Teenagers take interpreter's exam

The 2006 Shanghai interpreter's exam started on Sunday, and teenagers have become contenders in the normally adults-only battle to qualify as an English interpreter, wrote the Morning News Monday.

A total of 51,127 examinees, a record high, from east China's Shanghai Municipality（直辖市） and nine other cities took the English exam, according to the committee of this year's exam.

Xiao Ma, 15, told the reporter that he has been preparing for the exam since last summer and it is his parents' wish that he take it.

"It made me nervous to be surrounded by so many people of my uncle and aunt's age, they must have known more than me," Ma said.

"I drew up a study plan for my daughter and she has been working on it through the summer vacation. I know she is tired, but everyone is preparing, we have no choice," Liu, accompanying her daughter, told the reporter.

"We have 2,000 teenagers in our summer interpretation training program, and the youngest is only eight," Qiu Zhengzheng, an interpretation teacher with the New Oriental School Shanghai branch told the Morning News.

According to Qiu, the exam has two levels, and the lower one equals the College English Test Band 4. He suggested that parents not push their children so hard, as frequent failure may do harm to teenagers' enthusiasm for English learning.

The nine other cities holding the exam were Hangzhou, Nanjing, Suzhou, Wuhan, Nanchang, Yantai, Qingdao, Ningbo, and Shenzhen. Most of them are provincial capital cities and coastal cites.

                                                           From China Daily