On the whole, it’s not something we parents shout about, but one in four of us does it. Hiring private tutors for our children is now widespread.

“It’s expensive, but worth it,” says Ashan Sabri, whose daughter Zarreen, is having tuition in biology and chemistry in preparation for A-levels this summer. “My husband and I tried to tutor her at home, but we found all our knowledge was out of date and we were only confusing Zarreen. We also tried a group revision course but all the children were sitting in a room for different kinds of exams. On the whole, we think one-to-one tuition works best.”

The real reason is: does tutoring do any good?

“It’s not the magic bullet,” says Professor Judith Ireson, author of a 2005 Institute of Education report on the subject. “It’s still up to the child to do the learning. If he or she isn’t interested, sending them to a private tutor won’t do any good. However, we did find that students who had private tuition in mathematics during the two years before GCSE achieved on average just under half a grade higher than students who did not have a tutor.”

In which case, surely it’s time to break open the champagne? Not necessarily, says Elaine Tyrrell, head of The Rowans School, Wimbledon, a preparation school which regularly gets children into the best private schools.

“While we recommend private tutoring for a few children whose first language isn’t English, we don’t encourage it for the others. With the level of education they get here, children really ought to be able to pass the entrance exams without any extra teaching. And our worry is that they might just get used to getting help from last-minute tutoring, but, once they actually get to that school, they won’t be able to cope.”

But Mylene Curtis, owner of Fleet Tutors, one of the biggest tutoring agencies in the country, holds a different view.

“In some respects, the hurdles children have to leap in order to get into these schools are set at a higher level than the reality,” says Curtis. “We often find that, once a child has got into a school, the standard of work isn’t as high as was feared. The trick is to do well enough in the exam to win a place.”

1.What does Ashan Sabri think of the group revision course?

2. What do the underlined words “magic bullet” in Paragraph 4 mean?

3.According to Elaine Tyrrell, private tutoring is _______.

4. What can be inferred from the last two paragraphs?

5.What attitude does the author hold towards home tutoring?

Rabbits are easy to raise. They are clean and quiet. They don’t need a lot of room. And it costs a small amount of money to feed them, but you can get a big return.

One male and two females will produce as many as fifty more rabbits in a year. That is enough to provide enough meat for a family. Rabbit meat is high in protein and low in fat.

You don’t have to be a farmer to raise rabbits. You can raise them in the city.

Rabbit houses are easy to make with wood and wire. They don’t have to be very big. But each rabbit must have its own little room in the house. This is very important. Each room should be about 75 centimeters wide, 60 centimeters high and one meter deep.

Fencing is used for the sides and floor of the rabbit house. The holes in the wire fencing should be about one centimeter square. Waste from the animals will drop through the holes. This keeps the rabbit house clean and dry.

Rabbits need a lot of fresh air and sunlight. Cover the sides of the rabbit house only to protect it from rain.

Rabbits eat mostly grass and leaves. Hang feeding containers on the outside of the house to let the rabbits eat whenever they want. They simply pull the grass and leaves through the holes in the fence.

Each room should have fresh water. The water containers should be heavy so the rabbit cannot turn them over. Or you can tie the containers to the fence.

One month after mating(交配), female rabbits give birth to about eight babies. In two months, a baby rabbit should weigh about two kilograms. This is big enough to make a meal for a small family.

Rabbits are also valuable for their fur. It takes time, skill and money to prepare the fur and skin for use. If you have only a few rabbits, it probably would be best to let a tanner(制革工) prepare the fur for you. Skill is also needed to remove the fur from the rabbit.

But rabbits do not have to be dead to be valuable. Many people enjoy keeping rabbits as friendly pets. And rabbit waste makes an excellent fertilizer(肥料). It can be mixed directly into the soil to improve the growth of vegetables, trees, and flowering plants.

1.The text is written mainly_______.

2.What is important if you raise rabbits?

3.Why should the holes in the wire fence be about one centimeter square?

4.What does the underlined sentence in the last paragraph mean?

Sometimes, the simplest ideas are the best. For example, to absorb heat from the sun to heat water, you need large, flat, back surfaces. One way to do that is to build those surfaces specially, on the roofs of buildings. But why go to all that trouble when cities are full of black surfaces already, in the form of asphalt(柏油) roads ?

Ten years ago, this thought came into the mind of Arian de Bondt, a Dutch engineer. He finally persuaded his boss to follow it up. The result is that their building is now heated in winter and cooled in summer by a system that relies on the surface of the road outside.

The heat-collector is a system of connected water pipes. Most of them run from one side of the street to the other, just under the asphalt road. Some, however, dive deep into the ground.

When the street surface gets hot in summer, water pumped through the pipes picks up this heat and takes it underground through one of the diving pipes. At a depth of 100 metres lies a natural aquifer(蓄水层) into which several heat exchangers（交换器）have been built. The hot water from the street runs through these exchangers, warming the groundwater, before returning to the surface through another pipe. The aquifer is thus used as a heat store.

In winter, the working system is changed slightly. Water is pumped through the heat exchangers to pick up the heat stored during summer. This water goes into the building and is used to warm the place up. After performing that task, it is pumped under the asphalt and its remaining heat keeps the road free of snow and ice.

1.Which of the following is true according to the first two paragraphs ?

Arian de Bondt got his idea from his boss.

Large, flat, black surfaces need to be built in cities.

The Dutch engineer’s system has been widely used.

Heat can also be collected from asphalt roads.

2.For what purpose are the diving pipes used ?

3. From the last paragraph we can learn that __________.

4.What is most likely to be discussed in the paragraph that follows ?

此题要求改正所给短文中的错误。对标有题号的每一行作出判断：如无错误，在该行右边横线上画一个勾（√）；如有错误（每行只有一个错误），则按下列情况改正：

此行多一个词：把多余的词用斜线（\）划掉。在该行右边横线大写出该词，并也用斜线划掉。

此行缺一个词：在缺词处加一个漏字符号（^），在该行右边横线上写出该加的词。

此行错一个词：在错的词下划一横线，在该行右边横线上写出改正后的词。

注意：原行没有错的不要改。

One day Mr. White made a very nice models plane.                    1.__________

All his children liked it very much and wanted to play it                 2.___________

first. They quarreled as they could not agree with                                  3.___________

each other. Mr. White thought hard and then he has                         4.___________

an idea. He got his children together, said “This plane                     5.___________

is only for best child. He or she never quarrels with Mother                    6.___________

and always helps doing housework.” The children looked                7.___________

at him sad when they heard their father’s words. Then they              8.___________

had an idea. The eldest brother said, “We think of it is only                    9.___________

for you, Dad !” With the word, the children ran away.                     10.___________

某英语杂志社举办“建设节约型校园”征文比赛。请针对目前许多校园内部的浪费现象，写一篇短文，号召同学们从我做起，杜绝浪费。

注意：

1、词数：100-120词。  

2、可根据内容要点适当增加细节，以使行文连贯。

3、不要逐字逐条翻译。

4、标题和第一句已为你写好，不计入总词数。

Building up a Saving Campus

Our school campus is becoming more and more beautiful. But did you notice _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 --- We are too busy to take _______ holiday at present.

--- But I think we’ll be able to take _______ two weeks away.

 --- Why don’t you try his phone number right now?   --- _______. I’ll try it.

 Monica promised to forgive Jason _______ he showed his actual deeds.

I might fail, but _______ I insist on doing it. I don’t mind what the result will be.

Every detail should be thought of _______ that nothing unexpected happens again.