My father asked me to chat with him for a while. Actually, I was unwilling to listen to his talking endlessly as he always did. My father was a lawyer, but I never wanted to go to law school or follow his path through life.
As was expected, he cleared his throat and started to say, “Er … What … What do you really want to do in the beautiful future?”
I was silent for a moment playing with the cell phone. I kept thinking, “Should I tell him my true thoughts? What if he gets angry? What if I let him down?” Later I replied, “Well, I want to be a writer.”
I guessed this may not be the answer he would expect. But surprisingly, “Interesting idea!” he answered. I was shocked, speaking in a low voice with hesitation.
“Are you serious, Dad?”
“Well, you need confidence and good preparations, and you still have plenty of time. You need to find out what you really enjoy now. Look, it’s late. Let’s take the boat out tomorrow morning, just you and me. Maybe we can catch some crabs (螃蟹) for dinner, and we can talk more.”
Early next morning we packed up the equipment and set off along the coast. We didn’t talk much, but enjoyed the sound of the seabirds and the sight of the coastline.
There were no big waves and blinding sunlight at that time. “Let’s see if we get lucky,” he said, picked up a web basket with a rope tied and threw it into the sea. We waited a while. Then my father stood up and said, “Give me a hand with this,” and we pulled up the crab cage onto the deck.
To our joy, the cage was filled with dozens of soft shell crabs. Squatting (蹲) down, we watched them for a moment. At first they fought against each other to climb out hard, trying to escape. Many were pulled back into the cage. Later, some gave up, but there were still some crabs trying to escape again and again.
Paragraph 1:At that moment, my father pointed to the cage, “Look at that crab, there!” Staring at the crab, I found that every time he wanted to escape, he was pulled back into the cage. However, he didn’t give up his fight. Fortunately, he survived from the struggle eventually. Shocked and amazed, I suddenly understood why my father had suggested catching crabs that morning. I thought the future would be filled with many possibilities. Everyone would need to find out what he enjoys and hold on to it.
Paragraph 2:From that day on, I was determined to make my dream come true. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1. 你所推荐的俱乐部； 2. 推荐理由； 3. 你的期待。
注意：
1. 词数80左右；
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使得行文连贯。
Dear Jack,
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Yours,
Li Hua
注意：词数100左右
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“Life is not easy for any of us. We must work, and above all we must believe in ourselves. We must believe that each one of us is able to do something well, and that, when we discover what this something is, we must work until we succeed.”
—Madame Curie
读了居里夫人的这段话，你有何感想？请结合生活中的具体事例对你的观点加以说明。______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Are your children getting on your last nerve? Did a coworker's comment rub you the wrong way? There's no need to plug the steam coming out of your ears. In fact, science now gives you full permission to release those emotions; you might actually be happier for it. If that seems counter—intuitive(违反直觉的), hear us out. A new study suggests that people tend to be happier if they can feel and express emotions as they want. That goes for unpleasant emotions like anger and hatred, too.
An international team of researchers recruited 2,300 university students from the United States, Brazil, China, Germany, Ghana, Israel, Poland, and Singapore. They then asked the participants to tell them which emotions they desired and which ones they actually felt, and then compared those responses to how the participants rated their overall happiness or life satisfaction.
The results showed an interesting trend. While participants wanted to experience more pleasant emotions, they reported higher life satisfaction if the emotions they experienced matched those they desired. More surprising still, 11 percent of people wanted to feel less of positive emotions, such as love and empathy, and 10 percent of people wanted to feel more negative emotions, such as hatred and anger.
At first glance, these result might seem confusing. But there's a simple explanation, according to the study's authors. Happiness is "more than simply feeling pleasure and avoiding pain," they write. It is also learning to release negative emotions when you feel them, instead of ignoring them or bottling them up.
"If you feel emotions you want to feel, even if they're unpleasant, then you're better off," lead researcher Dr Maya Tamir from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem told the BBC News website. 71
A friend of mine whose name was Martin Brown had a bad memory, which made him really famous. He was so forgetful that he sometimes forgot what he was talking about in the middle of a sentence. His wife had to always remind him about his appointments, his classes or even his meals! Since Martin was a professor at a well-known university, his forgetfulness often caused him a lot of trouble. It wasn't that he was unintelligent, as some critical people tended to say, he was just very, very absent-minded.
One hot summer day, Professor Brown decided to take his children to the beach. The seaside town he planned to visit was about a three-hour train ride away. To make the trip more interesting for his young children, he decided to keep the name of the town secret. Unfortunately, by the time Martin had arrived at the train station, the poor forgetful man had forgotten the name of the town. Luckily, a friend of his happened to be in the station. He offered to take care of the children while Martin went back home to find out where he was going.
The professor's wife was surprised to see him back again so soon, but she laughed when she heard what was the matter. She distrusted his memory, so she wrote the name of the town on a piece of paper. Satisfied that she had solved the problem, she sent her husband off again. Ten minutes later, she was astonished to see him outside the house again.
注意：
1）所续写短文的词数应为150左右；
2）至少使用5个短文中标有下划线的关键词语；
3）续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好；
4）续写完成后，请用下划线标出你所使用的关键词语。
Paragraph 1:
"What was the matter now?" asked his wife.
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Paragraph 2:
Hearing the cry, out rushed the neighbours, trying to find out what had happened.
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Sapphire Fish lived with her mom, dad, sister Mariana, and baby brother Matthew in a blue house across the street from the Elizabeth River. Sapphire loved the water. Maybe it was because her last name was Fish.
Sapphire liked to make sailboats out of paper. Taking a plain square, Sapphire folded and folded until two wide sails appeared. Then she tested the boats in the bathtub. No matter how hard she tried, though, Sapphire couldn’t keep the boats from slowly sinking into the water.
So Sapphire folded more and more paper and made bigger or smaller sails. But still the boats tipped over and disappeared underneath the surface of the water. Sometimes, the boats sank very slowly. Other times, an entire boat got pulled quickly underneath the water, almost like an invisible hand was grabbing it.
One day, the sky grew dark and the wind whistled against the house. Rain fell all day. And all night. In the afternoon, the rain finally stopped. Sapphire looked outside the living room window. There was water everywhere! The river ran right into the street and was filling up Sapphire’s front porch (前门廊).
The next day, Sapphire put on her blue boots that squeaked when she walked. She ran outside to the muddy front yard, where the river had been the day before.
Sapphire looked down at her feet and noticed something shiny and silvery. The most beautiful silver fish was wiggling in the wet mud. It was trying to get back to its home in the river.
Sapphire was scared. She knew that fish couldn’t breathe out of water. Either she had to return the fish to his family in the river or bring the fish inside her house and give him water. But how? Her mother had forbidden her to walk past the tree in the front yard. Waves of water still covered the street. It was too dangerous.
She couldn’t put him in a bowl of water from her house. The water from her sink (水槽) was very different from the river water the fish was used to. He might get sick living in the bowl.
注意：1.所续写短文的词数应为150左右；
2.至少使用5个短文中标有下划线的关键词语；
3.续写部分分为两段，每段的开头已为你写好；
4.续写完成后，请用下划线标出你所使用的关键词语。
Paragraph 1:
Suddenly, Sapphire had an idea.
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The wind pushed the boat along, past the street, and the boat was about to enter the Elizabeth River.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Deep in the forest, my husband and I had fun climbing over and crawling under the downed trees that blocked the dirt path before us. It was May, yet we walked up a snow-covered hill. When we noticed our jeans were wet up to our knees, it did not dampen our spirits Not once did we say, “Let’s turn around.” This was our vacation, and we were on an adventure. Little did we know this was the beginning of many more surprises.
The trail was marked as an easy one-kilometer like yet we were already walking a long distance. Our light-heartedness stopped when we came out into a clearing and saw a parking lot without our rental car in it. As my eyes scanned the surroundings, nothing looked familiar. My heart raced. I realized we were lost in a national park that did not officially open for another week.
Usually, I am the calm one in the relationship, but my husband surprised me with his calmness. This did not comfort me; in fact, it heightened my fear. As we walked, I asked my husband to call for help, but there was no cell-phone signal in this isolated（偏僻的）area.
It was awfully quiet except for our footsteps hitting the road, and my heavy breathing. My husband suggested we conserve energy and walk slower. With each step on the road, my feet and thighs hurt while my mind raced with thoughts about people who got lost in the Canadian woods for days.
My vision sharpened. I noticed everything around me: the trees, rocks and snow. I thought we could eat the snow on the ground in case we needed water. For the first time in my life, I was ready and willing to get a ride, but we did not meet with a single car on the road. Silently, I prayed multiple times. We focused on each other, made joint decisions and connected through gratitude. We managed to stay on the main road and walked straight on.
Paragraph 1:My husband suddenly spotted a small building on a hill in the distance.
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Just then, a friendly woman appeared, saying, “Hello.”
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Lately, I was deeply touched with two movies about faithful dogs：A Dog's Purpose and A Dog's Way Home. A dog's life cycled and cycled only to meet his first owner while the other covered 400 miles of toil and hunger all the way back to her home. I had a faithful dog too when I was a little girl, but it was a different story.
When my dad first took him home in a cardboard box, he was so quiet that I even doubted whether there was really a dog in it. When I peeped through two small holes on the side, I just saw a patch of grey fur. My dad assured me that it was just a small dog before I dared to open the box. There he was! What a lovely grey dog! He was slim and looked smart. I was on my knees as I cheerfully observed him. However, he tried to avoid eye contact with me, apparently a little scared with everything strange around. I wanted to pet his head but he only turned his head away.
When he became familiar with me, I called him Billy and he was really delighted, zagging his tail. Every time I left for school, he saw me off. When I came back, he ways waited on my way home and greeted me with his licks and brushed his head against legs. When Billy was in the kitchen with my father, lying on a small heap of firewood side the furnace （灶）,he could always know which piece of firewood my dad would pick and raised his paw in time. It always surprised me how intelligent and considerate Billy I imagined him turning into a small boy carrying my schoolbag for me and talking my dad. With Billy brightening every day of my childhood, I was more than happy.
Paragraph 1：But one day, Billy was seriously ill.
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A few years later, I went to a dog's shelter to try my luck.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________My Dad’s Best Flower
I remember my first home was a small apartment on the second floor with a lovely and spacious balcony. When my mom was busy in the kitchen, she let me stay on the balcony watching the kids playing in the street. On that balcony I played sometimes with my elder sister, Maria. She was seven years old and when my mom was absent, she was like a mother to me. The balcony was a great hobby place for my father. After his work he used to grow carnations (康乃馨) in flower boxes. His carnations were red, pink and white, and everyone appreciated them for their beauty.
He took care of them with so much love and devotion. He dealt carefully with his flowers like a mother taking care of her baby. Many times I sat on the floor of the balcony for hours observing him and his lovely flowers with patience. He was always doing something on that balcony. He was watering them every day, cleaning the balcony floor, changing the potting soil and when the stems were thick, strong and high enough, he started his improvement operation attentively like a doctor.
My dad took a tiny knife and with his left hand he held the stem of the carnation and measured the height. Then he made a small mark on the stem with his finger. Afterwards he made a sharp cut with the knife, just enough to fit in again of barley (插穗的芽). Then he bandaged the stem with a small bandage. His job was then to water the plants and to take care of them. “No one should touch them,” he said to Mom. Every day, when he came home from work he went straight to the balcony.
Mom used to tell us, “Do not touch Daddy’s flowers.” For us it was a fascinating experience to watch how the small stems were growing and making flowers. When the carnations had grown big enough, my dad enjoyed watching them every day. We the kids did too.
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。
Paragraph 1：
One day, my elder sister, who loved Dad very much, had a great idea.
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When my dad arrived, he went as usual, straight to the balcony and saw his flowers lying on the floor like dead animals.
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