When I was in the seventh grade, I was a volunteer at a local hospital in my town.Most of the 1 I spent there was with Mr. Gillespie.He never had any visitors and nobody seemed to care about his 2.
I spent many days there holding his hand and talking to him,3 anything that needed to be done.He became a close friend of mine,4 he responded with only an occasional squeeze(捏) of my 5. Mr. Gillespie was in a coma(昏迷).
I left for a week to vacation with my parents, and when I came back, Mr. Gillespie was 6. I didn't have the7 to ask any of the nurses where he was, for fear that they might8 me he had died.
Several 9 later, when I was a senior in high school, I was at the gas station when I noticed a familiar face.When I10 who it was, my eyes filled with tears.He was 11! I got up the nerve to ask him if his name was Mr. Gillespie. With an uncertain look 12 his face, he replied yes.I 13 how I knew him and that I had spent many days talking with him in the hospital.His eyes welled up with tears, and he gave me the warmest hug I had ever 14.
He began to tell me that15 he lay there comatose(昏迷的), he could hear me talking to him and could 16 me holding his hand the whole time. Mr. Gillespie17 believed that it was my voice and 18 that had kept him alive.
Although I haven't seen him since, he fills my heart with 19 every day.I know that I made a(n)20 between his life and his death.
“I would say, no matter what people tell you, anything can happen.” That's the message Internet singer Austin Mahone says at We Day, an event for young people in Canada.
When he was 14，Austin and a friend began uploading pop songs to musical websites.“I was just doing it because we had nothing to do, living in a small town.”
“I'd check different websites for the hottest songs, and I'd record my own videos,” he explains. “That's how people began to find me online.”His videos got millions of hits and he signed with a record company. The result was the release of Austin's first album, Junior Year. While it seems like a sudden rise for the teenager, Austin admits the early days were not always fun. He says a lot of people thought badly of him for posting his videos online. Yet this didn't put him off.“I kept working hard. ”And the hits on his videos kept coming.
Austin's achievement and spirit make him a perfect fit for the message of We Day. After all, Free the Children, the creator of the event, was founded to “enable youth to make changes.” Even Austin's unusual rise by way of the Internet fits with the way Free The children works and raises money.
Because of Austin, his four million followers will learn about Free the Children. While Austin's presence certainly helps We Day, it's good for him, too. Austin gets to show himself as someone who volunteers his time and talent for a worthy cause and show that he cares about making the world a better place.
Rick Garcia is going to play outside with his friends. He is taking out his reliever inhaler (缓解物吸入器) and taking two puffs (吸). Five minutes later, he's on the field with his friends, running after a soccer ball. Rick has asthma (哮喘), but he knows how to control it.
Asthma is a lung disease. A person with asthma may cough or suffer from shortness of breath. Asthma can begin at any age. Childhood asthma, often beginning when a child is younger than 10 years old, is one of the most common childhood diseases. Doctors report that the number of young people with asthma is increasing. It is the number one cause of absence from school. If parents have asthma, their children are more likely to develop the disease. Children in homes where an adult smokes are more at risk.
It is important to find out the triggers for asthma. As we know, dust, pollen, or animals often make people suffer from asthma. Once a child learns the triggers, he can help prevent future attacks. About half of all children outgrow asthma and then asthma attacks stop when they are teenagers. However, many people live with the disease into adulthood.
Children often take control drugs once or twice a day to help prevent asthma attacks, if a child begins to have an asthma attack, a quick-relief drug is also necessary. This is often an inhaler. School-aged children usually carry their inhalers with them. This medication works quickly and children begin to breathe more easily in a few minutes. If a child has a serious asthma attack, he may need full-time care at a hospital or a doctor's office.
Today, many people use plants from other places to design their yards. Well, do they have any influence on animals living nearby? As we know, plants supply food for things like insects and plant-eating animals. In turn, birds and meat-eating animals feed on these insects and plant-eating animals. It is easy to see how important plants are.
Although foreign plants may look beautiful, they can cause problems when there are too many of them. I live in Virginia, USA, and sometimes see a plant—commonly known as Kudzu—that seems to cover everything in the area, even climbing over whole trees and houses.
Kudzu is an unbelievable plant since it grows very fast. It was first brought to the United States from south-east Asia around the 1870's as a crop that farmers could grow. However, Kudzu quickly came to be considered harmful throughout the southern United States.
Since Kudzu grows fast in many different environments, it can completely cover areas of land quickly. The plant is also not eaten by any insects or birds in the United States so it can grow unchecked. Kudzu can cover trees, bushes, and even houses. It costs the United States 500 million dollars a year to just keep Kudzu from growing too fast. The plant is a perfect example of what scientists call an invasive (侵略性的) species, which grows more quickly than other native plants.
All foreign plants have the possibility to spread quickly. Not only are they costly, but planting them in gardens actually takes away food from insects. If everyone filled their garden with plants native to where they live, many lovely butterflies and other native creatures would be attracted to their backyards! So, take a look out of your window — how does your garden grow?
Nowadays, it is common that more and more high school students open their own micro-blogs on the Internet. For one thing, it can provide a colorful platform to show their talent. For, it is a useful way to release their pressure. And all these make it more and more popular with high school students. ,many parents and teachers hold a different view. They think that managing one's micro blog will take a lot of time and energy, should be used to study.
In my view, I am greatly in favor this activity. Today the Internet is playing important and essential role in our life. Therefore as high school students, we need to learn to make use of this (value) tool to communicate and display ourselves. What's more, opening microblogs need various abilities such writing, designing , being skillful at computer and so on. Only if we master those abilities can we make a successful micro blog. As a result, we will improve ourselves while (organize) our microblogs.
In fact, microblog (oneself) is of little harm. It is your attitude towards it matters. We should take the advantages and avoid some bad effects.
Be an inventor
The biggest secret about inventing is that anybody can do it! Perhaps this sounds crazy, but it's true. Maybe you have the wrong idea about inventing, so read on to discover the truth.
Wrong idea number 1:
Well, inventing means creating something “new”, but the idea could come from something that already exists.
Wrong idea number 2: Inventors are born, not made.
There are a lot of factors that make invention possible. Take Mozart, for example. He was born with a special talent for music.His father was a music teacher, and Mozart practiced for hours every day, from the time he was in kindergarten.
Very successful creators don't give up when they get something wrong. As one inventor said, “A failure is the right answer to the wrong question!”
Wrong idea number 3: Inventors are always old people.
Here is an example of a young inventor: Louis Braille went blind when he was a child. When he was 15, he invented a system of reading and writing for blind people that is still used in most countries today.
A. Everyday things can give people lots of ideas.
B. An invention has to be something completely new.
C. But other factors were also important for his creativity.
D. As a young man, George Nissen invented the trampoline (蹦床).
E. Don't believe that you can't invent something when you are young.
F. Thomas Edison said that being an inventor was “99% hard work and 1% inspiration”!
G. The Wright brothers, for example, got the idea for building a “flying machine” from watching birds.
Dear Sandy,
I'm writing this letter to ask for help. I will visit England soon, but I know little about the culture of England. Please give me a hand.
I'm looking forward to hearing from your reply soon.
Yours,
Li Hua
请给Li Hua回一封信，要点如下：
1)．交通和气候注意事项（适应靠左行走或驾驶的交通规则，出门带伞）；
2)．公共场合的注意事项（保持安静等）；
3)．和英国人交往的注意事项(尊重隐私等)。
注意：
1)．词数：80左右，信的格式、开头和结尾已写好，不计入总词数；
2)．可适当增加细节,以使行文连贯。
Dear Li Hua,
It is a great chance to visit England.
Have a good time.
Yours sincerely,
Sandy Smith
Getting rid of dirt, in the opinion of most people, is a good thing. However, there is nothing fixed about attitudes to dirt.
In the early 16th century, people thought that dirt on the skin was a means to block out disease, as medical opinion had it that washing off dirt with hot water could open up the skin and let ills in. A particular danger was thought to lie in public baths. By 1538, the French king had closed the bath houses in his kingdom. So did the king of England in 1546. Thus began a long time when the rich and the poor in Europe lived with dirt in a friendly way. Henry IV, King of France, was famously dirty. Upon learning that a nobleman had taken a bath, the king ordered that, to avoid the attack of disease, the nobleman should not go out.
Though the belief in the advantage of dirt was long-lived, dirt has no longer been regarded as a nice neighbor ever since the 18th century. Scientifically speaking, cleaning away dirt is good to health. Clean water supply and hand washing are practical means of preventing disease. Yet, it seems that standards of cleanliness have moved beyond science since World War Ⅱ. Advertisements repeatedly sell the idea; clothes need to be whiter than white, cloths ever softer, surfaces to shine. Has the hate for dirt, however, gone too far?
Attitudes to dirt still differ hugely nowadays. Many first-time parents nervously try to warn their children off touching dirt, which might be responsible for the spread of disease. On the contrary, Mary Ruebush, an American immunologist (免疫学家), encourages children to play in the dirt to build up a strong immune system. And the latter position is gaining some reason.
