Reading Comprehension

I didn't go to school until I was twelve years old. Before that, I studied at home with my brother and sister. We lived on a sheep station - a very big farm- in Australia, and the closest school was two hundred kilometres away. We studied a variety of subjects and the school was called the School of the Air.

Our classroom was the dining room and we studied for five hours every day. We communicated with the teacher and other students by radio. My favourite subjects were History and Science and I did quite well in them. I didn't like Maths and I wasn't very good at it. In fact, my results in this subject were so unsatisfactory that my parents were very angry about it. We spent half an hour a day on the radio, read books and wrote different kinds of stories which were then sent to the school centre in Alice Springs. The teacher who visited us once a year corrected them and sent them back to us by mail. These days, of course, the Internet is widely used but we didn't have computers at that time so we couldn't communicate by email and chatting was obviously unheard of.

In 1948, my parents sent me to a boarding school in Brisbane. That was very different to what I was used to. There were a lot of other students, all with different personalities, and we lived at the school where we slept in the living quarters. I only went home during school holidays. Brisbane is a big, beautiful city by the sea; however, I was really sad and missed my family at first. I cried on my first day there but after that I enjoyed it very much. It is an experience that I will remember for the rest of my life.

Carol Baines started studing when she was 12.

Carol Baines lived on a farm with her two sisters.

They used the sitting room as a classroom.

They talked to the teacher and other students on the Internet.

Carol Baines studied History,Science and Mathematics.

The centre of School of the Air was in Alice Springs.

The teachers visited us at the end of each week.

Carol's parents were very angry about her Science results.

Children on a farm didn't use the Internet in their studing.

Boarding school is a school where students study and live.

Carol Baines only went home at the weekends.

Carol didn't like the school in Brisbane at first.