“Want to go to the pool tomorrow?” Rosa asked Stephanie during recess. The pool at the YMCA was one of their favorite places, where they learnt and practiced swimming.
Rosa and Stephanie did everything together. They rode the school bus together. They sat together during lunch. They took dance lessons together and they even went to the same summer camp. Their classmates called them “twins”. They were best friends. Most of the time.
Sometimes, though, when Stephanie was with other friends, she ignored Rosa or treated her like a little kid, even though they were the same age. Rosa and Stephanie had played together since they were babies, but sometimes Stephanie didn't act like a friend.
Today was one of those times.
“Sorry. I’m already going to the pool,” Stephanie said. “Toni and Vanessa and I are going.” She gave a broad smile, but in Rosa’s eyes, it wasn’t her nice smile. Saying nothing more, she walked straight away to join Toni and Vanessa, and Rosa was left standing alone, with her face burned and an angry tension coming into her limbs.
After school, at dance class, Stephanie talked and giggled with the other dancers as they stretched in front of the mirror. When Rosa came in, Stephanie didn’t say hello to her, but just another smile. Rosa hesitated for a while about whether she should join them, but she still felt too upset.
Then she noticed Kiara, the new girl. Rosa joined her and began stretching, too. Kiara smiled and Rosa smiled back. The two girls began to talk. Rosa discovered that Kiara was not the quiet girl she had thought she was. Kiara talked a lot — about her little brother, about the tree house her uncle had built and even about swimming. “I love swimming,” Kiara said. “I will hold a pool party at the YMCA. Would you like to come?” “Yes. It’s awesome.” Rosa responded. She tried not to check the mirror to see if Stephanie had noticed. She hoped Stephanie felt left out.
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。
After the dance class, when Rosa boarded the bus, Stephanie was waiting in their usual seat.
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When Rosa saw Stephanie in low spirits, her heart sank.
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My mother was a supporter of physical punishment, but for all her talking she has never spanked (打屁股) my siblings, and me only once. Instead she found ways of punishment that left a more lasting memory than giving us a spanking. One of the most memorable of these occasions occurred when I was four.
In the early 70’s my mother attended college during the day and I was in day care. One day at day care I watched an extremely tired mother attempt to pick up her daughter. The little girl asked, “Momma, are we going to McDonald’s for dinner?” The mother replied, “Honey, not tonight. Momma has to run a few errands (差事) and then we have to go home and cook dinner for Daddy.” “But I wanna go.” “Susie, I said not tonight. Maybe, if you are a good girl, we can go tomorrow.” Susie immediately dropped to the floor, kicking and screaming, “I want to go to McDonald’s.”
No amount of pleading (恳求) or scolding her mother tried stopped Susie’s tantrum (发脾气). Finally her mother gave in, “Okay, Susie, let’s go to McDonald’s.” Susie stopped yelling. With a smile on her face she grabbed her mother’s hand and they left. To say I was amazed would be inaccurate (不准确的); I was delighted that anything I wanted could be had by throwing a tantrum.
That day my mother picked me up early from day care because we were going to a store to purchase some Christmas items. I was excited by the lights and decorations, and as we walked through the toy section on the way to the counter, I saw a toy I had to have. It was a white and red telephone whose bells rang as it was pulled along on a string. Looking lovingly up at my mother I asked, “Mama, can I have that telephone? ”
She replied, “Baby, not now, but if you are a good girl, maybe Santa will bring it to you.” “But Mama, I want that telephone right now.” Her eyes narrowed and her hand tightened on mine. “Becky, you can’t have that telephone today, but if you misbehave, you can have a spanking.”
注意：
1. 所续写短文的词数应为150左右；
2. 应使用5个以上短文中标有下划线的关键词语；
3. 续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好；
4. 续写完成后，请用下划线标出你所使用的关键词语。
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By now we were standing in the long holiday line to pay the bill, and I figured it was a good chance.
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“Mama, stop. Mama, get up,” I tearfully pleaded.
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He met her at a party. She was so outstanding, with many boys around her, while he was so ordinary, with nobody paying attention to him.
At the end of the party, he invited her to have coffee with him. She was surprised, but out of politeness, she agreed.
They sat in a nice coffee shop. He was too nervous to say anything, and she felt uncomfortable, thinking, “Please let me go home.”
Suddenly he asked the waiter, “Would you please give me some salt? I’d like to put it in my coffee.”
Everybody stared at him. So strange! His face turned red, but, still, he put the salt in his coffee and drank it.
She asked him curiously, “Why do you have this hobby?”
He replied, “When I was a little boy, I was living near the sea. I liked playing in the sea, and I could feel the taste of the sea, just like the taste of the salty coffee. Now every time I have the salty coffee, I always think of my childhood. I miss so much my hometown and my parents who are still living there.”
While saying that he couldn’t hold back his tears. She was deeply touched. That’s his true feeling, from the bottom of his heart. A man who can speak out his homesickness must be a man who loves home, cares about home, and has responsibility for his family.
Then she also started to speak about her faraway hometown, her childhood, and her family. That was a really nice talk, also a beautiful beginning of their story.
They continued to date. She found that actually he was a man who met all her demands: he was kind-hearted, warm and careful. He was such a good person but she almost missed him.
Thanks to his salty coffee! Then the story went on just like every beautiful love story: the princess married the prince, and then they were living in happiness…And, every time she made coffee for him, she put some salt in the coffee.
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；2.请按如下格式在答题卡相应位置作答。
After 40 years, he passed away, leaving her a letter.
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Learning the truth while reading the letter,
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One day I got stuck in the Tube on my way to work.
The Tube—that’s what most people call it—is London’s underground railway system.
It was about nine o'clock in the morning, the middle of the rush-hour. Nobody had expected something unusual would happen later and everyone was doing their usual: a pretty girl gave her boyfriend sweet kisses one after another. Sitting next to me, a young woman with a suitcase and a baby took a scarf out of her suitcase and made her baby a nest, so that it could lie more comfortably. In fact, the train had just left Green Park Station when, instead of speeding up, it started to slow down and then came to a stand-still.
Ten minutes passed, though it seemed like half a day. the train didn’t move. Had the railwaymen forgotten all about our existence? Had there been a crash on the line in front? How serious was the breakdown? We had no means of knowing. However, to anxious people who are stuck in the Tube, I suppose it doesn’t really matter what it is that has broken down. What they care is when they can get out of the trouble.
Twenty minutes passed. All hope of getting to work on time had long since gone. Had the train really broken down? Several people thought so, but they were wrong. A railwayman at last came down the length of the train to tell us that the power supply had failed, and that we were not to worry as they were working to put it right.
We could not leave the train, as it had stopped in the tunnel (隧道), not at a station. There was nothing else to do. The weak signal disabled cellphones. Besides, the train was getting hot and stuffy (闷). I even began to wonder if we were going to stay there for the rest of the day.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150左石：
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
The hopeless waiting in the darkness drove us crazy.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________As a commuter (上班族) who traveled to work on the train every day, I thought it my duty to do something.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________5 . Modern medicine’s ability to keep us alive makes it tempting to think human evolution may have stopped. But if we look at the rate of our DNA’s evolution, we can see that human evolution hasn’t stopped – it may even be happening faster than before.
Evolution is a gradual change to the DNA of a species over many generations. It can occur by natural selection, when certain traits created by genetic changes help an organism survive or reproduce. Such genes are thus more likely to be passed on to the next generation, so they increase in frequency in a population. Gradually, these changes and their associated traits become more common among the whole group.
By looking at global studies of our DNA, we can see evidence that natural selection has recently made changes and continues to do so. Though modern healthcare disrupts a key driving force of evolution by keeping some people alive longer, in countries without access to good healthcare, populations are continuing to evolve. Survivors of infectious disease outbreaks drive natural selection by giving their genetic resistance to offspring. Our DNA shows evidence for recent selection for resistance of killer diseases like Lassa fever and malaria. Selection in response to malaria remains in regions where the disease remains common.
Humans are also adapting to their environment. Gene change allowing humans to live at high altitudes have become more common in populations in Tibet, Ethiopia, and the Andes. The spread of genetic changes in Tibet is possibly the fastest evolutionary change in humans, occurring over the past 3,000 years. This rapid increase in frequency of a mutated gene that increases blood oxygen content gives locals a survival advantage in higher altitudes, resulting in more surviving children.
Diet is another source for adaptations. Studies show that natural selection favoring a change allowing adults to produce lactase – the enzyme (酶) that breaks down milk sugars – is why some groups of people can digest milk. Over 80 per cent of northwest Europeans can, but in parts of East Asia, where milk is much less commonly drunk, an inability to digest lactose is the norm. Like high altitude adaptation, selection to digest milk has evolved more than once in humans and may be the strongest kind of recent selection.
Yet, despite these changes, natural selection only affects about 8 per cent of our genome. But scientists can’t explain why some genes are evolving much faster than others. We measure the speed of gene evolution by comparing human DNA with that of other species. One fast-evolving gene is human accelerated region 1 (HAR1), which is needed during brain development. A random section of human DNA is on average more than 98 per cent identical to the chimp comparator, but HAR1 is so fast evolving that it’s only around 85 per cent similar. Though scientists can see these changes are happening – and how quickly – we still don’t fully understand why fast evolution happens to some genes but not others.
1. Which of the following statements may the author agree with?| A．Evolution occurs among several people overnight. |
| B．Genes may change and some are beneficial to people’s lives. |
| C．Evolution is done when the whole population possesses a certain gene. |
| D．The changed genes leading to higher survival rates are chosen deliberately. |
| A．explains | B．causes | C．upsets | D．heals |
| A．some people can resist infectious diseases like malaria |
| B．children in Tibet tolerate living environments with thin air |
| C．northwestern Europeans digest lactose better than East Asians |
| D．the human gene HAR1 resembles that of a chimp to a lesser extent |
| A．What Is Natural Selection? |
| B．Are Humans Still Evolving? |
| C．Why Will Certain Genes Evolve? |
| D．How Do Mutated Genes Function? |
"Pick up the pace!" said Amy's husband. "But I can't!" Amy said, her heart beating quickly inside. "I can't go any faster! Her husband encouraged her. "Yes, you can! You're making progress every day.”
To help Amy stay healthy, her husband had been running with her for over two years. Several years ago, Amy could barely walk down the stairs of her apartment building due to fatness caused by eating disorders. She realized the problem after a failed job interview and began walking to improve her ability to move. At first, she could walk for only 15 minutes at a time. But she pushed herself every day, walking 5 minutes longer than she did the day before until she walked for an hour and eventually two. For three years, Amy kept her walking habit, slowly and painstakingly building her body shape. Then she changed her walking shoes to running shoes about two years ago and became an excellent runner.
In March 2001, an advertisement invited people to nominate（提名）an ordinary person who inspired them to bring the Olympic flame to Salt Lake City as torch bearers（火炬手）or support runners.（Support runners serve as “guardians of the flame" and run with torch bearers along the journey.）Amy's experiences touched her husband, so he nominated her to be a torch bearer. The possibility to be selected was low, but Amy wanted to try.
Running taught Amy the importance of training for a race. She pictured herself running a race and crossing the finish line. For months, she ran through her neighborhood carrying a broken-off broom handle, feeling the weight of the torch. She waved at her neighbors, pretending they were cheering crowds. She also printed a picture of a torch bearer wearing the white uniform, replaced the face with a picture of hers, and put it onto her refrigerator door.
Every day, Amy imagined herself as a torch bearer. She was training for a historic running event. On September 26th, while on her daily run through her neighborhood, an express package arrived.
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:
Amy opened it and found a letter and a book on the Olympics.
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Paragraph 2:
"One of today's torch bearers can't run her part, " announced the relay organizer.
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I’m Martha. My middle school had a tradition carried out every year during the eighth-grade graduation: a beautiful gold and green jacket was given as a prize to the student who had kept the highest grades for eight years. I was fourteen and in the eighth grade. I had been a straight A student(全优生) since the first grade and this last year I had looked forward very much to owning that jacket.
One afternoon when I was on my way to the gym, I suddenly remembered my P.E. shorts were left in the bag under my desk. So I went back and get them. I was almost back at my classroom door when I heard voices raised in anger as if in some sort of argument. I recognized the voices: Mr. Smith, my history teacher, and Mr. Brown, my math teacher. They seemed to be arguing about me.
“I refuse to do it! I don’t care who her father is, her grades don’t even begin to compare to Martha’s!” That was Mr. Smith and he sounded very angry. Mr. Brown’s voice sounded calm and quiet. “Look. Joann’s father is not only on the Board(董事会), he owns the only store in town…”
The pounding in my ears kept out the rest of the words, only a word here and there got through. “...Martha is Mexican ... impossible ... won’t do it.” To this day I don’t remember if I got in trouble in P.E. for being late or how I made it through the rest of the afternoon.
The next day I was told by the headmaster that there had been a change in policy this year that whoever was awarded the jacket would be charged fifteen dollars and if the prize winner was unable to pay the money it would be given to the next one in line. That was unfair! I carried all the way home, so by time I got home, my eyes were red and puffy(肿大的). I went to Dad, who was working in the bean field. He saw my shadow and looked up.
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，每段的开头语已为你写好，
4.续写完成后，请用下划线标出你所使用的关键词。
Paragraph 1：
He waited for me to speak.
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Paragraph 2：
It was a very sad and upset girl who dragged into the headmaster’s office the next day.
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8 . We all experience “oh crap” moments. Running into the person you canceled a date with — while you’re on another date. Realizing you hit “reply all”on an e-mail that you’d do anything to have back. Whatever the situation, the first thing you probably do is freak out. Everybody does.
While many of us think that we’re cool in a crisis, science tells us that we seldom are. At the moment we need to be keenly aware of our surroundings, our attention can tunnel in on the scariest thing in the scene, leaving us unaware of the other sights, sounds, and even smells around us. Armed robbers go unidentified because witnesses remember little more than the guns. Our ability to remember the things we do notice also becomes compromised; we can be told something, and two seconds later we’ll forget. And we jump to conclusions. When we’re freaked out, we’re anything but at our best.
These normal human reactions can be reversed. Once you calm down, you’ll face the most routinely ignored challenge of any crisis situation — identifying what the crisis is really about. We tend to misdiagnose problems because we don’t practice for them. Do the thinking ahead of time so you can just find the solution when it’s showtime. This is why flight attendants suggest you find the closest exit before you depart — so you don’t have to go exit shopping after the plane has caught fire or is sinking into a river.
Performing in a crisis is becoming more important for all of us, for two reasons. Back in the good old days, the reliability of most anything we used or did was far less than it is today. Now think about what happens to our preparedness as the possibility of something bad happening shrinks. Unless we practice what hardly ever happens, our ability to respond when it does happen tends to slip away. Reliability can kill you. Also, the systems we use today are more complex. There are seldom moving parts in plain view that allow us to see when things are about to go wrong. When complex systems lack transparency (透明度,显而易见), serious situations can “come out of nowhere.” We should all learn to breathe, recognize the situation, and carry out the plan that we were smart enough to prepare well in advance.
1. What does the underlined phrase “freak out” mean?| A．Be at one’s best. | B．Calm down gradually. |
| C．Run away immediately. | D．Panic or be scared. |
| A．Because the witnesses jump to conclusions. |
| B．Because the witnesses focus on their scariest thing. |
| C．Because the witnesses forget what they have been told. |
| D．Because the witnesses are keenly aware of the surroundings. |
| A．Because of less reliability and less complexity. |
| B．Because of more reliability and more complexity. |
| C．Because of worse transparency and less preparedness. |
| D．Because of better transparency and more preparedness. |
| A．Taking a deep breath and dialing 119. |
| B．Staying cool and ignoring the challenge. |
| C．Calming down and remembering the situation. |
| D．Performing escaping and rescuing beforehand. |
Honesty is a vital quality of human behavior and always regarded as a virtue.Every time people refer to the topic, I would recall an unforgettable experience which had a deep impact on my growth.
I was 16 when one morning, Dad told me I could drive him to Mijas, a town 18 miles away and then take the car in a nearby garage to get it serviced.At that time,I had just passed the driving test, and I hardly had a chance to use the car, so I said yes without hesitation.
I drove my father to Mijas,promising to pick him up again at 4 pm, then I went to a nearby garage,and put the car in there. Since I had several hours to spare, I decided to go to a movie theater near the garage to see a movie. However, I was so absorbed in the plot of the movie that l forgot the time. When the last movie finished, I looked at my watch:6 pm.I was two hours late!
I thought my father would be very angry if he knew what I was doing. And he would never let me drive again. So I decided to make up an excuse. Then, I drove to the appointed place,my father was sitting in a corner, waiting patiently. I first apologized for being late, then told him that I wanted to get there as soon as possible, but that something was wrong with some of the main parts of the car.
I would never forget the way he looked at me. “ I'm very disappointed that you thought you had to lie to me, Jason.” My father looked at me again and said, “When you didn’t show up on time, I called the gas station and asked if there was anything wrong. They told me you never picked up the car. So, you see, I know there's nothing wrong with the car at all.”
Paragraph 1
A wave of guilt swept over me.
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Paragraph 2
＂I'm going to walk home now and think where I have gone wrong all these years,"father said to me.
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10 . A Faithful Friend
Neil loves to travel and he was so fond of forests. Whenever he plans for a holiday, he would choose a place that is blessed by Mother Nature. To celebrate his son’s second birthday, he decided to stay and enjoy the celebration in woods, located at the lap of a mountain. He with his family and friends, reached the village located near the woods and had his stay in the cottage. The cottage was located at the entrance of the dense forest, where the guests can see wolves wandering in the nearby place.
Neil’s son saw a dog at the door and offered him a biscuit. The dog was happy and very soon the little son befriended the dog. On second day, the birthday of the boy was celebrated grandly in the woods within beautiful nature. The dog did not leave the boy even for a minute and they both became close friends.
The next day, Neil, his wife and others decided to go for hunting in the forest and arranged a babysitter to take care of the little boy for half a day.
After 3 hours, all of them returned to the cottage and they seemed very tired. The cottage was open and nobody was there. The dog saw Neil and others, it rushed to them and licked (舔) Neil’s shoes. Neil’s wife was shocked to see the blood strain in the dog’s mouth.
注意：1.所需写的短文词数应为150左右；
2.续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已经为你写好；
Paragraph 1:
Everyone was shocked to see the blood-spattered mouth.
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Paragraph 2:
Hearing the noise from the dog, the babysitter rushed out of the room.
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