The Meredith family lived in a small community. As the economy was in decline, some people in the town had lost their jobs. Many of their families were struggling to make ends meet. People were trying to help each other meet the challenges.
Mrs. Meredith was a most kind and thoughtful woman. She spent a great deal of time visiting the poor. She knew they had problems, and they needed all kinds of help. When she had time, she would bring food and medicine to them.
One morning she told her children about a family she had visited the day before. There was a man sick in bed, his wife, who took care of him and could not go out to work, and their little boy. The little boy -his name was Bernard-had interested her very much.
“I wish you could see him,” she said to her own children, John, Harry, and Clara. “He is such a help to his mother. He wants very much to earn some money, but I don't see what he can do.”
After their mother left the room, the children sat thinking about Bernard. “I wish we could help him to earn money,” said Clara. “His family is suffering so much.”
“So do I,” said Harry. “We really should do something to assist them.”
For some moments, John said nothing, but, suddenly, he sprang to his feet and cried, “I have a great idea! I have a solution that we can all help accomplish(完成).”
The other children also jumped up all attention. When John had an idea, it was sure to be a good one. “I tell you what we can do,” said John. “You know that big box of corn Uncle John sent us? Well, we can make popcorn(爆米花), and put it into paper bags, and Bernard can take it around to the houses and sell it.”
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。
When Mrs. Meredith heard of John's idea, she thought it was a good one, too.
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With everything ready, Bernard started out on his new business.
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In the spring sun, my aunt and I headed for her flower shop. Normally I would be delighted to help in her shop, but not recently because of Rosa. Rosa was my sister, just one month old, who was settled in my old bedroom. For ten years, the small room was full of my toys and books. But now it was transformed into her baby room, decorated like a garden with pinks and yellows. My space, my old life, was gone.
“Here we are!” We arrived at the shop, a wave of colour and sweet smell washing over me. My aunt said I could pick some flowers for Mum and Dad. I used to love this, but today I was so overcome with tiredness and envy. Why bother to bring them flowers when they were enjoying Rosa at home without me?
Silently I helped my aunt arrange flowers. “Your mum told me there hasn’t been much shut eye recently for any of you.” “Not much, since Rosa the alarm clock was installed (安装).” I complained with a huge yawn (哈欠).
“I remember having to creep (蹑手蹑脚地走) around like a worn-out mouse when your mum was a baby. I spent the first months hating her so much.” “But you and Mum seem so close,” I said, guiltily hiding away my envy of Rosa.
“Now we are. But it took me years to grow into the role of big sister. Few flowers blossom (绽放) overnight, you know.” She pulled me in for aside hug, glancing up at the clock, and suggested I take a walk outside.
Behind her shop was a field dotted with spring flowers. Stepping into the field, I began to pick little flowers. It was like gathering my childhood memories. I remembered how I’d sit with Dad, making flower chains, crowning (授予) each other with the silliest titles: Queen of Junk Food and King of Mess. My smile grew wider. The shining yellow flowers reminded me of the color in Rosa’s baby room. Was she awake? I wondered.
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右；
2.请按如下格式在答题卷的相应位置作答。
Suddenly I saw two familiar figures walking towards me.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Rosa was wide awake in her baby basket beside the picnic blanket.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Edward walked slowly past the school blacktop where his older brother, Leon, was playing basketball with his friends. Leon didn’t notice Edward until he turned to shoot the ball. Leon really loved basketball and was good at it. But Edward was another story.
Edward would beg to play with them but Leon’s friends complained a lot. For some reason, in that last game, Edward’s playing was worse than ever. He couldn’t do anything right. He was completely unable to keep possession of the ball. He missed even the easy rebounds. His dribbling was useless, and none of his throws were anywhere near the basket. Leon had to turn his brother away.
Edward was always a whiz at math. He was so advanced that he already knew how to solve long division problems before he was taught in school. Word problems, even the complicated ones with several steps, were no problem.
One day, Leon’s math teacher, pulled him aside. “ You need to do better, a lot better, or you’re not going to pass this class. There’s a big test coming up. ”
Leon’s heart sank. When he got home, he talked with Edward about it. The boys agreed that over the next two weeks they intended to spend an hour each day after school working on math problems and then an hour playing basketball.
“Here is a good one,” Edward said and pointed to a word problem. “ Why don’t you read it?”
Leon looked at the book for several seconds. “ I’m dizzy already!” He exclaimed.
“Do you know what the first step is?” asked Edward, “The first step is to stay cool and focused.” Edward talked Leon through the problem. “Think about what you need to find out. Don’t let the problem trick you.” Step by step, together they figured it out and got the right answer. Leon soon discovered that Edward was really good at helping him.
Paragraph1.Soon it was time for basketball practice.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph2.
The morning of the math test came all too soon for Leon.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________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.
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。
Glancing down at my jeans and my old sneakers, I wished I hadn’t come.
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“How do you know all these things about me?” I asked.
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Ali and his younger sister, Zahra, lived with their parents in a poor neighborhood. Their mother was very sick and their father was struggling to find a job, and they had only a little money with which to buy food. As they had not paid the rent for several months, the landlord was breathing down their necks.
One day, Ali took Zahra's shoes to a shoe repairman to be fixed, but he lost them on the way home. It wasn’t until he got home that he realized he had lost the shoes. He was afraid that his parents would be angry and disappointed, so he begged his sister to keep it a secret. Zahra agreed and the two decided to share Ali’s running shoes. Zahra's school hours were in the morning, so she would wear them first. After school, she would rush back and give them to Ali. He could then run to his school, which began in the afternoon. Although he ran as fast as he could, Ali often arrived late and was warned by the school.
Ali heard about a long distance race that was held for the boys in the city.When he learned that the third prize was a new pair of shoes, he decided to take part. He ran home excitedly and promised his sister that he would win her the new shoes.
The day of race arrived. Ali had a strong start, but halfway through the race he began to get tired and his legs began to ache. Getting more and more exhausted he thought only of Zahra and his promise to her. Dreaming of the new shoes he would win for his sister gave him strength, and he stayed right behind the two fastest runners, determined to finish third. Suddenly, as the finish line drew near, another runner collided(碰撞) with Ali from behind and he crashed to the ground.
Ali looked up and saw the other boys rushing ahead.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Filled with delight, Ali walked home quickly.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________As a young boy, I was carefree. Every vacation I looked forward to two things—seeing my grandpa and hearing his wonderful stories. My grandpa was a very good storyteller. He had worked various odd jobs when he was young and wove his adventures and misadventures into fantastic tales. These wonderful tales colored my childhood.
As I grew up, I had to admit that Grandpa’s stories went on a little long, even a little boring and gradually lost their magic. However, not wanting to upset him, my brother and I would sometimes take turns sitting in the living room, listening to grandpa tell his stories.
When my grandpa was approaching 91, he suffered from serious memory-loss. It was kind of what doctors called dementia (痴呆), probably the earliest stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Following the doctor’s directions, we moved him into a Sunrise Assisted Living Community, where he could get a better care. After that, grandpa hardly came to our house.
One weekend before my grandpa’s birthday, I came to visit him. Seeing grandpa sitting in his armchair, dull-looking, I was consumed with mixed feelings. I wheeled grandpa to the sunshine in the courtyard, talking to him. He couldn’t express himself clearly and spoke in short bursts, but I listened to him patiently and carefully just as I used to be a little boy.
It was then that I noticed a shadow box with some old and yellowish photos in it. I picked one up, in which my brother, several boys in our neighborhood, and I were playing basketball with grandpa cheering us on twenty years before. My mind flashed back to those beautiful memories. Back then, Grandpa was in good physical condition and we were all wearing basketball jerseys, playing and laughing with abandon. I presented the photo to my grandpa, pointing at each member and reminding him of their names. Incredibly, grandpa could speak out the name of every player. I even caught a soft light in grandpa’s eyes and a smile on his lips.
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 bright idea for grandpa’s birthday came to my mind.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Seeing “the same players” playing there, grandpa seemed to have thought of something.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Catherine had stayed at home all her life to look after her three children, but now, she, who lost her husband in a car accident, had to step out and earn money to make ends meet. With zero work experience and no professional degree, her chances of getting hired for a well-paid job were next to zero.
One day, after dropping her children at school, Catherine spotted a construction site. “I think I can work here,” she thought and approached the manager.
“Hi, are you hiring?” she asked. “Yes, we are,” the manager looked at Catherine from head to toe. “Are you sure you can work here? This job requires a lot of hard work.” “I’m ready for it,” she told the manager and signed a contract to work a 12-hour shift.
However, Catherine kept her new job a secret from her children. She thought they would feel embarrassed after learning their mother worked at a construction site.
Every morning, after dropping her children to school, she would go to the construction site and work until her shift ended. She would pick up heavy bricks on her shoulder to transport them from one part of the site to the other. One evening, Catherine’s son, Peter, told her about an upcoming contest in school that required mothers to participate. In the competition, students will wear blindfolds and have to recognize their mothers without looking at them. “That sounds like such a cool event, Peter!” Catherine said excitedly. “I can’t wait for it!” “I won’t go therewith you, mom,” Peter replied. “But why?” What her son said next was something Catherine wasn’t prepared to hear.
“Mom, I would have to touch your hands to recognize you, and everyone would look at them,” Peter explained. “Your hands are so ugly. They’re so hard and rough,” he added. “I will feel so embarrassed when my classmates look at your hands,” the boy said. “I won’t attend the event.” Catherine felt terrible but couldn’t say anything in her defense.
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:
A few weeks later, Peter was walking home when something unexpected caught his attention.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Paragraph 2:
On his way back home, he kept thinking about how he would apologize to his mother:
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Green Thumb
All I did was show my little sister how to grow plants. Dig a hole. Put in a seed. Cover it with dirt. Water it. Wait. “See, Laynie,” I explained, “a whole plant will grow from this tiny seed. All we have to do is water it.”
Laynie had her own watering can so she could “help” me in the garden. One day, after everything was watered, she ran to the fence and started sprinkling water on another spot. I walked over and saw a fresh patch of dirt near the fence.
“Did you plant something there?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m growing a pencil. My purple pencil got too small, so I planted it.”
“What? But, Laynie—”
I should have explained things right then, but I just muttered, “Uh…I never grew one before.”
Later I got what seemed like a great idea. I dug up Laynie’s pencil and “planted” a brand-new purple pencil. Laynie was really excited when she saw it. “My pencil grew!” she shouted.
A few days later, Laynie was watering on the same spot. Two days later, new crayons sticking their pointy little heads out, thanks to me. Laynie jumped up and down and yelled, “They look like flowers!” She “picked” them and ran into the house.
Next, Laynie grew an adult bear doll from a tiny one, a soup spoon from a teaspoon, and a hand mirror from a piece of glass. When she claimed that she had grown these things, I just kept my mouth shut! Actually, it was fun trying to think of what should grow from Laynie’s seeds. And it was cool to see her get excited.
One day I saw her patting down some dirt near the fence again, so I knew she’d just planted something. My heart dropped to my feet when she asked, “How long does it take to grow a goldfish, Brad?” I couldn’t speak.
“Not long, I bet!” said Laynie. She knelt down to whisper “Grow, Molly. Grow!” before she skipped back to the house.
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 sat down with my back to the fence and thought for a long time.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Later I found Laynie sitting by the spot where Molly was buried.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________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.
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。
The doctors suggested he return to college with scars of severe burns temporarily.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________So I told him about Nancy’s childhood.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________10 . 阅读下面短文，根据所给情节进行续写，使之构成一个完整的故事。
A Vacation with My Mother
I had an interesting childhood. It was filled with surprises and amusements, all because of my mother---loving, sweet, yet absent-minded and forgetful. One strange family trip we took when I was eleven tells a lot about her.
My two sets of grandparents lived in Colorado and North Dakota, and my parents decided to spend a few weeks driving to those states and seeing all the sights along the way. As the first day of our trip approached, David, my eight-year-old brother, and I unwillingly said good-bye to all of our friends. Who knew if we’d ever see them again? Finally, the moment of our departure arrived, and we loaded suitcases, books, games, camping equipment, and a tent into the car and bravely drove off. We bravely drove off again two hours later after we’d returned home to get the purse and traveler’s checks Mom had forgotten.
David and I were always a little nervous when using gas station bathrooms if Mom was driving while Dad slept: “You stand outside the door and play lookout(放哨) while I go, and I’ll stand outside the door and play lookout while you go.” I had terrible pictures in my mind: “Honey, where are the kids?” “What?! Oh, Gosh…I thought they were being awfully quiet.” We were never actually left behind in a strange city, but we weren’t about to take any chances.
On the fourth or fifth night, we had trouble finding a hotel with a vacancy. After driving in vain for some time, Mom suddenly got a great idea: Why didn’t we find a house with a likely-looking backyard and ask if we could set up tent there? David and I became nervous. To our great relief, Dad turned down the idea. Mom never could understand our objections(反对). If a strange family showed up on her front doorstep, Mom would have been delighted. She thinks everyone in the world is as nice as she is. We finally found a vacancy in the next town.
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:The next day we remembered the brand-new tent we had brought with us. ______________
Paragraph 2:
We drove through several states and saw lots of great sights along the way. ______________
