As I walked into the primary school, I looked down at my new black shoes—I wanted to be anywhere in the world but this school.
I stood at the classroom door. Before I tried to escape, the door suddenly opened to the sweet voice of Mrs Blackstone, my new teacher.
"We've been waiting for you!" she said gently. With a smile my mum walked away and I was left standing in front of a group of students. Over the next few days, Mrs Blackstone made it her job to find me a new friend.
One spring afternoon, Mrs Blackstone asked me to stay after class. "I'd like to speak with you, Amanda," she said. My mind raced. Had I got bad grades? Had I hurt someone's feelings?
"Are you enjoying your new school?" she asked, sitting comfortably behind her desk. "I want to tell you something, between you and me, not to be shared with anyone else." With her eyebrows raised she continued, "I see something special in you—the way you communicate with others, the kindness you show. I think you have the great potential to be something very important."
I listened attentively to every word.
"I've been a teacher for over twenty-five years; I can see it. But first you have to believe in yourself. That's very important. Remember that and you'll go far," she said. Then she hugged me and said, "See you tomorrow."
Her sweet voice was music to my ears that day. I walked out of her class, not staring at my shoes, but looking straight ahead with my head high. My teacher saw something special in me!
When I was 9, we packed up our home in Los Angeles and arrived at Heathrow, London on a gray January morning. Everyone in the family settled quickly into the city except me. Without my beloved beaches and endless blue-sky days, I felt at a loss and out of place. Until I made a discovery.
Southbank, at an eastern bend in the Thames,is the centre of British skateboarding, where the continuous crashing of skateboards left your head ringing. I loved it. I soon made friends with the local skaters. We spoke our own language. And my favourite: Safe. Safe meant cool. It meant hello. It meant don't worry about it. Once, when trying a certain trick on the beam(横杆), I fell onto the stones, damaging a nerve in my hand, and Toby came over, helping me up: Safe, man. Safe. A few minutes later, when I landed the trick, my friends beat their boards loud, shouting: "Safe! Safe! Safe!" And that's what mattered—landing tricks, being a good skater.
When I was 15, my family moved to Washington. I tried skateboarding there, but the locals were far less welcoming. Within a couple of years, I'd given it up.
When I returned to London in 2004, I found myself wandering down to Southbank, spending hours there. I've travelled back several times since, most recently this past spring. The day was cold but clear; tourists and Londoners stopped to watch the skaters. Weaving(穿梭) among the kids who rushed by on their boards, I found my way to the beam. Then a rail-thin teenager, in a baggy white T-shirt, skidded(滑) up to the beam. He sat next to me. He seemed not to notice the man next to him. But soon I caught a few of his glances. "I was a local here 20 years ago," I told him. Then, slowly, he began to nod his head. "Safe, man. Safe."
"Yeah," I said. "Safe."
Nothing could stop dad. After he was put on disability for a bad back, he bought a small farm in the country, just enough to grow food for the family. He planted vegetables, fruit trees and even kept bees for honey.
And every week he cleaned Old Man McColgin's chicken house in exchange for manure. The smell really burned the inside of your nose. When we complained about the terrible smell, dad said the stronger the manure, the healthier the crops, and he was right. For example, just one of his cantaloupes filled the entire house with its sweet smell, and the taste was even sweeter.
As the vegetables started coming in, dad threw himself into cooking. One day, armed with a basket of vegetables, he announced he was going to make stew(炖菜). Dad pulled out a pressure cooker and filled it up with cabbages, eggplants, potatoes, corns, onions and carrots. For about half an hour, the pressure built and the vegetables cooked. Finally, dad turned off the stove. The pot began to cool and the pressure relief valve sprayed out a cloud of steam. If we thought dad's piles of chicken manure was bad, this was 10 times worse. When dad took off the lid, the smell nearly knocked us out.
Dad carried the pot out and we opened doors and windows to air out the house. Just how bad was it? The neighbours came out of their houses to see if we had a gas leak!
Determined, dad filled our plates with steaming stew and passed them around. It didn't look that bad, and after the first wave had shut down my ability to smell, it didn't offend the nose so much, either. I took a taste. It would never win a prize in a cooking competition, but it was surprisingly edible, and we drank up every last drop of the soup!
A 24-year-old woman who lost her leg due to cancer has proudly shared a raw photograph of herself without the prosthetic(假体的) leg on in an effort to promote body positivity.
Jessica Quinn, from New Zealand, was diagnosed with osteosarcoma—a rare form of bone cancer at the age of nine and eventually she had her leg amputated(截肢) to stop the disease from spreading.
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, the brave woman said she got up the courage to share the powerful picture publicly for the first time. Following a 14-hour surgery to remove her leg during her childhood, the cancer survivor started struggling with her body image because she was "forever stuck with it". She used to cover up her leg by avoiding wearing anything shorter than her knees.
"It took me 10 years to really start showing people what I looked like without my leg on. Now I don't like feeling weak though I know people will be supportive," she said.
"The challenges sometimes feel endless. But they remind me how lucky I am to have two feet planted on the floor."
Jessica also explained how social media has helped her gain self-confidence and the platform even shaped her into the person she is today.
"I know people often speak about social media in a negative light yet it's helped me grow. Simply just seeing the response and love I get when I share things like this and then seeing how it can help others is so heart-warming."
"If I can make someone feel beautiful in their own skin then I'll take every chance I can get."
Her social media post has since attracted more than 9,000 "likes" after sharing the post on Thursday evening. "The reaction has been extraordinary," Jessica said. "I get a flood of comments and I read every single one of them which brought tears to my eyes. Meanwhile, I'm always blown away by the support and love I get."
Much of the work in today's world is accomplished(完成) in teams. Most people believe the best way to build a great team is to gather a group of the most talented individuals. Companies spend millions hiring top business people. Is their money well spent?
They focused on football, basketball and baseball. The results are mixed. For football and basketball, adding talented players to a team proves a good method, but only up to the point where 70% of the players are top talent; above that level, the team's performance begins to decline. Interestingly, this trend isn't evident in baseball, where additional individual talent keeps improving the team's performance.
To explain this phenomenon, the researchers explored the degree to which a good performance by a team requires its members to coordinate(协调) their actions. In baseball, the performance of individual players is less dependent on teammates. They conclude that when task interdependence is high, team performance will suffer when there is too much talent, while individual talent will have positive effects on team performance when task interdependence is lower. If a basketball star is, for example, trying to gain a high personal point total, he may take a shot himself when it would be better to pass the ball to a teammate, affecting the team's performance. Young children learning to play team sports are often told, "There is no I in TEAM." .
Another possibility is that when there is a lot of talent on a team, some players may make less effort. Just as in a game of tug-of-war(拔河比赛), whenever a person is added, everyone else pulls the rope with less force.
. An A-team may require a balance—not just A players, but a few generous B players as well.
A. It's not a simple matter to determine the nature of talent.
B. Sports team owners spend millions of dollars attracting top talents.
C. The group interaction and its effect drew the researchers' attention.
D. Stars apparently do not follow this basic principle of sportsmanship.
E. Several recent studies examined the role of talent in the sports world.
F. Building up a dream team is more complex than simply hiring the best talent.
G. This task interdependence distinguishes baseball from football and basketball.
As a young boy, Britain's great Prime Minister(首相), Sir Winston Churchill attended a public school called Harrow. He was not a good student and nearly 1 from the school for breaking the rules.
2 , he did finish his schoolwork and his mistakes there did not
3 him from going on to the university. He even really had an army experience, for which he was later elected prime minister. He achieved it for his wisdom and 4 , because he once refused to 5 during the painful days of World War Ⅱ. His amazing determination helped inspire his entire nation and was an 6 worldwide.
Towards the end of his period as prime minister, he was invited to make a speech to the students at his old school. When the great day
7 , Sir Winston Churchill gave his short, clear-cut speech: "Young men, never give up. Never give up! Never give up! Never, never, never, never!"
Another 8 example is Sandra Day O'Connor who fought to achieve her best education. Graduating at the top of her class, she worked her 9 into Stanford Law School, where she graduated with
10 . Though working hard, she was still a woman in the 1950s. She was 11 by many law firms as they preferred to hire less qualified men rather than a great female lawyer. Yet she refused to give up on her dreams. With great efforts her dream 12 came true.
Churchill and Sandra stand for those who never give up. However, many people in our daily life simply say they want something but without making efforts. Instead, they let the fear of 13 stop them from trying. As a wise saying goes, "It's not how many times you fall down that 14 . It's how many times you get back up that makes success!" With hard work, 15 and preparation, you can overcome any difficulty and achieve success.
(2023年·浙江1月卷)
During China's dynastic period, emperors planned the city of Beijing arranged the residential areas according to social classes. The term "hutong", (original) meaning "water well" in Mongolian, appeared first during the Yuan Dynasty.
In the Ming Dynasty, the centre was the Forbidden City, (surround) in concentric(同心的) circles by the Inner City and Outer City. Citizens of higher social classes (permit) to live closer to the centre of the circles. The large siheyuan of these high-ranking officials and wealthy businessmen often (feature) beautifully carved and painted roof beams and pillars(柱子). The hutongs they formed were orderly, lined by (space) homes and walled gardens. Farther from the centre lived the commoners and labourers. Their siheyuan were far smaller in scale and (simple) in design and decoration, and the hutongs were narrower.
Hutongs represent an important cultural element of the city of Beijing. Thanks to Beijing's long history capital of China, almost every hutong has its stories, and some are even associated with historic (event). In contrast to the court life and upper-class culture represented by the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and the Temple of Heaven, the hutongs reflect culture of grassroots Beijingers.
1)表示欢迎;
2)介绍活动安排;
3)表达祝愿。
注意：
1)词数80左右(开头和结尾已给出,不计入总词数);
2)可适当增加细节,以使行文连贯。
Dear Mr Smith,
I am Li Hua, chairman of the Students' Union in our school. I am writing to express our warm welcome to you and tell you what we have arranged for you.
Yours,
Li Hua
Robert and Henry were two friends in the same class. They always played together and went home together. One day, Robert and Henry were going home from school, when, on turning a corner, Robert cried out, "A fight! Let's go and see!"
"No," said Henry. "Let us go quietly home and not meddle with(干涉) this quarrel. We have nothing to do with it and may get into trouble. Also our parents are expecting to have dinner with us together at home and I don't want them to worry about me."
"You are a coward, and afraid to go," said Robert, and off he ran. Henry went straight home, and in the afternoon went to school as usual.
But Robert had told all the boys that Henry was a coward, and they laughed at him a great deal. From then on, they looked down upon Henry and didn't want to play with him together.
Henry was sad but he wasn't angry with Robert for his rude behaviour, because he learned that true courage is shown most in bearing misunderstanding when it was not deserved, and that he ought to be afraid of nothing but doing wrong. Thus, he just ignored the other boys' laughter and continued to go to school and study as well. However, Robert didn't invite Henry to go home with him anymore. Instead, he had some other boys who also thought Henry was a coward. Every day after school, they didn't go home directly but went to the river or somewhere to play games and had a lot of fun.
A few days later, Robert was bathing with his new friends in a river, and got out of his depth. He struggled, and screamed for help, but all in vain. The boys who had called Henry a coward got out of the water as fast as they could, but they did not even try to help him.
注意：
1)续写词数应为150左右;
2)请按如下格式作答。
Robert was fast sinking.
Thus, Robert's life was saved.
