Read the following passage and summarize the main idea and the main point(s) of the passage with no more than 60 words. Use your own words as far as possible.
Editors of newspapers and magazines often go to extremes to provide their readers with unimportant facts and statistics. Last year a journalist had been instructed by a well-known magazine to write an article on the president's palace in a new African republic. When the article arrived, the editor read the first sentence and then refused to publish it. The article began: 'Hundreds of steps lead to the high wall which surrounds the president's palace.' The editor at once sent the journalist a fax instructing him to find out the exact number of steps and the height of the wall.
The journalist immediately set out to obtain these important facts, but he took a long time to send them. Meanwhile, the editor was getting impatient, for the magazine would soon go to press. He sent the journalist two urgent telegrams, but received no reply. He sent yet another telegram informing the journalist that if he did not reply soon he would be fired. When the journalist again failed to reply, the editor reluctantly published the article as it had originally been written. A week later, the editor at last received a telegram from the journalist. Not only had the poor man been arrested, but he had been sent to prison as well. However, he had at last been allowed to send a cable in which he informed the editor that he had been arrested while counting the 1084 steps leading to the 15-foot wall which surrounded the president's palace.
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Surfer Guys to the Rescue
Past the Breakers, about 50 feet from shore, two brothers were fighting for their lives. They had been swept out to sea in a wild current, their mouth barely able to stay above water. Thick fog made it difficult for beachgoers to see the guys, but the screams were unmistakable. And every second counted. The brothers, ages 15 and 20, were wearing shorts and T-shirts, unsuitable for a November day, let alone the 50-degree water. Keven Harder, a supervising ranger, told the North Coast Journal that swimming in such a temperature “takes the fight right out of you.”
Luckily, four surfers in wet suits were nearby. Narayan Weibel, Spenser Straton, and Sdrian York, all 16, along with Taj, 15, were on their surfing boards riding up and down the coast on five-foot waves when they heard the cries. They turned and saw two bobbing heads and four flailing arms.
“We looked at each other and knew these guys were about to drown,” Weibel told the Washington Post.
Weibel, Stratton, and Ortize-Beck paddled toward the distressed swimmers while York headed to shore to alert someone to call 911. He then dived back in to help his friends.
As the surfers drew close, the brothers were struggling. “It was pretty stressful, but there wasn’t any time to think about it, and that helped me keep cool,” Ortiz-Beck says.
Ortiz-Beck pulled up alongside the younger brother. Grabbing him under his arms, he lifted him onto his board. Stratton and Weibel, meanwhile, were straining to help the older brother. He was large, 250 to 300 pounds and he was panicked!
York arrived in time to help get the older brother atop the second board. The surfers then paddled several minutes through the water to the medical help waiting onshore. The brothers were scared but fine.
“When we get a call like this, it’s usually too late by the time we get there,” says Dillon, a first-aider. “I can’t say enough about what these guys did. They were willing and prepared to risk their lives.”
请简要描述图片内容，并联系生活实际谈谈你的感想。
相关词汇：crow（乌鸦）
Why don't you drink water as the book told us?
Once upon a time a man became a great archer (射手). He asked the king to declare him as the greatest archer of the country. The king was about to do so when an old servant of the king said,“Wait, my king. I know an old man who lives in the forest. He is a much greater archer. Let this young man go to him and learn from him for at least three years. ”
The man could not believe that there could be a greater archer than him, but he went and found the old man and he was! For three years he learned from him. Then one day, when he thought he had learned everything, the thought arose in him, “If I kill this old man, then I will be the greatest archer.”
The old man had gone to cut wood and he was coming back carrying wood on his shoulder. The young man hid behind a tree, waiting to kill him. He shot an arrow. The old man took a small piece of wood and threw it. It struck the arrow and the arrow turned back and wounded the young man badly. The old man came, took out the arrow and said, “I knew that some day or other you were going to do this. That’s why I have not taught you this secret. There is no need to kill me. My master is still alive, and I’m nothing better than him. It would take you at least thirty years to learn from him. Actually, one can never be the greatest.”
One spring morning many years ago, I had been searching for gold along Coho Creek on southeastern Alaska’s Kuprean of Island, and as I emerged from a forest of spruce(云杉) and hemlock tree, I froze in my tracks. No more than 20 paces in the bog(沼泽) was a huge Alaskan timber wolf - caught in one of Trapper George’s traps.
Old George had died the previous week of a heart attack, so the wolf was lucky. Confused and frightened at my approach, the wolf backed away. Then I noticed something else: It was a female, and her teats were full of milk. Somewhere there was a den of hungry pups (小狼) waiting for their mother.
From her appearance, I guessed that she had been trapped only a few days. That meant her pups were probably still alive. But I suspected that if I tried to release the wolf, she would turn aggressive and try to tear me to pieces.
So I decided to search for her pups instead and began to look for tracks that might lead me to her den. Fortunately, there were still a few remaining of snow. After several moments, I spotted pups’ marks on a trail.
The tracks led a half mile through the forest, then up a slope covered with many rocks. I finally spotted the den at the base of an enormous spruce, There wasn’t a sound inside. Wolf pups are shy and cautious, and I didn’t have much hope of inviting them outside, But I had to try. So I began imitating the high-pitched(声音很尖锐的) sound of a mother wolf calling her young. No response. A few moments later, after I tried another call, four tiny pups appeared. They couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old.
注意:
1. 所续写短文的词数应为150左右；
2. 续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好。
Paragraph 1:
I extended my hands.
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Paragraph 2:
With her young to protect, she was becoming aggressive.
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1. Write something in some way related to travel.
古人云：“天生我材必有用”（There must be a use for my talent.) 通过描述你生活中的一件事情，说明人各有所长，无论才能大小都能成为有用的人。
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The Voice in the Box
When I was quite young, my family had one of the first telephones in our neighborhood. I remember well the polished the wooden case fastened to the wall on the lower stair landing. But my first personal experience with this genie-in-the-receiver came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbor. Amusing myself at the tool bench, I hurt my finger with a hammer. The pain was terrible, but there didn’t seem to be much use crying, because there was no one home to offer sympathy. I walked around the house, and finally arriving at the stairway. The telephone! Quickly I ran for the footstool and dragged it to the landing. Climbing up, I unhooked the receiver and held it to my ear. “Information Please,” I said into the mouthpiece just above my head.
A click or two, and a small, clear voice spoke into my ear, “Information.”
“I hurt my finger…” I cried into the phone. The tears came readily enough, now that I had an audience.
“Isn’t your mother home?” came the question.
“Nobody’s home but me.” I sobbed.
“Are you bleeding?”
“No,” I replied. “I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts.”
“Can you open your icebox?” she asked. I said I could. “Then break off a little piece of ice and hold it on your finger. That will stop the hurt. Be careful when you use the icepick(冰锥),” she said, “And don’t cry. You’ll be all right.”
After that, I called Information Please for everything. I asked her for help with my geography and she told me where Philadelphia was, and the Orinoco, the romantic river that I was going to explore when I grew up. She helped me with my arithmetic, and she told me that my pet chipmunk----I had caught him in the park just the day before----would eat fruit and nuts.
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描述发生在你和你朋友之间的一件事情，并阐述你对“友谊”的看法。
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常言道：“良言一句三冬暖，恶语伤人六月寒”。一句鼓励的话能给人带来温暖，一句伤人的话会使人情绪低落。请你结合某一次经历，讲述自己的故事和感受。
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