It’s the Saturday, 1:00 am, and Stormy, my dog, and I were going on a pre-dawn bird-watching adventure. The weatherman predicted fog, but as we hit the road, it’s clear. Along our journey, I stopped at a petrol station, ensuring Stormy was safely locked in the truck.
“Stormy, hang tight,” I whispered, stepping out into the night air.
Back on the highway, as we were near the marshlands, a heavy fog began to swallow everything. At a sharp bend, my truck hit soft ground, and I lost control. “Oh, no!” Panic set in as the vehicle slid off the road with a bang, falling down a steep bank and into the water.
In the strange silence that followed, I was floating inside the car, gently carried downstream by the canal. “Come on, door,” I said, switching uselessly at the handle. It won’t move; the electrical system had shorted out due to the water. “I’ve got a glass breaker,” I reminded myself, reaching for the tool in the center part.
With each failed attempt to break the window — the glass bouncing back at me — I felt a growing sense of urgency. Water moved over the floorboards, cooling my feet. “Stormy, stay calm,” I said, lying down to kick at the window with all my strength. But my efforts only met resistance.
As the water level rose threateningly close to the ceiling, fear clawed at my heart. In a last effort, I dived behind the seat for my toolbox. “Got to find something solid.” My hands brushed against the cold metal toolbox, then the fire extinguisher (灭火器). “This might work.”
“Here goes everything,” I thought, holding the extinguisher and hitting it against the window. The impact resounded through the car, but the glass holds firm. “Not yet,” I begged under my breath, as the extinguisher bounced harmlessly away.
The water kept rising, and so did my fear. A voice inside me screamed to give up, but another thought pierced through — Stormy. “For Stormy, I can’t quit.” Just then, I sensed a pause in the water’s rise.
An unspoken sound said, “You have more time. What will you do?”
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2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
“I’ll fight harder,” I promised aloud.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Exhausted, we caught the now flooded vehicle, waiting for daylight.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________1. 感谢投稿；
2. 出版目的；
3. 邀请阅读。
注意：
1. 写作词数应为80左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
参考词汇: Beautiful China: A Collection of Student Contributions《美丽中国：学生作品集》
Dear readers,
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Yours sincerely,
Editor-in-Chief
Years ago, back in the middle 2010s, I moved to a hillside house and drove down to work every morning at about eight o’clock and came home at around five thirty. Each time I drove by, I would see a young boy at about age 15 and a large dog walking along the road. When cars would pass him on the other side, he made eye contact and waved with a toothy smile. I saw him almost every day, walking along the road and waving at cars. Amazing?
On a rainy day, I saw him, along with his dog, sitting at the roadside. I stopped my car and got out to ask what had happened to him. “Nothing. I just want to take a break,” the boy responded. I then asked if he could need a ride. The young boy, Kevin, said, “I’m not really going anywhere, just walking, thank you anyway, sir.” I used to enjoy walking in the countryside myself, so I thought it wasn’t too odd. “In case of some emergency, or if you ever need a ride or help,” I told Kevin, “flag me down and I’ll do whatever I can.” Kevin thanked me and went on his way. Over the following days, each time we met, I would stop for a while and have a quick talk with Kevin, and his sweet dog Randy.
One afternoon, I suddenly felt a voice inside my mind: “Go back home now!” There was still one hour for work. But I asked for an early leave and drove back faster than usual. Again, I saw Kevin walking along the road. But this time he didn’t have his usual smile and was pacing rather than walking. When he saw my car, he violently flagged me down. As I got closer, I could see he was crying. “What’s wrong, Kevin?” I asked.
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2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
“We were just walking but Randy somehow dropped,” Kevin said in tears.
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As I drove to the animal hospital, Kevin sat in the back and kept talking to the dog.
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4 . When you ask people to judge others by their speech, a trend emerges: Listeners dislike disfluency. Slow talkers producing loads of ums and pauses(停顿)are generally perceived as less charming. But science tells us there may be even more to disfluency.
Disfluencies do not occur in arbitrary positions in sentences. Ums typically occur right before more difficult or low-frequency words. Imagine you’re having dinner with a friend at a restaurant,and there’re three items on the table: a knife, a glass, and a wine decanter(醒酒器). Your friend turns to you and says, “Could you hand me the...um...” What would you assume they want? Since it’s unlikely that they will hesitate before such common words as knife, and glass, chances are you’ll pick up the decanter and ask, “You mean this?”
This is exactly what we demonstrated through controlled eye-tracking studies in our lab. Apparently, listeners hear the um and predict that an uncommon word is most likely to follow.Such predictions, though, reflect more than just simple association between disfluencies and difficult words; listeners are actively considering from the speaker’s point of view. For example, when hearing a non-native speaker say the same sentence but with a thick foreign accent, listeners don’t show a preference for looking at low-frequency objects. This is probably because listeners assume non-native speakers may have as much trouble coming up with the English word for a common object, like a knife, as for unusual ones and can’t guess their intention.
In another experiment, listeners were presented with an atypical speaker who produced disfluencies before simple words and never before difficult words. Initially, participants displayed the natural predictive strategy: looking at uncommon objects. However, as more time went by, and they gained experience with this atypical distribution of disfluencies, listeners started to demonstrate the contrary predictive behavior: They tended to look at simple objects when hearing the speaker say um.
These findings represent further evidence that the human brain is a prediction machine: We continuously try to predict what will happen next, even though not all disfluencies are created equal.
1. What does the underlined word “arbitrary”mean in paragraph 2?| A．Random. | B．Strategic. | C．Obvious. | D．Consistent |
| A．They can be understood easily. | B．They actively put themselves in others’ shoes |
| C．Their vocabularies are limited. | D．Their disfluencies are a little less predictive. |
| A．Simple things are difficult in some cases. | B．Listeners can adjust predictions accordingly. |
| C．Distribution of disfluencies is changeable. | D．Disfluencies in communication can be avoided. |
| A．Pauses Coexist with Prediction. | B．Brains Are Powerful Prediction Machines. |
| C．Active Listeners Simplify Talks. | D．Disfluency Says More Than You Think. |
As the school dress-up party was just around the corner, the school hall was full of children dressed in different shapes and colors. Some walked in as princes and princesses, some stepped in as superheroes and some made their dramatic entrance as astronauts and historical figures. But one little girl, whose name is Ellie, walked in, hiding her face and hoping nobody would take notice of her grey pants and white T-shirt.
Ellie wanted to dress up as a princess that year. Her dad had promised her a few months earlier that her costume would turn heads. But, her dad was so busy with all kinds of work that he forgot the small important things while dealing with the big important ones. When Ellie’s dad forgot to save up for her princess costume for the school dress-up party that year, she wasn’t mad at him. However, she couldn’t hold back her tears when the mean kids from her class started making fun of her. “What are you supposed to be dressed as? Ugly Ellie?” one of the boys laughed loudly. Ellie covered her ears and cried as she heard the kids crying out her latest name and laughing over and over again. Every face around her was unkind and indifferent to her sadness, making the poor girl feel more unconfident and alone.
“Follow me! Ellie!” an older voice whispered to her. It was Mr. Borges, her art teacher. He was trying to tell her something. The girl managed to escape the crowd of children and walk past them, closely following her teacher. “Wait here!” Mr. Borges told Ellie and walked away. A moment later, he returned and Ellie couldn’t help but wonder why Mr. Borges was holding a few rolls of toilet paper.
注意：
1.续写词数应为150左右;
2.请按如下格式作答。
“What’s that for?” Ellie asked, confused.
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What Mr. Borges did meant everything to Ellie.
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I’m smaller than everyone else my age. When I walk in the halls at school, I have to squeeze in between the bigger kids to get by. At the playground, sometimes even little kids try to boss me around. Mia, my best friend, is so tall that when she walks, I have to jog to keep up with her.
I used to try to make myself taller whenever I could. My posture was perfect, straight as an arrow. I hung from the tree in our backyard to stretch out my arms and legs. I even ate all my vegetables. Every day I measured myself, but I was the same height every time. Frustrating!
“Don’t worry,” Mom always said. “Being small has its advantages.” “Really? I could never notice any.”
One day, Mrs. Alvarez announced to the class that we’d be putting on a spring play. I practiced all the lines. But at the audition (试演), when I walked up to the stage, Mrs. Alvarez cried, “You’ll be perfect as the elf (小精灵)! You’re just the right size for the costume.” I even never got a chance to deliver the practiced lines. Back home I grumbled (咕哝) to mum that I was made an elf. But she bet I would be the best elf. To please her, I went to rehearsals (排练), though I only had two lines.
Mia got the lead role-a girl wandering through a magical fairy forest in search of her lost dog. In the last scene, she finds a box under a giant mushroom, and when she opens it, her dog jumps out. Mrs. Alvarez’s dog, Prince, played the dog role. She brought him to all the rehearsals, and when he wasn’t onstage, we got to play with him, but he seemed to like me best.
The night of the show, my first line came early, “Let’s ask the Fairy Queen!” Since my only other line was toward the end, I waited offstage, playing with Prince.
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。
Finally, the grand end came, and Prince was brought onstage inside the box.
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“How can we get Prince out from beneath the stage?” Mrs. Alvarez asked.
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Molly ran back home from school and dropped her schoolbag on the sofa. Then on the table she saw “Mum’s Wish Book” —a mail order catalog from a gift shop. “Mum,” she said excitedly to herself, “this year you’ll get the gloves you want!” Molly had walked a dog for a neighbor and saved her money all year to buy Mum the gloves.
She opened “Mum’s Wish Book” and hoped that she could find these gloves in it. So carefully did she look through that tears ran down her face when she saw the gloves in the catalog. Mum wouldn’t buy them for herself, because the family had a hard time on the farm. She once heard Mum say to Dad, “Maybe some day, I’ll have the money to get them.”
Molly ran out by the back door and went straight to the post office. There she carefully filled out the order form torn from the catalog.
“I need to buy a stamp to send the form.” She said to Mr. Smith, the only worker in the post office.
“Umm, a pair of gloves?” said Mr. Smith, as he passed a stamp to her.
“Yes, It’s a Christmas gift for Mum, but please don’t tell her. It’s our secret, OK?” Molly didn’t realize how white Mr. Smith’s beard was until that moment. In fact, he reminded her of Santa Claus.
As Molly walked back home, she decided to tell Dad her secret. “You’ve got to check the mailbox every day,” said Molly quietly to Dad. He nodded, with a big smile.
Coming home from school every day, Molly peeked at Dad when Mum wasn’t looking , but every time he shook his head.
On Christmas Eve, Dad came back from the mailbox, still empty handed. Molly felt sad when she went to bed, because she didn’t have the gloves for Mum.
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:
Before Christmas dinner, Molly felt so hopeless.
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Paragraph 2:
Mum thanked Mr. Smith and took the box .
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Dad handed me the bucket and the net with a long, wooden handle. He gave Paulie two dead fish wrapped in newspaper. They were tied up with string like a present. I held my nose, but Paulie held those fish like they were his best baseball cards.
“Since we all want crabs for supper, catch a whole bunch. But just in case you don’t, we have leftover broccoli (花椰菜).” Dad said with a wink.
The salty air from Chesapeake Bay filled our noses. This was the best place in the world to catch blue crabs. They like grassy, shadowy water, so Paulie and I headed for our old wooden dock. It was hot, and I sat down and swung my legs over the edge, into the cool water. Paulie struggled to tie the string to one of the slippery fish. Then he slid the extra fish into the bucket and set it in the dark water under the dock for later.
“Here.” Paulie handed me the baited string. “Dangle (提着) this down in the water to call the crabs.”
Crabs love smelly, old fish, so our first crab didn’t take long to come. Its big claw clamped (紧夹住) the bait, and I raised the string real slow so Paulie could net it. But my legs swishing (发出刷刷声) in the water startled that crab, and it let go and floated back to the bottom like a leaf off a tree. Paulie brought up the net and stood there with the handle on the dock.
“Kathy, I can’t believe you’re going to be in third grade and can’t sit still for one minute,” he said.
“And I can’t believe you’re going to be in sixth grade and haven’t caught any crabs yet.”
I went back to dangling the fish.
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:
“Well, get ready,” he urged. “Here comes another one.”
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Paragraph 2:
The sun began to set.
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1. 解释字面意思；
2. 阐释道理。
注意:
1. 写作词数应为80左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的应位置作答。
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It was six o'clock when Breanna heard her mother’s phone receive a text message as it’s at on the kitchen bench. “Mum, I bet it’s Dad!” Breanna said and jumped up from the sofa, books spilling out in front of her. She had been deciding which story her dad would read in one of his funny voices for the night. Breanna’s mum rubbed her temples (太阳穴) and sighed softly. “Honey, would you mind seeing if that’s Daddy? I’ve got a bad headache but I want to start cooking a lovely meal for us to enjoy tonight.”
“Sure, mum,” Breanna skipped into the kitchen to check the phone. Her dad had been away for two whole nights working on a malfunction (故障) at his company’s warehouse that was at risk of theft. Breanna felt sure he’d been able to act like a superhero and save the day — but did it have to take so long? She picked up the phone and read the message, “Just leaving now — can’t wait to see you both.” Breanna confirmed excitedly, “It’s from Daddy! He’s on his way home!”
Her mother managed a weak smile as her daughter clapped her hands with joy. It had been four months since she’d lost her job and with only one income to support the family. Her husband had taken on as many shifts and extra duties as he could to make ends meet. Times were tough and he was working long hours, but it made the time Breanna spent with her daddy even more special. “Oh, that’s wonderful news. Now let’s see what I can find to eat,” her mother rose painfully from the sofa and added.
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。
“Great! Mum’s got a bad headache but I’m going to help her cook dinner. See you soon!” Breanna sent her dad a quick reply.
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Another message from her father drew Breanna’s attention.
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