16．　　As a young man, Mike was a skilled artist with a wife and two sons. One night, his older son developed a serious stomachache. (1)       of the couple thought it was some serious illness. (2)       , the boy died suddenly that night.
　　After Mike knew that the death could be (3)       , he always felt he was guilty. Later the matters got (4)      . His wife left him alone with his six-year-old younger son. The hurt and pain of the two situations were more than Mike could stand (忍受), and he (5)       alcohol (酒精) for help. (6)      , Mike became an alcoholic.
　　As the alcoholism progressed, Mike began to lose (7)      he owned — his land, house and so on. Finally, Mike died alone in a small bar. Hearing of Mike's death, I thought, "What a totally wasted life! What a complete (8)       !"
　　As time went by, I began to revalue my earlier rough (草率的) (9)      . I knew Mike's now adult son, Ernie. He is one of the (10)       , most caring, most loving men I have ever known. I saw the love between Ernie and his children, (11)       where his kindness and caring came from.
　　One day, I worked up my courage to ask him (12)       he became such a special person. "I must thank my (13)      ." Ernie said quietly, "As a child (14)       I left home at 18, Father came into my room every night, gave me a kiss and said, love you, son."
　　Tears came to my eyes as I realized what I was a fool to judge Mike as a failure. But he had been a kind loving father, and (15)       his best love instead of material possessions.

17．　　There are thirty-four bridges on the Thames in London. The following are among the most famous ones.

18．　　Colin dreamt about the garden again, and Dickon and his animals.
　　Early the next morning Mary ran into his room. "Dickon is here with the fox cub and the crow and two squirrels and a new-born lamb!" she cried. "Listen! Did you hear that caw-caw sound?" Colin looked very excited. Just then Martha opened the door. "Dickon and his animals are here, sir," she said.
　　Dickon came in. The new-born lamb was in his arms and the little red fox walked next to him. A crow sat on his left shoulder and a squirrel sat on the other. Another squirrel was looking out of his coat pocket. Colin stared as Dickon gave him the new-born lamb. "What is it doing?"cried Colin. "What does it want?" "It wants its mother," said Dickon, smiling. He took a baby's bottle from his pocket. He pushed the bottle into the lamb's mouth. The lamb drank the milk, then it fell asleep.
　　The next day, Dickon pushed Colin in the wheelchair slowly and carefully. Mary walked next to it. They went across the lawn to the long path near the wall.
　　"This is where I walked up and down looking for the door," whispered Mary. They walked a bit further, and then Mary whispered again: "The robin (知更鸟) flew over the wall here. And there," she said, pointing under a big bush in the flower bed, "is where I found the key".
　　Then Dickon stopped pushing the chair. "And look!" Mary moved the ivy branch. "Here is the door. Dickon, push him in 一 push him in quickly!"
　　When they were inside the garden, Colin looked round and round. He saw the walls and the earth and the trees with their new green leaves. In the grass under the trees there were flowers — gold and purple and white. The trees were covered in pink and white flowers. The sun was warm on his face. Mary and Dickon stared at him. He looked different. His face was pink, not white. "Mary! Dickon!I'm going to get well!" he cried, "And I'm going to live forever and ever!"
一Taken from The Secret Garden

19．　　Yesterday I woke up to the sound of music on my couch in my fifth floor apartment. I couldn't possibly tell you what song was playing because I was thinking what to do that day. I felt as if that day was going to be one of "those days".
　　After taking my son to school, I remembered I should meet my 85-year-old friend Harry. I promised to take him to lunch anywhere he wanted to go. When we parked the car, Harry told me, "I have to go into the donut (甜甜圈) shop next door before going to the restaurant. " Of course I agreed and in we went. He immediately walked in and began having a joke with the owner of the shop in his fashion. They chatted happily as she gave him a dozen donuts and off we went. I couldn't help but ask him, "What are the donuts for?" He quickly replied, "You will soon see."
　　As we opened the door to the restaurant, the line was very long. It was lunch time. People were on their cell phones. Babies were crying and the waiters looked stressed and burnt out. Harry and I were waiting in line chatting about nothing until we reached the front of the line. As he walked to the counter (柜台), all the waiters began smiling. He placed the box of donuts on the counter and said, "These are for you and other workers. " At once, the mood in the restaurant changed. This single act of kindness made the customers, the waiters, the kids and even me think when was the last time we did something nice for a stranger.
　　What was most amazing to me was earlier that morning I felt bored with my life. It felt like it was just another day. Watching this gentleman provide donuts for the waiters in a crowded restaurant at the lunch rush hour changed my ideas on life. Making an effort to do the little things can make people feel happy every day and our days will be better.

20．　　Do you know black boxes?
　　Black boxes are flight recorders placed in an aircraft for the purpose of making it easier to know how the accidents happened in flight.
　　An airplane actually has two black boxes. The flight data recorder catches the information, which can discover whether human error or instrument problems contributed to an accident. The cockpit (驾驶舱) voice recorder records pilot voices and cockpit sounds.
　　The black boxes are not black. They are painted bright orange to help with their recovery after accidents. The outside is with stripes of reflective tape (反光带). The black boxes are usually placed in the tail of a plane where they are more likely to survive a crash. A flight data recorder is required to store at least 25 hours of flight information. A cockpit voice recorder is required to record at least 2 hours of audio information.
　　For the black boxes to survive a crash, they are built to be waterproof, fireproof, shockproof, heat and pressure and corrosion resistant (耐腐蚀). The black box must be able to hold 3, 400 times the force of gravity, when the airplane goes down at the speed of about 500 km/h. It must also survive flames up to 1, 100 degrees Celsius for one hour, and the boxes should be able to give out a signal once per second while put under 6, 000 meters of saltwater for at least 30 days.
　　How is data from black boxes picked up?It needs special skills to physically bring the black boxes back. Investigators may need to clean and dry the black boxes and download data from them. It takes time to download and get the information from data. If the storing units go wrong, it will take longer time, either days or months.
　　So, the black boxes are very important to explain to everyone what happened during the flight.

31．　　My father loves his garden. He planted some seeds in it. But at that time, I didn't understand why working in the dirt excited him so much.
　　Unluckily, in early May, my father was seriously hurt in an accident. He had to stay in bed for a while. I didn't want my father to worry, so I said that 1 would take care of his garden until he was well. I thought that the little plants would continue to grow as long as they had water, and luckily it rained very often, so I didn't think much about the garden.
　　One Saturday morning, my father said to me, "Christine, the vegetables should be about ready to be picked. Let's have a salad today!" I went out to the garden and was sad to see that many of the lettuce leaves and carrots had been half eaten by bugs (虫子). There were hundreds of bugs all over them!I had no choice but to go to the nearest store to buy some vegetables.
　　When I gave the salad to him, he said, "Oh, Christine, what a beautiful salad!I can't believe the carrots are this big already. You must be taking very good care of my garden." I felt a bit guilty. After that, I looked after the garden carefully, and weeks later I was finally able to pick some.
　　I carefully made a salad and took it to my father. He looked at it with a smile. "My good girl, the carrots are smaller in this salad, but they taste better."
　　Now, I better understand how putting a lot of effort into caring for something can help you enjoy the results more, however small they may be. Perhaps this was one of the reasons for my father's love of gardening.
根据短文内容回答问题(每小题答案不超过10个单词)．

32．　　Mark Twain was an American writer and speaker whose real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Mark Twain was his pen name. He wrote a large number of works (1)d       his life.
　　His representative works (2)i      The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and so on. In some ways, these two works were a little (3)s       . In books, the main characters were boys who were (4)b       naughty, kind and loved freedom.
　　The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was written earlier. In this book, Tom always played tricks on others. He was good friends with Huck who was homeless and did something (5)a      the society. After some adventures, everything changed and Tom grew up in mind and body. (6)C      with The adventures of Tom Sawyer, The adventures of Huckleberry Finn paid more attention to the society-slavery. In this book, Jim, a (7)b      boy, was from slavery and Huck, a white boy, was from a society that wanted to control him. They wanted to get away and to be (8)f      . Jim and Huck shared the adventures on the river, so these two boys (9)h       each other and got closer together. Black or White was no longer important and they became good friends. This book was considered as one of the greatest books in America.
　　Language used by Mark Twain in these two books was very popular among the public at that time because it was (10)h      and full of wisdom. Mark Twain was famous for his humor and wisdom and he was the first writer to use everyday English in the novels.

38．在国家"双减"政策的引导下, 不少初中生的学习生活发生了许多改变．请你根据下表中的内容要点, 以Changes in My Life为题写一篇英语短文, 与同学们分享"双减"政策实施后, 你学习生活中的变化．
内容要点:

要求:
1.表达清楚, 语法正确, 上下文连贯, 词数100词左右(文章的开头和结尾已给出, 不计入总词数);
2.必须包括所有要点, 结构合理, 字迹工整, 并适当发挥;
3.不要出现学校和学生的真实姓名．
Changes in My Life
　　Thanks to the Double Reduction Policy, my life has changed a lot. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________