A thin young boy loved football with all his heart. Practice after practice, he eagerly gave everything he had. But being half the size of the other boys, he got absolutely nowhere. At all the games, this hopeful athlete sat on the bench and hardly ever played. This teenager lived alone with his father, and the two of them had a very special relationship. Even though his son was always on the bench, the father was always in the stands cheering.
He never missed a game. This young boy was still the smallest of the class when he entered high school. His father continued to encourage him but made it very clear that he did not have to play football if he didn’t want to. But the young boy loved football and decided to hang in there. He was determined to try his best at every practice, and perhaps he would play when he became a senior.
When the young boy went to college, he decided to try out for the football team. Everyone was sure he could never make the cut, but he did. The coach admitted that he kept him in the team because he always put his heart and soul into every practice, and at the same time, provided the other team members with the spirit they badly needed. The news thrilled him so much that he rushed to the nearest phone and called his father. His father shared his excitement. This persistent young athlete never missed practice during his four years at college, but he never got to play in a game.
It was the end of the football season, and as he ran to the practice field shortly before a big playoff game, the coach met him with a telegram (电报). The young boy read the telegram and he became deathly silent. Crying hard, he said, “My father died this morning. Is it all right if I miss practice today?” The coach put his arm gently around his shoulder and said, “Take the rest of the week off, son. And don’t even plan to come back to the game on Saturday.”
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。
Saturday arrived, and the game wasn’t going well.
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Before long, everyone couldn’t believe their eyes.
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Ella walked into the kitchen and twirled. She was wearing a new dress and felt like a famous model. Even better, it was a dress she made! Her very first piece of fashion! “What do you think?” she asked her family. They all gathered at the kitchen table for an early school breakfast. The scent of French Toast hung in the air and made Ella’s stomach grumble.
“Is that the secret dress you’ve been working on?” Mom asked.
“Yes! This is it! Don’t you love it?” Ella twirled again.
“It’s very pretty, Ella. I can’t believe you designed and sewed that all by yourself!”
“I’m so proud of you! How long did that take?” Dad said as he reached across the table for the syrup(糖浆) bottle.
Ella pulled out her chair and sat down. “Two weeks! But I think I could make the next one faster.”
“Nice job, Ella! I can’t believe you can sew like that! You’re only eight years old!” Mom praised.
Ella smiled as she poured some syrup over the pancake on her plate. It was going to be a perfect day.
The kids at school were excited about her dress, and she got some nice comments from some girls, so she was happy about that. The day went by quickly, and before she knew it, she was outside for the last class break of the day. What a perfect day! She thought to herself as she swung on the swings. Ella leaned back in the swing and looked up at the blue sky full of white wispy clouds. She smiled. This would be the first dress of many that she would make. Some day she would have her very own fashion line with all kinds of clothes. She would be famous one day.
The school bell rang and the break was over. All the kids were moving slowly toward the door to go back inside. Ella sat up straight on the swing and waited for it to stop. When the swing was close to stopping, Ella jumped off. When she landed, she heard a loud rip. “Oh no!” she whispered as she moved her hand to the back of her dress. It was ripped(撕破) all the way down the back! Everyone would laugh at her. This was terrible!
Paragraph 1:
Ella spotted her teacher, Miss Miller, near the door, calling her into the classroom.
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Paragraph 2:
“What’s wrong, Ella?” Miss Miller asked when she reached Ella.
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Almost all of my holidays were spent with my grandpa. My grandpa was a retired army officer and the years in the army had made him a very tough person, which helped him a lot in fighting with cancer for a long time. Silver and golden stars on his shoulders and medals on his chest in grandma’s old photo albums reflected the marks of his distinguished service and numerous adventures. Grandpa had fine qualities and was a real personality. He was strict with his family, me included, as well as himself.
In our ancestral house there was a big pond as was common in bygone Bengali homes with lots of trees and bushes. Both my grandparents were fond of our so-called garden. One morning our new neighbor saw my grandpa planting two trees on both sides of our main gate, which still stand tall today. Across the street our new neighbor also got the same kind of tree and planted the trees exactly on both sides of his gate too.
My grandpa didn’t often give enough amount of water to his plants and didn’t always give his full attention to them, while our neighbor gave a lot of water to his plants and looked after them too well. My grandpa’s plants were simple but looked good. But our neighbor’s plants were much fuller and greener.
Normally, during April and May, we have short but violent thunderstorms called “Kalboishakhi”. One late evening during a Kalboishakhi we had showers with strong winds, which continued right throughout that night. Next morning along with my grandparents I came out to inspect the damage to our garden. I saw our neighbor was there in his garden too, but looked upset as his plants were uprooted. But, our plants were not damaged and were standing firm on the ground.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式作答。
Seeing this, our neighbor was surprised and curious.
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Grandpa’s explanations not only convinced the neighbor, but made me realize something.
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I remember the hot summer when my friends and I discovered ice cream sandwiches at the corner store. They were ten cents apiece, a lot of money back then. I don’t remember how we came to buy one and taste it, but we were mad after that. Of course, none of us had any money. Whether we rode our bikes, or played ball, or sat and played cards, we talked and dreamed about those soft, creamy sandwiches.
My dad worked nights, coming home to join us for breakfast, and then sleeping till late afternoon. When he came home one morning, I heard the jingle (叮当声) of change in his pants and something ugly slowly came into my mind. That change was just what we needed, what I had to have. All day long I kept coming into the house and listening at his door. When I heard his sleeping sounds, I cracked the door. And there hanging at the foot of the bed were those pants. I slipped in and took a handful of change. It was enough for my friends and me to buy an ice cream sandwich, which we ate like greedy pigs. And I became a hero to my band of friends.
That went on every day for about two weeks. I had gotten good at slipping in and slipping out, and then ran to my friends and we headed to the store.
One day there was no change in dad’s pocket so I felt for his wallet, hesitated a moment, and then took out two whole dollars. I had been okay with taking the change, but those dollars made my face hot. Even before we began enjoying sandwiches, my stomach felt sick. The importance and joy I had felt buying for my friends was gone. If dad knew what I had done, he’d kill me.
注意:1.续写词数应为150左右;
2.开头已给出。
Paragraph 1:
Early that afternoon, I hid myself in our basement, crying.
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Paragraph 2:
In a moment I would never forget, he said, “Son, I’ve known since the first day you took the money.”
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It was a dark night in Texas when Luke Armstrong drove into town. He had a lot of things on his mind, and he was driving slowly, thinking of solutions to his problems. He had a sick daughter named Anne, and he was worried she would give in to her illness before he could gather enough money to pay for the surgery (外科手术).
Suddenly, he noticed a flashy sports car parked by the side of the road. It looked like it had a broken tire, but Luke couldn’t be too sure. He passed it without giving it a second thought and continued down the road.
He was so lost in thought that he almost missed the prone (俯卧的) figure of a human lying just by the side of the road. “What is it?” he said to himself and his truck stopped beside the figure.
It was a woman, and she was weak. Luke immediately knew he had to help her as soon as possible. He noticed her expensive outfit as he lifted her. “Perhaps she owns the fancy car I saw a few minutes ago,” Luke said to himself as he moved her to his truck and turned on the heater.
He noticed that she seemed to be having trouble breathing, so he called 911 and reported his exact location as well as the predicament (困境) he found the woman in.
Soon the ambulance came, and the woman was carried away.
After checking on his daughter the next day, Luke decided to see how the woman he rescued was feeling. He had been told she was getting treated in the same hospital. It turned out that she was no longer in danger. She was very grateful for his kindness. After learning about his daughter, she expressed great sympathy (同情).
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。
A week passed with Luke trying his best to work something out for his child.
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Who might be kind enough to pay for the surgery?
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It was time to go home. “Remember to work on your class speeches for homework,” Miss Walker said as everyone started talking and packing their school bags. Jenny felt sick. She hated having to read aloud in class. She was sure everyone would get really bored with listening to her. Once, when Jenny was reading out her holiday diary, Lee was even looking at his watch, a silver and blue one which seemed just magical.
Jenny watched Lee walk ahead of her as they left school. He seemed so clever, and he had a certain sort of shining confidence. He was just one of those people who were good at everything. Jenny sighed. As she turned the corner, she saw Lee’s watch lying right in the middle of the path.
Jenny picked it up and wanted to return it to Lee, but she couldn’t catch up with him. When she arrived home, Jenny put it on, thinking about the magic. She was surprised that it fitted so well. She walked to the mirror and started practicing her speech. Words just flooded out of her. “I’m going to talk about swimming. I have been lucky. I’ve won lots of competitions. But when I’m in a race, I’m not really thinking about winning. I’m just loving the feeling of being in the water…” Jenny laughed with excitement. She walked across the room. She suddenly seemed to have a certain sort of confidence. Turning back to the minor, Jenny saw a flash of light from the watch in the glass. The flashes of silver seemed almost magical. So maybe Lee’s watch really did have something magical.
The next day, as the lesson began, Miss Walker ask cd who was going to be brave and go first. Nobody moved, Jenny slowly raised her arm. Before Miss Walker could say something, there was a shout “She’s stolen in y watch!” Lee said angrily. “It went missing at school yesterday.”
注意：1.所续写短文的词数应为150左右；
2.续写部分分为两段. 每段的开头语已为你写好；
Paragraph 1:
Everybody was fixing their eyes on Jenny, waiting for an explanation,
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Paragraph 2:
Miss Walker smiled and asked the class lo listen lo Jenny’s speech first.
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It was just another busy day until I met the boy on the bus. He was not a passenger like me. He was, what we call a street child, an 8-10-year-old kid with a worn T-shirt. These poorly dressed kids were seen almost everywhere in Dhaka city. But what was special about that boy was his face. There was “something” in him that caught my attention. That was an angelic(天使般的)baby face with little care.
He got straight into the bus as it stopped at a traffic light. The bus helper shouted at him in the first place. But instead of talking back, the boy kept silent and started handing out a piece of paper to all the passengers. What was written in the paper was, in short, that his father died a couple of years ago. His mother worked at houses. He badly needed money to help his family, so he wished someone warm-hearted to buy chocolates from him.
This was nothing new to people who took a bus every day and I was no different. I had my earphones on, listening to some relaxing music to kill time. When he came to me to get the paper back, I casually gave him some money. Thankfully it brought some smiles on his face. He was about to give me ten chocolates in return for the money I gave to him when I stopped him.
“I don’t like chocolates, brother. So there is no need of chocolates. You can have the money,” I said.
All of a sudden, the smile on his face disappeared.
“I’m not a beggar. Please take the chocolate, or take your money back.”
His straight answer greatly surprised me. I even felt he was slightly angry. I had given money to many kids before, without taking their chocolates. But this time something seemed different. I realized his angelic baby face was not the only thing special about 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。
The boy put ten chocolates on my seat and got off the bus.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Having got the boy’s name, I decided to help him.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________My family moved in a small house in Brighton, Colorado on my seventh birthday. My first memory is our neighbor Bill, an old man, handing me strawberries from his garden through a hole in the chain-link fence. “We need to make the hole bigger,” he said jokingly. Later I knew that he lived alone.
Bill spent much time working in the garden, and I was always talking to him from our yard. I was a chatterbox. I think what drew me to Bill is that he never got tired of listening to me. I also think Bill saw a lot of himself in me — we were both lonely and anxious — and that may be why he always took the time to listen to me. It was a wonderful connection.
There weren’t any kids of my age in the neighborhood, and my parents were very busy, so I mostly played in the yard with my dog. I had a lot of imaginary friends — a whole family, actually, with a wife, children, a best friend... no joke. Weird kid.
One day, my parents asked Bill whether he’d watch me while they were away on business. This worked for everyone, so it became a somewhat monthly occurrence. Bill had a spare room in his house, which became “my” room.
Bill promised to teach me to drive the lawn tractor(割草机) someday and I was always looking forward to it. In winter, Bill would attach a snowplow(铲雪机) to the front of the dawn tractor. I seriously told him that I would invent a better snowplow when I grew up. “Sure you will. You’ll get a patent certificate. It takes a certificate to prove an important thing,” Bill said with a smile.
One snowy morning, an idea suddenly hit me. My parents were watching TV when I spit it out, “What if I adopted Bill as my grandpa?” My parents said I could go over and ask 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。
I knocked on his door, sat down in his living room, and asked, “Can I adopt you as my grandpa?”
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The next morning, while learning to drive the lawn tractor with a snowplow, I accidentally plowed down our chain-link fence.
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Fiona Simpson, 23, was on her way home. She was driving on the D'Aguilar Highway in Queensland, Australia. It was a long, lonely road, but she had company at least. Her 78-year-old grandmother and four-month-old daughter were with her for the journey.
Clouds started to roll in overhead. Fiona hadn't bothered to listen to the weather report that morning. Mostly because she had expected to arrive home before any sort of downpour hit. As she drove down the D’Aguilar Highway, however, the slight pattering(拍打) of rain began to beat into an angry drum beat upon the roof of the car.
Even though she had been driving quite slowly, she could hardly see the lines in the road. The pouring rain soon became so heavy that her windshield wipers(雨刮器) couldn't keep up. Fiona knew that her only option was to pull the car onto the side of the road until the bad weather lessened.
She stopped the car when suddenly she heard a sound that completely shocked her. The loud bang came from behind her, right near the window where her daughter sat. The glass of the window was broken, and a moment later she discovered that something equally sharp and dangerous was hitting her child.
It was hailstones(冰雹), nearly golf-ball-sized chunks of ice falling from the sky. Hailstones can cause serious damage. Even cattle can be killed as well if they do not seek shelter. Fiona dived into the back seat and tried to form a human shield(挡板) over the baby. Meanwhile, the hailstone was battering the roof of the car so loudly that she couldn't even hear the child crying beneath her.
Queensland had apparently been hit with a super-cell storm that resulted in tennis-ball-sized hailstones. Soon, even Grandma was being battered with the same falling ice. Fiona moved towards the front, still holding her baby in her arms, and tried to shield Grandma as well. Fiona found them caught right in the middle of the storm with nowhere to hide.
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。
At this time, a truck pulled off beside them.
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After quite a long time, the storm passed.
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Money Well Spent
It was late spring, and we were living in a house in a rural part of Tennessee. I have always loved to garden, and this morning seemed like the perfect time to be working on the broad flowerbeds surrounding the old house we were remodeling (改建).
I jumped when I heard a soft voice. “Hello? Could I have a glass of water, please?” a seventeen or eighteen-year-old girl asked hesitantly, looking at the ground.
“Of course,” I said, taking off my gloves. I went into the house and came back out with a cold bottle of water. She drank most of the bottle with the first swig (大喝) and then turned as if to walk back down the road.
“Did your car break down and do you need some help?” I asked.
She shook her head and took a deep breath that ended somewhere between a sigh and a sob. There was a flash of anger. “My dad threw me out, so I’m going to live with my grandma in Memphis. But she can’t come to get me, so she has a ticket for me at the bus station,” said the girl.
“It is thirty miles from our house to the bus station in Clarksville. How about I driving you there?” I suggested. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she nodded. “Well, let’s give your grandma a call,” I said. “She’s probably worried.”
Within a few minutes, the girl was dialing her grandma on my phone. As soon as I talked to her, she confirmed the whole story. The girl’s mother had died suddenly in an accident. Her dad had been coping with a lot of anger, and the two of them were not getting along.
At a second thought, I took out some extra cash from our emergency stash (储藏) in my top dresser drawer. About thirty minutes later, we pulled up to the bus station. But the bus wasn’t scheduled to arrive for another two hours.
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。
“Hungry for a burger?” I asked .
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About a year later, a car pulled up in our driveway.
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