Choose the best answer:
Dogs originally came from wolves. Wolves look a lot like dogs, but they are bigger. They are also quite fierce. At some point, some wolves changed through evolution. Some of them were smaller and gentler. These nicer wolves were the first dogs. No one knows for sure when this happened or why. Some people say it happened naturally over 50,000 years ago. Others say people made it happen between 15 000 and 50 000 years ago. However they came to be, people quickly saw that dogs were useful. Scientists who study humans say the first tame dogs appeared with humans about 13,000 years ago in the Middle East. Not long after there were dogs in Asia, Africa, Europe and eventually, North America. These dogs were probably used mostly for hunting and traveling. They were also good companions. Dogs were an important part of life in ancient Egypt. Egyptian dogs were used not only for hunting but as guards and warriors as well. They believed the god that guarded hell was a dog. Ancient Egyptians also named their pet dogs. Some popular names meant Brave One, Reliable, North-wind, Blacky, and Useless. Dogs were also good ancient Roman warriors. The Roman army used dogs all over Europe. Sometimes the dogs were attack dogs, but other times the dogs were messengers There are many different kinds of dogs today. How could they all come from wolves? There are many different explanations. Some scientists believe that dogs mixed with other animals from the Canidae family. This includes coyotes, foxes and jackals. Most scientists also believe that evolution and breeding influenced the variation. Later, people found breeds of dogs they liked and combined them to make all new breeds. In this way. people are still helping new breeds to appear today!
5. According to the reading, which of the following is TRUE?

My name is Nora and I live in Sweden. I live in a small village in the mountains. I love mountains and I can't imagine my life without them. I live with my parents and my little sister. She is six and I am eleven.
My mum's name is Helen and my dad's name is Nick. My mum is a fitness coach at my school and my dad is a farmer. We have a small milk farm. That's why I am fond of sports and animals.
I get up at 6.30 and do my morning training together with my mum. Then I wake my sister up. We have a big breakfast and our mum takes us to school by her car.
After lessons I stay at school to practice basketball. It's my favourite sport. At that time my sister trains at the singing club. After that I go home with my sister by bus because my mum has some evening trainings.
After school I like to help my dad to take care of calves. They are so nice! In the evening I like reading books or going out with my friends. We are crazy about riding bikes at the weekend. I have got a cool green bike. I think I am the best bike rider because I go in for sports every day.
Which sport does Nora practice every day?

Choose the best answer:
Vietnam is a (1) ____, developing country that in the last 34 years has had to recuperate from the ravages of war. Substantial progress was (2) ____ from 1986 to 1997 in moving forward from an extremely low level of development and significantly reducing poverty.  Since 2001, Vietnamese authorities have reaffirmed their (3) ____ to economic liberalization and international (4) ____. They have moved to implement the structural reforms needed to modernize the economy and to produce more competitive, (5) ____ industries.  Vietnam's membership in the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and entry (6) ____ force of the US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement in December 2001 have (7) ____ to even more rapid changes in Vietnam's trade and economic regime. Vietnam's exports to the US doubled in 2002 and again in 2003. Vietnam joined the WTO (World Trade Organization) in January 2007, following over a decade long (8) ____. This should provide an important boost to the economy and should help to ensure the continuation of liberalizing reforms.  Vietnam is working to create jobs to meet the challenge of a (9) ____ that is growing by more than one million people every year. Vietnamese authorities have tightened monetary and fiscal (10) ____ to stem high inflation

Choose the best answer:
Can you imagine your life without advertisements? They are present in all sectors of our lives, in our homes on TV, on public means of transport, in the streets, in newspapers, you name it. It is only natural that all this advertising with its intrusive nature would have an impact on our lives, and many people would agree that this impact is on the whole a negative one. Adverts are very creative and attract our attention; they are also highly persuasive and influence the way we think. Their aim is to make us believe we will feel a certain way if we purchase the product which is being advertised. For example, many adverts for products show good-looking, successful people enjoying themselves and consuming or using a specific product. This plays on our psychology and our sense of self-worth, and it makes us want to buy the product so that we can look and feel like the models in the adverts. Images and lifestyles aren't the only thing that advertising imposes on us. Artificial needs are also imposed on us. We are constantly exposed to visual and verbal adverts which try to convince us that our lives will be improved if we buy a particular product. Don't tell me the plasma TV or the air freshener advertised on TV is a necessity. However, clever advertising creates in people a sense of need for material goods, which if they don't acquire, can often lead to feelings of inferiority and unhappiness. Advertising also gives a distorted picture of reality, which creates unrealistic expectations, particularly among young children and teenagers. Many adverts are targeted specifically at these age groups, creating an intense desire to own a particular product. The resulting pressure on parents is so great that they often give in to the demands of their children in order to avoid confrontation and tantrums, thus creating patterns of consumption and gratification at the expense of other values in life. This vicious cycle can have a very detrimental effect on children and, consequently, the future of society. Advertising today, with its ubiquity and aggressive nature, poisons our minds with false ideals and instils in people a sense of dissatisfaction. It turns people into materialistic consumers; this is a far cry from the self-assured, informed individuals who know the real value of money and are able to develop the sensible shopping habits that any healthy society needs.
5. The phrase ‘a far cry’ in paragraph 5 mostly means _______

Choose the best answer:
I grew up with precious little choice about anything. You ate what you were given, went to school where you were told, wore your sister's hand-me-downs. And twice a year - birthday, Christmas - you got a present. We weren't poor at all but that was entirely normal and I don't remember feeling remotely deprived. Today, as we can see all around us, children seem to have everything - designer clothes, computer games, fussy eating habits and the attention span of itchy gnats. A report yesterday from the Children's Society found that one in ten kids now has mental illness diagnosed and it concluded that materialistic consumer pressure may be partly to blame, with children from poor backgrounds the main victims. Where is it coming from, this consumer pressure? First, from television, and the false dreams on offer there. Children from poor backgrounds, as well as having less money to buy the latest clothes or electronic games, are more likely to have parents without time to spend with them, and homes without access to outside space, so are far more likely to end up spending hours in front of the telly soaking up adverts alongside the easy gratification offered by cartoon; fantasy or drama. You cannot just blame the parents for this; many will be working hard, with no choice, just to put food on the table; after all, how many can afford a house with a garden in a city or suburb these days? Of course parents can correct bouts of consumerism in their children by teaching them what is and is not affordable, but why subject them to the clever traps of marketing people in the first place? Pressure is bad enough as it is, from schoolfriends and celebrity excess, without allowing some of the cleverest adult minds in the sharpest advertising agencies in the world to manipulate them as well. But why is it in a child's interests to be treated like a consumer? It has yet to be proven that giving even adults a wide range of choices improves their lives. In many instances, from too many yoghurts in the supermarket all the way up to a supposed choice of doctor or school, it is just confusing and stressful. I think the fewer, carefully selected, choices we can give young children, the more we help them. Watch the exhausted face of a six-year-old confronted by all this year's Christmas presents, without the time to play with any of them for more than a few minutes, and see what I mean. We are spoilt, and we are spoiling our children. They need to be taught to look down as well as up; to choose to feel fortunate, and not envious -and to recognise that gratification isn't as easy as buying a new toy or switching on a dream. And, as my mother would have been delighted to hear, it will not cost a thing.
6. Which of the following is true, according to the passage?

Choose the best answer:
Is the west falling out of love with the car? For environmentalists it seems an impossible dream, but it is happening. While baby boomers and those with young families may carry on using four wheels, a combination of our ageing societies and a new attitude among the young seems to be breaking our 20th- century car addiction. Somewhere along the road, we reached the high point of the car and are now cruising down the other side. The phenomenon was first recognised in The Road... Less Traveled, a 2008 report by the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, but had been going on largely unnoticed for years. Japan reached it in the 1990s. They talk there of “demotorisation”. The west had its tipping point in 2004. That year the US, UK, Germany, France, Australia and Sweden all saw the start of a decline in the number of kilometres the average person travelled in a car that continues today. What could be driving us off the road? Fuel costs and rising insurance premiums may be a factor. And urban gridlock, combined with an absence of parking places and congestion charging, makes an increasing number of us look on the car as a dumb way to move around in cities where there are public transport alternatives. Demographics are another possible explanation. It is surely no accident that ‘peak car’ happened first in Japan, which has the world’s oldest population. Pensioners do not drive to work, and many don’t drive at all. There is also the rise of “virtual commuters” who work from home via the Internet. Besides these new employment patterns, leisure lifestyles are also changing. Social scientists detect a new ‘culture of urbanism’. The stylish way to live these days is in inner-city apartments, not the suburbs. Richard Florida, an urban studies theorist at the University of Toronto in Canada, points out that the young shop online, telecommute, live in walkable city neighbourhoods near public transport and rely more on social media and less on face-to-face visiting. Given those changes, they can think of better ways to spend their money than buying a car. Some think car use will revive if and when economies recover. But it looks like something more profound is going on. Florida calls it a “great reset” in society that will have profound consequences – not least for the environment. Even our most treasured consumer aspirations can have a peak. Enough can be enough.
3. According to paragraph 3, what is stated regarding decline in motorization?

Choose the best answer:
Wild animals ____ (17) an important part in the balance of nature, and provide us with many important products. Wild animals provide fur, food, and recreation. They _____(18) make our surrounding more interesting. Uncontrolled hunting has destroyed much wildlife. People have also harmed animals by destroying their _____(19). Many animals, _____ (20) the passenger pigeon, have disappeared completely. Others, including the whopping crane, the blue whale, and the American alligator, are in danger of dying out

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
What do you do if you want to (1)______ a book in a library? If you know the author’s (2)______, go to the author catalogue. Find the title of the book (3)______ check the shelf mark. Make a note of this before you look (4)_______ the appropriate shelf. If you do not know the author’s name, go to the (5)______ catalogue. If there (6)_______ no title catalogue in the library, go to the subject catalogue. Check all the titles which are under the (7)______ you want. Then check the appropriate card, as with the author catalogue. Next look for the book on the shelf. Let the librarian stamp it (8)_______ you take it out of the library. If the book isn’t on the shelf, ask the librarian to get it for you

Choose the best answer:
People often find that success eludes them. But how often is this their own fault. One thing that we are all good at doing is procrastinating. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is a prime example of someone (26) _______ failed to act and, in fact, was rendered incapable of action by his need to put things off – in other words, to procrastinate. And because this is such a universal failing, it may be that it is that very quality that (27) _______ him to us all. But it’s not a good thing. We should force ourselves to get over it. Procrastinators are less wealthy and less healthy and regret their inability to make quick decisions. So why so many of you like it? What is it that prevents us from fulfilling our true potential? Are we attempting to become perfectionists, claiming that we need time to polish our work – or even that we can only do our best work under pressure? The latter is untrue, as work done at the last minute contains more mistakes than that done on time. Our procrastinating behaviour (28) _______ others and leaves us feeling flustered and guilty. Social scientists are struggling to understand the causes of this malaise and from that knowledge work out strategies to overcome it. There are various suggestions they have come up with for (29) having trouble getting things done. They say we should consider breaking a task down into manageable chunks so that it seems less daunting and keep on trying to accept why we are delaying in the first place: is it fear, wishing to produce something perfect or boredom with the task? (30) _______ , knowing the reason means we can do with it. As for me, I’m off to have a rest and think about it all

Choose the best answer:
For athletes who like to (31) _________ a variety of endurance sports in a single race, triathlons are a great fit. These competitions (32) _________ running, cycling, and swimming into one race, and they take place one after the other in a single continuous timed race. Athletes who participate must be in top physical form and have the skills needed to complete each portion of the race. Training for triathlons means the athletes have to become proficient not only in the sport required in each stage, but they also have to become familiar with what (33) _________ from one to the other does to their bodies. Many inexperienced triathletes are surprised to (34) _________ hard it can be to switch from swimming to cycling to running, and how tired their muscles can suddenly feel. One thing all triathletes can agree (35) _________ is that no one ever told them that running a triathlon would be easy

Choose the best answer:
Forget global terrorism - for most of the world's population, ticking time bombs like earthquakes, supervolcanoes and hurricanes pose a far greater threat. Natural disaster expert Bill McGuire reveals a few of the top catastrophes waiting to happen. With NASA's eminent climate scientist, Jim Hansen, concerned that collapsing polar ice sheets could result in sea levels rising 1-2m this century and several more in the next, prospects for the Earth's coastal zones are bleak. A 1m rise would threaten one third of the world's agricultural land, while a 4m rise would maroon Miami 60km offshore. Rising sea levels is not the only threat to coastal regions. The Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma is slowly creeping seawards. During a future eruption, this gigantic landslide will plunge into the ocean, pushing up a bulge of water close to a kilometre high, spawning a mega-tsunami capable of devastating all the coastal areas surrounding the North Atlantic. Coastal regions also face the menace of desertification. By 2030, over half a billion people living around the shores of the Mediterranean will be viewing the encroaching desert with increasing panic. An area bigger than the UK, and home to 16 million people, is threatened - by the end of the century- with transformation from a green and pleasant land to a baking wilderness of sand and rock. However, these disasters seem pale in comparison to the mega-catastrophes waiting to happen like supervolcanoes, for instance. Every 50 millennia or so, a colossal volcanic blast expels sufficient ash and gas to cover a continent and block the Sun's rays for years on end, heralding a bitter volcanic winter. At Yellowstone in Wyoming, US, two such super-eruptions have shattered the crust in the last 2.1 million years and the volcano there remains restless. An asteroid attack is another threat which would have devastating consequences. A total of 713 asteroids with diameters of 1km or more, and the potential to clobber the Earth at some future date, have been identified. A 2km asteroid would load the atmosphere with dust and trigger a sustained global freeze. Harvests would fail and billions would die. Fortunately, such collisions only happen every couple of million years.
4. The word ‘menace’ in paragraph 3 mostly means _______

Choose the best answer:
Increasing numbers of parents in the U.S. are choosing to teach their children at home. In fact, the U.S. Department of Education has estimated that in 1999, about 850,000 children were being homeschooled. Some educational experts say that the real number is double this estimate, and the ranks of home-schooled children seem to be growing at the average rate of about eleven percent every year. At one time, there was a theory accounting for home-schooling: it was traditionally used for students who could not attend school because of behavioral or learning difficulties. Today, however, more parents are taking on the responsibility of educating their own children at home due to their dissatisfaction with the educational system. Many parents are unhappy about class size, as well as problems inside the classroom. Teacher shortages and lack of funding mean that, in many schools, one teacher is responsible for thirty or forty students. The children are, therefore, deprived of the attention they need. Escalating classroom violence has also motivated some parents to remove their children from school. Although there have been a lot of arguments for and against it, home-schooling in the U.S. has become a multi-million dollar industry, and it is growing bigger and bigger. There are now plenty of websites, support groups, and conventions that help parents protect their rights and enable them to learn more about educating their children. Though once it was the only choice for troubled children, homeschooling today is an accepted alternative to an educational system that many believe is failing. 
1. The word "arguments" in the third paragraph can be best replaced by "_______"

Choose the best answer:
Edward Patrick Eagan was born on April 26th 1897 in Denver, Colorado, and his father died in a railroad accident when Eagan was only one year old. He and his four brothers were raised by his mother, who earned a small income from teaching foreign languages. Inspired by Frank Marriwell, the hero of a series of popular novels for boys, Eagan pursued an education for himself and an interest in boxing. He attended the University of Denver for a year before serving in the U.S. army as an artillery lieutenant during World War I. After the war, he entered Yale University and while studying there, won the US national amateur heavyweight boxing title. He graduated from Yale in 1921, attended Harvard Law School, and received a Rhodes scholarship to the University of Oxford where he received his A.M. in 1928. While studying at Oxford, Eagan became the first American to win the British amateur boxing championship. Eagan won his first gold medal as a light heavyweight boxer at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium. Eagan also fought at the 1924 Olympics in Paris as a heavyweight but failed to get a medal. Though he had taken up the sport just three weeks before the competition, he managed to win a second gold medal as a member of four-man bobsled team at the 1932 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. Thus, he became the only athlete to win gold medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympics.
4. According to the passage, Eagan won all of the following EXCEPT ______

Choose the best answer:
If you want to prepare yourself for great achievement and have more to _____ (27) to your education or your work, try reading more books. _____ (28) up some of the interestingly informative books and search for well - researched materials that can help you grow. We should encourage our children to read more books and spend less time watching TV. Some people have commented that this is inconsistent. "Why is the written word a superior way to get information than television?" That is _____ (29) interesting point of view worth further _____ (30). Reading is a skill that is in much greater demand than the demand for watching TV. There are no jobs that require a person to be able to watch TV but reading is an integral part of many jobs. The written word is an incredibly flexible and efficient way of communication. You can write something down and, in no time, it can be communicated to many different people. Not only that, we can _____ (31) vast amounts of information through reading in a very short time. A good reader can acquire more information in reading for two hours than someone watching TV can acquire in a full day. You are able to gain a lot of information quickly because you are a fast reader with good comprehension skills. It will save you massive amounts of time and you will be able to assimilate vast quantities of information

Choose the best answer:
Until fairly recently, explaining the presence of human beings in Australia was not such a problem. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was thought that Aborigines had been on the continent for no more than 400 years. As recently as the 1960s, the time-frame was estimated to be perhaps 8,000 years. Then in 1969 a geologist from the Australian National University in Canberra was poking around on the shores of a long-dried lake bed called Mungo in a dry and lonely corner of New South Wales when something caught his eye. It was the skeleton of a woman sticking out slightly from a sandbank. The bones were collected and sent off for carbon dating. When the report came back, it showed that the woman had died 23,000 years ago. Since then, other finds have pushed the date back further. Today the evidence points to an arrival date of at least 45,000 years ago but probably more like 60,000. The first occupants of Australia could not have walked there because at no point in human times has Australia not been an island. They could not have arisen independently because Australia has no apelike creatures from which humans could have descended. The first arrivals could only have come by sea, presumably from Timor or the Indonesian archipelago, and here is where the problems arise. In order to put Homo sapiens in Australia you must accept that at a point in time so remote that it precedes the known rise of behaviourally modern humans, there lived in southern Asia a people so advanced that they were fishing inshore waters from boats of some sort. Never mind that they the archaeological record shows no one else on earth doing this for another 30,000 years. Next, we have to explain what led them to cross at least sixty miles of open sea to reach a land they could hardly have known was there. The scenario that is usually described is of a simple fishing craft probably little more than a floating platform - accidentally carried out to sea probably in one of the sudden storms that are characteristic of this area. This craft then drifted helplessly for some days before washing up on a beach in northern Australia. So far, so good. The question that naturally arises - but is seldom asked - is how you get a new population out of this. If it's a lone fisherman who is carried off to Australia, then clearly he must find his way back to his homeland to report his discovery and persuade enough people to come with him to start a colony. This suggests, of course, the possession of considerable sailing skills. By any measure this is a staggeringly momentous achievement. And how much notice is paid to it? Well, ask yourself the last time when you read anything about it. When was the last time in any context concerning human movements and the rise of civilisations that you saw even a passing mention of the role of aborigines? They are the planet's invisible people. A big part of the problem is that for most of us it is nearly impossible to grasp what an extraordinary span of time we are considering here. Assume for the sake of argument that the Aborigines arrived 60,000 years ago (that is the figure used by Roger Lewin of Havard in Principles of Evolution, a standard text). On that scale, the total period of European occupation of Australia represents about 0.3 percent of the total. In other words, for the first 99.7 per cent of its inhabited history, the Aborigines had Australia to themselves. They have been there an unimaginably long time.
6. What are the main points the writer is making in the last paragraph?

Choose the best answer:
Few people have packed more into a day trip than Michael and Lillian Long from Kent who took the ferry from their home in England to Boulogne in France in 1987. On Easter Sunday this adventurous couple went for a short walk around the town. In no time they were spectacularly lost and showing all the qualities of born explorers. 'We walked and walked,' Mrs Long recalled, 'and the further we walked to try to get back, the further we walked away from Boulogne.' Unable to speak French, they felt embarrassed about asking the way, so they walked throughout the night until finally the next morning a driver gave them a lift to a small village they did not recognise. Here they caught a train to the wrong destination - Paris. In the French capital they spent all their remaining money on catching what they thought was the express train back to Boulogne. After an enjoyable trip they arrived in Luxembourg on Monday. Two hours later police put them on the train back to Paris, but it divided and their half ended up in Basel, an attractive medieval town in the north of Switzerland. Having no money, they tried to find work, but without success. The railway company offered them a free ticket to Belfort, thinking that this was where they had come from. Once they got off the train, our heroes hiked forty-two miles to Vesoul, hitched a lift to Paris and then nearly boarded the train to Bonn in Germany. Diverted just in time to the right platform, they finally reached Boulogne a week after they had set out on their walk. They had covered a distance of almost 1,700 km without luggage, maps or any idea of where they were. When he arrived at Dover harbour, Mr Long said it was the first time they had travelled abroad and that they would not be leaving England again.
5. Which of the following is NOT true, according to the passage?

Choose the best answer:
Maybe you are staying in a city, and there is no park nearby where you can take your morning job. One of the more recent trend is to go on a running tour, but you are not leading the way. Rather, a running (1)_________ who knows the best (2)_________ in the city acts as your guide. You are going out for a run, but you are also being shown highlights of the city while you are doing it. Guided running tours are a trend that seems to be catching (3)_________ in quite a few of the bigger cities in the United States. New York City, Chicago,  and San Francisco are just three of the major cities that have running tours in (4)_________. They offer these tours to individuals, groups, and even for corporate events. If you are going into a city with colleagues to attend a business meeting or a convention, what better way is there to see the city and network with others (5)_________ while taking a healthy run?

Choose the best answer:
Amy Tan was born on February 19, 1952 in Oakland, California. Tan grew up in Northern California, (25) _____ when her father and older brother both died from brain tumors in 1966, she moved with her mother and younger brother to Europe, where she attended high school in Montreux, Switzerland. She returned to the United States for college. After college, Tan worked as a language development consultant and as a corporate freelance writer. In 1985, she wrote the story "Rules of the Game" for a writing workshop, which laid the early (26) _____ for her first novel The Joy Luck Club. Published in 1989, the book explored the (27) _____ between Chinese women and their Chinese– American daughters, and became the longest–running New York Times bestseller for that year. The Joy Luck Club received numerous awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Award. It has been translated into 25 languages, including Chinese, and was made into a major motion picture for (28) _____ Tan co–wrote the screenplay. Tan's other works have also been (29) _____ into several different forms of media

Choose the best answer:
Biologists sometimes define longevity as the average life span expected under ideal conditions. It's hard to say what's ideal. Plenty of medical research is ongoing (1) ____ the "right" amount and type of exercise to get the best diet to eat to maximize longevity, and (2) ____ certain pharmaceuticals or supplements can help improve your longevity.  Lifespans have increased pretty dramatically over the last century or so, in large part due to (3) ____ in medicine that have nearly eliminated certain deadly infectious diseases.  The average baby born in 1900 lived about a half-century. Nowadays, the life expectancy of people in the United States is nearly 79 years on (4) ____ -81 years for women and 76 years for men, and in some countries, life expectancy is even longer.  It's very (5) ____ that humanity's true longevity might be much higher. Humans might live longer if they can create the ideal conditions of a healthy diet and exercise.

Choose the best answer:
Environmental pollution is a term that refers to all the ways by which man pollutes his surroundings. Man dirties the air with gases and smoke,. the water with chemicals and other substances, and damages the many fertilizers and pesticides. Man also pollutes his (31) _________ soil with (32) ____ surroundings in various other ways. For example, people ruin natural beauty by (33) _________ garbage and waste products on the land and in the water. They death. Polluted water kills fish life. Pollution of soil reduces the amount of land that is operate machines and motor vehicles that fill the air with disturbing noise. Badly polluted air can cause illness, and (34) _________ and other (35) available for growing food

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
There are many reasons (1) ____ it is important to have a hobby. First of all, a hobby can be a remedy for your (2) ____. Because it is the activity you choose for yourself, it will always give you pleasure and (3) ____ you relax. Even if you just spend a little time enjoying your hobby, you can see the difference (4) ____ your spirit. Second, some hobbies can also (5) ____ you financially. Many old people enjoy gardening. They grow a lot of trees and vegertable, so they can sell them for some money. In (6) ____, a hobby can help you connect with other people. If you like colecting stamps, you can (7) ____ a stamp club to share your albums with other collectors. If your hobby is caving eggshells, you can give your products to your friends (8) ____ gifts