It was a rainy November morning. Overcome with anger I knew if I didn’t leave the house soon I would lose my temper with my husband, Joe. As rain came down in sheets, Joe offered to take me to work. I struggled into my jacket, seized my bag and teaching plans and ignored him.

He insisted and reached for his boots. I looked at the piles of newspapers and the dirty dishes still on the table. “Don’t you have enough to do？I can take care of myself.” I stormed out, not even kissing him good-bye. Joe shouted after me not to take the shortcut.

Joe and I had been eagerly looking forward to our retirement when heart a attack that past spring forced him to leave his job earlier than we had planned. As the medical bills mounted we realized I would have to continue working full-time while Joe stayed home and took over the housework.

The new arrangement was a disaster. Exhausted after a day of full work, all I wanted was hot homecooked meal and a good night’s sleep. However, what greeted me at the table was a microwave package. Sometimes he would serve oatmeal for several nights in a row. One night when I dragged myself to bed, I was terrified to discover Joe had turned our white sheets blue: He told me he had found out how to save on water, soap and electricity. He patted his blue trousers and announced proudly washing everything together was just the secret.

Ten minutes later, ignoring Joe’s warning I turned off the main route. I thought it hadn’t rained enough to flood the road, but as I rounded the corner water rushed across my path. After a few feet, the car got stuck. I opened the door and water poured in. I hurriedly closed the door. I couldn’t risk walking in this. Almost 20 minutes passed. The car began to shake. I got frightened to death when I heard three long honks.

Looking over my shoulder, I stared into the flashing lights of a truck.

I screamed that I couldn’t make it.

Nowadays, more and more college students have no problem walking into a classroom and opening their laptops. Others may spend an entire study period with a smartphone in hand. Some people argue that the increasing use of technology can have many helpful effects on society. But a recent research suggests that using technology during class time may harm college students' ability to remember and process the subject material.

Arnold Glass, a professor in Rutgers University in New Jersey4, and a student researcher investigated the issue of divided student attention. The study involved 118 Rutgers students who were taking the same level college class. The students were permitted to use any electronic device during half of their daily class periods. During the other half, no one was allowed to use any technology.

The researchers found that the average daily quiz results showed no evidence of harmful effects from the use of technology. However, the average results of the larger tests and final exam showed that all the students performed poorly when they were permitted to use technology in the classroom. Glass argues that it shows the use of electronic devices in the classroom prevents students from processing information. When the students hear what the professor is saying, they might be buying things online or reading unrelated emails at the same time. And that, Glass says, makes it harder for the information to enter their long term memory. Even though the students know what the professor said at that time, they no longer remember it a week later because they missed the opportunity.

However, Lauren Margulieux, an assistant professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta argues that there are times when classroom use of technology is unavoidable. So, he says, educators need to consider that something other than technology is distracting students.

In fact, a special software program has been created. Students can use the program, which engages students more with the class material on their personal devices during a given class. It can also be used to observe student activity and prevent them from opening unrelated pages and programs.

7 . We love letters. Just as John Donne, a poet, _________ it, “Letters, to me and my friends mean _________ greetings; they get souls together. Thanks to letters, friends who are _________ speak.” He wrote these words nearly 400 years ago. Today, in the age of instant text message, social media, and email, they _________ ring truer than ever, because writing or receiving a letter has become such a _________ event.

A UK-wide survey undertaken by Sunday Times suggests that one in four of us has not _________ a letter for at least 10 years. That’s ten years without the bitter-sweet _________ of pacing the floor waiting for the _________; ten years without recognizing the handwriting on the envelope and eagerly _________ the letter to read its content.

We ____________ not get them any more, but we still love handwritten letters. In the same survey, one third of ____________ people interviewed say that they ____________ the content of sentimental (充满情感的) letters. Shouldn’t we make ____________ to give our friends and families what they will treasure forever? Ann Bickley went online in 2013 and offered to handwrite a letter to anyone who ____________ her. Her website received 50,000 ____________ in its first three months. Five years later, she is still the main ____________ behind one-million-lovely-letter.com and has personally written 4,000 letters offering hope and ____________ to strangers.

The thought behind a letter ____________ as much as its contents. “I never tell anyone that ____________ is going to be OK,” Ann Bickley says, “I am letting someone know that there is someone in the world who ____________ them.”

Who wouldn’t love to receive a letter like that? Let’s get writing!

Desiree, a 4-year-old girl, was sobbing quietly over her father, Ken, who had died nine months earlier. She was hugging a photograph of her father with her fingers running around his face. “Daddy”, she said softly, “Why won’t you come back?”

Instead of gradually adjusting to her father’s death, Desiree refused to accept it. “Daddy will be home soon,” she’d tell her mother. “He’s at work.” When she played with her toy telephone, she pretended she was chatting with her father. “I miss you, Daddy,” she’d say, “When will you come back?” Desiree’s situation made her mother worried.

Days later, it was Ken’s birthday. “How will I send him a card?” Desiree asked her mother. “How about if we tie a letter to a balloon,” her mother said, “and send it up to heaven?” Desiree’s eyes immediately lit up.

Her mother took her to a store and Desiree picked out a balloon with HAPPY BIRTHDAY above a drawing of The Little Mermaid(美人鱼). Desiree and her father had often watched it. The child’s eyes shone as they were on the way to Ken’s grave. Then Desiree dictated a letter to her dad. “Tell him, ‘Happy birthday, I love you and miss you,’” she rattled off(快速说). “ ‘I hope you get this and can write to me on my birthday in January.’ ”

Her mother wrote the message and their address on a small piece of paper, which was then wrapped in plastic and tied to the end of the string on the balloon. Finally, Desiree released the balloon. For almost an hour, they watched the shining spot of silver grow smaller and smaller till disappear. “Now Dad’s going to write back to me,” Desiree declared confidently.

Every day since they’d released the balloon, Desiree had asked her mother, “Do you think Daddy has my balloon yet?” Several weeks passed, and she stopped asking.

9 . 阅读下面短文，根据所给情节进行续写，使之构成一个完整的故事。

A Vacation with My Mother

I had an interesting childhood. It was filled with surprises and amusements, all because of my mother---loving, sweet, yet absent-minded and forgetful. One strange family trip we took when I was eleven tells a lot about her.

My two sets of grandparents lived in Colorado and North Dakota, and my parents decided to spend a few weeks driving to those states and seeing all the sights along the way. As the first day of our trip approached, David, my eight-year-old brother, and I unwillingly said good-bye to all of our friends. Who knew if we’d ever see them again? Finally, the moment of our departure arrived, and we loaded suitcases, books, games, camping equipment, and a tent into the car and bravely drove off. We bravely drove off again two hours later after we’d returned home to get the purse and traveler’s checks Mom had forgotten.

David and I were always a little nervous when using gas station bathrooms if Mom was driving while Dad slept: “You stand outside the door and play lookout(放哨) while I go, and I’ll stand outside the door and play lookout while you go.” I had terrible pictures in my mind: “Honey, where are the kids?” “What?! Oh, Gosh…I thought they were being awfully quiet.” We were never actually left behind in a strange city, but we weren’t about to take any chances.

On the fourth or fifth night, we had trouble finding a hotel with a vacancy. After driving in vain for some time, Mom suddenly got a great idea: Why didn’t we find a house with a likely-looking backyard and ask if we could set up tent there? David and I became nervous. To our great relief, Dad turned down the idea. Mom never could understand our objections(反对). If a strange family showed up on her front doorstep, Mom would have been delighted. She thinks everyone in the world is as nice as she is. We finally found a vacancy in the next town.

注意：

1. 所续写短文的词数应为150左右；

2. 至少使用5个短文中标有下划线的关键词语；

3. 续写部分分为两段，每段的开头已为你写好；

4. 续写完成后，请用下划线标出你所使用的关键词语。

10 . Can We Stop Food Longing Through Imaginary Eating?

Are you fighting an urge to reach for chocolate? Then, let it melt in your mind, not in your mouth. According to the recent research, imagining eating a specific food reduces your interest in that food, so you eat less of it.

This reaction to repeated exposure to food—being less interested in something because you’ve experienced it too much—is called habituation.     1    

The research is the first to show that habituation can occur through the power of the mind. “If you just think about the food itself—how it tastes and smells—that will increase your appetite,” said Carey Morewedge, a well-known psychologist. “It might be better to force yourself to repeatedly think about chewing and swallowing the food in order to reduce your longing.     2     Visualizing yourself eating chocolate wouldn’t prevent you from eating lots of cheese,” he added.

Morewedge conducted an interesting experiment. 51 subjects were divided into three groups. One group was asked to imagine putting 30 coins into a laundry machine and then eating three chocolates.     3     Another group was asked to imagine putting three coins into a laundry machine and then eating 30 chocolates. Lastly, a control group imagined just putting 33 coins into the machine—with no chocolates.     4     When they said they had finished, these were taken away and weighed. The results showed the group that had imagined eating 30 chocolates each ate fewer of the chocolates than the other groups.

    5     Physical signals—that full stomach feeling—are only part of what tells us we’ve finished a meal. The research suggests that psychological effects, such as habituation, also influence how much a person eats. It may lead to new behavioral techniques for people looking to eat more healthily, or have control over other habits.