I had a lot on my mind as I picked up the pieces of what had once been my teddy bear on the snowiest day last year. Only twenty-four hours before, I had been with it in our farmhouse. How quickly things ! The house I had lived in disappeared. The fire had all those things with my memories.
I have never known my mother to be . In fact, my whole family has always been . But when picking up my ashen (灰白色的) clothing on this cold winter morning, she moved with emptiness. The was so heavy to us.
Days passed and the situation didn’t become . After moving to the temporary house, my father told me dealing with this would cost money. It brought about a wave of and life became a struggle.
“Hey, Tony,” a classmate came up to me at lunchtime with a box in her hands. , all my classmates stood up. “Tony, we know what a few days ago. This is not something you have to go through . Alex, Phoebe and I started up the Shoebox Fund for you. Almost every student in our school . We love you and we want you to have this. ” She me with the box. I opened it to find piles of twenty-dollar bills and notes of love.
My eyes were filled with , and I had never been so moved. I had felt so lonely for the days after the fire that I became , unwilling to communicate with others. But these people looked past the rudeness I had them. They were my true friends and by sharing this , they were my family.
Yes, things are getting back to . But what I learned from this journey of discovery will with me forever.
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阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，从每题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
It often appears that we have more to gain by speaking than by listening. One big advantage of speaking is that it gives you a chance to _____ others' thoughts and actions. Whatever your goal is — to have a boss hire you, to ____others to vote for the person of your choice or to describe the ____ you want your hair cut ...the key to success seems to be the ____ to speak well.
Another ____ advantage of speaking is the chance it provides to ____ the admiration, respect, or linking of others. Tell jokes, and everyone will think you're really a ____ man. Tell them all you know，and they'll be ____ by your wisdom. But keep quiet, and it seems as if you are a ____ person.
Finally，talking gives you the ___ to release(释放) energy in a way that listening can't. When you're ____, the chance to talk about your problems can often help you feel better. In the same way, you can often ___ your anger by letting it out orally. It is also helpful to ___your excitement with others by talking about it, ____ keeping it inside often leaves you feeling as if you might burst.
____ it is true that talking does have many advantages，it's important to ____ that listening can do good to listeners, too. As you'll soon read, being a good listener is one good way to __ others with their problems; and what better way is there to have others ____ you? As for controlling others, it may be true that it's hard to be persuasive while you're listening, but your ___ to hear others out will often make them open to your ideas ____. Listening is often reciprocal(互惠的). “You get what you give.”
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阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，从每题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
I was a single parent of four small children, working at a low-paid job. Money was always tight, but we had a over our heads, food on the table, clothes on our backs, and if not a lot, always . Not knowing we were poor, my kids(孩子们) just thought I was . I’ve always been glad about that.
It was Christmas time, and although there wasn’t for a lot of gifts, we planned to celebrate with a family party. But the big for the kids was the fun of Christmas .
They planned weeks ahead of time, asking what they wanted for Christmas. Fortunately, I had saved $120 for to share by all five of us.
The big arrived. I gave each kid a twenty-dollar bill and them to look for gifts of about four dollars each. Then everyone scattered(散开). We had two hours to shop; then we would back at the “Santa’s Workshop”.
Driving home, everyone was in high Christmas spirits, my younger daughter, Ginger, who was unusually . She had only one small, flat bag with a few candies— fifty-cent candies! I was so angry, but I didn’t say anything we got home. I called her into my bedroom and closed the door, to be angry again. This is what she told me：
“I was looking thinking of what to buy, and I to read the little cards on the ‘Giving Trees’.One was for a little girl, four years old, and all she for Christmas was a doll(玩具娃娃). So I took the card off the tree and the doll for her. We have so much and she doesn’t have anything.”
I never felt so as I did that day.
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阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，从每题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
My daughter has been crazy about raising a pet for a long time. Last spring I bought two newly-hatched(孵化) chickens for her. She got and took good care of them. , a few days later, both chickens died. She burst into tears because of .I helped her the two birds under a tree behind our house. I thought it would be the of her ideas.I was wrong . Children are children . The failure hasn’t my daughter in any way. She still tried to keep a small animal or even a snail.
One day last winter, I noticed under the eaves(屋檐) of the house a family of sparrows(麻雀). My daughter and I could the sparrows as our “pets”, but we didn’t.
So I told her to the grains on the windowsill（窗台）. A few minutes later, the sparrows came to land on the windowsill and pecked(啄) at the rice. Suddenly my daughter asked me, Mum, can we catch and the sparrows, and let them live with us in the room？ How it is for them to live outside？
“Oh, my dear. I do not think it’s a good idea. You know,” I explained to her,“the sparrow is a bird who loves .No one can keep them in a cage. If they are caught, they will quickly. They are to living outside. Moreover, they have warm nest under the eaves.
From then on, we have set up a kind of with the sparrow family. We feed them frequently and them as pet birds. However, we do not need to them. We seeing these little birds flying and jumping among branches, leaves and flowers inthe spring morning.
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阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，从每题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
A few weeks after my first wife, Georgia, was called to heaven, I was cooking dinner for my son and myself. For a , I had decided on frozen peas. As I was cutting open the bag, it from my hand and crashed to the floor. The peas, like marbles, everywhere. I tried to use a broom, with each swipe they just rolled across the kitchen．
For the next week, every time I was in the , I found a pea---in a corner, or behind a table leg. They kept . Eight months later I pulled out the refrigerator to clean behind it, and 12 frozen peas hidden underneath．
At the time I found those few remaining , I was in a new relationship with a wonderful I’d met in a support group. After we married, I was reminded
those peas under the refrigerator, and realized that my had been like that bag of frozen peas. It had shattered（破碎）. My wife had died; I was in a new city with a busy job, and with a son having trouble his new surroundings and the of his mother. I was a bag of spilled frozen peas; my life had come apart and scattered．
When life gets you , when everything you know comes apart, and when you think you’ll never , remember that it’s just a bag of scattered frozen peas. The peas can be , and life will move on. You’ll find all the peas , including the ones that are hardest to find. And when you’ve got them you’ll start to feel whole again．
The life you know can break apart at any time. But you’ll have to , and how fast you collect your peas depends on you. Will you keep scattering them around with a broom, will you pick them up one by one and put your life back together?
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阅读下面短文，掌握其大意，从每题所给的A、B、C、D四个选项中，选出最佳选项，并在答题卡上将该项涂黑。
There are going to be moments in life when you must make very important decisions. You will find many people to offer you advice if you ask for it (and even if you don’t), but always remember that the life you is yours and nobody else’s. It’s important to decide for yourself what’s important to you and what you want before you others. Because while there will be times outside advice proves wise, there will be at least as many times when it proves completely . The only way to really evaluate other folks’ advice is to first learn everything that you can about whatever challenge you are . Once you’ve done that, in most cases you should be able to make a wise decision anyway.
You were with the ability to decide what is and what isn’t in your best interest. Most of the time, you will make the right decision and the appropriate action, and in thinking for yourself, you will become far more successful than if you had gone against your own .
Early on in my investment career, I made the mistake of a few important business decisions on colleagues’ opinions instead of conducting the necessary to make a wise decision. It wasn’t due to on my part; no one could ever accuse me of that. But, being to Wall Street, I intended to suppose that my more senior knew more than I did, and so I too much significance to their opinions.
You know what happened? Each of those investments ended in . Eventually I stopped allowing myself to be influenced by and began doing the work myself and making my own decisions. It took me until I was almost 30 years old to this—it’s never too late for a person to change his approach both to and to life.
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