I didn’t like Del so much. He always called me the nickname “Germy”, which meant “dirty”, instead of my real name “Jamie”. Besides, he was known as a trouble-maker in school. So when the head teacher Mr. Smith asked Del to come to his office, I naturally thought that Del had done something mean to someone. Through the window, I caught sight of a smaller boy crying. Del seemed unhappy, too.
He did not return to class that day. All of us were discussing what had happened to him. What else could such an annoying boy do? “He must have hit the boy and was sent home,” I whispered to my friends. Their eyes widened. It felt good to see them so interested in what I said.
The next morning, the whole school was talking about Del being expelled(开除) for beating up a kid. I was surprised that my assumptions were passed on so quickly. So when Del walked into the classroom, all the kids were shocked. The kids next to him shift ed their desks away. “What’s your problem?” Del asked. “I don’t want you to attack me,” one kid said. Some laughed. “Yeah, I might,” said Del. I could tell he was joking, but many kids thought he admitted he did beat up someone.
During recess(课间休息), Del tried to join the kickball game. “Neither team wants you,” one of the players said. “Why?” Del asked, looking confused. “I always play with you guys.” They ignored him and went on playing. Del sat by himself while the rest of the school enjoyed their recess away from him. Del looked lonely and sad, much different from before. I started to feel sorry for him.
Later that day, I learned what really happened. The kid was Del’s little brother and he was crying because their mother fell ill and was sent to hospital. I felt even sorrier for what I said before. I started a rumor(谣言).
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。
At recess the next day, I saw Del sitting alone watching the kickball game.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Now that Del had forgiven me, I decided to do more before the recess was over.
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“Sai Baba! Sai Baba! Hahahaha!” Rani’s cheeks burned with shame and tears welled up in her eyes as she pushed her way to the exit through the crowd of laughing boys in the packed school bus. It wasn’t the first time she’d been called Sai Baba, after the famous Hindu holy man she’d seen on TV with his trademark afro (非洲式卷发) towering over his head. But this time was the worst. Rani jumped off the school bus and landed hard in the muddy rainwater. It had been a Friday full of disasters! Angry thoughts ran inside Rani’s head as she marched home in the drizzling rain. Why did the rain have to come pouring down so hard just at the end of the school day? Why did she have to forget her raincoat back home? Why did her hair have to be like a giant cotton candy balloon just when she wanted it to behave? Why, why, why, Rani grew angrier as she turned the back door key.
“Rani, is that you?” Papa called from the family room.
“I hate my hair!” Rani cried as tears of anger and shame streamed down her cheeks.
“Why, your hair’s beautiful!”
“Then why does everyone make fun of it al the time? The boys teased me about my hair on the bus ride back home…” She paused and then tore at her hair and pulled out a couple of paper balls stuck in it. “Look, they even shot paper balls at my hair.”
Papa went up to Rani, hugging her tightly in his arms. “Listen! Those boys are bullies. They did so only to get an emotional response from you. What you need to do is either ignore them or speak up for yourself.”
Rani nodded uncertainly, remembering the hours, days and weeks she had spent trying to bring her hair under control. “Papa?” she murmured, “I don’t want to participate in the speech competition on Monday.”
“Why?” Papa sounded puzzled.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The next Monday morning dawned bright and it was time for the competition.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________We were sitting in her classroom, giggling, playing tricks on each other and talking about the latest information of the day. Mrs. Virginia DeView cleared her throat and asked us to be quiet.
“Now,” she said smiling, “we are going to discover our professions.” The class seemed to gasp(喘气) in chorus. Our professions? We stared at each other in disbelief. After all, we were only 13 and 14 years old.
Because Virginia DeView was demanding, most of us just overlooked her brilliance.
“Yes, you will all be searching for your future professions,” she said with a glow on her face as though this was the best thing she did in her classroom every year. “You will have to do a research paper on your upcoming career. Each of you will have to interview someone in your field, plus give an oral report.”
All of us went home confused. Who knows what they want to do at 13? I had narrowed it down, however. I liked art, singing and writing. But I was terrible in art, and when I sang, my sisters screamed: “Oh, please shut up.” The only thing left was writing.
Every day in her class, Virginia DeView monitored us. Where were we? Who had picked their careers? Finally, most of us had selected something: I picked print journalism（新闻工作）. This meant I had to interview a devoted newspaper reporter in person, and I was terrified. Sensing this, for the next 90 minutes, Mrs. Virginia DeView filled me with stories about print journalism…
A few days later, I gave my oral report totally from memory. Surprisingly, I got an A on the entire project.
Years later, I forgot all about Virginia DeView and the careers we selected. I was in college hunting for a new career. My father wanted me in business, which seemed to be sound advice at the time, except that I had no sense of any business skills. Then I remembered Virginia DeView and my desire at 13 to be a journalist.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150个左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Paragraph 1: I called my father.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph 2: Now I've had the most incredible and satisfying reporting career.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________I still remember what I felt on a bright Saturday morning in late September, at a five-kilometer race in Clarkston, Georgia.
It was an unusual morning. About an hour earlier, when we drove into town to participate in the race, my 11-year-old son noticed a green tree cricket（蟋蟀） on my car. It was friendly, no longer than a fingernail. It jumped onto my son’s finger, and walked across my shirt, and then went back to my son’s hand, where it stayed so long that we eventually gave it a name: Little Friend.
The walk from the car to the registration table was perhaps a quarter of a mile. Little Friend stayed with my son. Then, we walked back across the railroad tracks and waited for the race to start. A few minutes before the race, Little Friend either fell or jumped off my son’s hand and landed on the sidewalk. Maybe it wanted to go free. But this was not a good place for that. Pedestrian（行人） traffic was heavy, so Little Friend was in danger. My son knelt and reached out his hand. It came back.
The race was about to start, and the tiny green insect was in for a wild ride. My son would run fast, and the race would be long. The race began. I ran well enough, and felt excited at the finish line. But that thrill gave way to anxiety when my son didn’t show up.
I knew he could run 5 kilometers in about 30 minutes. When I didn’t see him at the 35-minute mark, I began to wonder what had gone wrong. And as the 40-minute mark approached and he still didn’t appear, I went out looking for him. Had he got lost? I crossed the railroad tracks and looked down a long straightaway, hoping to see his face. Finally, there he was, just ahead of the 45-minute mark.
注意：1. 续写词数应为150个左右；
2. 请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
Little Friend was riding proudly on one finger of my son’s right hand.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Smiling, we walked back to the car with Little Friend.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________My husband Kenny and I grew up playing sports. We both worked in the field of physical education and coach youth high school track and field. So, Kenny and I weren’t surprised when our daughter, Becky, showed early athletic promise.
Watching her outrun other kids on the playground, I knew she was destined for winning medals on the track. Slowly but surely, track took over our lives. Weekends were devoted to training. We stopped taking vacations so the girl wouldn’t miss any practices. We missed her birthdays and family outings. I even restricted the time she could spend hanging out with her friends, which would consume the energy she needed for competition:
We didn’t really ask Becky if that was what she wanted. Of course she did! Who wouldn’t want to use a God-given talent to the fullest? Occasionally, Becky would open up after a loss, “I wish you were the same even if I have a bad day on the track. I feel like you don’t accept me just for who I am.”
Honestly, that hurt. In my heart, I knew what she said was true. I could behave more like a coach than a Mom on the sideline. But I didn’t mind. Ensuring her on the track of winning was my only goal. I probably cared more about the medals than she did. By the time Becky started middle school, our family life had revolved around (以……为中心) practices and competitions. I had visions of college scholarships, maybe even the Olympics.
One day, at a regional Junior Olympics qualifying event, she twisted her leg and ended up in a heavy fall, screaming in pain. This was not supposed to happen. Kenny and I pushed her too hard the day before and she attempted to break the record which was clearly beyond her reach.
We rushed her to the hospital right away. Never did I imagine sitting in a doctor’s office, staring at the X-ray result as the doctor calmly explained that Becky’s posterior cruciate ligament (后十字韧带) — the thick tissue stabilizing the back of her knee—was torn.
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。
“Her professional career as an athlete was over,” the doctor broke the news to me.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Following the hard-fought recovery, I watched her running with a new attitude.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________There are too many treasures in life we take for granted, the worth of which we don’t fully realize until they’re pointed out to us in some unexpected way. So it was with Mama’s minestrone soup (意大利浓菜汤).
There was no recipe for her minestrone soup. For our large immigrant family, Mama’s soup guaranteed we would never go hungry. It was a symbol of security. Its recipe was created spontaneously (非计划安排地) from what was in the kitchen. And we could judge the state of our family economy by its contents. A hearty soup with tomatoes, pasta, beans, carrots, celery, onion, corn and meat indicated things were going well. A water y soup suggested hard times.
At one time, however, Mama’s soup pot became a source of embarrassment to me, for I feared it would cost me a new friend I had made at school. Sol was a thin, dark-haired boy, and an unusual pal for me because his father was a doctor and they lived in the best part of town. Often Sol invited me to his home for dinner. The family had a cook in a white uniform who worked in a kitchen with shining utensils (厨房用具). The food was good, but I found it bland (清淡的), lacking the heartiness of my home food served from flame-blackened pots. Moreover, the atmosphere matched the food. Everything was so formal. Sol’s mother and father were polite, but conversation around the table was subdued (克制的). And no one hugged! In our family, warm hugs were a constant and if you didn’t kiss your mother, she demanded: “What’s the matter, you sick?” But at that time in my life, all this was an embarrassment.
I had known Sol would like to eat dinner at our house, but that was the last thing I wanted. My family was so different.
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。
Finally when Sol asked again if he could come to our house, I had to say yes.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________But to my amazement, I noticed Sol took a spoonful of Mama’s minestrone soup.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Ninny grew up with her grandparents. Her grandmother worked as a housekeeper, and her grandfather was too weak to move. In his wheelchair, Grandfather told her stories about flowers, princesses and sunrises. Those stories always ended with the same message: A simple act of kindness creates an endless ripple (涟漪) that comes back to you.
One day, Ninny was at the supermarket with her grandmother. They only bought the bare minimum. “Oh!” Ninny jumped when she spotted a chocolate cake. She pulled her grandmother’s sleeve. “Grandfather’s birthday is around the corner! Can we please, please, please have it?” The old lady eyed the chocolate cake. There were beautiful decorations on the top with fancy designs on the side. Picking up the cake, Grandmother took a close look at the price and sighed, “Ninny, we can’t afford it. It’s $40!”
Ninny pouted (噘嘴), trying to convince her grandmother. Yet she knew that her grandmother would not bend, even if she begged with her puppy eyes. No matter what, money did not grow on trees. Ninny sighed and turned around. Grandmother gave her a sad smile and turned towards the cashier.
Almost out of nowhere, a man with a 50 dollar bill and the chocolate cake approached her and handed these things to Ninny. “Have them, dear.”
Ninny took a closer look at the man. He was average. Average face, average clothes, and average everything. He was just a random man.
The man bent down and maintained eye contact with Ninny. “Do you know why I’m giving you these?” Ninny shook her head. “When I was a little boy, a man bought me a chocolate cake. He just overheard a conversation I had with my mother. Nothing else. He gave me some money and a small slip of paper. Then he left.” The man reached into his pocket and took out a dog-eared piece of paper. Looking at the words written, Ninny wore a smile on her face, for she was so familiar with the message.
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。
Ninny hugged the dollar bill, cake and the piece of paper to her chest.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Grandfather’s eyes widened, “You won’t believe it!”
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Beavis was a rescue cat who came to our family from a broken home. At the time, I remember thinking that his attitude just might have been responsible for the break. His first three days in our house were spent under a bed hissing (发出威胁的嘶嘶声) and spitting at anyone brave enough to approach him. Even the non-threatening offer of food or water provoked an aggressive response.
Eventually, after a number of weeks and a lot of patience, Beavis deigned (屈尊) to be in the same room as other family members, as long as he was given his space and wasn't approached directly.
His first visit to the vet was a nightmare. The poor man had to wear a thick leather apron and industrial-grade gloves before giving Beavis a routine examination. After the visit, the vet wrote in his notes that Beavis was a “very difficult” animal to deal with. At least he didn't ask us to change vets.
It was my bright idea to get him some companionship. Drawing on my “vast experience” as a cat person, I thought the cure for his antisocial behaviour would be some cat company. The second mistake I made was in encouraging my daughter and her friend to be the ones to choose a barn kitten from a local farmer. As it turned out, they couldn't decide which one to pick, so they compromised by choosing two kittens.
It turned out that Beavis didn't need cat company, but rather came into his own as a kitten bully. The little guys were threatened at every turn. We had gone from a one-catastrophe family to three. Beavis was unable to share food or even toilet facilities with the kittens. We spent more time keeping them apart than watching them interact. It looked as though we were destined to suffer long-term cat problems.
One day, Beavis was strutting (趾高气扬地走) his stuff through a particularly well-fitting door in our basement.
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:
He was not quite through when the door closed sharply on his tail.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph 2:
From then on, I lost a fierce cat and gained “a soft ball of fur”.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________One day, my nine-year-old younger brother Jeff came home from school earlier than me. When I returned home, I found he was shouting at our mom—who was busy cooking in the kitchen—about the clothes that needed washing.
“Mom, why haven’t you washed my clothes?” he asked, pointing at the dirty clothes he had taken off two days before. “I want to wear them tomorrow,” Jeff added. However, the clothes that he was wearing still looked clean. “Dear, I’ll wash it after cooking,” Mom told Jeff, looking anxious and upset. Without replying, Jeff unhappily went to his bedroom and closed the door, with a long face.
I was shocked about Jeff’s bad behavior towards Mom. How unsympathetic he was! Our washing machine had been out of order for two months. Because our parents were on a tight budget and were too busy, they still didn’t buy a new one. So recently our family had to wash our clothes by hand, which was time-wasting and truly hard work.
Just when I decided to scold (训斥) my little brother, Dad came home from work, and I told him what had happened.
Dad was upset and felt sorry for Mom, knowing how hard she worked all day. She was a saleswoman in a supermarket and did all she could to support our family. Often, Dad tried to help with some of the housework. He didn’t want Mom to have too much burden, knowing her heavy work as a saleswoman. I also tried to spare time to help do housework, sharing some of the family burden. However, Jeff was a lazy and naughty (淘气) boy, who hardly did housework.
Now, our dad decided it was high time to teach him a lesson. “Jeff, come here,” Dad called out. “I’ve some good news for you.” Jeff immediately came and asked excitedly, “What, Dad?” “Your mom and I are too busy recently. Tonight, I want you to wash your own clothes,”Dad smiled. Jeff immediately refused, shaking his head.
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。
“Then, you won’t get your pocket money next week. I’m serious,” Dad replied.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________At 9 pm, Jeff was still struggling to rinse (漂洗) the clothes, realizing the work wasn’t easy at all.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________In the thriving city of Chengdu, a group of high school seniors were preparing for the biggest milestone of their academic journey: the college entrance examination. Among them was a young student named Liang Mei. Liang Mei was known for her exceptional academic performance, but as the exam drew near, she found herself overcome with anxiety.
Liang Mei’s worries weren’t just about the exam itself; she was also struggling with the fear of losing touch with her closest friends and the uncertainty of what the future would hold. The once carefree and joyful atmosphere among her classmates had been replaced by stress and tension. Liang Mei felt isolated in her concerns, as everyone seemed consumed by their own worries and study schedules.
One day, after a particularly difficult practice exam, Liang Mei trusted in her favorite teacher, Mr. Zhang. Mr. Zhang was not only a knowledgeable instructor but also a compassionate mentor who had always been there for his students. He listened attentively as Liang Mei shared her fears and concerns about the upcoming exam and the future.
Understanding the importance of addressing the emotional well-being of his students, Mr. Zhang decided to take action. He organized a group discussion session during one of the study breaks, inviting all the senior students to participate. The session provided a safe space for the students to express their anxieties, share their feelings, and offer support to one another.
During the session, Liang Mei found relief in hearing her classmates voice similar concerns. They realized that they were not alone in their fears and that their shared experiences could be a source of strength. They discussed strategies for managing stress and ways to maintain their friendships even after graduation.
Mr. Zhang also encouraged the students to focus on their personal growth and the valuable lessons they had been learning during their time in high school, rather than solely fixating (专注) on the exam results. He reminded them that their worth was not defined by their test scores but by their character, perseverance, and the relationships they had cultivated.
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。
As the college entrance examination approached, the atmosphere among the senior students began to shift.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________The day of the exam finally arrived.
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