When I was admitted to the University of Alabama, I decided to get a puppy. So I adopted an adorable Golden Retriever(金毛猎犬) puppy against my parents’ wishes.
Soon, I realized my parents were right. The dog was so naughty that it caused me a lot of trouble every day. In fact, she soon earned the nickname(绰号) Bella the Devil at school.
However, as time went by, she taught me how to be a better dog mom, and I taught her how to be a better dog. We became best friends and did everything together. Bella was there for me all the time: parties, restaurants, games, even dates! We loved spending time together. By the time I was a senior, Bella and I developed a stronger relationship. She was truly my best friend.
In the third year, I worked at the local college l bar not far from the house. One night, I was running late. Bella and I had been with friends down the street when I realized it was already 9:00 p.m. We had to rush home so I could make it to work by 9:30. I ran through the front door and jumped to the bathroom to have a shower. Bella followed me into the bathroom and lay in her usual place on the bathroom floor. Then I heard my front door open. It was so loud that I thought it was strange. It couldn’t be my roommate for she had flown to New York. I turned off the shower and yelled her name. No answer.
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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。
Instantly(立刻), I knew something was seriously wrong.
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Then I went outside to find Bella with the policemen.
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The power of silence
Joe was an old man aged 75. His children grew up and moved to different cities in pursuit of a good career and future. He lived in a small village carrying the memories of his deceased wife. Joe had 4 grandchildren and they used to visit him during their holidays. And it was the vacation time and Joe was eagerly waiting for his grandchildren. He was making preparations for their arrival, cleaning the house, mowing (修剪) the lawn, rearranging the household items and buying snacks and dresses for the children, etc.
However, in the busy arrangements, he lost his favorite watch, which was given by his late wife when their first child was born. Joe treasured the watch and it became his only companion (伴侣) after his wife’s death. He didn’t realize that he had lost the watch and received the kids happily at home. It was only the next day when he was about to take a bath that he remembered the watch was missing. He was shocked and very upset. His grandchildren asked him why he was so sad and what troubled him.
Joe said, “Dear children, I lost the most precious watch I have ever had in my life. It was gifted by your grandma and I lost it while cleaning the house. I feel like I’m missing my heart.” Joe was in tears and the children promised him that they would find the watch for him.
One granddaughter, Mary, asked, “Grandpa, do you remember when you saw the watch last before you lost it?” Joe said, “I guess when I was cleaning the barn.”
The children immediately began to search for the watch in the barn. The barn was full of waste materials, books, broken furniture, etc. They searched for more than three hours with the help of Joe, but failed.
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2. 请按如下格式作答。
After a fruitless search for the watch, Joe gave up.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Mary stayed alone in the barn for about 10 minutes quietly and then rushed to her grandfather.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Early in the morning I went to the ocean beach to play my guitar.The usually crowded beach was deserted except for two people.On one side of the boardwalk (木板人行道)was a woman who was cleaning the beach with a broom;on the other side was a lone figure sitting and staring at the sea.I chose a spot between them and began to play.
As I played,the woman with the broom swept her way right next to me.She stopped sweeping and leaned on her broom,smiling at me.She appeared to be homeless with dirty mismatched clothes.
"You sure play beautiful music,” she said.“I think my friend would like your music.I want to hire you to play for her.” She pointed to the lone figure staring out at the ocean, then produced a few coins from her pocket.“I don’t have much,and I know you’re worth a lot, but if I give this to you, will you play a song for her?She’s going through a lot.I know the music will make her feel better.”
I told her I’d be happy to play for free.
As we walked over to her friend,the Broom Lady told me that her friend had not talked for weeks.We approached,and the Broom Lady introduced me,“Annie,I got you a present to cheer you up.It’s a guitar man who is going to play a song specially for you.”
Annie didn’t move.She was wearing dark sunglasses and had an old coat pulled up to cover most of her face.
I sat next to Annie and played.As I played I put every thought into having good things happen for this woman.I played for quite a while.
Suddenly,Annie turned toward me and said,“You make it so beautiful.I can feel it inside my heart.”
Paragraph 1:She took off her sunglasses.
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When I stopped playing and looked up,I was shocked to see a small crowed around us.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The Story of an Umbrella
Carla is a freshman in the science department of a university in her city. Due to her poor family, she saves everywhere and studies hard.
One weekend, she was going to the bookstore to buy a badly needed book. Suddenly the rain poured down.
Without an umbrella, Carla ran for cover when it started to rain. Finally, she decided to buy a beautiful umbrella,
The prices of various umbrellas ranged from a few dollars to tens of dollars. She fell in love with a read umbrella. But she had only $10.
“I can give you seven dollars for that umbrella,” she said shyly to the smiling salesgirl.
“OK. Young lady. This is your lucky day. The umbrella is yours,” the salesgirl agreed. She opened the red new umbrella above her head, and the rain beat on it.
Carla went to the bookstore she used to go to. She carefully placed her beloved umbrella next to another old and black one.
There are no other customers in the store except a girl of her height and age. While Carla was talking to a shop assistant, the girl left the shop.
When Carla left, Carla found her own umbrella missing.
There was only the old and black umbrella which had a pattern of yellow ducks.
“This is not my lucky day,” Carla walked to the city square.
“Hello!” a young man smiled at her. But Carla didn’t know this young man. She walked away quickly. But the young man still followed the old and black umbrella. She looked at the young man angrily.
“Marissa, I’m sorry,” he said to her. “I am late.”
“I’m not Marissa!” Carla shouted, staring.
“You’re not Marissa?” the young man pointed at the black umbrella with yellow ducks, saying, “That’s her umbrella.”
“Oh!” said Carla. “Who is Marissa?”
“I don’t know Marissa. I’ve only seen a picture of her holding this umbrella. My name is Paul, a junior in college. I’m majoring in law. I came here today to give her some legal advice. Marissa works with my cousin,” said he.
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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’m not Marissa!” said Carla again.
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It was the very new red umbrella she had bought.
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We call Talent Show the biggest stage in our country. I stood on that huge stage, with my throat dry. As I stared at the audience, I knew this moment could change my life forever. When judges asked my name and I tried to speak,nothing came out. The crowd fell silent, waiting for the words to come. Finally I stuttered(结巴地说) my name and my age. “As you can tell,” I said, “I have a speech disorder…”
I’d love to sing and had already signed up for the school talent show in fourth grade when I started stuttering.Fortunately, most of the kids at my school were kind, and I was rarely made fun of. I tried speech therapy too, but it didn’t help. I feared to sing in the school talent show. Therefore, I decided to practice at home. To my surprise, the words came smoothly when I sang. And then I decided to learn to play the guitar, which was given as a birthday gift by my father.
One afternoon, I walked into the basement, where I kept my musical equipment. My eyes lit on the guitar. I picked it up and started playing. I opened my mouth, and the words came flooding out. Then I wrote a song called I Will Trust,telling the pain IP’d experienced. The next day, I filmed a video of performing the song and posted it online. Hundreds of strangers left comments that I had uplifted them with my music. Ever since, I’ve been writing songs.
Last year, I started college and majored in music production. When I saw Talent Show audition(试唱)announcement pop up on my computer, I wanted to have a try. Several months later, I was standing on that stage, trying to calm my nerves as I introduced myself, “I have a speech impediment.” I said, “It was definitely something that caused me to…” I took a long pause to find the words. “…to hide. But I found that I don’t stutter when I sing.”
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2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Then I began to sing a new song I’d just written.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________My performance on Talent Show had a deep influence on me.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________I like staying overnight at my Gramma’s house — that is, until Gramma starts telling me how wonderful my cousin Maya is. Then it’s Maya this and Maya that until I don’t ever want to hear another word about her.
That’s why I wasn’t too excited when Gramma called me on the phone to “come on over and bring your pajamas.” When I got there, it was worse than I’d expected. There, in Grandpa’s big leather rocker, sat Maya, all dressed up and formal-looking and wearing fancy shoes as if she’d just been to a party.
“Surprise, Kristen!” Gramma said. “Your cousin Maya and her parents have traveled in from the East Coast on business. Maya gets to stay with us this afternoon.” Gramma chattered away about how excited she’d been for this surprise get-together, and how cousins ought to get to know each other better.
I hung my baseball cap in the closet and set my backpack by the stairway, all the time smiling and nodding as if I’d been waiting forever for this chance to spend an afternoon with Maya. Grandpa’s chair squawked (咯咯叫) as Maya rocked back and forth. It’s the chair I like best in the house, the one I usually sit in. I sat down on the sofa across from her.
Shortly, Gramma went off to the kitchen to “see about some lunch,” she’d said. That left me stuck in the living room with rocking Maya.
She was still small but taller than I’d remembered her from her last visit four years ago. She was good at small talk, though, and was chatting away about how nice it was to see me again. But I could tell that she didn’t really think so. The last time she was here, we’d had hours of fun together building caves out of Gramma’s sofa pillows.
After that, I’d heard about her only through Gramma’s tales. Maya taking piano lessons. Maya learning math. Maya, Maya, Maya. Now Maya was here, looking great with the latest haircut and a fancy dress.
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2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Glancing down at my jeans and my old sneakers, I wished I hadn’t come.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________“How do you know all these things about me?” I asked.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________It was exam time at Marc’s school. Every day, their teachers gave them loads of homework and told them the test was very important and that they ought to spare no effort to perform well in it. Everyone followed the teachers’ instructions and made preparations for it, except Marc. He just turned a deaf ear to it. He thought he would rather play football than study.
His mum and dad repeated the importance of revision for exams over and over again. They told him that he should be working hard preparing for the test. But the weather was sunny and he thought he had better things to do.
“Shall we go to the park?” he said to his friend Huck one afternoon. “It’s a nice day. We could play football and kick around.” Huck shook his head. “I’m supposed to review my lessons,” he said. “I’m going home to do some math.”
Marc was amazed. “You’d rather do math than play football?”
“Math is important. Besides, my mum says she will buy me a mountain bike if I do well in the math exam.”
“That’s crazy,” said Marc. Huck shrugged (耸肩) and replied, “Wait until I beat you in the test and you will watch me riding past on my mountain bike!”
“You won’t beat me,” said Marc.
“Oh yes, I will.”
“Oh no, you won’t! That will never happen. Just wait and see!”
For the first time ever, Marc wanted to perform well. He couldn’t bear it if his friend came top and he did badly. So when he got home, he opened his math book. But there was so much to do. All of a sudden, he felt like he’d forgotten everything he had learned that year! He didn’t know where to start. When his sister Lily came in, he was sitting expressionlessly by the desk, just staring out of the window.
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“You don’t look happy, Marc. What’s wrong?” she said.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________On the day of the exam, Marc went to school with great confidence.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________I was moving as fast as I could, stepping carefully from rock to rock along the uneven jetty (防波堤). “Too slow, sister!” I heard my brother Sam yell as he jumped with ease.
I’ll show him and attempted a double jump. What a mistake! My left foot came down hard between the edges of two gray rocks, scraping (刮伤) my ankle. “Ouch!” I yelled.
I tried to pull my foot out, but my shoe was stuck. I bent closer to the rock, and that’s when I saw it: a shiny, square shaped stone attached to a shining gold chain. It was just lying there on the wet sand, and a few seconds later it was in my pocket.
“Why do you look strange?” my brother asked once I’d freed my foot and caught up to him. “I don’t look strange,” I said. Sam looked at the sun. Could he tell I was hiding the most perfect discovery of the summer? I kept turning the treasure around in my pocket, pushing each corner of the square stone into my finger. I was excited, but I didn’t want Sam to notice. He liked to tell everybody my business.
“Ryan kept the paper napkins (餐巾) from the Andersons’ barbecue!” he had once announced. They were stamped “R.A.” Those are my initials! “Ryan saved the mini cola bottle from the carnival!”
My family calls me their “little collector”. Some mean kids at school call me “trash (垃圾) girl”.
Sam and I walked along the main street. Through the window of the candy shop I could see tubes of colourful jelly beans. A sign on the window’s glass read LOST: Gold and blue necklace. Verry special. If found, call Chrissy at 555-9924.
Chrissy had drawn a crayon version of the necklace at the bottom of the poster. The necklace looked different from the one I clutched (抓) in my pocket, I decided. Rounder, bluer. The poster appeared old and weathered. It must have been put up months ago.
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2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Once home, I placed the necklace into my box, attracted by it.
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Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting in a café across from Chrissy.
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My grandfather belonged to a world of formal manners. He was handsome, always perfectly dressed, neat and tidy in the appearance. But that was only one part of my grandfather’s character. He was also the kindest person I’ve ever known.
One story returns to my memory again and again. I was 16 and took part in a school play. We had been preparing for the play for several months; it was our yearly event. All our parents, family and friends were scheduled to attend.
Our teacher, Mr. Razin, was devoted to art and took even a school play very seriously. He had written our play himself and he was committed to making sure it would succeed. He had strong views on social equality and he had written a play about a group of people who met a bedraggled(全身泥污的) homeless tramp(流浪汉). That was the plot.
Then disaster struck. The man who was to play the elderly tramp called in and told Mr. Razin that he could not appear. He did not give a reason. His unexpected decision shocked our teacher, and the cast(全体演员) sat looking at each other in hopelessness. It was two hours before the opening, and soon the audience seats would be full. The tramp was on stage the entire ninety minutes of the play. In addition, he was an old man, and we were all under twenty.
“Where can I find an actor at the last minute?” cried Mr. Razin. At that moment, I heard the familiar, sharp click of a man’s shoes, and my grandfather walked in. He was on his way to a formal event that night and had come to promise me that he would see most of the play even though he would have to leave early because of the event at which he had to make a speech. I took my grandfather aside and explained what had happened and that we probably would not be able to perform the play that night. I then introduced him to my teacher.
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The teacher stopped and looked at my grandfather.
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My grandfather then said to Mr. Razin quietly: “I will do the part.”
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When I was a child, my mother told my sister, who had a 10-inch very obvious scar (伤疤) on her arm, “Nancy, if you ignore the scar, other people will ignore it. It does not mean they will not notice it, but it means it will not matter to them if it doesn’t matter to you.”
It never occurred to me that something like this would happen to my son years later. Sending a child off to college can certainly be stressful for concerned parents. It was in 2018 that my son went off to college. He rarely contacted us. I couldn’t help asking about other aspects, which sometimes made him complain that I didn’t treat him as an adult.
To be honest, my son is excellent. Some of my friends always tell me that they admire my son’s characters and they hope their sons could have some of them.
Unexpectedly, it was 4 o’clock in the morning in 2020, when I received the phone call. “This is the emergency room calling and your son was just brought in with severe burns on his face, neck and arms. We have called for an aircraft and are going to fly him to the burn unit in Seattle.” Seattle was 350 miles from his college, so we knew immediately this was serious.
The doctor described the reason, which caused the burns. At 6 am, my son and his friends decided to barbecue hamburgers in the courtyard of their apartment. When they lit the charcoal, it burst into flames because they had sprayed too much gasoline. The flames caught my son’s shirt tail and shot from his waist to well over his head.
Fortunately, one of the boys who was quick-minded grasped my son and rolled him on the grass. While it saved his life, it was not in shape to save him from severe burns and terrible scars.
After he recovered from the treatments, the doctors told him they would not do plastic surgery for 6 months because it takes that long for the skin to stop shrinking and wrinkling.
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2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
The doctors suggested he return to college with scars of severe burns temporarily.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________So I told him about Nancy’s childhood.
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