What a great year we had had! A new baby daughter, a job promotion (晋升) for my husband, and a new home were among what we had received. My husband and I were grateful for them. We wanted no gifts for Christmas, because our cups were running over. So my husband and I decided to teach them to learn to share.
After dinner, we talked about doing something special for someone else at Christmas. Our oldest son said, “Why don’t we find a family who needs help and give them presents?”
All of us were excited about the idea. We didn’t know exactly how we find our “Christmas family”, but we did know we wanted to help. The next morning I made calls to friends who might know of someone in need. That evening at dinner I described the family I had found. The father was a repairman but lost his job two weeks before. He hadn’t landed a new job yet. There were three children in the family. The wife gave birth to a new baby, who was the same age as ours. But unluckily, the baby had been taking many tests as doctors tried to determine why she wasn’t developing properly. They had spent almost all their savings on the treatment, with little for daily necessities. They were in great trouble. Of course, they had little hope of having gifts for Christmas.
“Can we give them some of our clothes?” asked our daughter. We all agreed that her idea was good, and so the children ran to their bedrooms and began sorting out the clothes they had outgrown. But my husband and I knew that clothes were not enough.
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。
On Christmas Eve, my family went for holiday shopping.
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___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________After over 10 years of dreaming and planning and 18 months of very serious considering, my husband and I finally bought a farmhouse about a mile from where I grew up. Neither my husband, David, nor myself had any experience with decoration, but we jumped in with much excitement. There was much to be done before the winter came to knock at our door. We rearranged the garden, laid out the lawn (草坪), and set all the furniture in place. Then there remained only one thing to worry us: We didn’t have a fireplace (壁炉) indoors against the extremely winter.
I knew the perfect choice of person for the work is my uncle, Richard Jones. Being a senior construct worker (建筑工人) for almost 40 years, he could do the job better than anyone else. On thinking of the idea that my house would be in my uncle’s hands, my heart was filled with expectation and comfort. The problem was that he lived far away in Florida, about an 18-hour drive from our home in Cortland. Another problem was the cost of building a fireplace. Buying the farmhouse cost almost all our savings, so could we even afford to pay him?
Much to my relief, the drive turned out to be no problem at all. On receiving my call, my uncle, at the age of 65, loaded his suitcase and his tools into his truck and headed to our place. When I asked how much he would charge, he replied, “We’ll figure up a price when the job is finished. Just have coffee and cookies ready when I get there. The more you bake cookies, the lower the price will be.”
My uncle wasn’t joking. As long as I had served coffee and cookies, he could work pleasantly. The man was obviously born with a sweet tooth. For two weeks, the coffee machine never stopped, and the cookies often disappeared before I could put them into the cookie box.
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 construction was slowly coming to an end.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________I found the paycheck (工资) lying quietly next to the coffee machine.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Vicky was a first-grade student in a primary school, but she did not feel happy there. Her parents wanted to cheer her up, so they sent her to start her second grade in a primary school nearby. She felt quite happy and wanted to make some new friends. However, she made a mistake. She wanted to become so popular that she ioined a group of students at school, but not in the right way.
Jenny, who was very nice at the beginning, became Vicky’s best friend. But Vicky did not realize that by joining up with her, she would suffer a lot later.
Jenny always acted in a proud and unpleasant wav. showing little thought for others. She did not want Vicky to have other friends. Jenny also enjoyed talking about others’ private lives. Vicky started to change as soon as she met Jenny. Her personality was not as sweet as before any more.
Time went by slowly. Vicky’s marks began to go down. Things got even worse. She hardly had any friends and she didn’t care about her friends at all. either. She always talked to her classmates in an impolite way instead of being nice.
After all that suffering, the day at last arrived when one of her classmates told her that Jenny was not going to be in the school next year as she was moving. Vicky said nothing but in fact did not believe it.
However, on the last day at school Jenny told Vicky that she was leaving. Instead of having a happy parting(分手) , Jenny told her that she never felt that Vicky was her true friend.
Vicky was quite surprised when she heard the news and started crying. When holiday was over, Vicky went back to school. telling herself that all the bad times she had suffered last year with Jenny were over, too. But she found out that her classmates had not forgotten her bad acts.
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。
Vicky couldn’t change this until Lily came to her.
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Finally, Vicky was accepted as a member of the class.
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“I’m not putting up a Christmas tree this year. I just don’t have the spirit,” my husband Bill’s mom said sadly over the phone.
My husband’s parents used to have a big Christmas. There were many lights in their yard, decorations hanging from the ceiling, a big well-decorated, freshly cut tree, etc. It was amazing.
But this year would be different. With Bill’s dad passing late that November, it was understandable that his mom’s holiday spirit was nonexistent. Christmas decorating had been something husband and wife had undertaken together for over fifty years, and she simply would not do it alone.
Still, it was heartbreaking to think that not even a tree would decorate their home this year. Phone calls were made to Mom and conversations were made with her children and grandchildren in order to try to bring back her holiday spirit. Yet, it was no use.
That season, every Christmas song I heard in the stores only made me sadder as I thought of the barren (荒芜的) spot in Mom’s heart. There had to be something that could be done to bring some joy back into her life.
One afternoon, while passing a discount store, I saw many fresh green tabletop trees. They were so beautiful. Then I got an idea. I walked into the store, and selected a multi-colored string of lights and many other decorations I could find. Then I grabbed the largest tree, paid for all the things and walked home with four bags in one hand and a tree in the other.
I couldn’t imagine what I looked like, out in the cold, carrying a tree for half a mile. I only knew I felt a boost in my own heart — a boost I hoped Mom would also feel when I delivered the tree to her. And I wanted her to know that if Dad had still been alive, he would have wished her to be happy. If he had seen her unhappy, he would have been sad.
When I got home, Bill saw the tree. I told him that I would give it to Mom.
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式作答。
But he shook his head, saying, “I wouldn’t give this to her. She’s not going to like it…”
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Just when Bill and I secretly put the tree in Mom’s yard, the door suddenly flew open.
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I was fifteen when my world took a hopeless turn for the worst. My mom was diagnosed with cancer again. She had undergone surgery and beaten the cancer. Then the cancer came back. However, there was more to worry about than the disease that my mom was battling. My dad had left us years before. Besides, because of the mounting medical bills she was paying for her previous cancer, we were on the edge of financial ruin. I was too young to get a job.
That winter was the worst. We didn’t have money to pay for electricity. Our neighbor, Sophia, allowed us to use her electricity so that we could have one lamp on in our home. The gas stove in the living room was the only heat in our house. My mom slept in her cold room, with as many blankets as we could pile on her.
Thanksgiving Day came. I searched our cupboards for food and there wasn’t much. I started slamming doors as I looked through the cabinets for a can of food we might have missed. The more I searched, the angrier I became. The noise must have woken my mom, because she came to the kitchen wrapped in a blanket. She looked worried at me and asked, “Baby, what’s wrong,” I retorted, “I’m hungry. I’m freezing to death in our own house,” I wasn’t angry at her. I was angry at our situation.
She opened her arms toward me and said, “Come here. Right now things are hard, but hope is always there. Whatever difficulties we meet, we should be strong. All you have to do is have faith. Why not believe we can be better by using our own hands?”
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 was deeply ashamed of what I had done and said.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Just as I wondered what to do to spend the night, Sophia knocked at our door.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________During my school years, I had only close friend. We spent years together, and we were inseparable, in or out of school. But the Greg moved away, and I never thought it would take more than 40 years to bring us together again.
As children, Greg and I dove into everything with passion. At that time, we were pure (纯真的) and kind, full of curiosity and expectation for life. We raced our bikes and illustrated (给书加插图) our own comic books. We even became attracted to the same girl from around the corner, a sixth -grader named Joanne who barely (几乎不) knew we existed.
The last times a Greg was sometime in 1966. It was so short a meeting that I couldn’t recall saying goodbye before he moved. Since then, we lost touch.
But then, a few summers ago, I saw a familiar woman. “Excuse me. Would your name happen to be Joanne?”
“Uh, yes...” She didn’t recognise me until I explained who I was. We hadn’t exchanged more than a few dozen words in our entire lifetime. “Have you stayed in touch with Greg?” she asked. I was surprised she even knew of our friendship.
“No. I haven’t,” I admitted. “I wish I had.”
Back at the office I checked my messages. I received one email, and then read it from start to finish. The email was from Greg.
Greg had tracked me down through social media. He was now married, had two children and had become a musician and entrepreneur (企业家) . We exchanged several emails before connecting by phone. A month later, my wife and I drove to meet Greg and his family in person.
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。
Standing in front of his house, I began to get nervous.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Seeing the photo, Greg handed me a small, old card.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________1. 该现象产生原因；
2. 提出相应的建议。
注意：1. 词数80左右；
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
Relationships with neighbors in the city
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My father is funny, smart, hardworking and loving. He taught me to drive, throw a baseball, and fish. One other thing my dad’s good at is holding a bit of a grudge(怨恨). For most of my teen years, he didn’t speak to his younger brother, although they were at many family functions together.
I was never sure why my dad was so angry with my uncle in the first place. But they spent many Christmases, Thanksgivings and Easter Sundays seated at opposite ends of the table. It was simply something that we all accepted at the time.
When I was nineteen, I got a call in my college dorm that my dad was having serious medical problems. My mom and grandmother picked me up in the middle of the night so I could be there the next day when he was scheduled to transfer to a better hospital. I didn’t sleep that night, not a wink. I tossed, turned and was almost crazy when we arrived at the hospital early the next morning before the transfer.
That morning, as my mom and I walked down the hallway of the hospital, we could see straight into my dad’s room. A tall man wearing a stylish suit stood over my father’s bed with his back to us. Casually, my mom remarked how nice it was for the doctor to come by to see my dad so early in the morning. But through my sleepless fog, something about the scene struck me as odd. The man with his back to us was standing very quietly and still, looking down, but he was holding both of my dad’s hands in his own. Not typical doctor behavior.
I stopped cold in my tracks and whispered softly to my mom, “That’s not a doctor.” I knew right away it was my uncle. But, little did I know, I would continue to reflect on that quiet moment for decades. And it would be the beginning of something truly wonderful.
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。
My dad had had a brain aneurysm (动脉瘤) and ended up in the hospital for quite a while.
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Thankfully, my dad pulled through beautifully.
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My name is Maeli. I am so lucky, because I have Lizzy Jo. She is my cousin and my friend! We are close. We talk about everything from our dreams, our sad things to the things we value most such as her beautiful bracelets (手链) and my beads (有孔的珠子).
Yesterday our teacher brought out a big box just before the last bell rang. “I have a little gift for each of you,” she said. Then she gave each of us a perfect popcorn ball. Each popcorn ball was in clear bag that was tied with a ribbon (丝带). Just that little ribbon made the gift look so fancy! Sometimes, it’s the tiny details that make things special.
I happen to have a great appreciation for popcorn balls, so I was pleased. Lizzy Jo and I rode the bus home. The moment I was off the bus, I untied the ribbon and put it into my pocket. Then I took the popcorn ball out of the plastic bag. I didn’t even stop walking. Unfortunately, my feet were in a big hurry to get home, and sometimes when feet are in a hurry, they trip.
My feet tripped. I fell. And my perfect popcorn ball dropped right into a dirty puddle (水坑). I was okay, but my popcorn ball wasn’t. Have you ever seen a perfect popcorn ball in a dirty puddle? It isn’t something that you want to take a photo of and frame and keep forever.
I looked at my popcorn ball. That moment definitely was NOT the time to use the two second rule. Last week at my grandma’s house I used the two second rule. I accidentally dropped my cookie on her floor. I picked it up REALLY fast, and I admit that I ate that cookie. But this was a very different situation. This involved a puddle.
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 wanted to cry.
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I went to my room and opened my box of beautiful beads.
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I frequently joke that my family heirlooms (传家宝)are plastic. My parents grew up poor and over the years, as a family we were comfortable but didn’t have a lot of things which would be considered luxuries: jewelry, family vacations, china, fancy cars, etc. My father went on a trip to Italy with my aunts one year and brought my mother a ring. It was her favorite stone. She valued that ring because it was one of the nicest things she ever had and represented my dad’s love for her. Sometimes they quarreled but had a deep love for each other. He died in 1980, aged 53 after a difficult battle with cancer.
She had lost some weight and wore the ring to work on a different finger. During her shift the ring slipped off and she realized it the following day. She was sick about it after having tried to find it with no luck. At the point when I talked to her she was trying to face the fact that she would never see it again. Her voice sounded hollow and weak which I assumed was due to the nature of the conversation. She choked back some tears.
I decided to look for the ring at my mom’s work. She was working at the Burlington Coat Factory Department store at the time in the Youth Dept. The Youth Dept was huge and packed with clothes, toys and tables. It was always a mess even when someone was working in it. I started row by row crawling (爬行) on the floor to see if I could find the ring under all the clothes. As I worked my way through the Youth Dept, I tried not to panic. I was amazed that no one asked me what I was doing. At that time I encountered one of my mom’s co-workers who didn’t understand English very well and tried to explain what I was doing. She didn’t seem to understand but she didn’t try to stop me either.
注意：
1.续写词数应为150词左右；
2请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
When I got to the last row, I still didn’t find the ring.
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That ring meant so much to my mom, so I never gave up.
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