A GIFT FOR GRANDPA
Summer vacation was coming. Jack and his brother Berlin were filled with excitement as they thought of visiting their grandparents again.
The big day came at last. After the happy family got ready, they set out for the grandparents’ eagerly. On the way, the brothers were excitedly talking about the fun they had with grandparents.
A little blue house with a tall white chimney finally appeared. Behind the property was the forest carrying their good memories with Grandpa. They arrived at the driveway, at the end of which Grandma was waiting for them joyfully.
Jack and Berlin each gave Grandma a big hug and then swept to the living room, shouting excitedly “Grandpa, we are back!”
Seeing his grandsons, Grandpa was wild with joy and tried to get up with all his strength from the chair but in vain. A helpless expression flashed on his face. Grandma explained that his health was declining rapidly and maybe couldn’t stand up on his own forever. But Grandpa declared stubbornly (倔强地), “I can!” Certainly, he was stuck in his boyish way. Mum and grandparents were happy to meet again after a long time. They sat together and chatted about what happened recently.
The brothers were soon bored with adult conversation, went out and wandered into the forest. Tall trees stretched up to the heavens with large branches crossing each other, while young ones rose straight like soldiers. Grandpa was once a great explorer full of wisdom. He could tell where the birds came from only by their calls and songs. The trees, birds, lizards, lots of bugs...How many merry moments they spent with Grandpa in the kingdom!
But now Grandpa couldn't get up. This made them worried. “We’d think out a way to cheer him up.” Jack said. “Grandpa is a bird lover, and we can catch him a bird.” Berlin suggested. “But he hates birds being caged!” Jack shook his head.
Then a bright idea came to Jack’s mind. “Why not make a cane (拐杖) out of a young tree!”
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。
Berlin thought it was a good idea.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Jack and Berlin handed the cane to Grandpa.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Her name was Mrs. Thompson. And as she stood in front of the 5th grade class on the very first day she looked at her students and said that she loved them all the same. But that was impossible because there in the front row was a little boy named Teddy Stoddard. Mrs. Thompson had watched Teddy the year before and noticed that he didn't play well with the other children, that his clothes were messy and that he constantly needed a bath. She paid no attention to Teddy.
However, when she read his file, she was in surprise. Teddy's first grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is a bright child with a ready laugh. He does his work neatly and has good manners...he is a joy to be around." His second grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is an excellent student, well liked by his classmates. But he is troubled because his mother has a deadly illness and life at home must be a struggle." His third grade teacher wrote, "His mother's death has been hard on him. He tried to do his best but his father doesn't show much interest." Teddy's fourth grade teacher wrote, "Teddy is withdrawn and doesn't show much interest in school. He doesn't have many friends and sometimes sleeps in class.” By now, Mrs. Thompson realized the problem and she was ashamed of herself. She thought that she could make a difference.
She felt even worse when her students brought her Christmas presents, wrapped in beautiful paper and tied with pretty ribbons, except for Teddy's. His present was clumsily wrapped in the heavy, brown paper that he got from a grocery bag. Mrs. Thompson opened it in the middle of the other presents. Some of the children stared to laugh when she found a stone bracelet(手镯)with some of the stones missing, and a bottle that was one-quarter full of perfume.
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Mrs. Thompson, her voice choked up with tears, thanked her students for their presents.
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Ten years later, Teddy invited Mrs. Thompson to attend his wedding as groom's mother.
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It’s just a small, white envelope stuck among the branches of our Christmas tree. No name, no identification, just a short note inside which says what we have done to celebrate Christmas. It has stuck through the branches of our tree for the past 10 years or so.
It all began because my husband Mike hated Christmas—oh, not the true meaning of Christmas, but the commercial aspects of it—the overspending, the anxious running around at the last minute to get a tie for Uncle Harry and the dusting powder for Grandma—the gifts given in desperation because you couldn't think of anything else.
Knowing he felt this way, I decided one year to avoid the usual shirts, sweaters, ties, and so on. I reached for something special just for Mike. The idea came in an unusual way.
Our son Kevin, who was 12 that year, was wrestling (摔跤) at the junior level at the school he attended. Shortly before Christmas, there was a non-league match against a team supported by an inner-city church. These teenagers, dressed in sport shoes so ragged (破烂的) that shoestrings seemed to be the only thing holding them together, presented a sharp contrast (对比) to our boys in their stylish blue and gold uniforms and new wrestling shoes. As the match began, I was alarmed to see that the other team was wrestling without headgear, a kind of light helmet designed to protect a wrestler's ears. Obviously, the poor team could not afford.
Well, we ended up defeating them. We took every weight class. And as each of their boys got up from the mat, he walked around in his rags with a kind of steet pride that couldn’t acknowledge defeat.
Mike, seated beside me, shook his head sadly, ‘‘I wish just one of them could have won, "he said "They have a lot of potential, but losing like this could take the heart right out of them. ’’
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,
Paragraph 1:
That’s when the idea for his present came.
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For each Christmas, the envelope has become the tradition of our family.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________1．倡议的原因；
2．倡议的内容。
注意：
1．词数80左右；
2．题目已为你写好；
3．请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
More Exercise, Better Health
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For many years, I had a recurring dream. I was a little girl again, rushing about, trying to get ready for school.
“Hurry, you'll be late for school,” my mother called to me.
“I am hurrying, Mom! What did I do with my books?”
Deep inside I knew where the dream came from. It was about some unfinished business in my life. As a kid, I loved everything about school. I loved books, teachers, tests and homework. Most of all I longed to someday march down the aisle to receive my diploma. That seemed more appealing even than getting married.
But at 15, I had to drop out because my parents couldn't afford tuition. My hope of getting a diploma was dead, or so I thought. Pretty soon, I married and had three children, and I thought: “There goes my diploma.”
Even so, I wanted my children to be educated. But Linda, our youngest child, had juvenile arthritis in her hands and knees, which made it impossible for her to function in a normal classroom. I felt sorry for her and I didn't want her to live her life with regret. I didn't give up hope of her being back to school in some way.
One day, I saw an ad in the newspaper for evening courses. “That's the answer,” I said to myself. Linda always feels better in the evening, so I'll just sign her up for night school.
Linda was busy filling out enrollment forms when the secretary said: “Mrs. Schantz, why don't you come back to school?”
I laughed: “There's no way! I'm 55!” But he persisted, and before I knew what I had done, I was enrolled for classes in English and crafts. “This is only an experiment,” I warned him, but he just smiled. So, I told myself to try for just a semester and to see if it would work. Anyway, my dream was still there in my heart.
1. 写作词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Paragraph 1：
It was exciting to go to school again but________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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Linda and I saw each other through the time.
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It should have been a perfect summer. My father bought me a new bicycle though I couldn’t ride very well. He set a basketball hoop for me in the backyard, and best of all built a tree house beside it. But it wasn’t, because Jeremy Ross moved into the neighborhood.
He laughed at me when he struck me out of the baseball game, and he had a party on his trampoline(蹦蹦床) while I wasn’t invited. Jeremy Ross became my enemy. I didn’t like him at all. Dad understood stuff like enemies. He told me he had enemies too when he was my age and that he knew a good way to get rid of them. “I’ll show you.” he said.
He began to make Enemy Pie in the kitchen which he said was the fastest known way to get rid of enemies. Excitedly, I got my mind working: Dad might put disgusting things like weeds, earthworms and rocks from the backyard into the pie, but none of those. Instead, I smelled something really, really good from our kitchen. Confused, I went to ask my dad. “If the pie smelled bad, your enemy would never eat it.” he said. I was catching on.
Still, I wasn’t quite sure how this enemy pie worked. What exactly did it do to enemies? Maybe it made their hair fall out, or made their breath smelly?
“Everything is ready except that there’s one part left for Enemy Pie to work. You need to invite your enemy over. Even worse, you have to be nice and make friends with him. I know it’s not easy, but that’s the only way Enemy Pie can work.” Dad told me.
It sounded horrible, but it was worth a try. All I had to do was spend time with Jeremy Ross and then he’d be out of my hair for the rest of my life.
I knocked on Jeremy’s door. Jeremy seemed surprised when he opened the door, waiting for me to say something. “Um, can you come to my house and play with me?” I asked nervously.
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。
Jeremy nodded and came playing with me in my backyard.
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Later that day Dad got us to have the pie in the kitchen.
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"Why did you do this without asking for my permission first? Don't you know it's a total waste of time and it will have a bad influence on your study?" That's what my mother yelled at the ten-year-old me when she found out that I had signed up for an English story-telling competition.
I bowed my head; yes, she was right. By then I was entering Grade Six, faced with the biggest challenge yet to come — the examination to enter my dream junior high school. For that. I had given up my beloved piano lesson, my favourite cartoon program and even the joyful weekend family reunion with my cousins. I wouldn't be surprised at all if my very strict-university-teacher mother got angry at me when I chose to do anything that had little to do with study at that important moment. In her opinion, if I hadn't spent all my time on my study I would have difficulty in entering my dream junior high school.
But that's not all to it. When I was ten, I was nervous, shy, tongue-tied when facing strangers, and essentially a bookworm. These signs looked fatal (致命的) to my mother, and possibly to you, too; she thought that I could be anything but a good public speaker.
Well, I myself actually said no to my English teacher at first, because I had never done anything like that before and I was afraid. But he told me that — since I liked reading so much, why not try to tell a story I love to everyone? He also promised me that the judges were not frightening at all; just think of them as carrots and cabbages in a vegetable garden.
The ten-year-old me was persuaded by my teacher's words.
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Apparently surprised by my determination, my mother looked as if she was close to another explosion-but she only sighed and agreed.
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“Nothing will ever be the same again,” Ally said to herself.
Ally's father died last summer. It wasn't fair, Ally thought. Dad was young and had never been sick. Why had his heart suddenly stopped? Ally sank slow into her father's favorite chair and looked at his picture on the bookcase. Ally smiled. “I miss you, Dad,” she said softly.
At this moment, she felt a hand smoothing her hair and looked up. “Why don't you come outside with me, Ally?” her mother asked. “The birds are nesting in the woods. By this time last year you'd already taken dozens of pictures.”
But her mother must know birdwatching wouldn't be the same this year. How could it be? Ally wondered. Ever since she could remember she and Dad had been a team, searching the woods for the special wood warbler (林柳莺). “I'll be out in while, I promise,” she answered.
After her mother left, Ally reached for the photo album she and Dad had put together. On the cover was a photo of a tiny yellow bird with blue-gray wings and black eyes. Dad cut it from a local newspaper. Ally smiled, remembering the excited look on Dad's face when he showed her the pretty bird.
“I can't believe someone spotted this little guy way up here in New Jersey,” he said. “Wood warblers are usually found in the south, not this far north. I bet if we search really hard, Ally, we'll see this little guy together someday.”
Ally closed her eyes. She loved thinking about the times she and Dad had spent searching the woods for the little bird. They'd never spotted the warbler, but her father had an amazing way of making each outing seem special. He was her best friend.
注意：
1.续写的短文词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题纸的相应位置作答。
When they were together, Ally felt comfortable with her favorite blue sweatshirt on.
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Just then her mother came to her, carrying the old net.
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I grew up in a small town where elementary school was a ten-minute walk from my house and in an age, not so long ago, when we children could go home for lunch and find our mothers waiting.
Our lunchtime when I was in the third grade will stay with me always. I had been picked to be the princess in the school play, and for weeks my mother had painstakingly practiced my lines（台词）with me. But no matter how easily I delivered them at home, as soon as I stepped on stage, every word disappeared from my head. Finally, my teacher took me aside. She explained patiently that she needed a narrator (叙述者，旁白员) and had written a narrator’s part to the play, and asked me to play the role of the narrator. Her words, kindly delivered, still hurt me especially when I saw my part go to another girl.
I didn’t tell mother what had happened when I went home for lunch that day. But she sensed my upset, and instead of suggesting we practice my lines, she asked if I wanted to walk in the yard. It was a lovely spring day and the rose vine（ 藤 ）was turning green. Under the huge trees, we could see yellow dandelions（ 蒲 公 英 ） appearing unexpectedly through the grass in bunches (簇，串）, as if a painter had touched our landscape with small amounts of gold. I watched my mother casually bend down by one of the bushes. “I think I’m going to dig up all these weeds,” she said, pulling a blossom up by all its roots. “From now on, we’ll only have roses in this garden.” I immediately argued, “But I like dandelions. All flowers are beautiful — even dandelions.”
注意：
1. 续写词数应为 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：
“Do you mean that every flower has its own beauty?”asked my mother thoughtfully.
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Paragraph 2：
Having learned what had happened, Mom patted me on the back gently and said,“But you will be a beautiful narrator.”
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As we came down to breakfast that morning, with very shiny faces and spandy clean aprons, we found father alone in the dining-room.
“Happy New Year,papa! Where is mother?”we cried.
“A little boy came begging and said they were starving at home, so your mother went to see and--ah,here she is.”
As papa spoke, in came mamma, looking very cold, rather sad, and very much excited.
“Children, don't begin till you hear what I have to say,” she cried and we sat staring at her, with the breakfast untouched before us.
“Not far away from here, lies a poor woman with a little new-born baby. Six children are huddled into one bed to keep from freezing, for they have no fire. There is nothing to eat over there; and the oldest boy came here to tell me they were starving this bitter cold day. My little girls, will you give them your breakfast, as a New Year's gift?”
We sat silent a minute, and looked at the nice, hot porridge, creamy milk, and good bread and butter.
“I wish we'd eaten it up,” thought I, for I was rather a selfish child, and very hungry.
“I'm so glad you come before we began,”said Nan, cheerfully.
“May I go and help carry it to the poor, little children?” asked Beth, who had the tenderest heart.
“I can carry the lassy pot,” said little May, proudly giving the thing she loved best.
“And I shall take all the porridge,” I burst in, heartily ashamed of my first feeling.
“You shall put on your things and help me, and when we come back, we'll get something to eat,”said mother, beginning to pile the bread and butter into a big basket.
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We were soon ready and set out.
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Seeing the house totally in a mess, we fell to work immediately.
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