A MOTHER’S DAY SURPRISE

The twins were filled with excitement as they thought of the surprise they were planning for Mother’s Day. How pleased and proud Mother would be when they brought her breakfast in bed. They planned to make French toast and chicken porridge. They had watched their mother in the kitchen. There was nothing to it. Jenna and Jeff knew exactly what to do.

The big day came at last. The alarm rang at 6 a.m. The pair went down the stairs quietly to the kitchen. They decided to boil the porridge first. They put some rice into a pot of water and left it to boil while they made the French toast. Jeff broke two eggs into a plate and added in some milk. Jenna found the bread and put two slices into the egg mixture. Next, Jeff turned on the second stove burner to heat up the frying pan. Everything was going smoothly until Jeff started frying the bread. The pan was too hot and the bread turned black within seconds. Jenna threw the burnt piece into the   sink and put in the other slice of bread. This time, she turned down the fire so it cooked nicely.

Then Jeff noticed steam shooting out of the pot and the lid starting to shake. The next minute, the porridge boiled over and put out the fire. Jenna panicked. Thankfully, Jeff stayed calm and turned off the gas quickly. But the stove was a mess now. Jenna told Jeff to clean it up so they could continue to cook the rest of the porridge. But Jeff’s hand touched the hot burner and he gave a cry of pain. Jenna made him put his hand in cold water. Then she caught the smell of burning. Oh dear! The piece of bread in the pan had turned black as well.

As the twins looked around them in disappointment, their father appeared.

The twins carried the breakfast upstairs and woke their mother up.

2 . By day, Robert Titterton is a lawyer. In his spare  time though he goes on stage beside pianist Maria Raspopova — not as a musician but as her page turner. “I’m not a trained musician, but I’ve learnt to read music so I can help Maria in her performance.”

Mr Titterton is chairman of the Omega Ensemble but has been the group’s official page turner for the past four years. His job is to sit beside   the pianist and turn the pages of the score so the musician doesn’t have to break the flow of sound by doing it themselves. He said he became just as nervous as those playing instruments on stage.

“A lot of skills are needed for the job. You have to make sure you don’t turn two pages at once and make sure you find the repeats in the music   when you have to go back to the right spot.” Mr Titterton explained.

Being a page turner requires plenty of practice. Some pieces of music can go for 40 minutes and require up to 50 page turns, including back turns for repeat passages. Silent onstage communication is key, and each pianist has their own style of “nodding” to indicate a page turn which they need to practise with their page turner.

But like all performances, there are moments when things go wrong. “I was turning the page to get ready for the next page, but the draft wind from the turn caused the spare pages to fall off the stand,” Mr Titterton said, “Luckily I was able to catch them and put them back.”

Most page turners are piano students or up-and-coming concert pianists, although Ms Raspopova has once asked her husband to   help her out on stage.

“My husband is the worst page turner,” she laughed. “He’s interested in the music, feeling every note, and I have to say: ‘Turn, turn!’ Robert is the best page turner I’ve had in my entire life.”

3 . According to Jessica Hagy, author of How to Be Interesting, it’s not difficult to make yourself interesting at a dinner party.

    1    , if you’re out of your comfort zone or if you’re wandering into somebody’s house for the first time. So the main thing is just to show up and be adventurous, trying different foods and talking to strangers.

People love to talk about themselves. If you can start the conversation with a question other than “What do you do for a living?”, you’ll be able to get a lot more interesting conversation out of whomever it is you’re talking to.     2    , it can bring in “I have this old, broken-down vehicle” or “I rode the bus with these crazy people who were laughing at silly jokes in the back.” It just opens up conversation.

    3    ? If you can’t take their wine away, you should certainly try to take away their soapbox (讲台). If you’re the host, you can ask them to help you in the kitchen with something and just remove them from the situation.    4    .

And what about that other dinner-party killer: awkward silence? If you’re faced with an awkward silence at a dinner party, the only thing that always gets everyone talking again is to give the host a compliment (赞扬).     5    . Just quickly turn around and say, “This cake is extremely delicious and you have to tell me all about it.”

So being interesting at a dinner party isn’t that hard.

4 . Over the past 38 years, Mr. Wang has pretended to be someone else many times,and has even learned to ________ different dialects (方言), leading to him being described as an “Oscar-winning actor”.

The 60-year-old is not an actor, but a ________ However,he is more devoted to his “________ ” than any real actor.

In the 1990s, a group of thieves often sold stolen goods with the help of some beggars. To look into the ________, Wang disguised (伪装) himself and ________ the beggars. Dirty shorts and old shoes gave him the ________ of a real beggar and his convincing dialect soon won him the ________ of the beggars.

“I often ________ them to drink alcohol. Once they were ________,they began to talk a lot,"Wang said. “I'd then ________ myself to use the toilet, ________ what the beggars said, and send the ________ to my teammates.”

Wang, who is often in ________ situations, is also a judo (柔道) master.   “As long as I get close enough, no criminal can ________ from me,” he said.

Wang's ________ won him several honors, including a National May Day Labor Medal and 11 Citations of Merit.

5 . A Take a view, the Landscape(风景)Photographer of the Year Award, was the idea of Charlie Waite, one of today’s most respected landscape photographers.Each year, the high standard of entries has shown that the Awards are the perfect platform to showcase the very best photography of the British landscape.Take a view is a desirable annual competition for photographers from all comers of the UK and beyond.

Liu Ruying,     1     grandfather is a huge fan of Peking Opera, has been interested in Peking Opera for much of her young life. Her grandfather is a great influence     2     her. At the age of 8, she     3    (begin) to practice the classic art. It wasn’t easy for a little girl     4    (experience) the difficult training, as performances combine martial arts, dancing and acrobatics(杂技).

“Sometimes I was tired,“ she said. ”I had to balance my studies and other     5    (course) I was interested in, such as dance. But the great charm(魅力) of Peking Opera made me always practice it.”

When Liu got the news that her region would have a cultural exchange with other countries, she had the idea of     6    (introduce) Peking Opera to the world in English. With     7     help of her mother, she took part in the activity after several months of practice.

“I     8    (extreme) love traditional Chinese culture,” she said. “Peking Opera has a long history of about 200 years and     9    (consider) a treasure of our nation. We should let     10    (we) make great efforts to carry forward our culture and protect the cultural diversity of the world.”

7 . How does it feel when you solve your problem by yourself? Things may not always go as planned, but being resourceful can help you stay calm and work your way out of tricky situations.

Being resourceful means finding smart and creative ways to solve a problem, using whatever resources you have at the time.     1     They can also be anything else that’s useful, such as information, advice or your own experience. It also means trusting your instincts, the ability you’re born with, rather than through training and being confident about your ability to face challenges. A resourceful person is not the one getting cross or panicking when something goes wrong. They’re thinking about how to solve the problem.

    2     when we learn to problem solve for ourselves rather than immediately going to others for help, it can help to build our confidence, help us feel more independent, and feel better about making decisions. Being resourceful may not help you avoid problems, but thinking creatively about how you can deal with them will make you feel less stressed and more prepared next time.     3     This can boost self-esteem, that is, how you feel about yourself.

When you’re facing a challenge, try to focus on the actual problem rather than how you feel about it. Think about where and when it happened and what the causes are. Next, think up as many solutions to the problem as you can.     4     Finally, review what has and hasn’t worked, so you’re equipped to deal with a situation next time.

And remember, if you have a tricky problem that you’re unable to solve, then ask a trusted adult for help.       5    

9 . I grew up on a university campus in eastern Nigeria.I was a(n) _________reader, and what I read were British and American children’s books.I began to write when I was seven.I wrote exactly the kinds of stories I was reading: All my _________ were white and blue-eyed. They played in the snow. They ate apples, and they talked a lot about the _________，how lovely it was that the sun had _________.

What this demonstrates is how _________we can be influenced by what we read, particularly as children. Because all I had read were foreign books, I had become _________ that books had to have _________ in them and had to be about things with which I could not personally identify.

Things _________ when I discovered African books. There weren’t many of them available, and they weren’t quite as easy to _________ as the foreign books.

But __________ writers like Chinua Achebe and Camara Laye I went through a mental __________in my view of literature.I __________ that people like me, girls with skin the color of chocolate,could also __________ in literature. I started to write about things I recognized. What the __________ of African writers did for me was this: It saved me from having a __________ story of what books are.