●A 78-year-old grandmother whose education was cut short by the second world war celebrated an A-level with her 50-year-old daughter. Betty Allen and daughter Chris Branton of Sprotbrough, South Yorkshire, opened their results together on TV after completing the UK's only online English A-level course. Mrs Allen received a D and Ms Branton a C

●Actor Holly Grainger, 18, from East Didsbury, Manchester, achieved two As and two Bs. She is a regular face on television screens with roles in Terry Pratchett's Johnny and the Bomb and new legal drama New Street Law. She learned yesterday that she had landed a main part in a new school drama called Waterloo Road

●A teenage hockey star who hopes to play for England in the 2012 Olympic Games won three A-grades. Will Miles, 18, from Formby, Merseyside, who attends Merchant Taylors' school in Crosby, plans to study maths at Manchester University 

● Andrew Nowell, a student at Nottingham high school, got five grade As, including one of the top five marks in the country for his design and technology paper. He won the Young Engineers for Britain contest this year with an invention he produced for his Design and Technology A-Level - a "remote control and security interface system". He is off to Cambridge to study engineering .

● Jed McQueen Jones got A grades in chemistry, maths and physics, despite being diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2003 and being hospital for three months. Jed, a pupil at Richard Huish College in Taunton, restarted A-levels in September 2004 and continued chemotherapy(化疗)into that Christmas. He is going to Exeter University on a science scholarship to study physics.

1. How did Betty Allen learn English and complete the course?

   A. On TV     B. On the Internet      C. By herself    D. Through her daughter

2. The underlined word “landed” in Paragraph Two means_______.

   A. moved down   B. arrive at   C. catch up     D. got successfully

3. Which of the following statements is WRONG according to the passage?

   A. She and her daughter were invited to appear online to celebrate.

   B. Her daughter did worse than her in the English A-level course.

   C. They completed the English A-level course on the internet.

   D. Betty Allen’s education was stopped by the Second World War.

4. What really made Andrew Nowell prouder and more successful?

   A. getting five grade As.

   B. an invention.

   C. his study on engineering

   D. His job as an engineer

5. The best title of the passage is probably_________

   A. Super students and their achievements

   B. Super gifts account for great achievements

   C. Hard work results in success

   D. Star pupils and super students

– Can you tell me ___________?           

– An engineer from Jinan Iron and Steel Plants.

   A. what your friend is                 B. who your friend is

   C. what is your friend                 D. who is your friend

The problem is that parents are only educating their children on how to take multiple-choice tests and how to study well, but parents are not teaching them the most important skills that they need to be confident, happy and clever.

Parents can achieve this by teaching practical skills like cooking, sewing and doing other housework.

Teaching a child to cook will improve many of the skills that he will need later in life. Cooking demands patience and time. It is an enjoyable but difficult experience. A good cook always tries to improve his cooking, so he will learn to work hard and gradually finish his job successfully. His result, a well-cooked dinner, will give him much satisfaction and lots of self-confidence.

Some old machines, such as a broken radio or TV set that you give your child to play with will make him curious and arouse his interest. He will spend hours looking at them, trying to fix them; your child might become an engineer when he grows up. These activities are not merely teaching a child to read a book, but rather to think, to use his mind. And that is more important.

1.          Generally speaking, children’s skills __________.

2.          The writer of this passage does not seem to be satisfied with_______.

3.          Doing some cooking at home helps children_________.

4.          According to the passage, which of the following is True?

5.           Cooking_____

A demands patience  B demands time.

C. is an enjoyable but difficult experience.

D.above all

请认真阅读下列短文，并在文章后表格中的空格里填入一个最恰当的单词。每空一词。
In the United States, engineering is a profession that has been dominated historically by men． Even today, it’s still true that few women become civil or chemical or mechanical engineers, but that’s something www．EngineerGirl．org aims to change． Young women who visit the web site can find out about a great career choice they might not have considered．
“Women are very much underrepresented in engineering and in engineering education programs and then of course, down the road, in the engineering workforce． So only about 20 percent of engineering undergraduate degrees go to women, and then only about nine percent of working engineers are women．”
Mary Mattis in the National Academy of Engineering, says the EngineerGirl website aims to reach young women around ages 11 through 14, when they are just getting old enough to start thinking about their futures．
“We know from the research that middle-school girls are at a critical point in their lives, and that it’s a time when we need to reach them, both with an understanding, increasing their awareness of interesting fields in engineering, what a wonderful productive and exciting career you can have as an engineer． But we also need to reach them at that time because you have to take certain courses, and you can’t start thinking about taking those courses when you’re a junior in high school．”
Engineering is a demanding course of study ---there is a lot of science and mathematics, for many girls and even boys, that can be challenging． But Ms． Mattis says that the EngineerGirl website stresses that engineering can also be fun and exciting．
“It’s about designing things． It’s about changing the world for people． It’s about making a difference． And, in addition, you can make a good living, you can be independent economically by becoming an engineer． All of those things are messages that girls need to get．”
While most engineers go into traditional fields such as mechanical and electrical engineering, the EngineerGirl site also highlights unusual engineering careers in fields such as sports engineering and --- believe it or not --- chocolate engineering．
“There’s a section called ‘why be an engineer,’ and that talks about the many opportunities and increasingly different opportunities like with bio-engineering and environmental engineering, some fields that might appeal to girls who want to make a difference or have a meaning for their careers beyond earning an income．”
Even if you are not a girl in the target age group, there’s a lot of interesting information on the site, including biographies of some notable women engineers．