As a language arts teacher, I think it my duty to teach my kids how to use our tools of words well. Use your tool right—this is what I always tell them. But I never expected to learn that lesson from them.
I clearly remembered it was my 40th birthday. On that day, my sixth-grade students were seated in a large circle, each holding a different tool in their hand—a hammer, a flashlight, a screwdriver, etc. The students discussed how words are like tools—they have the ability to build or to destroy, and they discovered how the right tool used at the right time for the right job can bring about great results. They freely shared personal stories of how they had experienced someone’s words used as a tool, to wound or to heal.
I watched and listened with a sense of satisfaction—the students were engaged, attentive, and enjoying the lesson. They got it! It was one of those times when I sat back and enjoyed the magic of being a teacher—to have the opportunity to watch young people discover a greater truth about life about each other, and about themselves. There was no better gift than that.
As we neared the end of that school day, one of my students, Laura, had an unexpected outburst of defiance(违抗) in class. Busy scribbling (涂画) in her exercise book, she refused to work with her group. I was aware from reading Laura's file that she had struggled with defiant behavior in previous years, but we had developed a good relationship and she was always a respectful, thoughtful, and positive contributor to our class. Her behavior caught me off guard. “I'm disappointed in you!" With a sharp tone, I asked her to excuse herself and told her I would visit with her in our next-door meeting room after school. She refused to leave and sat silently, staring at me angrily from the back of the room.
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。
“This was NOT optional," I firmly told her, sounding unpleasantly bitter.
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________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________1. 你对责任感的认识；
2. 关于责任感的故事。
注意：
1. 词数80左右；
2. 可以适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。
A lesson of responsibility
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The Freshest Bakery was in a small town called Balminster. It made bread for supermarkets in a nearby city. The bakery had been there for a long time and most of the machines were old. The factory engineer, Frank, was good at maintaining (维修) the machines and most of the time there were no problems.
One Tuesday, Frank was finishing work. The manager came out of his office.
“You have a day off tomorrow,” he said to Frank.
“Yes!” smiled Frank. “My son is graduating from university! Tomorrow I will go to the graduation ceremony!” He planned to leave at 6 am and had enough time to drive there.
At 4:30 am the next morning, Frank got a phone call from the factory, asking him to repair the broken oven at once.
Oh no! thought Frank. He hoped he could fix it quickly. He took his suit to the factory, so he could drive from there to the university.
When he arrived at the factory, all the workers and the manager were waiting for him. “Thank you, Frank,” said the manager. “I know this is a big day for you, but we must bake the bread.”
Frank went to look at the big bread oven. Then he went back to the manager. “I can fix it, but it will take a long time. I will be too late for the graduation ceremony.”
The manager felt very bad. But Frank knew they had to make bread and get it to the supermarkets today, or the supermarkets would turn to a newer bakery. All the workers would lose their jobs.
Frank worked hard to fix the bread oven. At 7:00 am he finished, and the loaves of bread started rolling into the oven to be baked.
“We will be on time for our supermarket deliveries!” The manager was very happy. “You can go now,” he said to Frank. “Enjoy your son’s graduation.”
“It’s too late,” said Frank sadly. “I cannot drive there in time.”
注意：
1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 请按如下格式在相应位置作答。
Paragraph 1:
Usually the workers talked a lot and laughed, but today, everyone was very quiet.
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Paragraph 2:
“Fly to the university?” the manager remembered his old friend, a helicopter company manager.
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注意：1.写作词数应为80左右；
2.请在答题卡的相应位置作答。
3.文中不能出现真实姓名、校名等信息。
参考词汇：《伊索寓言》Aesop’s Fables
《狐狸和葡萄》The Fox and the Grapes
酸的sour
I started playing the cello(大提琴) when I was three years old. Its large wooden body made me look very tiny. Every week my father would drive me past gardens, and I would look out of the window to watch dogs running and look for flowers all the way. This was the road to my cello teacher’s home.
My childhood was a mixture of cello performances, at-home concerts, and instrument rehearsals(彩排). My hands ran up and down the instrument, and adults smiled when I played well. Actually, I didn’t enjoy all of that. To me, all was just about getting A grades, practicing accompanied by my mother and her opinions about what the music should feel and sound like.
I felt the pressure to succeed, and I did it. I got my diploma(文凭) at 14, and my parents bought an expensive cello for me when I was 16, hoping I would become the next Yo-Yo Ma, a well-known cellist. I continued to practise and play unwillingly, spending almost every Saturday at a music program.
However, I didn’t feel much towards it. When high school finished, I stopped playing, leaving the cello sit in its place silently. Growing up, I sometimes resented(怨恨) my parents for expecting so much from me, and wondered why they wouldn’t let me decide my own hobbies and interests. When I gave up playing, relatives complained about my wasted talent at family gatherings, which made me feel like I had nothing else to offer. At that time I was just like a lot of today’s young people, who feel angry when they are forced to do what they don’t really like.
But things have changed in the last few years. I began to have a strong desire for cello when I felt lonely in a strange city. I missed its familiar sound, and it aroused passion in my mind. Without any hesitation, I asked my parents to drive my cello down from Sydney to Melbourne. I started playing again, writing songs that sounded more like the kind that I’d always want to play in bands and alone in my room.
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。
Playing the cello again was both unfamiliar and familiar to me.
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Now I have a real understanding of my parents’ decisions for me.
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It was early morning, yet already it had been a very bad day. One thing after another, the downward spiral (螺旋) continued when a large bottle of orange juice slid from my hands and fell to the floor. Glass and sticky juice splashed to the farthest corners of the kitchen. Shocked, I looked at the mess. Then I dropped heartbrokenly down to the floor, my eyes filling with tears. The tears seemed to show that “today is just not my day.”
Bad day or not, things had to be done. Filled with anxiety and negative mental baggage, I got in my car to drive into town. In the few minutes it took to travel to the bank I made a decision. I would be careful not to pass my bad day off to anyone else. I would be friendly and polite. And I would NOT be angry when that careless driver pulled quickly and rudely in front of me causing me to brake suddenly.
Standing in line at the bank, I was silently talking to myself. Actually, I was scolding myself. All of the events that had accumulated and contributed to my bad day were, in reality, so very minor and trivial. I was over-reacting. I was filled with self-pity. I tried to imagine the innumerable, individual lives that had been affected by terrorist attacks, by war, by hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters.
For the second time that day my eyes filled with tears as I realized how disconnected I felt from all those individuals who are trying to cope with truly miserable experiences in their lives.
They all seemed so distant and unknowable, and this justified and strengthened my belief that I was being self-centered and selfish. I was sure that all my efforts to be a caring and loving person were in vain.
A voice broke through my mental distractions. Somehow I had mechanically finished my bank transaction (交易) and the teller was trying to get my attention. “Young lady,” she was saying, gently, “Young lady!”
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 looked up and into the eyes of the bank teller, a silver-haired grandmother with a gentle beauty.
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In the moment of her touching my hands, my self-doubt disappeared.
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One day a man named Steve Gowan was fishing in the Thames Estuary in Britain. By the end of the day, besides fishes and sea weeds, he fished a message bottle. He opened it carefully and inside the bottle was a brief loving letter from a British soldier named Hughes to his wife:
Dear Wife, I am writing this note on this boat and dropping it into the sea just to see if it will reach you. If it does, sign this envelope on the right hand bottom corner where it says receipt. Put the date and hour of receipt and your name where it says signature and look after it well.
Ta-ta sweet, for the present. Your Hubby
Also attached was a covering note intended for the finder of the bottle:
Sir or madam, would you kindly forward the enclosed letter and earn the blessing of a poor British soldier on his way to the front this ninth day of September, 1914. Signed Private T. Hughes.
Actually, as Hughes crossed the English Channel from Southampton to St. Nazaire on 9 September, 1914, at 7:52 p.m., he dropped a message in a green beer bottle over the side of the ship and he died two days later in the war.
85 years later, the bottle was finally caught by Steve Gowan, the fisherman. Steve Gowan examined the letter carefully. It had the soldier’s name and army number, so he supposed that the message should be real. But how could he deliver it to the intended recipient? In 1999, the internet was still in its early years. No way would he be able to find Hughes’s possible surviving family that way! So, what to do?
Well, he put an advertisement in a local paper! The story captured so many hearts and minds that it gained national coverage. Somewhere along the way, through magic and luck, he learned that Hughes’s daughter, Emily, was still alive in New Zealand!
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。
Right away, Gowan and journalists managed to get in touch with Emily.
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The local paper decided to offer Mr. Gowan an air ticket to deliver the letter in person.
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Nothing Extraordinary
It was a Saturday. The mall was packed with people. I was with my mom.
Mom is short, skinny. It is easy to overlook her in a crowd simply because she is nothing extraordinary to see.
On that day we went for another window shopping in a mall next to our apartment, peeking at window boutiques(时装店)in fleeting glances because we both knew we wouldn’t be buying much, like always.
I remember I was looking up at the people we passed as we walked—at first indifferently, but then more attentively.
Ladies wore bright, delicate clothing and five-inch heels that clicked importantly on the floor. Men stepped by smelling of sharp perfumes. An uneasy feeling started to settle in my chest. I tried to push it out, but once it took root, it refused to be rid of and tossed away: I was ashamed of my mother.
We were in a high-class neighborhood, I knew that. We lived in a small, overpriced apartment building that Mom chose to move to because she knew the schools were good.
We were in a high-class neighborhood, but as I examined the passers-by and then turned accusing eyes on Mom, I realized for the first time that we didn’t belong there.
I could see the heavy lines around Mom’s eyes and mouth, carved deep into her skin without luxurious creams to ease them away. She wore cheap, ragged clothes with the seams tom, shoes with the soles(鞋底)worn down. Her eyes were tired from working long hours to make ends meet and her hair was too gray for her age.
My mom is nothing extraordinary, yet at that moment she stood out because she was just so plain.
I don’t want to be seen with her, so I hurried away to the bathroom. When I finally made my way out with reluctant steps, Mom wasn’t in sight. I had to search door to door, only to find Mom was standing in the middle of a high-end store, holding a sweater that looked much too expensive.
注意: 1. 续写词数应为150左右；
2. 续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已为你写好。
She said, “This will look good on you. Do you want it?”
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No longer ashamed of her but of myself, I put the sweater back.
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9 . The Belfast, Maine of my youth was not the coastal tourist village that it is today. At the time, McDonald’s hadn’t yet moved into town. Before the supermarket existed, Cottle’s, a food market where Mr. Proulx worked as the manager, was the only place where my mother could do her once-a-week shopping. Because we lived a few miles from Belfast, we’d usually combine the grocery trip with a visit to see my grandmother who always had cookies ready for us.
On one particular shopping day at Cottle’s, I stood behind my mother as she was unloading the grocery cart (购物车) and checking her items out at the register. The candy that displayed on either side of me were full of Life Savers, Clark Bars, Sugar Babies—you name it!
“Can I get some candies?” I asked. My mother rarely veered (转向) from her list so I wasn’t surprised with her response “No.” But I really wanted that candy!
I reached for a Sugar Baby package. My mother didn’t notice. So I thought she probably wouldn’t notice if I put them into my pocket. No one noticed my action—not my mother, not the cashier—no one! I did it! Wow! My very first shoplifting experience! How easy! How rewarding! Got my candy and didn’t need one penny to get it!
I sat in the back seat as my mother drove across the bridge to where my grandmother lived. Slowly, so as not to make any unnecessary noise, I opened my prize and carefully slipped a Sugar Baby into my mouth. No one piece of candy ever tasted so good!
Finally we pulled into my grandmother’s driveway. As I prepared to open my car door, I confidently slipped a few more Sugar Babies into my mouth.
“Keith, what have you got in your mouth?” I looked up at the rearview mirror (后视镜) and could see my mother’s eyes staring back at me. “I asked you a question! What have you got in your mouth?”
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。
“Uhhh ... just some Sugar Babies,” I replied, still not skilled in telling lies.
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After pulling into Cottle’s parking lot, my mother took me into the store.
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It was a cold night in December. Two beggars were sitting on a busy street corner in the downtown section of the city. They watched helplessly as lots of people walked by. Some ignored them on purpose and others were too caught up in their own cares to even notice their existence.
Every so often, a kind-hearted woman or a small child would drop a few coins in the hats which lay in front of them on the icy sidewalk. Some people, feeling particularly generous, would even pull out a bill or two from their wallets and drop them into the beggars’ hats and then continued their walking.
Just as they were getting ready to leave the street corner, they noticed a man walking toward them. He was obviously a wealthy man. They could tell that from the finely tailored business suit he was wearing.
The first beggar whispered to the second with excitement, “He’s coming our way!” The two tried not to look directly at the man as he stepped closer to them, but they couldn’t help gazing up with expectation as he reached into his pocket and took something out.
“Thunk” was the only sound they heard as what looked like a piece of hard candy, wrapped doubly in tissue paper, hit each of their waiting hats. The rich man turned and continued on his way, not making a backward glance.
“How sickening!” said the first beggar, as soon as the rich man was out of sound range. “He could have easily left us a few coins or a spare bill, but he tricks us with a piece of hard candy. ”The beggar picked up the object with the very tips of his fingers and threw it into the gutter（排水沟）. He watched as it floated a few yards in the stream of muddy water and disappeared into the drain（下水道）at the end of the street. Then, he gathered up his things and walked away.
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 second beggar looked down at the object in his hat.
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So the second beggar changed his mind.
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