Question:
Read the text and answer the questions.
In England, a civil parish (CP) is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority. It is an administrative parish, in contrast to an ecclesiastical parish.

A civil parish can range in size from a large town with a population of about 80,000 to a single village with fewer than a hundred inhabitants. In a limited number of cases a parish might include a whole city where city status has been granted by the Monarch. Reflecting this diverse nature, a civil parish may be known as a town, village, neighbourhood or community by resolution of its parish council. Approximately 35% of the English population live in a civil parish. As of 31 December 2015 there were 10,449 parishes in England.

On 1 April 2014, Queen's Park became the first civil parish in Greater London. Before 2008 their creation was not permitted within a London borough.

The division of land into ancient parishes was linked to the manorial system: parishes and manors often covered the same area and had the same boundaries. The manor was the principal unit of local administration and justice in the early rural economy. Later the church replaced the manor court as the rural administrative centre, and levied a local tax on produce known as a tithe. In the medieval period, responsibilities such as relief of the poor passed increasingly from the Lord of the Manor to the parish's rector, who in practice would delegate tasks among his vestry or the (often well-endowed) monasteries. After the dissolution of the monasteries, the power to levy a rate to fund relief of the poor was conferred on the parish authorities by the Act for the Relief of the Poor 1601. Both before and after this optional social change, local (vestry-administered) charities are well-documented.
1. How many parishes were there in England in 2015?
2. What is a civil parish?
3. What kind of territorial designation is it?
4. About what percentage of English live in a civil parish?
5. What was the first civil parish in Greater London?
6. On what date?
7. What was the dividing up of land into ancient parishes linked to?
8. What was a manor?
9. What later replaced it?
10. What's the range in size of a civil parish?
11. Can parishes include whole cities?
12. What wasn't permitted before 2008?
13. In medieval times, where did responsibilities pass?
14. What was the Act for the Relief of the Poor?
15. In what year?
16. Did parishes and manors sometimes cover the same places?
17. What was the main unit of local administration and justice in early rural economy?
18. What was a tithe?
19. Who delegated tasks to his vestry?

Numbered answers:
1. 10,449
2. a town, village, neighbourhood or community
3. the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties
4. Approximately 35
5. Queen's Park
6. 1 April 2014
7. the manorial system
8. the principal unit of local administration and justice in the early rural economy
9. the church
10. about 80,000 to fewer than a hundred inhabitants
11. Yes
12. creation of civil parishes were not permitted within a London borough.
13. to the parish's rector
14. the power to levy a rate to fund relief of the poor
15. 1601
16. Yes
17. The manor
18. a local tax on produce
19. the parish's rector

Question:
Read the text and answer the questions.
What do Tom Sawyer and Jumping Frogs have in common? Stories about both of them were created by one man: Mark Twain. Twain was four years old when his family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, located on the west bank of the Mississippi. Twain grew up there and was fascinated with (......) life along the river----the steamboats, the giant lumber rafts, and the people who worked on them.

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is one of Twain's best loved short stories, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is one of his most famous novels. Both these works are celebrated by events held during National Tom Sawyer Days, which originated in the late 1950s and became national in the 1960s. Children enter their frogs in the jumping contest during National Tom Sawyer Days. There's also a fence painting contest to see who can paint the fastest. The idea for this contest comes from a scene in Tom Sawyer, in which Tom has been told to paint the fence in front of the house he lives in. It's a beautiful day, and he would rather be doing anything else. As his friends walk by, he makes them believe that it's fun to paint, and they join in the "fun". By the end of the day, the fence has three coats of paint!

Although the story of Tom Sawyer is a fiction, it's based on facts. If you go to Hannibal, you'll see the white fence, which still stands at Twain's boyhood home.
1. What's one of Mark Twain's most popular novels?
2. What else is celebrated in National Tom Sawyer Days?
3. Is it an official holiday?
4. Where?
5. When did it become official?
6. What days is the holiday held on?
7. What's an example of a thing that people do to celebrate it?
8. Anything else?
9. Is Tom Sawyer a real person?
10. Did he live in Missouri?
11. Did he enjoy painting?
12. Did he like frogs?
13. Is he based on a real person?
14. Who?
15. What did Twain like about his home?
16. How old was he when he started living there?
17. When was he born?

Numbered answers:
1. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
2. The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
3. Yes
4. Missouri
5. The 1960s
6. unknown
7. Children enter their frogs in jumping contests.
8. Fence painting contest
9. No
10. unknown
11. No
12. unknown
13. Yes
14. Mark Twain
15. Life along the river
16. Four
17. unknown

Question:
Read the text and answer the questions.
A local area network (LAN) is a computer network that interconnects computers within a limited area such as a residence, school, laboratory, university campus or office building. By contrast, a wide area network (WAN) not only covers a larger geographic distance, but also generally involves leased telecommunication circuits or Internet links. An even greater contrast is the Internet, which is a system of globally connected business and personal computers.

Ethernet and Wi-Fi are the two most common technologies in use for local area networks. Historical technologies include ARCNET, Token ring, and AppleTalk.

The increasing demand and use of computers in universities and research labs in the late 1960s generated the need to provide high-speed interconnections between computer systems. A 1970 report from the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory detailing the growth of their "Octopus" network gave a good indication of the situation.

A number of experimental and early commercial LAN technologies were developed in the 1970s. Cambridge Ring was developed at Cambridge University starting in 1974. Ethernet was developed at Xerox PARC in 19731975, and filed as . In 1976, after the system was deployed at PARC, Robert Metcalfe and David Boggs published a seminal paper, "Ethernet: Distributed Packet-Switching for Local Computer Networks". ARCNET was developed by Datapoint Corporation in 1976 and announced in 1977. It had the first commercial installation in December 1977 at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York.
1. What does LAN stand for?
2. And what is that?
3. What about WAN?
4. Which kind of network would you use to connect to other computers at a school?
5. What would you use to visit websites?
6. When did demand and use of computers increase?
Numbered answers:
1. local area network
2. a computer network
3. a wide area network
4. (LAN
5. (WAN
6. in the late 1960s