1 . We parents often take material things for love. “I give him everything，” a disappointed mother complains. “New shoes, videogames, and his own TV. You’d think he’d at least show me respect!”
Of course, love and presents are related. Most parents work hard to earn money. They want their children to have more than they did and have better lives. The problem is, most children don’t connect the things parents buy with the labour that is paid for them. Children have more, but our culture—television in particular—teaches them that more is never enough. Having more does not mean that a child feels loved.
From a parent’s point of view, children are not thankful. But this has to do with their natural growth. Young children see their parents as all-mighty (万能的). If parents fail to provide what they want, it must be a matter of choice. It’s normal for children, even schoolage ones, not to be able to take another person’s point of view. For example, they may dislike their parents for working long hours, and not realise that the parents would also rather have more time at home.
In addition to giving presents, we have to find other ways to express love and create memories. Reading or telling stories together, making music and playing games are all ways for families to spend time without spending money. Traditions like reading favourite poems and even snowball fights all serve the purpose (达到目的). Most importantly, as parents, we have to learn to hold back some energy from our tiring jobs. When we’re present for our children, we ourselves become the presents we want to give.
1. What does the underlined word “them” (in Paragraph 2) refer to?| A．The things parents buy. | B．Parents. | C．Children. | D．Better lives. |
| A．want fewer presents | B．want presents rather than love |
| C．are taught to ask for more | D．can live better without their parents |
| A．There’s a heavy job load for some parents. |
| B．There’s a lack of money in some families. |
| C．There’s misunderstanding between parents and children. |
| D．There’s little love between parents and children. |
| A．Our children are good presents to us. | B．We should spend more time with our children. |
| C．We ourselves need some presents. | D．We should give more presents to our children. |
A Secret Promise Kept
When I was a little boy, I loved to visit the fire station where my father worked. Sometimes Dad would give me a ten cents to buy a soda (汽水).
One day, I took two friends to the station to show my dad off. I asked Dad if we could each have a soda before we went home for lunch. I sensed just the slightest hesitation in my father’s voice. But he said “sure” and gave us each a dime (一毛钱). We each bought a soda and headed home for lunch and a summer afternoon of swimming.
When I came home, I heard my parents talking. Mom seemed upset with Dad, and then I heard my name mentioned. “You should have just said you didn’t have money for sodas. Brian would have understood. We don’t have any extra money, and you need to have your lunch.”
I suddenly realized the sacrifice (牺牲) my father had made for it. For the next twenty years, he worked three jobs to support my big family.
One afternoon Dad’s old car broke down, and he asked me to take him to his doctor’s appointment. As I pulled up to the firehouse, I saw Dad outside around a brand-new pickup truck with the other firemen. It was a beauty. Dad said, “Someday, I’ll own a truck like that.”
My brothers and I were doing well in business. We had offered to buy him a truck, but he refused.
When Dad stepped out of the doctor’s office, his face was pale. “Let’s go,” was all he said.
We drove by the old house, the lake and the corner store, and Dad started talking about the memories each place held and how proud he was of us. That was when I knew he was dying, which totally shocked me. He made me promise that I would never tell anyone of his impending (迫近的) death. I agreed, knowing it was the toughest secret to keep.
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 the time, I was just looking to buy a new truck, so I invited Dad to go to the local car dealer’s (经销商) shop with me.
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I walked to my father with the key to the brown truck.
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Jack was a bright and curious child, always eager to learn new things and explore the mysterious world about science. However, he often found himself in disagreement with his mother. His mother was always busy with her work and she didn’t have enough time to learn about his interests and passions.
One day, Jack came home from school feeling particularly excited. He just found a sci-fi book about an adventure on the moon. Upon arriving at home, he couldn’t tear himself away from the book. He read and read until it was dark. Having finished reading it, he couldn’t wait to share it with his mother, only to be told that he should focus on more practical subjects like math and history, which would help him get into a good college and have a successful career.
Jack couldn’t understand why his mother didn’t see the value in what he was doing. He felt that she was holding him back and not allowing him to pursue his true interests. “Why can’t you see how important this is to me?” Jack asked his mother angrily. “I’m never going to be happy if I have to spend my life doing things that I show no interest in just because they are practical or make you proud.”
The once peaceful home was filled with tension and anger. His mother’s voice grew louder as she shouted, “You can’t just do whatever you want! You should be responsible for your future!” Jack, fueled by his own frustration, shot back, “I am tired of you always telling me what to do! I am not a child anymore! You only care about your own feeling! You never thought about my feeling!” They were so caught up in their own anger and hurt that they failed to see how their words and actions were affecting each other.
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。
Jack rushed into his bedroom and locked the door heavily.
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When Jack heard his mother’s words, regretful tears rolled down his face.
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4 . Parents often believe that they have a good relationship with their teenagers. But last summer, Joanna and Henry noticed a change in their older son. Suddenly he seemed to be talking far more to his friends than to his parents. “The door to his room is always shut,” Joanna noted.
Tina and Mark noticed similar changes in their 14-year-old daughter. “She used to cuddle up (依偎) against me on the sofa and talk,” said Mark. “Now we joke that she does this only when she wants something. Sometimes she wants to be treated like a little girl and sometimes like a young lady. The problem is understanding which time is which.”
Before age 11, children like to tell their parents what’s on their mind. “In fact, parents are first on the list,” said Michael Riera, author of Uncommon Sense for Parents with Teenagers. “This completely changes during the teen years,” Riera explained. “They talk to their friends first, then maybe their teachers, and their parents last.”
Parents who know what’s going on in their teenagers’ lives are in the best position to help them. To break down the wall of silence, parents should create chances to understand what their children want to say, and try to find ways to talk and write to them. And they must give their children a mental (思想的) break, for children also need freedom, though young. Another thing parents should remember is that to be a friend, not a manager, with their children is a better way to know them.
1. “The door to his room is always shut” suggests that the son ________.| A．keeps himself away from his parents | B．begins to dislike his parents |
| C．is always busy with his study | D．doesn’t want to be ignored |
| A．Their daughter isn’t as lovely as before. |
| B．They can’t read their daughter’s mind exactly. |
| C．They don’t know what to say to their daughter. |
| D．Their daughter talks with them only when she needs help. |
| A．Teenagers talk a lot with their friends. | B．Teenagers do not understand their parents. |
| C．Teenagers talk little about their own lives. | D．Teenagers do not talk much with their parents. |
| A．Parents shouldn’t be angry with teenagers. |
| B．Parents have to talk with children face to face. |
| C．Parents are unhappy with their growing children. |
| D．Parents should try to understand their teenagers. |
5 . When parents discover their children have lied to them for the first time, it can often come as a shock to find their children are capable of such a trick. But new research has suggested many parents may not even notice many of the lies their children tell them.
Psychologists have discovered that most parents are overconfident about their children’s honesty and this may impair their ability to discover a lie. The findings may help to explain why some parents seem to be willing to let their children get away with almost anything even in the face of evidence. They say parents suffer from a “truth bias (偏见)” with their own youngsters, but when faced with lies from other people’s children, they have less difficulty telling whether a statement is true or not.
Dr Angela Evans, a psychologist at Brock University in Canada, said, “The close relationship that parents share with their own children may lead to parents’ failing to detect their children’s lies. Parents’ truth bias may result in parents’ being less doubtful about their children, allowing the children to successfully cheat them.” Most children are thought to start lying as early as two years old but start telling more believable lies at around the age of four years old. Learning how to lie is considered as a key part of cognitive (认知的) and social development in children. But many parents are shocked when their children start lying to them. In their study, Dr Evans and her colleagues filmed 108 children aged between 8 and 16 as they performed a test after being asked not to look at the answers. They were asked afterwards if they had looked, with 50 truthfully denying looking, 49 lying about looking and 9 admitting to looking.
Videos of those denying looking were then shown to 152 parents of children aged 8 to 16, 80 of whom had children who had taken part in the test. The researchers found that the parents were less able to spot lies told by their own children than by other people’s children.
1. What does the underlined word “impair” in Paragraph 2 mean?| A．Show. | B．Develop. | C．Damage. | D．Recognize. |
| A．They aren’t prepared for the lies. |
| B．They pretend not to discover the lies. |
| C．Their children know how to lie to them. |
| D．Their children are very good at hiding their lies. |
| A．What makes parents lose trust in their children. |
| B．What causes children to tell lies to their parents. |
| C．What affects children’s relations with their parents. |
| D．What makes parents fail to detect their children’s lies. |
| A．Parents tend to protect their own children. |
| B．Lying is a part of children’s development. |
| C．Children aged 8 to 16 are likely to tell lies. |
| D．Parents can judge lies told by children of others more easily. |
6 . The evidence for harmony (和睦) may not be obvious in some families. But it seems that four out of five young people now get on with their parents.
An important new study into teenage attitudes shows that their family life is more harmonious than it has ever been in the past. “We were surprised by just how positive today’s young people seem to be about their families,” says one member of the research team. “They’re expected to be rebellious (叛逆的) but actually they have other things in their minds; they want a car and other material goods, and they worry whether school is serving them well. There’re more negotiations (协商) between parents and children, and children expect to take part in the family decisionmaking process.”
So it seems that this generation of parents is much more likely than parents of 30 years ago to treat their children as friends. “My parents are happy to discuss things with me and willing to listen to me,” says 17 year old Daniel Lazall. “I always tell them when I’m going out. As long as they know what I’m doing, they’re fine with it.” Susan Crome, who is now 21, agrees. “Looking back on the last 10 years, there was a lot of what you could call negotiations. For example, as long as I’d done all my homework, I could go out on a Saturday night. But I think my grandparents were a lot stricter with my parents than that.”
One of the researchers comments, “Our astonishment that teenagers say they get along well with their parents comes because of a brief period in our social history when teenagers were regarded as different beings. But that idea of rebelling and breaking away from their parents really only happened during that one time in the 1960s when everyone rebelled. Now, the situation has changed.”
1. What does the new study show?| A．Teenagers are more rebellious. |
| B．Teenagers worry more about studies. |
| C．Teenagers dislike making family decisions. |
| D．Teenagers have more negotiations with families. |
| A．They are stricter than before. |
| B．They are more independent. |
| C．They give their children more freedom. |
| D．They care less about their children’s life. |
| A．Surprise. | B．Aim. |
| C．Memory. | D．Option. |
| A．Discussion in family. |
| B．Harmony in family. |
| C．Teenage trouble in family. |
| D．Teenage education in family. |
7 . A little boy told his mother that there was a teacher-parent meeting in his school. To the little boy’s
At the meeting, the people were
The teacher asked
The mother replied, “When my son was a baby, he was in a room that caught fire. Everyone was too afraid to go in because the fire was out of
At this point, the little boy came out running toward his mother with tears in his eyes. He held her in his arms and appreciated her great
| A．enjoyment | B．disappointment | C．surprise | D．sorrow |
| A．sick | B．ashamed | C．afraid | D．tired |
| A．included | B．passed | C．covered | D．shaded |
| A．talk about | B．think about | C．care about | D．bring about |
| A．impressed | B．shocked | C．excited | D．comforted |
| A．in honor of | B．in spite of | C．instead of | D．because of |
| A．hid | B．protected | C．separated | D．escaped |
| A．understood | B．reminded | C．heard | D．learned |
| A．carefully | B．angrily | C．nervously | D．anxiously |
| A．control | B．order | C．danger | D．focus |
| A．helpless | B．hopeless | C．senseless | D．useless |
| A．hated | B．showed | C．wiped | D．touched |
| A．forgotten | B．recognized | C．considered | D．regretted |
| A．honour | B．spirit | C．happiness  | D．pride |
| A．quietly | B．slightly | C．tightly | D．suddenly |
8 . My mother used to take me to my grandparents’ in Belgium during the school holidays. While I would play chess with my grandfather, he would tell me stories about growing up, falling in love, and travelling around the world.
I didn’t realize the importance of preserving memories until my grandfather passed away, which ultimately changed my outlook on remembering our loved ones and the stories we share. I thought about solutions to help other people record the precious memories for those they love—before it’s too late. So I began matching ghostwriters (代笔人) to clients to help them write a book as smoothly and beautifully as possible, and Story Terrace was born.
Since then, we have explored the power of stories and their ability to connect us with our past and make sense of the present. It has been documented that increased family connection is significantly linked to less loneliness. Learning more about one’s family history, however, has been linked to boosting emotional health, increasing compassion and providing a deeper sense of cultures and traditions.
What we have found through our own research is that so many of us have missed out on the opportunity to explore our origins. 56 percent of Brits agreed that much of their family history is lost because they are no longer able to speak with the person who knows the most about it. A further 51 percent expressed regret as they wished they could tell their younger self to document their family’s life story, feeling that most of it had been forgotten. But when it comes to telling these stories, many don’t know where to begin.
We have seen numerous times when people come to us with random journal entries and notes from over the years, and these can be developed into a wonderful work of art that can be passed down for generations to come.
Half of the projects we see at StoryTerrace are heritage stories, with family occupying a dominant theme for most stories. Alongside this, common themes we see are of course love, overcoming challenges, settling in new surroundings and so on. However, family is a thread that always ties these together.
1. What does Story Terrace do?| A．It boosts the mood of your family members. |
| B．It gives treatment to people with mental illness. |
| C．It links people from different cultures together. |
| D．It helps turn your beloved one’s stories into a book. |
| A．Why StoryTerrace matters. |
| B．How StoryTerrace functions. |
| C．What StoryTerrace focuses on. |
| D．Where StoryTerrace beings your story. |
| A．It is part of the national heritage. |
| B．Its stories are mostly about family. |
| C．It dominates half of the market. |
| D．Its stories gain much popularity. |
| A．Family Stories Worth Telling |
| B．Create Your Own Story Books |
| C．Documents of Family History |
| D．Preserve Memories with StoryTerrace |
9 . Strangers Under the Same Roof
Does every dinner with your parents seem to turn into an argument? Have your once warm and open conversations become cold and guarded? Do you feel that you just cannot see eye to eye with them on anything? You are not alone. Heated arguments and cold silences are common between teenagers and their parents.
Teenagers’ physical changes may result in such family tensions. You may feel anxious that you are not developing at the same rate as your friends, shooting up in height or getting left far behind. You might worry about your changing voice, weight problems or spots(粉刺). When the worries get too much, your parents are often the first target of your anger.
It can be a big headache to balance your developing mental needs too. You enter a strange middle ground—no longer a small child but not quite an adult. You have both a new desire for independence and a continued need for your parents’ love and support. You feel ready to be more responsible and make decisions on your own. Unfortunately, your parents do not always agree and that makes you feel unhappy. Sometimes they forget that growing up is a rough ride. It can be difficult when your parents treat you like a child but expect you to act like an adult. All of this can lead to a breakdown in your relationship.
Despite the fact that sometimes it may seem impossible to get along as a family, you can take action to improve the situation. The key to keeping the peace is regular and honest communication. Just remember that it is completely normal to struggle with the stress that parent-child tensions create, and that you and your parents can work together to improve your relationship. The good news is that this stormy period will not last. Everything will turn out all right in the end, and the changes and challenges of your teenage years will prepare you for adulthood.
1. Why does the author mention the questions in Paragraph 1?| A．To express his doubts. |
| B．To compare different ideas. |
| C．To introduce points for discussion. |
| D．To draw readers’ attention to the topic. |
| A．Between a child and an adult. |
| B．A small child. |
| C．An adult. |
| D．An old man. |
| A．Parents should let go of the control over their teenagers. |
| B．Teenagers should always follow their parents’ points of view. |
| C．Parents and teenagers should always keep open conversations. |
| D．Teenagers should not depend on their parents’ love or support. |
| A．Indifferent. | B．Critical. |
| C．Positive. | D．Negative. |
10 . On the 25th of December, my mother expected her children to be present, exchanging gifts and eating turkey. But as an artist and daughter, my heart seemed to be more in my work as an artist. As for my mother and my family, I thought we would have more time to spend Christmas together. I was going to do my own thing.
I made plans for my winter adventure in New Hampshire. The MacDowell Colony (麦道尔艺术村) was everything I could have wished for. About 20 to 30 artists were present, and it was as captivating as I had imagined. Snowy New England, sledding (滑雪橇) and whisky! It felt like my life had become an unexpected independent film.
By Christmas Eve, I had been at the colony more than a week. The fresh feelings were wearing off, but I would never admit it. Everyone around me was having too much fun—drinks and deep conversations by the fireplace. It seemed so amazing! What was wrong with me? This was the holiday I’d always dreamed of. No plastic reindeer. Not a Christmas sweater anywhere in sight. People here didn’t even say “Christmas”, but they said “holiday”. Then why was I so down?
Finally, I called home. My dad answered. He told me that my mother was out shopping with my brothers. I found there was a fire in my heart. They were having a fine Christmas without me? Didn’t they miss me? How could they?
Despite a serious snowstorm, a large package with my mother’s beautiful handwriting showed up near my door at the artist colony on Christmas morning. I seized it as if I had been five years old. Inside was my favorite cake.
As I sliced (切) the cake, everyone gathered around —young and old. My mother had sent a real homemade gift. It was a minor Christmas miracle that one cake managed to feed so many. We ate it from paper towels with our hands, satisfying a hunger we didn’t know we had and reminding us of our dear families, who must be missing us too.
1. Why was the author unwilling to spend Christmas at home?| A．She met some trouble at work. |
| B．She wanted to focus on her career. |
| C．She had disagreements with her mother. |
| D．She was tired of staying at a familiar place. |
| A．Attractive. | B．Tough. | C．Strange. | D．Simple. |
| A．It attracted many sports lovers. |
| B．It was suitable for holiday parties. |
| C．It lacked the Christmas atmosphere. |
| D．It gave the author some artistic ideas. |
| A．She learned to be open to others. |
| B．She enjoyed bringing kindness to strangers. |
| C．Her mother was good at taking care of her family. |
| D．Her mother’s cake cured the artists of their homesickness. |
