Choose the best answer:
Although the villa is in the remote area, it’s _________ by car.

 

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Thanks to our modern lifestyle, with more and more time spent sitting down in front of computers than ever before, the number of overweight people is at a new high. As people frantically search for a solution to this problem, they often try some of the popular fad diets being offered. Many people see fad diets as innocuous ways of losing weight, and they are grateful to have them. Unfortunately, not only don't fad diets usually do the trick, they can actually be dangerous for your health. Although permanent weight loss is the goal, fewareabletoachieveit. Expertsestimate that 95 percent of dieters return to their starting weight, or even add weight. While the reckless use of fad diets can bring some initial results, long-term results are very rare. Nonetheless, people who are fed up with the difficulties of changing their eating habits often turn to fad diets. Rather than being moderate, fad diets involve extreme dietary changes. They advise eating only one type of food, or they prohibit other types of foods entirely. This results in a situation where a person's body doesn't get all the vitamins and other things that it needs to stay healthy. One popular fad diet recommends eating lots of meat and animal products, while nearly eliminating carbohydrates. A scientific study from Britain found that this diet is very high in fat. According to the study, the increase of damaging fats in the blood can lead to heart disease and, in extreme cases, kidney failure. Furthermore, diets that are too low in carbohydrates can cause the body to use its own muscle for energy. The less muscle you have, the less food you use up, and the result is slower weight loss. Veteran dieters may well ask at this point, "What is the ideal diet?" Well, to some extent, it depends on the individual. A United States government agency has determined that to change your eating habits requires changing your psychology of eating, and everyone has a different psychology. That being said, the British study quoted above recommends a diet that is high in carbohydrates and high in fiber, with portions of fatty foods kept low. According to the study, such a diet is the best for people who want to stay healthy, lose weight, and keep that weight off. And, any dieting program is best undertaken with a doctor's supervision.
1. What is the author's main point?

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I tried ........................... the bus, but I missed it.

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“Will aliens become good friends with humans?” Nick asked his teacher

The concept of urban agriculture may conjure up images of rooftop, backyard or community gardens scattered among downtown city streets and surrounding neighborhoods. But in the Seattle area, and within and beyond the Puget Sound region, it means a great deal more. "Urban agriculture doesn't necessarily equate to production that occurs only in a metropolitan urban area, "says Jason Niebler, who directs the Sustainable Agriculture Education (SAgE) initiative at Seattle Central Community College. "It means we are providing for growing population food needs from surrounding rural landscapes, as well as from the core urban landscape."

Picture a series of concentric circles, with an urban core that produces some food at varying capacities, surrounded by a series of outlying rings of small farms that become increasingly more rural with distance. The hope is that such land use planning, from the inner core to the outer rings, will encourage local ecologically sound sustainable food production. This, in turn, will create local jobs and decrease reliance on distant food products that originate from petroleum-intensive large scale farms.

That's the idea behind SAgE, believed to be the nation's first metropolitan-based community college sustainable agriculture program that emphasizes farming practices across diverse landscape types from urban centers to surrounding rural environs. "It's small scale agriculture with an urban focus" Niebler says. "Any urban population, large or small, can practice sustainable agriculture, improve food security and protect the environment, which ultimately results in resilient food systems and communities."

SAgE is a part of National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Program, which is providing the project with $157,375 over two years. ATE's goal is to support projects that strengthen the skills of technicians who work in industries regarded as vital to the national's prosperity and security. The support largely goes to community colleges that work in partnership with universities, secondary schools, businesses and industries, as well as government agencies, which design and implement model workforce initiatives.

The SAgE project focuses on the environmental, socioeconomic, political and cultural issues related to sustainable food systems, within Puget Sound watersheds through student and community education and research, and technological innovation. The curriculum offers courses that cover such issues as agricultural ecology, urban food systems, food politics and ethics, soil science, sustainable food production and technology, the integration of food and forests, and career opportunities.

"We've created a curriculum that is fundamental in nature, addressing the principles of sustainable agriculture and what a food system is - how it functions both locally and globally," Niebler says. "These courses are challenging, robust and inspirational. One of the really wonderful things about them is that we offer service learning opportunities, where students volunteer a portion of their time to working with local partner organizations. They can do a research project, or a service learning option. The ideal would be to prompt students into careers that involve sustainable practices in an urban agriculture setting."

Adapted from "Promoting Sustainable Agriculture" by Mariene Cimons

It can be inferred from the passage that the conventional idea of urban agriculture  ________ .

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Joanne Rowling became famous almost overnight. She is the (1)_____of a highly successful series of books for young people. Joanne has dreamt of being a writer for as long as she can remember. In fact, she has been(2)_____ stories and characters ever since she was a schoolgirl. When she was still quite young, the family moved to a town called Chepstow. A family who lived (3) ____were called Potter, and she used their name for the hero of her books. She and her sister, Di, (4)_____a state school in town. At school, she was hard-­‐working and rather reserved. She was (5)_____good at English and languages. Her talent for telling stories made her popular figure in the school. During breaks between (6) _____she was often surrounded by a crowd of friends, excited to hear the (7) _____story she had written. She often included her classmates in her stories though they were not always aware of this! When she left school, Joanne succeeded in getting a place at university. After graduating, she got a(8) _____in French. Then Joanne started to work as a teacher in a school in Portugal. She married a journalist but, sadly, the couple soon (9)_____and she moved to Edinburgh. She had (10) _____and couldn’t even afford a plastic folder to send her new book to potential publishers. However, one wonderful day a publisher said “yes”. It was the greatest day of her life

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 order to prove that they don't (19)_______the housing problems, governments should encourage property owners to rent out the properties to those without house. In return, can be (20)________ given to owners in forms of tax relief or subsidies. (21)__________ this is not a complete answer to the problem, it ought to be considered.

Question 21....................

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.

According to the passage, Silent Spring is primarily     .

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At 5 o'clock yesterday evening, I...............my clothes.

FAMILY HISTORY

In an age when technology is developing faster than ever before, many people are being (21).........  to the idea of looking back into the past. One way they can do this is by investigating their own family history. They can try to (22) ............ out more about where their family came from and what they did. This is now a fast-growing hobby, especial in countries with a (23).............  short history, like Australia and the United States.

It is (24).................  thing to spend some time (25) ................... through a book on family history and to take the (26) .............. to investigate your own family’s past. It is (27) ............. another to carry out the research work successfully. It is easy to set about it in a disorganised way and (28) ................ yourself many problems which could have been (29)............ with a little forward planning.

If your own family stories tell you that you are (30) ........... with a famous character, whether hero or criminal, do not let this idea take over your research. Just treat it as an interesting possibility. A simple system for collecting and storing your path. The most important thing, though, is to get started. Who knows what you might find?

(21).........

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Dr. Evans has ____________a valuable contribution to the life of the school.

He spent a year in India and loves spicy food. _____ the food is, _____ he likes it.

(448)_________

Jenny’s engagement ring was precious! It ______ have cost a fortune.

(372)________

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Background, in relation to computers, on the screen, the color on which characters are displayed. (1) _______, a white background may be used for black characters. In a windowing environment in which more than one program or document can be available to the user, open but currently inactive (2) _______ are said to be in the background. In the context of operating systems and program execution, background refers to a process, or task, assigned a lower priority in the microprocessor's share of time to tasks other than the task running in the (3) _______. A background process thus often performs (4)_____________ work, such as printing or checking for arriving messages on an electronic mail network, invisibly unless the user requests an update or brings the task to the foreground. (5) _______, only multitasking operating systems are able to support background processing.

Choose the best answer:
………… doing morning exercises is good for your health, don't do it too hard.

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:
At 7pm on a dark, cold November evening, thousands of people are making their way across a vast car park. They’re not here to see a film, or the ballet, or even the circus. They are all here for what is, bizarrely, a global phenomenon: they are here to see Holiday on Ice. Given that most people don’t seem to be acquainted with anyone who’s ever been, the show’s statistics are extraordinary: nearly 300 million people have seen Holiday on Ice since it began in 1943; it is the most popular live entertainment in the world.
But what does the production involve? And why are so many people prepared to spend their lives travelling round Europe in caravans in order to appear in it? It can't be glamorous, and it's undoubtedly hard work. The backstage atmosphere is an odd mix of gym class and workplace. A curtained-off section at the back of the arena is laughably referred to as the girls' dressing room, but is more accurately described as a corridor, with beige, cracked walls and cheap temporary tables set up along the length of it. Each girl has a small area littered with pots of orange make-up, tubes of mascara and long false eyelashes.
As a place to work, it must rank pretty low down the scale: the area round the ice-rink is grey and mucky with rows of dirty blue and brown plastic seating and red carpet tiles. It's an unimpressive picture, but the show itself is an unquestionably vast, polished global enterprise: the lights come from a firm in Texas, the people who make the audio system are in California, but Montreal supplies the smoke effects; former British Olympic skater Robin Cousins is now creative director for the company and conducts a vast master class to make sure they're ready for the show's next performance.
The next day, as the music blares out from the sound system, the cast start to go through their routines under Cousins’ direction. Cousins says, The aim is to make sure they're all still getting to exactly the right place on the ice at the right time - largely because the banks of lights in the ceiling are set to those places, and if the skaters are all half a metre out they'll be illuminating empty ice. Our challenge, ‘he continues, ‘is to produce something they can sell in a number of countries at the same time. My theory is that you take those things that people want to see and you give it to them, but not in the way they expect to see it. You try to twist it. And you have to find music that is challenging to the skaters, because they have to do it every night.’
It may be a job which he took to pay the rent, but you can't doubt his enthusiasm. “The only place you'll see certain skating moves is an ice show,” he says, “because you're not allowed to do them in competition. It's not in the rules. So the ice show world has things to offer which the competitive world just doesn't.” Cousin knows what he's talking about because he skated for the show himself when he stopped competing - he was financially unable to retire. He learnt the hard way that you can't put on an Olympic performance every night. “I'd be thinking, these people have paid their money, now do your stuff, and I suddenly thought”, “I really can't cope. I'm not enjoying it”. The solution, he realised, was to give 75 per cent every night, rather than striving for the sort of twice-a-year excellence which won him medals.
To be honest, for those of us whose only experience of ice-skating is watching top-class Olympic skaters, some of the movements can look a bit amateurish, but then, who are we to judge? Equally, it's impossible not to be swept up in the whole thing; well, you'd have to try pretty hard not to enjoy it.

Which of the following is the writer’s conclusion of Holiday on Ice?

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
Journalists: Protection of Sources
Being a reporter for a major news publication can be a difficult job. The best journalists often work long hours and have to do a bit of dirty work to uncover scandals that others want to remain secret. In many cases, it is a bit of information provided by an undisclosed source that finally helps to break the story. But do reporters have a legal right to keep their sources a secret? The protection of sources is the idea that journalists have the right to keep their sources of their news stories a secret. Those who support this idea insist that if reported are forced to reveal their sources, it will be much harder for them to do their job. It certainly seems logical that fewer people would come forward with sensitive information if they know that eventually their identity will be revealed to the public. Furthermore, in cases where the source’s information uncovers a ring of corruption or somehow damages the reputation of a rich and powerful person or company, releasing the source’s identity could put their life in danger. For the most part, reporters are rarely required by law to reveal undisclosed sources if it is a minor case of little importance. Yet in some instances, when vital or leaked information is involved, a journalist may be asked to testify in court and reveal how they got their information. In the US, such a situation arose after a mass shooting in Colorado in 2012. One journalist, with information provided by an anonymous source, wrote an article claiming that the suspected killer had sent a diary detailing plans to kill people to his psychiatrist a few days before the murder occurred. The suspect’s lawyer then demanded the reporter should reveal her source because they felt it damaged their defense case. In the end, the judge declined to force the reporter to testify. So are there any cases when reporters should reveal their sources? Many would argue that when the issue is a matter of national security, journalists should be willing to reveal their sources if it can help to save lives. For instance, let’s say a reporter receives a tip from an anonymous source about a terrorist attack. In this scenario, saving innocent lives should be more important than protecting one’s source. In the end, it seems that forcing reporters to reveal their sources should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
4. The act of revealing the sources of the story may most cause danger to the source’s identity in the case of _________

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If people stop destroying animal's natural habitat, more species will survive and produce .......

The latest addiction to trap thousands of people is Internet, which has been (1) ______ for broken relationships, job losses, financial ruin and even one suicide. Psychologists now recognize Internet Addiction Syndrome (IAS) as a new illness that could cause serious problems and ruin many lives. Special help groups have been set up to of sufferers help and support. IAS is similar to (2) ______ problems like gambling, smoking and drinking : addicts have dreams about Internet; they need to use it first thing in the morning; they lie to their partners about how much time they spend online; they wish they could cut down, but are unable to do so . A recent study found that many users spend up to 40 hours a week on the Internet; (3) ______ they felt guilty, they became depressed if they were (4) ______ to stop using it. Almost anyone can be at risk. Some of the addicts are teenagers who are already hooked on computer games and who find it very difficult to resist the games on the Internet. Surprisingly, however, psychologists (5) ______ that most victims are middle-aged housewives who have never used a computer before.

(36)________

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Nonrenewable resources include fossil fuels and mineral deposits, such as (1) _______ ore and gold ore. Conservation activities for nonrenewable resources focus (2) _______ maintaining an adequate supply of these resources well into the future. Natural resources are conserved for their biological, economic, and recreational values, (3) _______ their natural beauty and importance to local cultures. (4) _______, tropical rain forests are protected for their important role in both global ecology and the economic livelihood of the local culture; a coral reef may be (5) _______ for its recreational value for scuba divers; and a scenic river may be protected for its natural beauty.

Alexis _____ next week.

(420)_______