Help 114年國中教育會考

Rex is a dog that lives at the bakery next to our school. He is cute and friendly. Every morning, he stands in front of the school to welcome everybody. We all see Rex as one of us. But one Monday morning, I was surprised that Rex was not there to say hello to us. “Rex is in the hospital. He was hit by a car last night,” my classmate told me. We went to see Rex in the hospital that day after school. Two weeks later, Rex was much better, and we decided to take him for a walk every evening. Because of the exercise, Rex became healthier and stronger. Soon he could happily run and jump again. He is now as handsome and strong as before!

Many years ago, Dan Ariely bought a cabinet from IKEA. IKEA is a famous furniture store that sells boxes of furniture parts. People who buy them have to put all the parts together themselves. It took Ariely hours to build his cabinet. Ariely didn’t really enjoy himself when he was trying to put all the parts together. However, after he finished, he felt quite good about himself and his cabinet. Later, he found that he loved his cabinet more than any of his other furniture.

Ariely wanted to know if anyone shared his feelings, so he did a fun origami study. He invited two groups of people to join his study. He called one group “builders” and the other group “buyers.” Builders were told to make origami, like paper frogs or paper birds. When they finished, they were asked how much they would spend on their works. Ariely then showed the origami to buyers and asked them how much they would pay for them. The two groups gave very different answers. Though buyers would pay only five cents for builders’ origami, builders would spend 25 cents! Interestingly, builders believed others would think their works were good enough to cost that much money!

Ariely’s study showed that he was not alone in his IKEA experience — we just love things more, sometimes blindly, when we make them ourselves. Ariely called it “the IKEA effect.”

In the picture is a UK electricity worker in the 1970s. Pictures like this appeared in many newspapers at the time. In 1972, electricity workers in the UK asked to be paid more, and they decided to stop working until their wish was answered. The government worried that there wouldn’t be enough electricity for the country if these workers didn’t go to work, so it agreed to give them the pay rise. However, the story didn’t end there.

A year later, the electricity workers asked for another pay rise. To get what they wanted, they worked shorter hours and acted like they would walk away from their job anytime. But this time, the government decided to fight. To save electricity, it made new rules for people to follow. For example, each family could turn on the heat in only one room; TV stations had to stop their shows at 10:30 p.m.; businesses could open only three days a week.

People’s lives were greatly changed. Without enough heat to keep the house warm, people covered themselves in blankets all the time. Hospitals had to use candles because they couldn’t keep all the lights on. Factories couldn’t keep their machines working. Many people lost their jobs. For months, people were paying the price while the electricity workers were fighting for their wish. In the end, the government agreed to the second pay rise. This picture shows what many people thought of the electricity workers during the “dark” time.

Most kids want gifts from their parents on their birthdays, but Cameron doesn’t. On his birthday, he gives his mom a gift. He 38 doing this in his first year of junior high school. That year, during one class, he watched a video about how a baby is pushed from its mother’s body. After class, 39. How brave a woman is to have a baby! Thank God I’ll never have to do that!

When Cameron came home that day, he held his mom in his arms for a long time. He decided that his birthday 40. During those nine months inside his mom, he just ate and slept while his mom was doing all the hard work. So why should he get a birthday gift for doing nothing? If anyone should get a gift on his birthday, it should be his mom.

The 41 “birthday gift” Cameron prepared was a bag of cookies he baked. The cookies tasted so bad, but his mom said they were the best thing she ever got. Hearing that 42. It was so much better than getting a gift. Now, on his birthday every year, Cameron makes a gift for his mother to thank her for giving him life.

This year, Cameron 43 his mom a nice dress. A few months ago, he learned to make dresses at school and decided to make one for his mom. Now the dress is finished and hanging behind Cameron’s bedroom door. He believes the gift will tell his mother how much he loves her.