Choose the best answer:
Last summer we went to Russia ______ the ferry. It was wonderful.

 

Choose the best answer:
Without plants, most water ____________ off as soon as it falls, taking away valuable soil.

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
The Design Present Conference is an annual event held in Melbourne for graphic-design professionals. The conference is steadily growing in popularity. Last year, it ---(1)--- more than 3,000 attendees from Australia and around the world. The next Design Present Conference, which will be held from 20 to 23 March, will offer more than 100 workshops, plus keynote speeches and plenary sessions. This year, several opportunities for professional networking will be added. Attendees will have the chance to market ---(2)--- to firms in several different industries. Periods for networking will be included in the ---(3)--- each day. Whether you are a design enthusiast, student, freelance designer, or business owner, Design Present has something for you. ---(4)--- .

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:
There are three valid arguments to support the preservation of endangered species. Aesthetic justification contends that biodiversity contributes to the quality of life because many of the endangered plants and animals are particularly appreciated for their unique physical beauty. The aesthetic role of nature in all its diverse forms is reflected in the art and literature of every culture attaining symbolic status in the spiritual life of many groups. According to the proponents of the aesthetic argument, people need nature in all its diverse and beautiful forms as part of the experience of the world.
Another argument that has been put forward, especially by groups in the medical and pharmacological fields, is that of ecological self-interest. By preserving all species, we retain a balance of nature that is ultimately beneficial to humankind. Recent research on global ecosystems has been cited as evidence that every species contributes important or even essential functions that may be necessary to the survival of our own species. Some advocates of the ecological argument contend that important chemical compounds derived from rare plants may contain the key to a cure for one of the diseases currently threatening human beings. If we do not protect other species, then they cannot protect us.
Apart from human advantage in both the aesthetic and ecological arguments, the proponents of a moral justification contend that all species have the right to exist, a viewpoint stated in the United Nations World Charter for Nature, created in 1982. Furthermore, if humankind views itself as the stewards of all the creatures on Earth, then it is incumbent upon human beings to protect them, and to ensure the continued existence of all species. Moral justification has been extended by a movement called “deep ecology,” the members of which rank the biosphere higher than people because the continuation of life depends on this larger perspective. To carry their argument to its logical conclusion, all choices must be made for the biosphere, not for people.

Which of the arguments supports animal rights?

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Throughout the world there are different ways for people to greet each other. In much of the world, a handshake is the (1) __________ form of welcoming and greeting someone. In many countries around the Mediterranean Sea a (2) ___________ kiss on the cheek is the appropriate way to welcome friends and family. It can be a very (3) __________ surprise if you expect to shake hands and get a kiss or a hug instead. At times, it is difficult to tell what sort of greeting (4) ___________ is followed. People may bow, grab another‟s arm or even slap the other person on the back. In some places people just smile, look at the other‟s face and say nothing. Most people in the world are tolerant of visitors and don‟t mind what travellers do that seems wrong as long as the visitors are (5)__________. A big part of the delightfulness of world travel is experiencing different customs.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
During the nineteenth century, women in the United States organized and participated in a large number of reform movements, including movements to reorganize the prison system, improve education, ban the sale of alcohol, and, most importantly, free the slaves. Some women saw similarities in the social status of women and slaves. Women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone were feminists and abolitionists who supported the rights of both women and blacks. A number of male abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Philips, also supported the rights of women to speak and participate equally with men in antislavery activities. Probably more than any other movement, abolitionism offered women a previously denied entry into politics. They became involved primarily in 20 order to better their living conditions and the conditions of others. When the Civil War ended in 1865, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution adopted in 1868 and 25 1870 granted citizenship and suffrage to blacks but not to women. Discouraged but resolved, feminists influenced more and more women to demand the right to vote. In 1869, the Wyoming Territory had yielded 30to demands by feminists, but eastern states resisted more stubbornly than before. A women's suffrage bill had been presented to every Congress since 1878 but it continually failed to pass until 1920, 35 when the Nineteenth Amendment granted women the right to vote.
5. The word "primarily" in line 19 is closest in meaning to: 

Choose the best answer:
Tokyo/ most populous/ capital/ city/ world.

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:
Overpopulation, the situation of having large numbers of people with too few resources and too little space, is closely associated with poverty. It can result from high population density, or from low amounts of resources, or from both. Excessively high population densities put stress on available resources. Only a certain number of people can be supported on a given area of land, and that number depends on how much food and other resources the land can provide. In countries where people live primarily by means of simple farming, gardening, herding, hunting, and gathering, even large areas of land can support only small numbers of people because these labor-intensive subsistence activities produce only small amounts of food.
In developed countries such as the United States, Japan, and the countries of Western Europe, overpopulation generally is not considered a major caus of poverty. These countries produce large quantities of food through mechanized farming, which depends on commercial fertilizers, large-scale irrigation, and agricultural machinery. This form of production provides enough food to support the high densities of people in metropolitan areas.
A country’s level of poverty can depend greatly on its mix of population density and agricultural productivity. Bangladesh, for example, has one of the world’s highest population densities, with 1, 147 persons per sq km. A large majority of the people of Bangladesh engage in low – productivity manual farming, which contributes to the country’s extremely high level of poverty. Some of the smalleer countries in Western Europe, such as the Netherlands and Belgium, have high population densities as well. These countries practice mechanized farming and are involved in high-tech industries, however, and there fore have high standards of living.
At the other end of the spectrum, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have population densities of less than 30 persons per sq km. Many people in these countries practice manual subsistence farming; these countries also have infertile land, and lack the economic resources and technology to boost productivity. As a consequence, these nations are very poor. The United States has both relatively low population density and high agricultural productivity; it is one of the world’s wealthiest nations.
High birth rates contribute to overpopulation in many developing countries. Children are assets to many poor families because they provide labor, usually for farming. Cultural norms in traditionally rural societies commonly sanction the value of large families. Also, the governments of developing countries often provide little or no support, financial or political, for family planning; even people who wish to keep their families small have difficulty doing so. For all these reasons, developing countries tend to have high rates of population growth.
(From “Poverty” by Thomas J. Corbett)

The phrase “engage in” in paragraph 3 is losest in meaning to     .

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
One of the most important social developments that helped to make possible a shift in thinking about the role of public education was the effect of the baby boom of the 1950’s and 1960’s on the schools. In the 1920’s, but especially in the Depression conditions of the 1930’s, the United States experienced a declining birth rate – every thousand women aged fifteen to forty-four gave birth to about 118 live children in 1920, 89.2 in 1930, 75.8 in 1936, and 80 in 1940. With the growing prosperity brought on by the Second World War and the economic boom that followed it, young people married and established households earlier and began to raise larger families than had their predecessors during the Depression. Birth rates rose to 102 per thousand in 1946, 106.2 in 1950, and 118 in 1955. Although economics was probably the most important determinant, it is not the only explanation for the baby boom. The increased value placed on the idea of the family also helps to explain this rise in birth rates. The baby boomers began streaming into the first grade by the mid-1940’s and became a flood by 1950. The public school system suddenly found itself overtaxed. While the number of schoolchildren rose because of wartime and postwar conditions, these same conditions made the schools even less prepared to cope with the flood. The wartime economy meant that few new schools were built between 1940 and 1945. Moreover, during the war and in the boom times that followed large numbers of teachers left their profession for better-paying jobs elsewhere in the economy. Therefore, in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the baby boom hit an antiquated and inadequate school system. Consequently, the “custodial rhetoric” of the 1930’s and early 1940’s no longer made sense; that is, keeping youths aged sixteen and older out of the labor market by keeping them in school could no longer be a high priority for an institution unable to find space and staff to teach younger children aged five to sixteen. With the baby boom, the focus of educators and of laymen interested in education inevitably turned toward the lower grades and back to basic academic skills and discipline. The system no longer had much interest in offering nontraditional, new, and extra services to older youths
4. According to the passage, why did teachers leave the teaching profession after the outbreak of the war?

Choose the best answer:
Recycling is a good way of ___________ the environment.

---139--- the past week you may have experienced increased wait times for our C-level elevators, which service floors 25 through 36. We have contacted Higwam, our elevator maintenance contractor, who ---140--- repairs in the elevator shafts. This is to alert all residents that beginning tomorrow and through the end of the week, you are likely to see Higwam technicians working in the lobby. They are planning to work on one unit at a time in order to keep the others operational while repairs are in progress, so for the next few ---141---, there may continue to be prolonged wait times. ---142---.

140.................

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the sentence that best combines each pair of sentences in the following questions.
“Why don't we go for a walk?" Mary said.

Choose the best answer:
We can communicate with friends by ______of e-mail

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
These features were discovered and explored (1) _______ in the late 1940s. The Lomonosov Ridge, the major ridge, cuts the Arctic Basin (2) _______ in half, extending as a submarine bridge 1,800 km (1,100 mi) (3) _______ Siberia to the northwestern tip of Greenland. Parallel (4) _______ it are two shorter ridges: the Alpha Ridge on the North American (5) _______, defining the Canada and Makarov basins, (6) _______ the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge on the Eurasian side, (7) _______ the Nansen and Amundsen basins. The average (8) _______ of the Arctic Ocean is only 1,300 m (4,300 ft) (9) _______ the vast shallow expanses on the continental shelves. The deepest (10) _______ in the Arctic Ocean is 5,450 m (17,880 ft).

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Carbohydrates, which are sugars, are an essential part of a healthy diet. They provide the main source of energy for the body, and they also function to flavor and sweeten foods. Carbohydrates range from simple sugars like glucose to complex sugars such as amylose and amylopectin. Nutritionists estimate that carbohydrates should make up about one-fourth to one-fifth of a person's diet. This translates to about 75- 100 grams of carbohydrates per day. A diet that is deficient in carbohydrates can have an adverse effect on a person's health. When the body lacks a sufficient amount of carbohydrates it must then use its protein supplies for energy, a process called gluconeogenesis. This, however, results in a lack of necessary protein, and further health difficulties may occur. A lack of carbohydrates can also lead to ketosis, a buildup of ketones in the body that causes fatigue, lethargy, and bad breath.
6. Which of the following words could best replace "deficient"?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Television has transformed politics in the United States by changing the way in which information is disseminated, by altering political campaigns, and by changing citizen's patterns of response to politics. By giving citizens independent access to the candidates, television diminished the role of the political party in the selection of the major party candidates. By centering politics on the person of the candidates, television accelerated the citizen's focus on character rather than issues. Television has altered the forms of political communication as well. The messages on which most of US reply are briefer than they once were. The stump speech, a political speech given by travelling politicians and lasting 1/2 to 2 hours, which characterized nineteenth-century political discourse, has given way to the 30-second advertisement and the 10 second "sound bite" in broadcast news. Increasingly the audience for speeches is not that standing in front of the politician but rather the viewing audience tvho will hear and see a snippet of the speech on the news. In these abbreviated forms, much of what constituted the traditional political discourse of earlier ages has been lost. In 15 or 30 seconds, a peaker cannot establish the historical context that shaped the issue in question, cannot detail the probable causes of the problem, and cannot examine alternative proposals to argue that one is preferable to others. In snippets, politicians assert but do not argue. Because television is an intimate medium, speaking through it require a changed political style that was more conversational, personal, and visual than that of the old-style stump speech. Reliance on television means that increasingly our political world contains memorable pictures rather than memorable words. Schools teach US to analyze words and print. However, in a word in which politics is increasingly visual, informed citizenship requires a new set of skills. Recognizing the power of television's pictures, politicians craft televisual, staged events, called pseudo-event, designed to attract media coverage. Much of the political activity we see on television news has been crafted by politicians, their speechwriters, and their public relations advisers for televised consumption. Sound bites in news and answers to questions in debates increasingly sound like advertisements.
8. According to the passage, as compared with televised speeches, traditional political discourse was more successful at: 

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the sentence that is closest in meaning to each of the following questions.:
The Citadel of the Ho Dynasty, which is located in Thanh Hoa Province, was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2011.

Choose the best answer:
Hardly any of the paintings at the gallery were for sale, _____________?

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
Clean, Convenient, and Cheap
Big cities like New York and London have a lot of great things. They have museums, parks, shopping centres, and a huge variety of restaurants. However, there are a lot of annoying things in big cities. The most common problems are air pollution and noise. Traffic is the main cause of air pollution and noise. For example, drivers in New York are famous for honking their horns and shouting. That noise drives many visitors crazy – it even drives a lot of the locals crazy, too. Other big cities have similar problems with their traffic. City governments have a lot of pressure to solve these problems. The most common solution is public transportation. Public transportation is a form of travel provided by the government. For example, New York’s biggest form of public transportation is the subway. Public transportation helps reduce these problems, but it is not enough. Another solution is bicycle sharing. This is a system that provides cheap bicycles. In cities that have bicycle sharing programmes, there are spots that have parked public bikes. People borrow the bikes and use them. They can _drop off_ the bike at the same spot where they borrowed it, or they can drop it off at another spot. Bicycle sharing programmes are different in each city. In some cities, the bikes are completely free. They are not even locked. In other cities, you have to pay a small deposit. You get the deposit back when you return the bike. In still other cities, you need to have a membership with the bicycle sharing programme. Once you have a membership with the bicycle sharing programme, you can use a bike at any time you want. Bicycle sharing is hugely popular all over the world. People love this system because it is cheap, clean, and easy to use. There are bicycle sharing systems in dozens of countries and hundreds of cities. In total, there are more than 530 bicycle sharing systems around the world, and that number is going up all the time.
3. All of the following are the advantages of bicycle sharing EXCEPT that __________

 _______are the formal rules of correct or polite behavior among people using the Internet.

(106)_______