1 . My favorite thing about autumn is that I have an excuse to make my mom apple cake again. So, I always thought, once my first child was in primary school, I would enjoy taking part in bake sale fundraisers.
Instead, I fear them. I do not imagine that funds for football uniforms appear out of thin air. So I dutifully show up to each bake sale with home-made cakes.
Still, bake sales trouble me. They feel like a holdover from a time when many moms didn’t work and it was supposed they had a lot of time to bake cookies for children. Women who don't have the time to bake at home and who bring packaged cookies are seen as breaking a great American tradition.
What are we selling at bake sales, anyway? Are we advertising our baking skills? Or is the goal to raise money? Children happily buy cupcakes from a store, so why do we care that nobody in a home kitchen worked late into the night to make them?
Actually, if you look closely at the economics, they just don’t add up. We might spend $10 on ingredients to make 18 cupcakes that sell for $2 each. Think of this $26 as profit supposing that the hours spent shopping and baking and packing things up and taking them to school, and possibly selling and cleaning up afterward, don’t have value. Volunteering your time and energy to something important is worth praising. But neither the ingredients nor the work is “free”, and many parents can't afford to give them away.
This is not an attack against people who love to make banana bread and have the time to do so. But most people do not. Most parents struggle to get even the most basic parenting tasks finished in the limited time between the end of the workday and children’s bedtimes. It feels crazy to take time away from helping with homework, or actually making dinner, to spend hours on a fundraiser.
1. What can we learn about the author?| A．She loves baking. | B．She is active at school. |
| C．She likes home-made food. | D．She is against fundraising. |
| A．She has to buy cakes in stores. | B．Home-made baking is a burden. |
| C．Some moms don’t attend bake sales. | D．Moms are showing off their baking skills. |
| A．Ingredients are too expensive. | B．It is uneconomical to bake at home. |
| C．It is hard to raise money at bake sales. | D．Ready-made cakes are popular at school. |
| A．It is increasing. | B．It is rewarding. |
| C．It is highly valued. | D．It is unavailable for many. |
As bike-sharing booms in China, a guideline was released by the government to promote a new form of the sharing economy - this time involving vehicles.
Car-sharing, which provides an alternative for people to travel in cities, will be the new innovation in a service model. The released guideline focuses on legal status, insurance and regular maintenance of cars before they join sharing services. It encourages the development of car-sharing, which is expected to reduce the liking to individually buy vehicles and ease traffic congestion amid a surge in recent years of private-car ownership.
“However, there is a long way to before the purpose of the guideline comes true,” said Xia Xueluan, a professor of sociology. “First, a car costs at least 100.000 yuan, almost 500 times that for a shared bicycle. Besides, shared cars also take the same spaces as other private cars, so parking will be another problem.”
“Meanwhile, traditional car rental companies are competing with the emerging car-sharing business. It’s estimated the charges will be almost the same for both forms of cars rentals,” Xia said. “How to survive fierce competition will remain a challenge for car-sharing providers,” he added.
【写作内容】
1. 用约30个词概括上述文章的主要内容；
2. 请你就共享汽车的话题发表观点。
(1) 为什么要发展共享汽车；
(2) 如何才能更好地发展共享汽车。
【写作要求】
1. 写作过程中不能直接引用原文语句:
2. 作文中不能出现真实姓名和学校名称:
3. 不必写标题。
【评分标准】内容完整，语言规范，语篇连贯，词数适当。
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I had an interesting conversation with a reporter recently --- one who works for you. In fact, he’s one of your best reporters. He wants to leave.
Your reporter gave me a copy of his resume(简历) and photocopies of six stories that he wrote for you. The headlines showed you played them proudly. With great enthusiasm, he talked about how he finds issues(问题), approaches them, and writes about them, which tells me he is one of your best. I’m sure you would hate to lose him. Surprisingly, your reporter is not unhappy. In fact, he told me he really likes his job. He has a great assignment (分工), and said you run a great paper. It would be easy for you to keep him, he said. He knows that the paper values him. He appreciates the responsibility you’ve given him, takes ownership of his profession, and enjoys his freedom.
So why is he looking for a way out?
He talked to me because he wants his editors to demand so much more of him. He wants to be pushed, challenged, coached to new heights.
The reporter believes that good stories spring from good questions, but his editors usually ask how long the story will be, when it will be in, where it can play, and what the budget is.
He longs for conversations with an editor who will help him turn his good ideas into great ones. He wants someone to get excited about what he’s doing and to help him turn his story idea upside down and inside out, exploring the best ways to report it. He wants to be more valuable for your paper. That’s what you want for him, too, isn’t it?
So your reporter has set me thinking.
Our best hope in keeping our best reporters, copy editors, photographers, artists --- everyone --- is to work harder to make sure they get the help they are demanding to reach their potential. If we can’t do it, they’ll find someone who can.
1. What does the writer think of the reporter?
| A．Optimistic. | B．Imaginative. | C．Ambitious. | D．Proud. |
| A．Finding the news value of his stories. | B．Giving him financial support. |
| C．Helping him to find issues. | D．Improving his good ideas. |
| A．An editor. | B．An artist. | C．A reporter. | D．A reader. |
| A．keep their best reporters at all costs |
| B．give more freedom to their reporters |
| C．be aware of their reporters’ professional development |
| D．appreciate their reporters’ working styles and attitudes |
