Once there were two mice. They were friends. One mouse lived in the country; the other mouse lived in the city. After many years the Country mouse saw the City mouse; he said, “Do come and see me at my house in the country.” So the City mouse went. The City mouse said, “This food is not good, and your house is not good.Why do you live in a hole in the field? You should come and live in the city. You would live in a nice house made of stone. You would have nice food to eat. You must come and see me at my house in the city.”
注意：
1.续写词数应为150词左右；
2.开头已给出。
The Country mouse went to the house of the City mouse.
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After some time they came out.
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Living in the shadow of my two elder sisters at college who already had their lives planned out since they were little, I was always undecided about everything. As a teenager, I was fickle (反复无常的). I would like one thing for a week and then hate it the next. But I was constantly searching for the beginning of the rainbow. Changing my dream from a vet to an astronaut, I thought there were various options available to me. However, my parents would shake their heads and repeatedly asked me such questions as, “Why can’t you be more like your sisters? What are you going to do with your life? Aren’t you interested in anything at all?” After a couple of shrugs (耸肩), my parents usually stopped talking. I was not sure if they gave up or anticipated my dull reactions. I often responded, “I couldn’t answer all of your questions now.”
Actually, my parents just had high expectations that never seemed to be fulfilled. Plus, like other parents, they just wanted to give the best to me and expected me to achieve success. The arguments with my parents seemed childish. One day, my mother made her thoughts clear, “Your grades aren’t high enough. No schools are going to want you, dear. We didn’t pay so much money for nothing.” Hesitating for a while, I said, “No matter what you say, I believe I will enter a good college.” Still, I let my emotions control myself.
Certainly, I had never planned not to go to college. After another debate with my mom, I decided to make a change. No longer would I sit back and let my parents mistake me for a bad boy. It was time to take action.
I knew it was a crucial year at high school. Releasing my feelings, I began to collect all the knowledge I had learned and review it with all my heart. I didn’t argue with my parents any more, but instead turned to my sisters for help and tried my best to study. Finally, I took the national college entrance examination with ease and confidence.
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 few days later, I received a call from my school, saying my college acceptance letter had arrived.
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My parents excitedly said behind me, “Well, open the envelop!”
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Molly and her husband Rex ran a used bookstore in a small town. People, mostly kids, came here to read books, sell books and buy books. The morning had been full of rain, and passers-by were walking with narrow eyes under umbrellas. Molly rested both her hands on the counter and leaned（倾斜）forward to watch the world outside in the rain while Rex was busy sorting out books on the bookshelves. Rick, who sat on the floor burying himself in reading a hardback illustrated book, was the only customer in such a rainy day. Rick was a regular customer to the bookstore and he never sold a book or bought a book. He just read books.
“Can you keep this book for me?” Molly heard a shy voice and looked down to find it was little Rick that stood before the counter, holding the illustrated book and asked.
“Sure!” Molly nodded encouragingly. But the uncertainty remained on Rick’s face. “I’ll be back really soon. Promise. Tomorrow if I can.” Molly nodded to him as seriously as she was treating an adult. Molly wanted to ask him if there was anything difficult, but she kept silent. Anyway, she put the illustrated book in a drawer in case anyone else would take it. Most of the secondhand books in her store were unique. If it was sold, she would fail to keep her promise.
Rick didn’t return the following day, or the day after that. Molly was somehow disappointed. Rex suggested placing the illustrated book on the bookshelf so that others could read it or take it. In Rex’s opinion, children made promises all the time and they promised all kinds of things. When they came to a store and was attracted by something, they promised to come back and they asked the shopkeeper not to let anyone else take the things they wanted away. It happened all the time.
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。
But Molly insisted that they should wait and keep the book.
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Rick pushed the door open and rushed to the counter holding his money box.
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The four mountain climbers were still breathing heavily as they looked out into the distance. The views from the top of the mountain were breathtaking. In all directions, valleys, forests and other mountains were laid out before them. They could even see the small wooden houses of the village where they had spent the night and the route they had taken to reach the top of this small but dangerous mountain. Laughing loudly, they were surprised at their courage in climbing such a steep and rocky mountain slope. Filled with an enormous sense of achievement, the four young climbers patted each other on the back.
As the other three continued to enjoy the views, Jason, the leader of the group, stared at the horizon with a troubled look on his face.
“What is it, Jason?” Sofia, the youngest of the group, asked.
“Those dark clouds in the distance mean a heavy storm is fast on the way,” Jason replied. He remembered the villagers had warned him of the unpredictable weather conditions on top of the mountain and that a terrible storm could appear from nowhere.
“But it's so warm and sunny here. I don't think the storm is coming this way,” Sofia said, more in hope than expectation.
However, Jason feared the worst and knew only too well what would happen if the storm caught them in the open. He addressed the group in a calm but serious tone, “If the storm hits us, the temperature will fall dramatically. The rain and mist will make it difficult for us to see where we are going and we could easily get lost or fall off a cliff. The wind will take our strength, so we need to get moving fast.”
The four mountain climbers packed up their facilities and immediately started back down the mountain. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, the storm was upon them sooner than expected. The wind screamed in their ears, the driving rain stung (刺痛) their eyes and the mist made it impossible for them to see clearly.
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。
With it getting dark, Jason decided that it was just too dangerous to continue.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Finally, the storm showed signs of stopping and the climbers decided to continue their way down the mountain.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Fiona and I had been classmates since kindergarten. She was always wherever I was and she was always ahead of me. Dance performance needed a big finish? Fiona was picked. Selling cookies for charity? “Oh, I’m sorry,” the lady living next door to me would say, “I just bought twenty boxes from Fiona. Such a nice girl.” And the school plays? Fiona would have the leads while I was cast as her mother or neighbor. I even played her dog once. Yeah, whatever.
Then the day of the choir concert audition(面试) came. We waited while Ms. Jones called us one at a time into the choir room. When Ms. Jones got to the C’s, my heart sped up each time she came to the door. By the time she actually called my name, my whole body was shaking. When I came back, Fiona smiled at me. Ms. Jones called her name and Fiona followed her. She was still calm and smiling when her audition was over.
When Ms. Jones made the announcement of who had made the special choir group, I wasn’t surprised when Fiona’s name was on the list and mine wasn’t. “So,” I said under my breath, “what else is new?”
Sudden clapping brought me out of my thought. Everyone was looking at me. I must have missed something here. Ms. Jones walked towards me and said, “Celia, you will have to start practicing with me. The lead singer takes extra preparation.” Lead singer? I got the lead singer? I glanced over at Fiona. She smiled and gave me the thumbs-up sign. She was always so nice.
Now the big day had come. We stepped onto the stage and took our places. I was front and center. Ms. Jones raised her baton (指挥棒) and we began to sing. The spotlight flashed over me and then circled me in its bright light. Ms. Jones nodded and pointed her baton at me. That baton must have shot out a secret ray because I froze right there on the spot.
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 couldn’t think and most of all, I couldn’t sing.
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The rest of the performance went well.
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| How to learn Chinese Well | keep a diary in Chinese every day |
| take Chinese lessons | |
| be interested in Chinese | |
| listen to Chinese songs | |
| … |
I’m glad to receive your letter,
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Best wishes!
Yours,
Li Hua
My Amazing Mom
I lived about an hour away from my mom’s, but I visited my mother often, especially when she turned ninety. Even though my brother and I had felt it was time for Mom to move in with one of us, she wouldn’t hear of it.
I remember one of my visits as if it were yesterday. Mom was ninety-six years old, and she had insisted on baking cookies for her great-grandsons’ birthday party. I had offered to make them for her, but she dismissed the thought. She wanted to contribute to the birthday party’s menu, just like she always had.
Mom had decided to bake cookies the following morning. I had suggested she wait until I arrived the next day, but she said she would be fine. So when I went grocery shopping, I made sure my mom had all the basic ingredients(食材) she needed for the morning. I placed them on the kitchen counter. And since it had been a handful of months since Mom had made her cookies, I decided to write the recipe out again. The original was pretty worn, and I wasn’t sure she would still remember all the ingredients and measurements. Before I left for home, I set the oven temperature to 350 degrees. All she had to do was turn it on in the morning.
When I arrived the next morning, I found her cookies were cooling in rows on the shelves. She had accomplished quite a lot that morning, and it was only nine o’ clock. However, Mom wasn’t happy. She told me the cookies tasted awful.
I blamed myself for not insisting that we bake them together. The disappointment on her face made it quite clear that Mom felt defeated, as if she had lost her purpose at the age of ninety-six, I looked at the cookies. They did appear flatter than usual and tasted awful. I assumed she had probably left out some ingredients. Maybe she didn’t read the recipe correctly.
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2．请按如下格式在相应位置作答。
But I checked my recipe and it turned out to be all my fault.
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That afternoon, she immediately decided to bake fresh cookies.
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What my father wore really embarrassed me. I wanted him to dress like a doctor or a lawyer, but on those muggy mornings when he rose before dawn to fry eggs for my mother and me, he always dressed like my father.
We lived in South Texas, and my father worked as a repairman. He liked shirts that snapped more than those that buttoned, and kept his pencils, cigars, glasses, wrenches and screwdrivers in his breast pocket. His boots were those with steel toes that made them difficult to pull off his feet, which I sometimes helped him with when he returned from repairing cars — his job that also shamed me.
I blamed the way he dressed for my social failures. When boys bullied me, I thought they’d seen my father wearing his cowboy hat but no shirt while walking our dog. I felt that girls laughed at me because they’d glimpsed him mowing the grass in cut-off jeans and black boots. The girls’ families paid men to beautify their lawns, while their fathers travelled in the bay wearing lemon-yellow sweaters and expensive sandals.
My father only bought two suits in his life. He preferred clothes that allowed him the freedom to move under cars. But the day before my parents’ twentieth anniversary, he and I went to Sears, and he tried on suits all afternoon. With each one, he stepped to the mirror, smiled and nodded, then asked about the price and reached for another. He probably tried ten suits before we drove to a discount store and bought one that saved him the bother of approaching a fitting room.
Later, he wore the same suit for my eighth-grade award banquet, but I wished he’d stayed home. After the ceremony, he praised my award and my character while changing into a faded red sweatsuit. He was stepping into the garage to wash a load of laundry when I asked what later struck me as cruel and wrong. “Why,” I asked, “don’t you dress ‘nice’, like my friends fathers?”
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。
He held me with his sad, shocked eyes and searched for an answer.
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In the following days, my father proved to me that there are things more important than what one wears.
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I started university in London years ago when I came from a small village in Sussex to a big city. It was quite shocking for me to see so many homeless people there and I didn’t know how to act. I knew nothing about them and they kind of scared me. I heard all these stories that they were high on drugs and thieves.
One of my friends was involved in a project with homeless people then so I decided to go along one week. Every Friday evening, a group of students made sandwiches in the student halls and then drove to Holborn to hand them out. Initially, I imagined we’d just hand out the food and leave, but we actually stood around for about an hour talking to them and hearing their stories.
From what we did, I learned that homeless people are real people with amazing experiences. There was a guy that kept saying that he had his name on a housing list and that he had a job as a road sweeper. I thought it was all talk and then he came along one week and said: “I’m coming along to say bye; I’ve got myself a place.” It was amazing and really nice that he remembered us and came back to tell us. It’s very satisfying when good things like that happen.
Working on this project has encouraged me to stay connected with homeless people in the future. I accepted the training to be a doctor, and I’ve seen some doctors who didn’t know where to start when they treated the homeless — they would normally ask questions like: “Where do you live?”, but how can you talk like this with a homeless person? From that point of view, my experience has been very useful for me to become comfortable talking to homeless people.
Until someone referred to me as a volunteer, I’d never really thought of myself as one! Young people don’t want to volunteer because they think they must give a lot and it sounds like what old ladies do — that is what I think of volunteering, even though I’m doing it myself.
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 two years of helping out, the project leaders asked me if I wanted to get more involved.
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Actually volunteering isn’t a huge devotion and I completely encourage young people to do it.
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