Mary was a little girl and she lived with her parents in Africa. Her parents had gotten tired of the neighbors always complaining to them about their daughter, who was naughty and disrespectful to others. To change the situation, the father told Mary a story of a thief who would come and take away the parents of a bad child to take care of a better child and leave the bad child alone.

    However Mary went on with her ways. One day she made fun of an old blind man on her way to school. On hearing this, her parents thought of a new plan.

    The next day Mary came back from school. To her surprise, nobody was at home. It was getting dark but neither of her parents showed up. The little girl started to wonder where they were. Suddenly she remembered the story. Mary began to cry, for she thought she would never see them again. While she was crying, the door opened and her parents came in. She ran to them and asked, “Where have you been? I thought the thief had taken you away.”

    “He did but he let us go and told us to come back home because he knows you are going to be a good girl. He told us that if you are still a bad girl, he will come back for us,” they told her.

    “I am a good girl now and I promise never to be bad again because I don't want him to take you away from me.” Mary's words made her parents very happy. From that day on, Mary has never misbehaved again.

任务一：判断下列句子正误。

任务二：回答问题。

    A king received a gift of two great falcons (猎鹰), and they were really beautiful. He gave the birds to his head falconer to be trained.

    One day, the falconer told the king that although one of the falcons was soaring (高飞) high in thesky, the other bird couldn't move from its branch (树枝) since the day it arrived.

    The king called on many falcon trainers to train the falcon, but no one could make the bird fly.

    After he tried everything else, the king thought to himself, "Maybe I need someone morefamiliar (熟悉的) with the countryside to work out this problem.” So he asked his men to go and get a farmer.

    In the morning, the king was surprised to find the falcon was soaring high above the gardens. The king asked the farmer, “How did you make the falcon fly?” The farmer said to the king, “It was very easy. I just cut the branch which the bird was sitting on".

    We are all made to fly. But sometimes we just sit on our branches, don't want to leave the things that are familiar to us. So sometimes our lives are boring and not exciting. Let us learn to cut the branch that we are familiar with and free ourselves to a brave soar!

    Hello. I am a dog and my name is Happy. My owner (主人) is Nancy. She loves me very much and she likes to dress me up. So I have many nice clothes.

    In the morning, Nancy always gets up early and makes breakfast for me. I usually get up at eight and then enjoy breakfast. I eat quickly so I can take a walk with her in the park after breakfast. At nine, we get back home. She cleans her room and then goes to work. I stay at home and play with my ball. When Nancy doesn't work, she takes me to go out to have a good time. When we go somewhere, Nancy usually puts (放) me in a bag. It is easy for her to take me in that way. I live a happy life with Nancy and I love her very much.

    I'm a 34-year-old man, married, lived in a nice house, and have a successful career. But my life was not always so great. I had a learning disability from an early age. I went to a special school where I got plenty of extra(额外的)help. Still, I suffered(遭受)the rest of my school days in public schools.

    My life improved greatly when I discovered art. The art world gave me a chance to express myself without words. I went to a workshop and gradually became good at making things with clay. Here I learned my first important lesson: disabled as I was in language, I could still be smart and well express myself with clay. And my confidence(自信)came along.

    I got my next lesson from rock climbing. It was a fun thing but I was scared from the start. I soon noticed it wasn't an easy thing: it needed lots of practice. So I did it more. After about five years of climbing, I found myself in Yosemite Valley on a big wall. I learned that if you fall in love with something and do it all the time, you will get better at it.

    Later I decided to learn how to read and write. I practiced reading and writing, which I used to avoid as much as possible. After two years, I was literate(有文化的).

    Through the long process with art, climbing, and reading and writing, now I've got to a point in my life: I am smart enough to dive into(潜入)an area that is totally unknown, hard, but interesting.