and said, “I guess so, Grandma.”
The big day came when I had to snorkel in the sea. Crystal and Peter both decided to come for security reasons. “You’ll be fine,” Crystal told me. “I’ll stay right by you. Even if you’re in trouble, I can help you out of it.”
On a sunny afternoon, we set off from the shore. When Peter stopped the boat, Crystal and I put on our equipment.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150个左右；
2. 请按如下格式作答。
My heart raced as I stared at the deep sea water.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Soon, I noticed the coral reef and many beautiful fish.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The man was kind of small, but to a five-year-old, he was a giant. Cherry-scented smoke from Grandpa’s pipe kept the hungry mosquitoes at bay. Now and again, he blew a smoke ring and laughed as I tried to target the hole with my finger.
We sat side by side on the old wooden stairs that hot summer evening, watching the traffic, counting cars and trying to guess the color of the next one to turn the corner. We watched the sun go down behind the old Texaco service station across the busy street, which I was never allowed to cross unless accompanied by an adult.
My grandfather was baby-sitting while my mother, father and grandmother went out. While my two baby brothers slept inside the house, my three older siblings (兄弟姐妹) played with friends around the corner, where I was not allowed to go. I stayed with Grandpa, and that was okay with me. “Thirsty?” Grandpa asked, never removing the pipe from his mouth. “Yes,” was my reply. “How would you like to run over to the gas station there and get yourself a bottle of Coke?” I couldn’t believe my ears. On my family’s modest income, Coke was not a part of our budget or diet. “Okay,” I replied shyly, already wondering how I would get across the street.
He stretched his long leg out straight and reached his huge hand deep into the pocket. Opening his fist, he exposed several silver coins. He instructed me to pick out one. After he deposited the rest of the change back into his pocket, he stood up. “Okay,” he said, helping me down the stairs and to the curb (马路沿儿).
“I’m going to stay here and keep an ear out for the babies. I’ll tell you when it’s safe to cross. You go over to the Coke machine, get your Coke out and come back. Wait for me to tell you when it’s safe to cross back.” My heart pounded. Excitement took my breath away.
注意：1．续写词数应为150个左右;
2．请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Grandpa held my hand tightly.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________My heart pounded wildly as I approached the Coke machine.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________One summer vacation, I allowed my husband and our three sons to take me to go horse-riding. I’d never been on a horse in my life. Horses scare me. “It will be fun,” my kids said. “What if I fall off?” I wanted to add more, but I kept my mouth shut. I was trying to be a good sport.
When we arrived, the coach gave me his gentlest horse. “Nothing to worry about. And kick your feet on the horse’s side to make him go,” he said. I hoped the horse had heard that, too. The horse may look gentle, but he was very big and tall. How on earth was I going to get on this horse using only one little stirrup (马镫) on the side? Well, it took my husband and three sons to do it, but they got me on that horse!
Since the coach knew I had the gentlest horse, he placed me at the very end of the road. I was happy. If I looked silly sitting on this horse, everyone else would be in front of me and couldn’t watch me. We started out just fine. As we got into the woods, my horse was still very gentle. By the time all the other horses were out of the woods, my horse and I were still in the woods! I saw our youngest son waving to me in the distance. This seemed to be the longest ride with this boring horse and me.
Slowly, we got out of the woods and were in a bean field. Suddenly, my horse stopped. Then I remembered one important thing the coach had told me. He said, “Don’t let the horse stop to eat the beans, because then the horse won’t want to go back to the barn (畜棚).” I looked down, and the horse was eating the beans.
注意：1.续写词数应为150个左右；2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
I tried to stop him, but he kept on eating.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Finally, the coach must have realized I was in trouble.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Mr. Ward couldn’t stand students cheating the most. Whenever there was an exam, he watched very closely, making sure no act of cheating was neglected, and any student who cheated would be seriously punished.
I remember many times after tests, Mr. Ward found that the students sitting around me had better scores than the others and the further away a student was from me, the worse his grade. Mr. Ward suspected that some of the juniors “accidentally” got some of my answers. So he and I had a very interesting talk about cheating.
Mr. Ward once told me of some of the ways students tried to cheat. Student A intentionally “dropped” his pencil an unusually far distance from his desk. Then he stood up and walked slowly across the room to take it back. On the way, he glanced at the papers. Student B got a piece of paper and wrote down all the formulas (公式) on a tiny bit of paper taped to the inside of the kid’s palm. These incidents weren’t very rare.
The last day of the entire school year, all I had left was my math exam and there seemed to be some definite tension in the air because this was the biggest test of the year. I saw some kids trying to do some last minute studying, some trying to calm themselves down by breathing slowly and some saying a silent prayer.
Mr. Ward went to the front and started handing out the tests by rows. After explaining the rules of the test, he said very clearly, “If you cheat, I will take your test and tear it up. You will get a 0 for the biggest grade of the year.” Mr. Ward moved very effortlessly and efficiently about the room and during every test he went into a sort of RADAR mode. He sat at the front and watched the room for anything that might look like cheating. During this RADAR mode, if you were cheating, you would be caught. Guaranteed.
注意：（1）续写词数应为150个左右；（2）请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Our test started and we were sitting there busy working on our papers.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Then Mr. Ward asked the kid he was watching to go to his office.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Bill Sumiel was having a tough Friday. It was October 2020, and the 71-year-old, who was dealing with kidney failure (肾衰竭) and had been on dialysis (血液透析) for a few years, found himself at the hospital 30 miles from home for the second time in 24 hours. The day before, his brother had driven him for a routine declotting (去除血块), but it unexpectedly blocked again that night.
Sumiel was no stranger to the struggles of kidney disease. He’d been diagnosed with diabetes (糖尿病) more than 20 years before, which led to his kidney problems. He was on the list of the kidney transplant program, but no matches had yet appeared. So he continued with his treatments, including the periodic declotting that had failed this time. This time, Sumiel took a taxi to and from his appointment.
Timothy Letts, 31, was driving north to visit a friend when his phone received the request for Sumiel’s ride home. The trip was out of Letts’s way. Still, he took the fare, figuring if the passenger was coming from a hospital, he likely needed a ride.
When Sumiel got into the car, Letts could see that the older man was not energetic but in good spirits. And as they set out on the 40-minute drive to Sumiel’s home, the pair started chatting.
Letts shared with Sumiel that he was a proud Army veteran (老兵) and Sumiel mentioned that in the past he’d enjoyed volunteering at his church and in his community, even serving as president of the city council. But he was doing less these days, he explained, because the dialysis treatments left him exhausted and he was searching for a kidney donor.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
This hit Timothy Letts deeply.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Weeks later, Letts received a call from the hospital, saying he was a perfect match.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________I decided to volunteer to be the “room mother” to my daughter Jenny’s class in second grade. I would have tasks like making cookies and helping with the kids’ every field trip. That evening, when I picked Jenny up from school, she introduced her best friend Tommy to me. During the chat, I noticed he had the sharpest sense of humor. And it touched my heart.
We burst out laughing just as their math teacher walked up. She smiled at me and then said to Tommy coldly, “Your grades are the lowest again.” Tommy’s face fell as he walked away. Placing his hands in his pockets, he turned and met my eyes. I would never forget that look. It was a look of hopelessness.
During the following days, I found Tommy’s low grades had led to him having no interest in study. Besides, he suffered from serious inferiority complex (自卑感). I wanted to communicate with him about his problem but he always refused.
Finally, one day he talked to me. He told me that all the students in his class except him had received at least one award because of good performance in study, sports or something else. “I don’t remember ever doing anything proud in my whole life, Miss Jaye,” he cried. “I’m nobody. I’ll be a failure forever. I won’t achieve anything.”
I felt great pity for him and told the story of my brother who also always doubted himself when young and finally grew to be an excellent scientist. Then, I told him that he was a wonderful boy who was humorous, smart, polite, etc. And I told him that he could be somebody as long as he was confident and worked hard like my brother. But he was still absorbed in sorrow.
In order to build Tommy’s confidence, I talked to his headteacher and his parents about his situation. But after several hours’ discussion, we still couldn’t make up a plan to help him.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Paragraph 1: Suddenly, a poster on the table struck me.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph 2: Soon, it was the day of the Joke competition.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________My parents would not let me go to school that morning. “Why not?” I argued. “I have exams. I have work in Spanish class that I can’t miss!” My mother gave me a sad look. “You have to get a checkup (身体检查),” she explained. I screamed, “NO!” My father pulled me over to the couch. “Alison,” my father said in a tone that was quiet but powerful. “You’re in the state of malnutrition (营养不良). And you know that. You can have all in the world, but if you don’t have your health, you have nothing.” For some reason, I believed him. I hadn’t wanted it to be this way.
I was a girl who didn’t like doing sports but was fond of snack food. I weighed 50kg at my age of 14. Most of the time, I avoided parties with my friends, afraid of how ugly they would think I looked. One day, I found a slim girl on TV was so attractive that I wanted to look like her. I forced myself to do exercise and started going on a diet for a good-looking body shape. During the summer, I did weekly weigh-ins (称重) and kept a strict diet. I memorized the calories of almost everything that I may eat. My only goal was to lose weight. Later, when it became too cold to run outside, I restricted my calories even more to make up for not being able to burn them.
Gradually I lost my weight a lot. But things turned out to be worse. My hands were especially dry, peeling and wrinkled. My sister called them old people’s hands. Once, I went shopping with my mom.While we waited in line to pay for our items, I felt I was going to faint (昏厥). I felt dizzy and standing was getting harder and harder.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150个左右；2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
As my mom tried to figure out which exit we should go through, she noticed my pale face.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Incidents (发生的事情) like the one in the store were in my thoughts as my parents had a talk with me that morning—the morning when I refused to see the doctor regularly.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Penny’s Present
The sun was shining when Penny woke up. Usually she jumped out of bed with a happy smile for the new day. But today she just lay there frowning (皱眉).
This was the day before Mother’s Day, and Penny still had no present for Mama. She had forgotten about Mother’s Day until she had heard her brother Peter and sister Elizabeth talking last night. “I made Mama an apron (围裙) in sewing class,” Elizabeth had said proudly.
“What are you going to give Mama?” Peter asked Penny. Penny had not answered. She had ducked her head, ashamed to admit that she had spent her pocket money. She had nothing at all to give Mama on her special day.
Penny got out of bed and dressed slowly. The bag of candies she had bought yesterday reminded her of her terrible mistake.
“Well, here’s our littlest sleepyhead,” Mama said as Penny walked into the kitchen. She gave her a good-morning hug, and the smell of baked apples floated up from her apron. In a way, that made Penny feel worse because it reminded her of all the good things Mama did for her.
She remembered a hot day last summer when Mama had spent a whole afternoon making strawberry jam, because she knew Penny liked it. She thought of the moment when Mama polished her shoes and taught her to cut and arrange flowers. Sometimes she also taught Penny to make paper flowers with colorful petals (花瓣).
“Penny dear, can you eat a little faster?” Mama was talking to her. With surprise Penny noticed that everyone else had finished breakfast.
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
“Well, finish up. I have to visit old Mrs. Logan and read for her. But first, I want to get this kitchen cleaned up.” Penny watched her mother hurriedly cleaning up the kitchen. Mama was a very busy person. It seemed to Penny that sometimes Mama could use an extra pair of hands and two more feet. Suddenly she had an idea! There was a present she could give Mama, and it might be better than anything she could buy.
注意：1．续写词数应为150左右;
2．请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
The next morning, Penny slid into the room with a package.
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“Read the petals of the Promise Flower, Mama,” Penny said.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Greg sat on the driveway of his home and rolled his papers for delivery on Monday afternoon. The shouts of his friends playing soccer in the schoolyard across the street caught his attention. He watched his neighbor, John, kick the ball into the goal and shouts of excitement came from his teammates.
Greg sighed and eagerly looked at the group. He would love to be able to play soccer too. But he had to deliver newspapers every afternoon. He didn’t have enough time to play soccer.
He thought about his paper route. It had been necessary after his father suddenly lost his job. Greg saw his parents struggling to meet their bills. His mother had to go to work while his father looked for another job. Greg knew there must be some small way he could help. His friend Mark had a paper route, and Greg decided that he could get a paper route to help his parents too.
One day, immediately he finished delivering papers to his subscribers (订户), he cycled home. He met John with his soccer ball in the Anderson’s driveway.
“Hi, Greg. We sure miss you on our team. Wish it were the good old days when you were our goalie (守门员),” said John. Greg shook his head and replied, “I just can’t do that now.”
On Tuesday, Greg stopped at the soccer field before he began his paper deliveries. John and his other friends were just beginning a game. John called out to him, “Hey, Greg. Come play a quick game with us.”
Just as Greg started to say no, the soccer ball went out of play and rolled to a stop by his feet. He picked it up and tossed (抛) it back to Tim who was playing goalie. Tim caught it and stepped aside. “I have to go home, Greg,” he said. “The goal is all yours.”
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右;
2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Greg took the ball from Tim and stood in front of the goal.
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When Greg got home, he found the bag on his bike empty, and his mother’s car was gone.
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My mom is the greatest morn ever! As I grew up, I saw her as my hero for all the things she would do for me. I remember she would fix my baby dolls and help me color pretty pictures when I started elementary school. I remember in middle school, I would see her do things that fathers were supposed to do, like fixing the car without caring how greasy her hands would get. Now that I’m in high school, I see how she is strong but sensitive at the same time. She looks at life with a positive attitude no matter what the situation is.
One day I came home from school and saw papers on the kitchen table and my mom sitting with a worried face looking at my dad. My dad wasn’t working at the time because he had broken his leg. I had heard my parents talk about money issues a couple of times before, but I never asked about the situation.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“We have to be out of the house in two weeks,” my morn said. She had her elbows (肘部) on the table and one hand over her forehead. Then I realized this was a serious problem. That very day, she made phone calls and started to look for a place to rent.
We had no money and no idea what we were going to do. I read the papers on the table, which said we had lost the house because we hadn’t been paying the rent. I was surprised that all this was going on. My dad seemed to be doing nothing about it and my mom never said anything about it. It seemed like everything was falling apart, but my mom seemed as if this was making her stronger.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
That whole week she tried her best to find a place for rent.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________“We are starting to move today,” she said with a smile on her face.
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