Once, when I was a teenager, my father and I were standing in line to buy tickets for the circus. Finally, there was only one family between us and the ticket counter.

     This family made a big impression on me. There were eight children, all probably under the age of twelve. You could tell they didn't have a lot of money.

     Their clothes were not expensive, but they were clean. The children were well-behaved, all of them standing in line, two-by-two behind their parents, holding hands. They were excitedly talking about the clowns, elephants, and other acts they would see that night with their brothers or sisters in a low voice.

One could sense they had never been to the circus before. It promised to be highlight of their young lives. The father and mother were at the head of the pack, standing proud as could be. The mother was holding her husband's hand, looking up at him as if to say, "You are my knight in shining armor."

He was smiling and responding in pride, looking back at her as if to say, "You got that right." The ticket lady asked the father how many tickets he wanted. He proudly responded, "Please let me buy eight children's tickets and two adult tickets so I can take my family to the circus."

The ticket lady gave the price. The man's wife let go of his hand, her head dropped, and his lips began to shake. The father leaned a little closer and asked, "How much did you say?"

     The ticket lady again quoted the price. The man didn't have enough money.

     How was he supposed to turn and tell his eight children that he didn't have enough money to take them to the circus?

     Actually we were not wealthy in any sense. So I understand how the kids would feel. I felt sorry for them.

注意：

所需写的短文词数应为150左右；

应使用5个以上短文标有下划线的关键词语；

续写部分分为两段，每段的开头语已经为你写好；

续写完成后，请用下划线标出你所使用的关键词。

Paragraph 1

Seeing what was going on, my dad put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a $20 bill and dropped it on the ground.

Paragraph 2

That day my father and I went back to our car and drove home without any tickets.

    There was once a farmer who had a fine olive orchard. He was very hardworking, and the farm always prospered(蒸蒸日上) under his care. But he knew that his three sons did not like the farm work, and were eager to reach the goal at a single leap.

    When the farmer felt that his time had come to die, he called the three sons to him and said, “My sons, there is a pot of gold hidden in the olive orchard. Dig for it, if you wish it.” After the farmer was dead, the sons went to work to find the pot of gold.” Since they did not know where the hiding-place was, they agreed to begin in a line, at one end of the orchard, and to dig until one of them should find the money.

    They dug until they had turned up the soil from one end of the orchard to the other, round the tree-roots and between them. But no pot of gold was to be found. It seemed as if someone must have stolen it, or as if the farmer had been wandering in his wits. The three sons were bitterly disappointed to have all their work for nothing. The next olive season, the olive trees in the orchard bore more fruit than they had ever given; when it was sold, it gave the sons a whole pot of gold.

    And when they saw how much money had come from the orchard, they suddenly understood what the wise father had meant when he said, “There is gold hidden in the orchard. Dig for it, if you wish.”

写作内容:1. 以30个词概括上文的主要内容。2. 以约120个词就“Dig for it, if you wish it.”的话题谈谈你的想法，内容包括：①你对这句话的理解。②试举例说明。③这个故事给你的启发。

请阅读下面文字及图表，并按要求用英语写一篇150个词左右的英语短文。

    You really should finish compiling that boring spreadsheet, but you just can't bring yourself to do it. Maybe it can wait a little longer? Or it might just disappear if you ignore it long enough? You know the feeling.

    According to Professor Piers Steel, of the Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary, 95% of people postpone important tasks at some point. But for some, procrastination (拖延症) isn't occasional, but constant. Professor Joseph Ferrari, of DePaul University Chicago, found that 20% of the population of the world are habitual procrastinators. Sadly, delaying our duties isn't very good for us. As the poet Edward Young wrote: “Procrastination is the thief of time”.

【写作内容】

1）. 用约30个单词概述上述信息的主要内容；

2）. 结合上述信息，简要分析“拖延症”产生的原因及危害；

3）. 根据你的分析，就如何克服“拖延症”谈谈你的看法（不少于两点）。

【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。

    Directions: Read the following passage. Answer the questions according to the information given in the passage.

    Kids and Ponds

    Years ago there was a group of kids who would hang around at some local ponds in the woods near their houses in Warwick, Rhode Island. In summer they caught frogs and fish. When winter arrived they couldn't wait to go skating. Time passed, and the ponds became the only open space for the kids to enjoy themselves in that neighborhood.

    One day. a thirteen-year-old boy from this group of kids read in the local newspaper that a developer wanted to fill in the ponds and build over a hundred small houses called condominiums. So the boy went door to door and gathered more than two hundred signatures (签名）to stop the development A group of citizens met and decided to support him.

    At the meeting of the town planning board (委员会)，the boy was quite nervous at first and spoke very softly. But when he saw the faces of his friends and neighbors in the crowd and thought about what was happening to their favorite ponds，his voice grew louder. He told the town officials that they should speak for the citizens. He also insisted that they should leave enough space for children. A few days later，the developer stopped his plan.

    Nine years later, when that teen was a senior in college, he was informed that the developer was back with his proposal to build condominiums. Now twenty-two years old, he was studying wetlands ecology. He again appeared before the town planning board. This time as an expert witness, he used environmental protection laws to explain restrictions on development in and around wetlands and the knowledge of wetlands ecology to help improve the development. Finally some condominiums were built, but less than half the number the developer wanted. The ponds where those kids used to hang around were protected by a strip of natural land，and are still there today.

    [1] Nowadays the cost of a new car has fallen in real terms so that it is cheaper than ever to own one, and better road conditions have also attracted more drivers. The result is overcrowding on the road system, which is one of the problems the local governments are faced with.

     [2] When people travel to other towns, the problem might be relieved by getting them to park outside the town. Buses could be provided to take them into the centre. These Park and Ride projects are increasingly popular in the UK. At Southerton, for example, a council-funded project led to a 15% drop in city centre traffic over five months.

     [3] What the council found, though, was that the project proved somewhat unpopular with shop owners in the area outside the centre. Many of their shops relied on passing car drivers for some of their trade. As the number of people driving past dropped, so did their incomes.

     [4] Making car driving expensive is another way of ____________. Road taxes tend to mean that people use their cars less. Fining drivers who are in areas where cars have been banned can also tend to encourage them to leave their cars behind.

     [5] However, one thing has to be got right for any solution to succeed. If we expect people to give up the habit of driving, we must give them an alternative they can rely on. Constant delays, unannounced changes to the timetable and sudden cancellations all discourage people from using public transport. People will only see it as a real choice if the buses and trains are on time.