tape player on the floor?

The model plane the desk.

Tom is going tonext year.

—Twice a week.

How do you feel when you teacher asks you to work on a group project with other student? Do you like to work together with others or work alone?

The Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, carried out a survey of student's ability to work together in groups. They found that students who do well on tests by themselves are also likely to be better at working with other people. This finding was true for many countries. Students in Japan, South Korea, Finland and Canada, where test scores are high, also did well in working together to solve problems.

But this was not the case for every country. Chinese students, who have high scores as well, displayed just average collaborative (合作的) skills. "One reason might be that Chinese parents and teachers focus too much on grades," said Zhao Zhongxin, former vice president of the Chinese Family Education Association. "Students have a lot of exam pressure and they see schools as places for competition." "However, collaborative skills are very important for preparing students for today's society." he added. "Luckily, more Chinese parents and teachers are realizing the importance of this and are thinking of ways to help students improve this skill."

Another interesting finding from the PISA survey was that girls can be better than boys at working together. They said girls show more positive attitudes (态度)to wards relationships, which means they are more willing to listen to other' opinions.

PISA also found that the classroom environment can influence how well students collaborate. In classes where there are a lot of activities that require communication such as class debates, students might have better attitudes towards collaborating.

F1 is a very fast car race. It is one of the most popular sports in the world. The drivers go at over 300 kilometers an hour every race. But F1 cars didn't always go so fast.

In 1895, the first F1 race began in France. During that race, it took the drivers 48 hours to finish 580 kilometers. In 1901, the best drivers had an average(平均) speed of 100 kilometers an hour. Modern grand prix(奖品) F1 racing began in 1950 in Britain. "Grand prix" is French. It means "large prize". Today, 12 teams and 24 drivers race to get points. There are races at different tracks(路线) all over the world from March to October every year. There are also F2 and F3 racing. But the cars are slower and less high-tech.

During a F1 race, drivers have to make several stops to change tyres(轮胎) and put more petrol in their cars. A team of people do these tasks together to make the stops short. Some people lift the car up, others change the tyres. While this person works on the tyres, another person puts petrol in the car and a different person cleans the driver's helmet. One more person talks to the driver about how to win. It's amazing that all those people finish it in just a few seconds!

During 100-meter races, people count the players' speed by 1/100th(0. 01) of a second, for example 10.81 seconds.

In the world of car racing, however, the race has to be timed to 1/1000th (0. 001) of a second. That is 50 times faster than the time  for a blink(眨眼).

F1 cars look very colorful. First, cars of different teams have different colors. Then there are a lot of advertisements on the cars.

—Because they _______ love.