Animation traditionally is done by hand-drawing or painting successive frame of an object,  each slightly different than the proceeding frame. In computer animation, although the computer  may be the one to draw the different frames, in most cases the artist will draw the beginning and  ending frames and the computer will produce the drawings between the first and the last drawing.  This is generally referred to as computer-assisted animation, because the computer is more of a  helper than an originator. 
In full computer animation, complex mathematical formulas are used to produce the final  sequences of pictures. These formulas operate on extensive databases of numbers that defines the  objects in the pictures as they exist in mathematical space. The database consists of endpoints,  and color and intensity information. Highly trained professionals are needed to produce such  effects because animation that obtains high degrees of realism involves computer techniques from three-dimensional transformation, shading, and curvatures. 
High-tech computer animation for film involves very expensive computer systems along  with special color terminals or frame buffers. The frame buffer is nothing more than a giant image  memory for viewing a single frame. It temporarily holds the image for display on the screen. 
A camera can be used to film directly from the computer’s display screen, but for the  highest quality images possible, expensive film recorders are used. The computer computers the  positions and colors for the figures in the picture, and sends this information to the recorder,  which captures it on film. Sometimes, however, the images are stored on a large magnetic disk  before being sent to the recorder. Once this process is completed, it is replaced for the next frame.  When the entire sequence has been recorded on the film, the film must be developed before the  animation can be viewed. If the entire sequence does not seem right, the motions must be  corrected, recomputed, redisplayed, and rerecorded. This approach can be very expensive and time – consuming. Often, computer-animation companies first do motion tests with simple computer  generated line drawings before selling their computers to the task of calculating the high resolution, realistic-looking images.

According to the passage, the positions and colors of the figures in high-tech  animation are determined by..........................

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.
One of the most interesting authors of the twentieth century, J.R.R Tolkien, achieved fame through his highly inventive trilogy. The Lord of the Rings. Born in 1892, Tolkien received his education from Oxford and then served in World War I. After the war, he became a professor of Anglo -Saxon and English language and literature at Oxford University.
Although published in 1965, the three books that comprise the Lord of the Rings were written in intervals from 1936 to 1949. This was mainly due to Tolkien's responsibilities as a professor and the outbreak of World War II. By the late 1960s, this fascinating trilogy had become a sociological phenomenon as young people intently studied the mythology and legends created by Tolkien.
The trilogy is remarkable not only for its highly developed account of historical fiction but also its success as a modern heroic epic. The main plot describes the struggle between good and evil kingdom as they try to acquire a magic ring that has the power to rule the world. The novels, which are set in a time called Middle Earth, describe a detailed fantasy world. Established before humans populated the Earth, Middle Earth was inhabited by good and evil creatures such as hobbits, elves, monsters, wizards, and some humans. The characters and the setting of Middle Earth were modeled after mythological stories from Greece and Northern Europe.
Although readers have scrutinized the texts for inner meaning and have tried to connect the trilogy with Tolkien's real life experiences in England during World War II, he denied the connection. He claims that the story began in his years as an undergraduate student and grew out of his desire to create mythology and legends about elves and their language.
Tolkien was a masterful fantasy novelist who used his extensive knowledge of folklore to create a body of work that is still read and enjoyed throughout the world today.

According to the passage, when did "the Lord of the Rings" trilogy become popular with young people?

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.
In the western customs (16)............ hands is the customary form of greeting, but in China a nod of the head or (17)............ bow is sufficient. Hugging and kissing when greeting are uncommon. Business cards are often (18)....... _ and yours should be printed in your own language and in Chinese. Also, it is more respectful to present your card or a gift or any other article using (19)......._ hands. The Chinese are (20)...........applauders. You may be greeted with group clapping, even by small children.
(16).......................

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.
In 1830, there were under 100 miles of public railway in Britain. Yet within 20 years, this figure had grown to more than 5000 miles. By the end of the century, almost enough rail track to encircle the world covered this small island, (81)..... the nature of travel forever and contributing to the industrial revolution that changed the course of history in many parts of the world.
Wherever railways were introduced, economic and social progress quickly (82)........In a single day, rail passengers could travel hundreds of miles, cutting previous journey times by huge margins and bringing rapid travel within the (83)....... of ordinary people. Previously, many people had never ventured beyond the outskirts of their town and villages. The railway brought them greater freedom and enlightenment.
In the 19th century, the railway in Britain represented something more than just the business of carrying goods and passengers. Trains were associated with romance, adventure and, frequently,(84).......luxury. But the railways did more than revolutionize travel; they also left a distinctive and permanent mark on the British landscape. Whole towns and industrial centers (85)........up around major rail junctions, monumental bridges and viaducts crossed rivers and valleys and the railway stations themselves became desirable places to spend time between journeys.
(81).....................

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.
A large number of inventions require years of arduous research and development before they are perfected. For instance, Thomas Edison had to make more than 1,000 attempts to invent the incandescentlight bulb before he finally succeeded. History is replete with numerous other examples of people trying, yet failing to make inventions before they eventually succeede d. Yet some inventions have come about not through hard work but simply by accident.
In most cases, when someone unintentionally invented something, the inventor was attempting to create something else. For example, in the 1930s, chemist Roy Plunkett was attempting to make a new substance that could be used to refrigerate items. He mixed some chemicals together. Then, he put them into a pressurized container and cooled the mixture. By the time his experiment was completed, he had a new invention. It was not a new substance that could be used for refrigeration though. Instead, he had invented Teflon, which is today most commonly used to make nonstick pots and pans. Similarly, decades earlier, John Pemberton was a pharmacist in Atlanta, Georgia .He was attempting to create a tonic that people could use whenever they had headaches. While he was not successful in that endeavor, he managed to invent Coca - Cola, the world – famous carbonated soft drink.
Scientists have also made crucial discoveries by accident when they were conducting experiments. In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, an antibiotic, in this manner. He discovered some mold growing in a dish with some bacteria. He noticed that the bacteria seemed to be avoiding the mold. When he investigated further, he determined some of the many useful properties of penicillin, which has saved millions of lives over the past few decades. Likewise, in 1946, scientist Percy Spencer was conducting an experiment with microwaves. He had a candy bar in his pocket, and he noticed that it suddenly melted. He investigated and learned the reason why that had happened. Soon afterward, he built a device that could utilize microwaves to heat food: the microwave oven.

In paragraph 1, the word “arduous” is closest in meaning to  .............

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the blanks.

Speech is one of the most important communicating (1) ______. It consists of far more than just making noises. To talk and also to be understood by other people, we have to speak a language, that is, we have to use combinations of sounds that everyone agrees to stand for a particular object or idea. Communication would be impossible if everyone made up their own language.

Learning a language properly is very (2)______ . The basic vocabulary of English is not very large, and not only about 2,000 words are needed to speak it quite (3)______ but the more idea you can express the more precise you can be about their exact meaning.

Words are the (4)______ thing we use in communicating what we want to say. The way we say the words is also very important. Our tone of voice can express many emotions and show whether we are pleased or angry, for instance.

(2) ______

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B,C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best first each of the numbered blanks from 1 to 5.
Humans are destroying the earth‟s tropical rain forests. About 80,000 square kilometers are being destroyed every year. About a quarter of the (1)_______ comes from people cutting trees for fuel. Another quarter is to make grassland for their cattle. The (2)_______ trees are cut down to sell the wood to start farms.
The population in cities all over the world is growing, and more and more wood is needed to build huge new buildings. For example, 5,000 trees from Sarawak rain forest in Malaysia were used to build just one tall building. (3)_______ people continue cutting down that many trees in Sarawak rain forest, all the trees could be gone in eight years.
The world needs more food, and it (4)_______ like a good idea to clear the rain forests and use the land for agriculture. Many people think that the land under these huge, thick forests must be in rich nutrients, but it isn't. This is another surprising thing about rain forests. Most of the land in tropical rain forest is very(5) _______ .
(1)....................

Read the following passage and choose among A, B, C or D the correct answer to each of the questions.

Telecommuting is some form of computer communication between employees' homes and offices. For employees whose job involves sitting at a terminal or word processor entering data or typing reports, the location of the computer is of no consequence. If the machine can communicate over telephone lines, when the work is completed, employees can dial the office computer and transmit the material to their employers. A recent survey in USA Today estimates that there are approximately 8.7 million telecommuters. But although the numbers are rising annually, the trend does not appear to be as significant as predicted when Business Week published "The Portable Executive" as its cover story a few years ago. Why hasn't telecommuting become more popular?

Clearly, change simply takes time. But in addition, there has been active resistance on the part of many managers. These executives claim that supervising the telecommuters in a large workforce scattered across the country would be too difficult, or at least systems for managing them are not yet developed, thereby complicating the manager's responsibilities.

It is also true that employees who are given the option of telecommuting are reluctant to accept the opportunity. Most people feel that they need regular interaction with a group, and many are concerned that they will not have the same consideration for advancement if they are not more visible in the office setting. Some people feel that even when a space in their homes is set aside as a work area, they never really get away from the office.

The author mentions all of the following as concerns of telecommuting EXCEPT ____.

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

"The big issue for plane-makers for the future is size, not speed. With the skies already full of air traffic, and with worse to come, the important questions for the designers are how many passengers they can (1)….. into the new super- planes and who will be able to build them first. (2) ……yourself ten years from now in a packed airport departure lounge. Eight hundred passengers are waiting with you for their first flight on one of a remarkable range of super-planes, and the check-in time (3)…… have been as much as four hours before take-off to (4)…… for the extra people. Impossible? Far from it. Designs for these planes are already stored on Computer at the world’s top aircraft manufacturers, waiting to be turned (5)…. reality. The airlines badly need the new jets to (6)…. with future increases in passenger numbers. A billion passengers a year are currently carried by plane, but that figure is (7)….. to double by the year 2010. The only practical way of avoiding making the skies even busier is to build much bigger planes. The (8)…. to build the new jets is the hottest contest in the airliner business. Manufacturers are working (9) ........ with the major airlines to produce designs I that will please airlines and passengers (10) …..."

7. A billion passengers a year are currently carried by plane, but that figure is (7)….. to double by the year 2010.

Read the passage below and choose the best answer (A, B, C or D ) to each question.

Sometimes you know things about people the first time you see them, for example, that you want to be friends with them or that you don't trust them. But perhaps this kind of intuition isn't as hard to explain as may seem. For instance, people give out body language signals all the time. The way you hold your body, head and arms tells people about your mood. If you hold your arms tightly at your sides, or fold them across your chest, people will generally feel that you are being defensive. Holding your head to one side shows interest in the other, while an easy, open posture indicates that you are self-confident. All this affects the way you feel about someone.

Also, a stranger may remind you of a meeting with someone. This may be because of something as simple as the fact that he or she is physically similar to someone who treated you well or badly. Your feelings about a stranger could be influenced by a smell in the air that brings to mind a place where you were happy as a child. Since even a single word can bring back a memory such as that, you may never realize it is happening.

Intuition described in the passage can be explained by means of

Read the passage and choose correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.

BOOKS

Nearly all the discoveries that have been (1)_______ through the ages can be found in books. The invention of the book is one of humankind's (2)_______ achievements, the importance of (3)_______ cannot be overestimated. Books are very adaptable, (4)_______ us with both entertainment and information. The production of books (5)_______ in Ancient Egypt, though not in a form that is recognised to us today. The books read by the Romans, however, have some similarities to the ones we read now. Until the middle of the 15th century, in Europe, all books were written by hand. They were often beautifully illustrated and always rare and expensive. With printing came the possibility of cheap, large-scale publication and distribution of books, making knowledge more widespread and accessible.

(2) ______

Choose the best answer:
My city has been changing since the municipal authority had a plan to renovate the canal systems. The project cost a huge amount of money which was from the support of the world bank and the city’s budget. Before the renovation, the canal was the dirtiest place full of rubbish along its sides. Many ramshackle shacks were built to be shelters of the impoverished working families migrating to this city to earn their living. Household wastes were directly dumped into the canal, resulting in the very contaminated environment. It was said that the very unpleasant smell releasing from the canal was unable to be eliminated, and the living condition there would not be better. However, thanks to the advanced technology and methods as well as the city authority’s effort, everything has been changing. There is no longer the disgusting smell or shabby houses along both sides of the canal. Instead, the road running parallel to the canal is now full of shade of greenery and the water now is so clean that it is a friendly habitat for a variety of fish. The residents now can walk or do morning exercise on the sidewalks along the banks to enjoy the fresh atmosphere. Former inhabitants are also relocated in new apartments with much better living conditions than before. The canal creates not only a beautiful urban landscape, but also brings a lot of economic benefits to local dwellers. Because of its reformation, the city is changing fast too.

1. The main topic of the passage is about ______________.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.
In the western customs (16)............ hands is the customary form of greeting, but in China a nod of the head or (17)............ bow is sufficient. Hugging and kissing when greeting are uncommon. Business cards are often (18)....... _ and yours should be printed in your own language and in Chinese. Also, it is more respectful to present your card or a gift or any other article using (19)......._ hands. The Chinese are (20)...........applauders. You may be greeted with group clapping, even by small children.
(20).......................

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.
Rowing is a sport in which athletes race against each other on rivers, lakes or on the ocean,(1) ......... on the type of race and the discipline. The boats are propelled by the reaction forces on the oar blades as they are pushed against the water. The sport can be both recreational, focusing (2)............ learning the techniques required, and competitive where overall fitness plays a large role. It is also one of the oldest Olympic sports. In the United States, Australia and Canada, high school and collegial rowing is sometimes referred to as crew.
(3) .......... rowing, the athlete sits in the boat facing backwards, towards the stern, and uses the oars which are held in place by the oarlocks to propel the boat forward, towards the bow. It is a demanding sport requiring strong core balance as well as physical (4).......... and cardiovascular endurance.
Since the action of rowing has become fairly popular throughout the world, there are many different types of (5)......... _ . These include endurance races, time trials,  stake racing, bumps  racing, and the side-by-side format used in the Olympic Games. The many different formats are a result of the long history of the sport, its development in. different regions of the world, and specific local requirements and restrictions.
(1)......................

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.
The elementary means of communicating with other people is (41).......... messages by voice. This fact is widely acknowledged and we recognize the voice as a feature characterizing the identity of a person. The array of voices is immeasurable as no two are exactly similar. They can be nasal, resonant or shrill produced in accordance with the individual physical (42) .........   of the throat
One possible implementation of the art of voice recognition is voice profiling used by police analysts as a method of (43).......  court evidence in  trials.  Every year thousands of  audiotapes with recorded interviews or casual utterances are put to the purpose to help identity the probable culprit. Specialists dealing with the voice investigation claim that people can give themselves away by their accents, infections or other voice attributes like pitch, intensity and loudness. A recorded sample is usually (44)....... into electric impulses and later transformed    into a pictorial recording which is processed by a computer program. Very frequently voice analysts have a stab at deciphering the relevant information which may be mingled with background noise or other interfering sounds until they attain the desired results.
Thankfully, these efforts help the police detect individuals who threaten their victim by phone or inform about bomb planting or those who make offensive calls (45).....  the peace  of decent citizens.
(45)...........................

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.
You can usually tell when your friends are happy or angry by the looks on their faces or by their actions. This is useful because reading their emotional expressions helps you to know how to respond to them. Emotions have evolved to help us respond to important situations and to convey our intentions to others. But does raising the eyebrows and rounding the mouth say the same thing in Minneapolis as it does in Madagascar? Much research on emotional expressions has centered on such questions.
According to Paul Ekman, the leading researcher in this area, people speak and understand substantially the same "facial language". Studies by Ekman's group have demonstrated that humans share a set of universal emotional expressions that testify to the common biological heritage of the human species. Smiles, for example, signal happiness and frowns indicate sadness on the faces of people in such far- flung places as Argentina, Japan, Spain, Hungary, Poland , Sumatra ,the United States, Vietnam, the jungles of New Guinea , and the Eskimo villages north of Artic Circle. Ekman and his colleagues claim that people everywhere can recognize at least seven basic emotions: sadness, fear, anger, disgust, contempt, happiness, and surprise. There are, however, huge differences across cultures in both the context and intensity of emotional displays - the so called display rules. In many Asian cultures, for example, children are taught to control emotional responses - especially negative ones- while many American children are encouraged to express their feelings more openly. Regardless of culture, however, emotions usually show themselves, to some degree, in people's behavior. From their first days of life, babies produce facial expressions that communicate their feelings.
The ability to read facial expressions develops early, too. Very young children pay close attention to facial expressions, and by age five, they nearly equal adults in their skill at reading emotions on people's faces. This evidence all points to a biological underpinning for our abilities to express and interpret a basic set of human emotions. Moreover, as Charles Darwin pointed out over a century ago, some emotional expressions seem to appear across species boundaries. Cross - cultural psychologists tell us that certain emotional responses carry different meanings in different cultures. For example, what emotion do you suppose might be conveyed by sticking out your tongue? For Americans, this might indicate disgust, while in China it can signify surprise. Likewise, a grin on an American face may indicate joy, while on a Japanese face it may just as easily mean embarrassment. Clearly, culture influences emotional expressions.

The biggest difference lies in   ..........

Choose the best answer:
My city has been changing since the municipal authority had a plan to renovate the canal systems. The project cost a huge amount of money which was from the support of the world bank and the city’s budget. Before the renovation, the canal was the dirtiest place full of rubbish along its sides. Many ramshackle shacks were built to be shelters of the impoverished working families migrating to this city to earn their living. Household wastes were directly dumped into the canal, resulting in the very contaminated environment. It was said that the very unpleasant smell releasing from the canal was unable to be eliminated, and the living condition there would not be better. However, thanks to the advanced technology and methods as well as the city authority’s effort, everything has been changing. There is no longer the disgusting smell or shabby houses along both sides of the canal. Instead, the road running parallel to the canal is now full of shade of greenery and the water now is so clean that it is a friendly habitat for a variety of fish. The residents now can walk or do morning exercise on the sidewalks along the banks to enjoy the fresh atmosphere. Former inhabitants are also relocated in new apartments with much better living conditions than before. The canal creates not only a beautiful urban landscape, but also brings a lot of economic benefits to local dwellers. Because of its reformation, the city is changing fast too.

5. What benefit can the canal bring to the city?

Fill in each numbered blank with one suitable word or phrase.

Robots are already a part of our lives. Industrial robots widely used in manufacturing. Military and police organizations use robots to (1) _____ in dangerous situations. Robots can (2) _____ be found from vacuuming the floors in your home to exploring the surface of Mars.

Within a few more years a whole host of robotic adaptations will be running many aspects' of our lives. "I think in (3) _____ next thirty years, we are going to see a transformation between the industrial sorts of robots to personal robots," says Brooks from Brooks' company, IRobot, markets floor cleaning robots for homes.

"The advances in robotics make it clear that many household (4) ____ will be easily handled by a robot in the near future," says Bob Christopher, who works for a robotic technology company that is marketing a toy robot (5) _____ Pleo. "We have only one child but I could easily (6) _____ five or six robots in the home as well."

Within the next 10 years one will be able to (7) _____, to lease or purchase a domestic robot that not only does the household cleaning and prepare and serve his meals, (8) _____ also can carry him to the bathtub if he cannot walk.

Demographic changes, such as a rapidly aging population and a shrinking workforce, will drive forward the application of new (9) ___. There is going to be a real pull for increasing the productivity of working age people. So there is going to be a real push for robotics to help people. (10) _____ addition it is likely that in the near future we will see robots- taking on some of the care functions elderly, or long-term ill people.

(2)....................

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.
Around the age of sixteen, you must make one of the biggest decisions of your life. “Do I stay on at school and hopefully go on to university (1)..... ? Do I leave and start work or begin a training course. The decision is yours, but it may be (2).....  remembering two things: there is more unemployment among those who haven’t been to university, and people who have the right skills will have a big advantage in the competition for jobs. If you decide to go (3)..... into a job, there are many opportunities for training. Getting qualifications will help you to get on more quickly in many careers, and evening classes allow you to learn (4) .....you earn. Starting work and taking a break to study when you are older is another possibility. In this way, you can save up money for your student days, as well as (5) .....practical work experience.
(4)............................

Read the passage below and choose the best answer (A, B, C or D ) to each question.

The movement of people towards cities has accelerated in the past 40 years, particularly in the less developed regions, and the share of the global population living in urban areas has increased from one third in 1960 to 47% (2.8 billion people) in 1999. The world's urban population is now growing by 60 million persons per year, about three times the increase in the rural population.

Increasing urbanisation results about equally from births in urban areas and from the continued movement of people from the rural surround. These forces are also feeding the sprawl of urban areas as formerly rural peri-urban settlements become incorporated into nearby cities and as secondary cities, linked by commerce to larger urban centres, grow larger.

The proportion of people in developing countries who live in cities has almost doubled since 1960 (from less than 22% to more than 40%), while in more-developed regions the urban share has grown from 61% to 76%. There is a significant association between this population movement from rural to urban areas and declines in average family size.

Asia and Africa remain the least urbanised of the developing regions (less than 38% each). Latin America and the Caribbean is more than 75% urban, a level almost equal to those in Europe, Northern America and Japan (all are between 75 and 79%).

Urbanisation is projected to continue well into the next century. By 2030, it is expected that nearly 5 billion (61%) of the world's 8.1 billion people will live in cities. The less-developed regions will be more than 57% urban. Latin America and the Caribbean will actually have a greater percentage of inhabitants living in cities than Europe will.

Globally, the number of cities with 10 million or more inhabitants is increasing rapidly, and most of these new 'megacities' are in the less-developed regions. In 1960, only New York and Tokyo had more than 10 million people. By 1999, there were 17 cities of more than 10 million people around the world, 13 of these were in less-developed regions. It is projected that there will be 26 megacities by 2015, 22 in less-developed regions (18 will be in Asia); more than 10% of the world's population will live in these cities, up from just 1.7% in megacities in 1950.

How many cities in less developed regions had more than 10 million inhabitants in 1999?

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.

Nearly 200 of the 1500 native plant species in Hawaii are at risk of going extinct in the near future because they have been (1) ____ to such low numbers. Approximately 90 percent of Hawaii's plants are found nowhere else in the world but they are threatened by alien invasive species such as feral goats, pigs, rodents and non- (2) ____ plants.

The Hawaii Rare Plant Restoration Group is striving to prevent the extinction of the 182 rare Hawaiian plants with fewer than 50 individuals remaining in the wild. Since 1990, (3) ____ a result of their ‘Plant Extinction Prevention Program’, sixteen species have been brought into cultivation and three species have been reintroduced. Invasive weeds have been removed in key areas and fencing put up in order to (4) ____ plants in the wild.

In the future the Hawaii Rare Plant Restoration Program aims (5) ____ collecting genetic material from the remaining plants in the wild for storage as a safety net for the future. They also aim to manage wild populations and where possible reintroduce species into reserves.

(3) ________