第９回毎日パソコン入力コンクール　６月大会
第３部　英文Ａ（文字数３，５００字程度）
東京都立高等学校入試問題　平成１８年度　英語　より引用

 Jennifer was ten years old. She had a brother Bill. He was sixteen. He was a leader of children's activities in the community. He sometimes asked Jennifer to join them, but she wasn't ready to do things with children she didn't know.
 One winter, when Jennifer was thirteen, some people of the community took a group of children to the mountains for skiing. Bill joined them. He had to take Jennifer with him because their parents were going to go out of town. She didn't want to go, but she had to go with him.
 She tried skiing for the first time. She fell in the snow many times. It was very difficult for her. Her legs got very tired. But at the end of the third day, she and other children were enjoying skiing very much. They were happy and laughed a lot. Jennifer became good friends with other children.
 Four years later, when Jennifer was seventeen, Bill thought it was her turn to take care of younger children in the community. He wanted her to help him with the children's activities. But she didn't think she was ready to do so.
 Then, in summer, Bill asked Jennifer to take some children to the mountains with him to hike. Jennifer didn't think it would be difficult, so she said yes. Jennifer and Bill took twelve children to the mountains with some other people from the community. On the first day they stayed in a village near the mountains. The next morning they started to hike. They had a plan to go to a lake in the mountains and to get back to the village before night.
 After walking for about an hour, a little girl in the group said, "I don't want to walk any more." Jennifer had to encourage her. Then a boy fell down and cried for a while. She held his hand and waited for a while before he stopped crying. Then another girl said, "I don't like that boy. He said a very bad thing to me." She had to listen to her for about ten minutes. And then another boy said, "I'm hungry. I want to eat my lunch here." Jennifer said, "We will have lunch when we get to the lake. I think having lunch there will be better than having it here." Those four children were a little younger than the other children in the group. Jennifer wanted to be kind to them, but it was hard to do so because they made so much trouble.
 While they were walking, Jennifer asked the four children about their schools, friends, and families. They began to talk with Jennifer. She listened to them and asked more questions. They sometimes laughed. She felt a little happier for the first time on that day.
 The group got to the lake at one in the afternoon. All of the children were happy, especially those four children. They had lunch by the lake. While they were having lunch, Jennifer told Bill about the four children. "At first they were making too much trouble. I wanted to take them back to the village. But then I began to talk to them, and they stopped making trouble. I think they began to like me."
 While they were walking back to the village, Jennifer enjoyed walking and talking with the four children. They looked happy. They didn't make trouble any more. Jennifer and the four children laughed a lot. They became good friends.
 It was five o'clock when the group got back to the village. The four children were very tired. But all of them were happy. Jennifer was happy, too. She was ready to become a children's leader at last. That was the thing she knew about herself then. She thought, "I hope today's hiking has made those four children a little stronger."