A ____ is an area of knowledge or study, especially one that you study at school, college, or university.

(239)_____

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Last year, there were millions of international tourist arrivals across the globe. Whether they were students on their (1)______ years looking for overseas adventure, stressed-out workers hoping to get away for a weekend, or retirees (2)______ to relax in an exotic location- clearly none of them thought they could find the same experience at home. The question is whether foreign travel brings more advantages or disadvantages. An obvious positive point is that going abroad sometimes helps people to expand their knowledge of the world. If they are (3)_____ – minded, they can learn about new cultures and hopefully gain a more accurate understanding about their way of life. In addition, there is the economic benefit of tourism to countries which have few other resources. It can provide an income to many people within the industry. Having said that, some people simply go to a foreign resort (4)______ by high walls and therefore learn little about their holiday (5)______. Another issue is that hordes of tourists often spoil the “unspoilt” places they visit. The most recent example of this is Antarctica, where last year cruise ships took thousands of visitors to view the disappearing icebergs and wildlife. Vegetation, nesting penguins and resting walrus are vulnerable when humans intrude

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____________ beautiful girl!

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Ever since it was first possible to make a real robot, people have been hoping for the invention of a machine that would do all the necessary jobs around the house. If boring and repetitive factory work could be (1) ________ by robots, why not boring and repetitive household chores too? For a long time the only people who really gave the problem their attention were amateur inventors And they came up against a major difficulty. That is, housework is actually very complex It has never been one job it has always been many. A factor robot (2) ________ one task endlessly until it is reprogrammed to do something else. It doesn’t run the whole factory. A housework robot on the other hand, has to do several different (3) ________ of cleaning and carrying jobs and also has to cope (4) ________ all the different shapes and positions of rooms, furniture, ornaments, cats and dogs. (5) ________, there have been some developments recently. Sensors are available to help the robot locate objects and avoid obstacles. We have the technology to produce the hardware. All that is missing the software- the programs that will operate the machine.

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If we became rich, we would travel ______ the world.

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
A small side door led into the whitewashed corridor from which the three bedrooms opened. We (1) __________ at once to the one in which Miss Stoner was now sleeping, and in which her sister (2)____________ her fate. It was a cosy little room, with a low ceiling and a gaping fireplace, the style of old country houses. A brown chest of drawers stood in one corner, a narrow bed in (3)___________, and a dressing table on the left-hand side of the window. These articles, with two small wickerwork chairs, (4)__________ all the furniture in the room, save for a square of Wilton carpet in the centre. Holmes drew one of the chairs into a corner and sat in (5) _________, while his eyes travelled round and round and up and down, taking in every detail of the apartment.

Choose the sentence A, B, C or D which in closest in meaning to the printed sentence.
“I will help you with the housework”, Mai said to me.

 Choose the word or phrase among A, B, C or D that best fits the blank space in the following passage:

"Men are lazy in the home, according to an official survey (1)……… today. They have about six hours a week more free time than wives, but play very little(2)…… in cooking, cleaning, washing, and ironing, according to the Social Trends Survey by the Central (3)…… Office.
 Nearly three quarters of married women (4)…… to do all or most of the housework, and among married men the proportion who admitted that their wives did all or most of the housework was only slightly lower.
 The survey (5)…… that washing and ironing was the least popular task among men, with only one percent (6)…… this duty, compared with 89 percent of women, and 10 percent sharing equally.
 Only 5 percent of men (7)….. the evening meal, 3 percent carry out household cleaning duties, 5 percent household shopping, and 17 percent wash the evening dishes. But when household gadgets break down, (8)……  are carried out by 82 percent of husbands.
 The survey says that, despite our economic problems, the majority of Britons are substantially better (9)….. than a decade ago. We’re healthier, too - eating healthier foods and smoking less.
 The (10)…..  Briton, not surprisingly, is more widely travelled than a decade ago. More people are going abroad for holidays, with Spain the favorite destination."

10. The (10)…..  Briton, not surprisingly, is more widely travelled than a decade ago. 

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This area is ________ overcrowding that the price of housing goes up very high.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions:
Rachek Carson was born in 1907 in Springsdale, Pennsylvania. She studied biology in college and zoology at Johns Hopkins University, where she received her master’s degree in 1933. In 1936, she was hired by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, where she worked most of her life.
Carson’s first book, Under the Sea Wind, was published in 1941. It received excellent reviews, but sales were poor until it was reissued in 1952. In that year, she published The Sea Around US, which provided a fascinating look beneath the ocean’s surface, emphasizing human history as well as geology and marine biology. Her imagery and language had a poetic quality. Carson consulted no less than 1, 000 printed sources. She had voluminous correspondence and frequent discussions with experts in the field. However, she always realized the limitations of her non-technical readers.
In 1962, Carson published Silence Spring, a book that sparked considerable controversy. It proved how much harm was done by the uncontrolled, reckless use of insecticides. She detailed how they poison the food supply of animals, kill birds, and contaminate human food. At that time, spokesmen for the chemical industry mounted personal attacks against Carson and issued propaganda to indicate that her findings were flawed. However, her work vindicated a 1963 report of the President’s Science Advisory Committee.

It can be inferred from the passage that in 1952, Carson’s book Under the Sea Wind

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
Putting Cars on Autopilot
Automobile accidents are one of the leading causes of death each year. Accidents can occur due to drunk driving, mechanical problems, carelessness, or a whole assortment of other reasons. In the near future, these problems could be solved by eliminating the person behind the wheel. Driverless cars may soon be turning all vehicle owners into “backseat drivers”. Driverless cars are vehicles that use several technologies to operate without human input. Through GPS, they can find a location on a map and plan the best route to get there. They may also use radar to detect other vehicles and avoid them when necessary. One company involved with developing driverless cars is Google. It’s developing a software called Google Chauffer which powers the vehicles. The technology isn’t cheap though, as Google robotic cars contain about $150,000 worth of equipment. In 2012, Google began testing the cars on the road with a highly-skilled driver in the driver’s seat, and a Google engineer in the passenger seat. In case there are any malfunctions, the human driver can step on the brakes or turn the wheel to take control of the automobile. Other car manufacturers are also working on implementing automated options into their cars. For example, the 2014 Mercedes-S class offers advanced cruise control using radar, lane warnings, and even detects, and warns drivers when they appear tired. Many Americans seem open to the idea, as three states have already passed laws that make it legal for driverless cars to be on the road. Still there will be some stumbling blocks to overcome before the roads are controlled by digital decision-makers. Firstly, companies will need to provide proof that driverless cars were tested a lot and are truly safe. Automobile manufacturers will also have to find a way to bring down costs, as few people would be able to afford the equipment required. Driverless cars could also potentially become targets for computer hackers. If a hacker were somehow able to override the software system, they could cause accidents or malfunctions. There are also economic issues to consider. If driverless cars became successful, millions of truck, bus, and taxi drivers would likely lose their jobs. Despite these issues, all indications suggest that it should be just a matter of time before humans are no longer needed behind the wheel.
8. The word “malfunction” in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to _________

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The ubiquitous bar code, developed more than twenty years ago, is not a stagnant product. On the contrary, the technology has been improved so that it can be used more efficiently. Much less expensive than a computer chip, the bar code can hold more information than it had in the past by adding a second dimension to the structure. The bar code consists of a series of parallel vertical bars or lines of two different widths, although sometimes four widths are used, printed in black on a white background. Barcodes are used for entering data into a computer system. The bars represent the binary digits 0 and 1, just like basic computer language, and sequences of these digits can indicate the numbers from 0 to 9, which can then be read by an optical laser scanner and processed by a digital computer. Arabic numbers appear below the code. The traditional bar code has been used to monitor skiers at ski lifts and to determine price and perform inventory control on groceries, drugs, medical supplies, manufactured parts, and library books to name a few. The bar code used on grocery products, introduced in the 1970s, is called a universal product code (or UPC) and assigns each type of food or grocery product a unique code. The five digits on the left are assigned to a particular manufacturer or maker and the five digits on the right are used by that manufacturer to identify a specific type or mark of product. Traditional single dimension bar codes are not readily customizable because there is little extra space. The two-dimensional bar code, with an information density of 1,100 bytes, allows a considerably greater amount of information to be coded than does the traditional bar code, including customized information. [A] It also has built-in redundancy, meaning that the identical information is duplicated on the same code. [B] Therefore, if the code is damaged, it can still be read. [C] The technology even allows pictures or texts to be contained within the code, as well as bar code encryption. [D] The new technology dramatically reduces the errors of the single dimensional bar code and reduces the enormous costs that some companies have reported in the past. 
3. The author implies that the bar code: 

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There are 54 ………. minorities in Vietnam.

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The company expects ________ from its employees.

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They usually _____ T-shirts on the weekends.

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The government has spent £1 million on an advertising ...... to encourage energy conservation.

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
The Particle that Started the Big Bang
In 2013, the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Francois Englert and Peter W. Higgs for their discovery of a particle that is vital to our understanding of the universe. Although its official name is the Higgs boson, many refer to it as the God particle, because it’s considered to be the building block of the universe. Many believe that the Higgs boson may be the cause for the Big Bang explosion which led to the creation of the universe. In the 1960s, Higgs came up with the concept that particles had no mass when the universe started. In a split-second, however, it came into contact with something that gave it mass. This, Higgs theorized, was the Higgs boson. Many scientists initially laughed at the idea, but in the upcoming years, Higgs along with Englert and several of their peers continued to work on these concepts. Their ideas would eventually help lead the way to the discovery of the Higgs boson decades later. The search for the Higgs boson certainly didn’t come up cheap, as it cost nearly $10 billion to build the machinery necessary to perform the tests to find it. Yet nearly every physicist would agree that it was worth it, as the Higgs boson has already been labeled as one of the most important discoveries in particle physics. The finding is also a huge boost for physics in general because it proves that the Standard Model of Physics which researchers have been using for years is correct. The Higgs was the last remaining question mark as all of the other particles and elements had been found. Still, many ordinary people may question how such a discovery affects their lives at all. Although quantum mechanics may seem weird, it has actually led to several important technological breakthroughs over the past century. These findings have led to laser and X-ray technologies that work in the real world. There is still much to be learned with further observation of the Higgs boson in action. Scientists hope to learn more about dark matter, a strange substance that constitutes 25 percent of the mass of the universe. The research could also lead to some other technologies as well.
2. How did the God particle get its name?

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Don’t Handle with Care
People always go shopping for the latest and greatest gadgets. Speed, performance, and the latest functions are always key factors before making a purchase. Yet the most important factor of all, which often isn’t considered, is a product’s durability. After all, if a product breaks easily and can’t be repaired, the buyer will have wasted their investment. In other cases, weakly-designed product can cost someone their life. Thankfully, today’s inventors and engineers coming up with some incredible ways to ensure that many products can survive the most difficult situations. One area where durability is absolutely essential is in designing weaponry. In the industry, lapses in quality can lead to death. Designers of military vehicles have recently made great strides in creating some extra tough bulletproof vehicles. Researchers were inspired by the advances made with a similar technology, bulletproof vests. This equipment, which keeps police officers and soldiers protected from gunfire, has been continually upgraded as time has gone on. In order to get tougher, these vests have got lighter, so officers and soldiers can move more freely while working. Beautiful screens, a fast computer processor, and the latest software are probably the biggest concerns for most people shopping for new smartphones. Yet, since most mobiles will be subject to their fair share of bumps and bruises during their life cycle, durability should also be a major concern. A major breakthrough in recent years was the invention of Gorilla Glass. This technology not only prevents devices from breaking when dropped on hard surfaces, but it also makes them scratch-resistant as well. Gorilla Glass screens are given molten alkaline salt baths that produce a hard, compressed layer at the surface. Before a screen can crack, it will have to penetrate this rugged surface, which takes a large degree of force. Recently, another new technique called electrospinning was developed that could make future products even tougher to break. The process involves applying high voltage to a polymer to create a strand of nanofiber. Products designed with the material will be able to absorb more energy without breaking. Researchers are aiming to lighten up aircraft and potentially decrease the damage planes suffer in crashes. Hopefully, these advances are just the beginning. Although science has come a long way in helping manufacturers to create more durable products, the next century should surely bring some even more incredible improvements.
7. What does the passage say about durable products in the conclusion?

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He ________ to find a job but he had no luck.

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It is no good ............................ sorry for yourself.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
I had never been to Denmark before, so when I set out to catch the ferry in early May, I little suspected that by the end of the trip I’d have made such lasting friendships. Esjberg is a (1) ________ port for a cyclist’s arrival, where tourist information can be obtained and money changed. A cycle track leads (2) ________ town and down to Ribe, where I spent my first night. The only appointment I had to keep was a meeting with a friend who was flying out in June. I wanted to use my time well, so I had planned a route which would include several small islands and various parts of the countryside. In my (3) ________, a person travelling alone sometimes meets with unexpected hospitality, and this trip was no (4) ________. On only my second day, I got into conversation with a cheerful man who turned out to be the local baker. He insisted that I should join his family for lunch, and, while we were eating, he contacted his daughter inOdense. Within minutes, he had (5) ________ for me to visit her and her family. Then I was sent on my way with a fresh loaf of bread to keep me going and the feeling that this would turn out to be a wonderful holiday