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（北京卷）When I entered Berkeley, I hoped to earn a scholarship. Having been a Straight-A student, I believed I could take tough subjects and really learn something. One such course was World Literature given by Professor Jayne. I was extremely interested in the ideas he presented in class. When I took the first exam, I was shocked to find a 77, C-plus, on my test paper, for English was my best subject. I went to Professor Jayne, who listened to my arguments but remained unmoved. I decided to try harder, although I didn’t know what that meant because school had always been easy for me. I read the books more carefully, but got another 77. Again, I reasoned with Professor Jayne. Again, he listened patiently but wouldn’t change his mind. One more test before the final exam. One more chance to improve my grade. So I redoubled my efforts and, for the first time, learned the meaning of the word “thorough”. But my effort did no good and everything went as before. The last hurdle(障碍) was the final. No matter what grade I got, it wouldn’t cancel three C-pluses. I might as well kiss the scholarship goodbye. I stopped working hard. I felt I knew the course material as well as I ever would. The night before the final, I even treated myself to a movie. The next day I decided for once I’d have fun with a test. A week later, I was surprised to find I got an A. I hurried into professor Jayne’s office. He seemed to be expecting me. “If I gave you the grade as you expected, you wouldn’t continue to work as hard.” I stared at him, realizing that his analysis and strategy(策略) were correct. I had worked my head off, as I had never done before.
I was speechless when my course grade arrived: A-plus. It was the only A-plus given. The next year I received my scholarship. I’ve always remembered Professor Jayne’s lesson: you alone must set your own standard of excellence.
（安徽卷） There are many different ways of seeing a town for the first time. One of them is to walk around it, guide-book in hand. Of course, we may study with our guide-books the history and special developments of a town and get to know them. But then, if we take our time and stay in a town for a while, we may get to know it better. When we look at it as a whole, we begin to have some questions, which even the best guide-books do not answer. Why is the town just like this, this shape, this plan, this size? Why do its streets run in this particular way, and not in any other way? Here even the best guide-book fails us. One can’t find in it the information about how a town has developed to the present appearance. It may not describe the original (最初的) design of a town. However, one may get some idea of what it used to look like by walking around the town. One can also imagine how the town was first planned and built. Then one can learn more about in what direction the town continues to develop. What is the point of studying towns in the way? For me, it is simply that one gets a greater depth of pleasure by visiting and seeing a town with one’s own eyes. A personal visit to a town may help one better understand why it is attractive than just reading about it in a guide-book.
(福建卷)The position of children in American family and society is no longer what it used to be. The ordinary family in colonial （殖民时期的） North American was mainly concerned with survival and beyond that, its own economic prosperity. Thus, children were valued in terms of their productivity （生产能力）, and they played the role of producer quite early. Until they fulfilled this role, their position in the family was one of subordination（附属）. With the development of the society, the position of children in the family and in the society became more important. In the complex and technological society that the United States has become, each member must fulfill a number of personal and occupational roles and be in contact with many other members. Therefore, viewing children as necessary members of society means that they are regarded more as people in their own right than as those of subordination. This acceptance of children as equal participants in the family is reflected in various laws protecting the rights of children and in the social and public welfare programs. This new view of children and the frequent contact between the members of society has also resulted in an increasing interest in child-raising techniques. People today spend much time seeking the proper way to raise children. Nowadays, the socialization of the child in the United States is a two-way transaction （事务）between parent and child rather than a one-way, parent-to-child training program. As a consequence, socializing children and living with them over a long period of time is for parents a mixture of pleasure, satisfaction, and problems.
(广东卷) Tales of the supernatural are common in all parts of Britain. In particular, there was (and perhaps still is) a belief in fairies(仙女). Not all of these fairies are the friendly, people-loving characters that appear in Disney films, and in some folktales they are cruel and cause much human suffering. This is true in the tales about the Changeling. These tell the story of a mother whose baby grows sick and pale and has changed so much that it is almost unrecognizable to the parents. It was then feared that the fairies had come and stolen the baby away and replaced the human baby with a fairy Changeling. There were many ways to prevent this from happening: hanging a knife over the baby’s head while he slept or covering him with some of his father’s clothes were just two of the recommended methods. However, hope was not lost even if the baby had been stolen. In those cases there was often a way to get the real baby back. You could place the&n
