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Many of the major supermarket chains have come under fire with accusations of various unethical acts over the past decade. They've wasted tons of food, they've underpaid their suppliers and they've contributed to excessive plastic waste in their packaging, which has had its impact on our environment. But supermarkets and grocers are starting to sit up and take notice. In response to growing consumer backlash against the huge amounts of plastic waste generated by plastic packaging, some of the largest UK supermarkets have signed up to a pact promising to transform packaging and cut plastic wastage. In a pledge to reuse, recycle or compost all plastic wastage by 2025, supermarkets are now beginning to take some responsibility for the part they play in contributing to the damage to our environment with one major supermarket announcing their plan to eliminate all plastic packaging in their own-brand products by 2023. In response to criticisms over food waste, some supermarkets are donating some of their food surplus. However, charities estimate that they are only accessing two per cent of supermarkets' total food surplus, so this hardly seems to be solving the problem. Some say that supermarkets are simply not doing enough. Most supermarkets operate under a veil of secrecy when asked for exact figures of food wastage, and without more transparency it is hard to come up with a systematic approach to avoiding waste and to redistributing surplus food. Some smaller companies are now taking matters into their own hands and offering consumers a greener, more environmentally friendly option. Shops like Berlin's Original Unverpakt and London's Bulk Market are plastic- tree shops that have opened in recent years, encouraging customers to use their own containers or compostable bags. Online grocer Farmdrop eliminates the need for large warehouses and the risk of huge food surplus by delivering fresh produce from local farmers to its customers on a daily basis via electric cars, offering farmers the lion's share of the retail price. There is no doubt that we still have a long way to go in reducing food waste and plastic waste. But perhaps the major supermarkets might take inspiration from these smaller grocers and gradually move towards a more sustainable future for us all.
3. The word "backlash” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to _______

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Sometimes our parents don't understand us. They don't understand some problems and things which are very important in teens' life; for example, the lifestyles of young people, piercing, tattoos, drugs, sex, relationship with friends and teachers. So, sometimes teens can't tell them about their private life. Some parents don't want to understand modern views, ideals and system of values.  Elderly people usually compare their childhood and youth with the present, and regard old times as better, always talking about "the good old days”. The young people, on the other hand, tend to think their times as the best. Teens look at the world with fresh eyes. Everything is new, interesting to them. Sometimes they cannot solve their everyday problems. But they want to cope with them by themselves. So, adults shouldn't prevent them from making their own mistakes.  People are said to become wiser with age. Sometimes, it is true and sometimes it is not. I think that you can meet a wise man among the old as often as among the young. It is false that when old age wisdom has come, useless illusions have disappeared. Sometimes when we talk to adults, a monologue is a preferred form of expressing your ideas in such talks. That's why some teens don't like to talk to adults.  I think that it's in people's nature to give advice. It seems to people that giving advice they can help somebody or put somebody on the right track. But if a person takes their advice and fails, he can blame an adult all of his life.  Our parents have their own ideas and views that their children don't share and understand. They think that their children won't find their place in life. They often say that now teens are very difficult to socialize with and dumpy. But children should settle all problems peacefully because they are their parents. They brought them up with loving care. And if children come to their parents for advice and help, they will do their best and help children to cope with problems and difficulties.
4. The phrase "cope with" in the passage is closest in meaning to ____

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Pablo Picasso is considered to be one of the most (26)_______painters in the twentieth century.(27)_______ was born in Malaga, Spain on October 20, 1881.(28)______painting, Picasso also tried (29)______ kinds of job such as a printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright. From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. On one occasion, the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the (30)______ of his son’s technique, the father felt that the thirten-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to (31)______ painting. Picasso grew up to become one of the greatest (32)______most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known (33)______ co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for (34)_____ styles that he helped develop and explore. Picasso is now regarded as one of the artists (35)______ most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century

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How do children learn about wildlife? And is what they learn the sort of thing they should be learning? It is my belief that children should not just be acquiring knowledge of animals but also developing attitudes and feelings towards them based on exposure to the real lives of animals in their natural habitats. But is this happening? Some research in this area indicates that it is not. Learning about animals in school is often completely disconnected from the real lives of real animals, with the result that children often end up with little or no understanding or lasting knowledge of them. They learn factual information about animals, aimed at enabling them to identify them and have various abstract ideas about them, but that is the extent of their learning. Children’s storybooks tend to personify animals as characters rather than teach about them. For direct contact with wild and international animals, the only opportunity most children have is visiting a zoo. The educational benefit of this for children is often given as the main reason for doing it but research has shown that zoo visits seldom add to children’s knowledge of animals - the animals are simply like exhibits in a museum that the children look at without engaging with them as living creatures. Children who belong to wildlife or environmental organizations or who watch wildlife TV programmes, however, show significantly higher knowledge than any other group of children studied in research. The studies show that if children learn about animals in their natural habitats, particularly through wildlife-based activities, they know more about them than they do as a result of visiting zoos or learning about them in the classroom. Research has also been done into the attitudes of children towards animals. It shows that in general terms, children form strong attachments to individual animals, usually their pets, but do not have strong feelings for animals in general. This attitude is the norm regardless of the amount or kind of learning about animals they have at school. However, those children who watch television wildlife programmes show an interest in and affection for wildlife in its natural environment, and their regard for animals in general is higher
4. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

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One of the strangest phenomena in the universe is the black hole. For years, scientists have studied black holes in an (15) _______ to better understand how they function. Like vacuum cleaners, black holes will suck up anything (16) _______ crosses their path. The incredible sucking power that black holes generate comes from gravity. They can quickly swallow up anything including planets, space debris, and anything else imaginable. Even light cannot escape the (17) _______ of black holes. Since they are able to pull in light, black holes are nearly impossible to see even with high-powered telescopes. (18) _______ scientists are able to detect the presence of black holes in space because of their effect on an observed area. Black holes can originate in a few ways. One type of black holes occurs when a star comes to the end of its lifecycle and it dies in a supernova explosion. They can also occur when the mass of a neutron star becomes so great that it collapses in on itself. Black holes may also occur when several large and dense stars collide with one (19) _______ in space.

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Sylvia Earle is an underwater explorer and marine biologist who was born in the USA in 1935. She became interested in the world’s oceans from an early age. As a child, she liked to stand on the beach for hours and look at the sea, wondering what it must be like under the surface. When she was 16, she finally got a chance to make her first dive, which motivated her to become an underwater explorer. Since then, she has spent more than 6,500 hours under water, and has led more than seventy expeditions worldwide. She has also made the deepest dive ever, reaching a record – breaking depth of 381 metres.
In 1970, she became famous around the world when she became the caption of the first all- female team to live under water. The team spent two weeks in an underwater “house”. The research they carried out showed the damage that pollution was causing to marine life, and especially to coral reefs. Her team also studied the problem of over- fishing. Fishing methods meant that people were catching too many fish, Earle warned, and many species were in danger of becoming extinct. Since then she has written several books and magazine articles in which she suggests ways of reducing the damage that is being done to the world’s oceans. One way, she believes, is to reply on fish farms for seafood, and reduce the amount of fishing that is done out at sea. Although she no longer eats seafood herself, she realizes the importance it plays in our diets, It would be wrong to tell people they should stop eating fish from the sea, she says. However, they need to reduce the impact they are having on the ocean’s supplies.
4. According to the last paragraph, Earle believes that _______

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Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, citizens of the United States maintained a bias against big cities. Most lived on farms and in small towns and believed cities to be centers of corruption, crime, poverty, and moral degradation. Their distrust was caused, in part, by a notional ideology that proclaimed farming the greatest Occupation and rural living superior to urban living. This attitude prevailed even as the number of urban dwellers increased and cities became an essential feature of the notional landscape. Gradually, economic reality overcame ideology. Thousands abandoned the precarious life on the farm for more secure and better paying jobs in the city. But when these people migrated from the countryside, they carried their fears and suspicions with them. These new urban population, already convinced that cities were overwhelmed with great problems, eagerly embraced the progressive reforms that promised to bring order out of the chaos of the city.  One of many reforms came in the area of public utilities. Water and sewerage systems were usually operated by municipal governments, but the gas and electric networks were privately owned. Reformers feared that the privately owned utility companies would charge exorbitant rates for these essential services and deliver them only to people who would afford them, some city and state governments responded by regulating the utility companies, but a number of cities began to supply these services themselves. Proponents of these reforms argued that public ownership and regulation would insure widespread access to these utilities and guarantee a fair price.  While some reforms focused on government and public behavior, others looked at the cities as a whole. Civic leaders, convinced that physical environment influenced human behavior, argued that cities should develop master plans to guide their future growth and development. City planning was nothing new, but the rapid industrialization and urban growth of the late nineteenth century took place without any consideration for order. Urban renewal in the twentieth century followed several courses. Some cities introduced plans to completely rebuild the city core. Most other cities contented themselves with zoning plans for regulating future growth. Certain parts of town were restricted to residential use, while others were set aside for industrial or commercial development. 
7. The word "exorbitant" in the passage closest in meaning to ____

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Geothermal energy offers enormous potential for direct, low-temperature applications. Unlike indirect applications, this new technology relies on the Earth's natural thermal energy to heat or cool a house or multifamily dwelling directly without the need to convert steam or other high-temperature fluids into electricity, using expensive equipment. A geothermal system consists of a heat pump and exchanger plus a series of pipes, called a loop, installed below the surface of the ground or submerged in a pond or lake. Fluid circulating in the loop is warmed and carries heat to the home. The heat pump and exchanger use an electrically powered vapor-compression cycle - the same principle employed in a refrigerator - to concentrate the energy and to transfer it. The concentrated geothermal energy is released inside the home at a higher temperature, and fans then distribute the heat to various rooms through a system of air ducts. In summer, the process is reversed: excess heat is drawn from the home, expelled to the loop, and absorbed by the Earth. Geothermal systems are more effective than conventional heat pumps that use the outdoor air as their heat source (on cold days) or heat sink (on warm days) because geothermal systems draw heat from a source whose temperature is more constant than that of air. The temperature of the ground or groundwater a few feet beneath the Earth's surface remains relatively stable – between 45°F and 70°F. In winter, it is much easier to capture heat from the soil at a moderate 50°F than from the atmosphere when the air temperature is below zero. Conversely. in summer, the relatively cool ground absorbs a home's waste heat more readily than the warm outdoor air. The use of geothermal energy through heat-pump technology has almost no adverse environmental consequences and offers several advantages over conventional energy sources. Direct geothermal applications are usually no more disruptive of the surrounding environment than a normal water well. Additionally, while such systems require electricity to concentrate and distribute the energy collected, they actually reduce total energy consumption by one-fourth to two-thirds, depending on the technology used. For each 1,000 hones with geothermal heat pumps, an electric utility can avoid the installation of 2 to 5 megawatts of generating capacity. Unfortunately, only a modest part of the potential of this use for geothermal energy has been developed because the service industry is small and the price of competing energy sources is low.
4. The word "it" in paragraph 2 refers to _______

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When engineer Tsutomu Takada lost his job, he decided to make a complete change in his life. He took off his business suit and put on an apron – and started a course to become a chef. “I had always dreamed of doing this, even when I was an engineer” says Takada. “And now, here I am” he says with a laugh. He is a student at Tokyo’s Sushi University. This is the only university in Japan which is devoted entirely to teaching the art of sushi. What is “sushi”? It is Japan’s famous dish of raw fish, dried seaweed and rice soaked in vinegar. Traditionally, it takes decades of training to become a sushi chef, but Sushi University trains chefs in one year. As well as providing quick retraining, the university’s approach reflects a growing change in Japanese society – a move away from the tradition a way of doing things. “Society has changed” sighs university principal Katsuji Konkani. Sushi started as a sushi apprentice more than sixty years ago. “People today wouldn’t put up with the tough training I had. When I made mistakes, my teacher hit me on the head with his knife handle!” Sushi hasn’t always been a matter of studying hard and being hit on the head. It started in ancient China, where people preserved fish by packing it in rice and salt. They did not eat the rice. It is said that this process probably came to Japan between 300 BC and AD 300. Adventurous Japanese cooks began to serve the pickled fish together with vinegared rice. This combination of rice and fish was called “sushi”. The most important thing about sushi is that it has to look attractive. In fact, the most carefully prepared sushi meals can cost hundreds of dollars! There are 45,000 sushi businesses in Japan today, including take- away, as some people like to eat it for lunch in their offices. There are also cheap self-service restaurants, where customers sit at a counter which has different colored plates with different types of sushi on them. These plates move around the counter on a conveyor belt, and customers choose the sushi they want to eat. When they have finished eating, the waitress counts the colored plates and works out the bill. Mr. Konkani has made sushi for Japan’s emperor. He says sushi preparation is an art, but he also believes that Sushi University’s intensive course is necessary. “Of course people complain this is not the way to do it” he says, “but we tried to make it easier for those who wanted to learn about sushi, and for those who want to take it overseas”. Many of the students already have jobs lined up in places like Australia, Italy and Singapore.
But the course is really just the beginning of the new chefs. According to Mr. Konkani, it takes five, ten or even twenty years to become a top- notch sushi chef. “To make good sushi, you have to have skill but you also need a warm heart” he says.
3. The word “reflect” in paragraph 2 mostly means _______.

Choose the letter A, B, C or D to complete the passage below

Hello everyone, I am......(1)..... teacher, I……..(2)…….at a primary school in the USA. In the morning I......(3)..... up at seven o'clock. I have breakfast with bread and a cup of coffee. Then I go to work. I teach his students French. I have lunch at school. I go home.....(4)...... one o'clock in the afternoon. I don’t work on Saturdays and Sundays. I go to the cinema, or …….(5)……… a book. I like the books very much. I have a sister in Oxford and a brother in London.

2.  I……..(2)…….at a primary school in the USA.

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Sociologists have been carrying out research into the social pressures of being a teenager. Many adolescents are unhappy at school because they find it difficult to (17) _____ friends. This stress can bring on illness or result in poor grades. They may also worry about their appearance and often feel (18) _____ enormous pressure to dress, talk and behave the same as (19) _____. This phenomenon is called peer pressure, and it is very common in today’s society. Advertising contributes a lot to the social pressures teenagers feel. Advertisers know how important it is to feel that you belong to a group when you are in your teens, so they try to persuade teenagers that certain products will make them (20) _____ with their classmates. Sadly, many teenagers act irresponsibly and even do dangerous things just to make others accept them. Peer pressure is often the reason for teenage smoking, drug (21) _____ or dangerous driving. Teenagers need to learn to say no to social pressure and to find friends who they can talk things over with when they have a problem

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Life span usually is measured in units of time. Although this may seem eminently logical, certain difficulties may arise. In cold blooded animals in general, the rate of metabolism that determines the various life processes varies with the temperatures to which they are exposed. If aging depends on the expenditure of a fixed amount of vital energy, an idea first proposed in 1908, life span will vary tremendously depending on temperature or other external variables that influence life span. There is considerable evidence attesting at least to the partial cogency of this argument. So long as a certain range is not exceeded, cold blooded invertebrates do live longer at low than at high temperalures. Rats in the laboratory live longest on a somewhat restricted diet that does not permit maximum metabolic rate. Of perhaps even greater significance is the fact that many animals undergo dormant periods. Many small mammals hibernate; a number of arthropods have life cycles that include periods during which development is arrested. Under both conditions the metabolic rate becomes very low. It is questionable whether such periods should be included in computing the life span of a particular organism. Comparisons between species, some of which have such inactive periods while others do not, are dangerous. It is possible that life span could be measured more adequately by total metabolism; however, the data that are necessary for this purpose are almost entirely lacking.  Length of life is controlled by a multitude of factors, which collectively may be termed environment, operating on a genetic system that determines how the individual will respond. It is impossible to list all the environmental factors that may lead to death. For analytical purposes it is, however, useful to make certain formal separations. Every animal is exposed to (1) a pattern of numerous events, each with a certain probability of killing the individual at any moment and, in the aggregate, causing a total probability of death or survival; (2) climatic and other changes in the habitat, modifying the frequency with which the various potentially fatal events occur; and (3) progressive systemic change, inasmuch as growth, reproduction,
development, and senescence are characteristics intrinsic in the organism and capable of modifying the effects of various environmental factors. 
1. The passage mainly discusses ____

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Some years ago, my daughter was studying English at a university on the south coast. One evening, she  phoned to (1)_____ me that what she really wanted to do was a travel round the world, (2)___she was looking into the possibility of working in another country. She had seen several advertisements in the paper for student teachers of English abroad, and she was interested in one in Italy, (3)____she was desperate to visit. She decided that this would be a good way to achieve her ambition, so she was writing to apply for the job. The reply (4)_______a long time to arrive, but eventually she received a letter asking if she would go for an interview in London the following week. She was so excited that she immediately got in touch with the school owner and agree to attend the interview . She was determined that nothing would prevent her (5) ______ doing what she had set out to do

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According to fossil fuel records, roses are over 35 million years old and they were cultivated in China about 5,000 years ago. A Chinese emperor in the 6th century B.C. apparently had over 600 books on roses in his library, and oil was extracted from those grown in his gardens. (33) _______, only the highest members of society were allowed to use it. If anyone else was found with even a small amount, they were (34) _____ to death. Roses were also popular with the Romans, who used their petals as medicine, a source of perfume and as confetti at weddings. Cultivated rose were only introduced to Western Europe in the 18th century. Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, started a botanical garden near Paris, (35) _____ she collected all the known varieties of rose and encouraged the breeding of new ones. This led to the flowers becoming increasingly popular, and in Britain at that time roses became so (36) _____ that they were often used as currency in local markets. All roses in Europe used to be pink or white until the first red ones arrived from China 200 years ago. These now (37) _____ love and are the world’s most common cut flower

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VA tiny village school is soon to celebrate its 110 birthday - against all expectations. Five years ago it seemed certain to close but parents and other villagers fought the local education authority and raised funds to keep it (1)_________. It is now ending its first term as a school (2)_________by the village community and the villagers are just proud of their achievement. They were furious when education chiefs tried to make them send the village children to other schools further away because the number of pupils at the village school was too (3)_________. The villagers started a huge campaign to (4)_________money. They collected enough to hire a teacher and begin to help with school cleaning, lunch supervision and lessons. Now the school is doing well and it seems (5)________it will continue to run in the future

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How do children learn about wildlife? And is what they learn the sort of thing they should be learning? It is my belief that children should not just be acquiring knowledge of animals but also developing attitudes and feelings towards them based on exposure to the real lives of animals in their natural habitats. But is this happening? Some research in this area indicates that it is not. Learning about animals in school is often completely disconnected from the real lives of real animals, with the result that children often end up with little or no understanding or lasting knowledge of them. They learn factual information about animals, aimed at enabling them to identify them and have various abstract ideas about them, but that is the extent of their learning. Children’s storybooks tend to personify animals as characters rather than teach about them. For direct contact with wild and international animals, the only opportunity most children have is visiting a zoo. The educational benefit of this for children is often given as the main reason for doing it but research has shown that zoo visits seldom add to children’s knowledge of animals - the animals are simply like exhibits in a museum that the children look at without engaging with them as living creatures. Children who belong to wildlife or environmental organizations or who watch wildlife TV programmes, however, show significantly higher knowledge than any other group of children studied in research. The studies show that if children learn about animals in their natural habitats, particularly through wildlife-based activities, they know more about them than they do as a result of visiting zoos or learning about them in the classroom. Research has also been done into the attitudes of children towards animals. It shows that in general terms, children form strong attachments to individual animals, usually their pets, but do not have strong feelings for animals in general. This attitude is the norm regardless of the amount or kind of learning about animals they have at school. However, those children who watch television wildlife programmes show an interest in and affection for wildlife in its natural environment, and their regard for animals in general is higher
1. What could be the best title for the passage?

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Australians place a high value on independence and personal choice. This means that a teacher or course tutor will not tell students what to do, but will give them a number of options and suggest they work out which one is the best in their circumstances. It also means that they are expected to take action if something goes wrong and seek out resources and support for themselves. Australians are also prepared to accept a range of opinions rather than believing there is one truth. This means that in an educational setting, students will be expected to form their own opinions and defend the reasons for that point of view and the evidence for it. Australians are uncomfortable with differences in status and hence idealise the idea of treating everyone equally. An illustration of this is that most adult Australians call each other by their first names. This concern with equality means that Australians are uncomfortable taking anything too seriously and are even ready to joke about themselves. Australians believe that life should have a balance between work and leisure time. As a consequence, some students may be critical of others who they perceive as doing nothing but study. Australian notions of privacy mean that areas such as financial matters, appearance and relationships are only discussed with close friends. While people may volunteer such information, they may resent someone actually asking them unless the friendship is firmly established. Even then, it is considered very impolite to ask someone what they earn. With older people, it is also rude to ask how old they are, why they are not married or why they do not have children. It is also impolite to ask people how much they have paid for something, unless there is a very good reason for asking.
7. Which of the following can be inferred from paragraph 5?

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Life span usually is measured in units of time. Although this may seem eminently logical, certain difficulties may arise. In cold blooded animals in general, the rate of metabolism that determines the various life processes varies with the temperatures to which they are exposed. If aging depends on the expenditure of a fixed amount of vital energy, an idea first proposed in 1908, life span will vary tremendously depending on temperature or other external variables that influence life span. There is considerable evidence attesting at least to the partial cogency of this argument. So long as a certain range is not exceeded, cold blooded invertebrates do live longer at low than at high temperalures. Rats in the laboratory live longest on a somewhat restricted diet that does not permit maximum metabolic rate. Of perhaps even greater significance is the fact that many animals undergo dormant periods. Many small mammals hibernate; a number of arthropods have life cycles that include periods during which development is arrested. Under both conditions the metabolic rate becomes very low. It is questionable whether such periods should be included in computing the life span of a particular organism. Comparisons between species, some of which have such inactive periods while others do not, are dangerous. It is possible that life span could be measured more adequately by total metabolism; however, the data that are necessary for this purpose are almost entirely lacking.  Length of life is controlled by a multitude of factors, which collectively may be termed environment, operating on a genetic system that determines how the individual will respond. It is impossible to list all the environmental factors that may lead to death. For analytical purposes it is, however, useful to make certain formal separations. Every animal is exposed to (1) a pattern of numerous events, each with a certain probability of killing the individual at any moment and, in the aggregate, causing a total probability of death or survival; (2) climatic and other changes in the habitat, modifying the frequency with which the various potentially fatal events occur; and (3) progressive systemic change, inasmuch as growth, reproduction, development, and senescence are characteristics intrinsic in the organism and capable of modifying the effects of various environmental factors. 
The passage is most likely taken from ____

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Cities are known to have lives of their own, and photographers are able to (34) _______ . some of it. Whether taking shots of people walking on a crowded street or time-lapse shots of cars driving at night, the (35) _______ . photos can be breathtaking. Because many of the shots taken are of man-made objects like architecture, many emotions that come into (36) _______ wouldn’t be found in nature photography. Photos can show the wonder of a child staring at a fountain as water shoots upward in the sunlight. They can also show the sadder side, such as a camp of homeless people living in terrible poverty. (37) _______ of what they show, there is always beauty to be found, even if it is beauty in something that is showing an ugly truth. Depending on the time of the day, photos taken in an urban environment can change drastically. To see the (38) _______ of a building as its shadow is cast on the lawn of a park is always amazing to see.

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People of every culture tell each other fairy tales but the same story often takes a variety of forms in different parts of the world. In the story of Little Red Riding Hood that European children are familiar with, a young girl on the way to see her grandmother meets a wolf and tells him where she is going. The wolf runs on ahead and disposes of the grandmother, then gets into bed dressed in the grandmother’s clothes to wait for Little Red Riding Hood. You may think you know the story – but which version? The universal appeal of these tales is frequently attributed to the idea that they contain cautionary messages: in the case of Little Red Riding Hood, to listen to your mother, and avoid talking to strangers. ‘It might be what we find interesting about this story is that it’s got this survival-relevant information in it,’ says anthropologist Jamie Tehrani at Durham University in the UK. But his research suggests otherwise. ‘We have this huge gap in our knowledge about the history and prehistory of storytelling, despite the fact that we know this genre is an incredibly ancient one,’ he says. That hasn’t stopped anthropologists, folklorists and other academics devising theories to explain the importance of fairy tales in human society. Tehrani’s analysis focused on Little Red Riding Hood in its many forms, which include another Western fairy tale known as The Wolf and the Kids. Checking for variants of these two tales and similar stories from Africa, East Asia, and other regions, he ended up with 58 stories recorded from oral traditions. First, he tested some assumptions about which aspects of the story alter least as it evolves, indicating their importance. Folklorists believe that what happens in a story is more central to the story than the characters in it. However, Tehrani found no significant difference in the rate of evolution of incidents compared with that of characters. Neither did his analysis support the theory that the central section of a story is the most conserved part. But the really big surprise came when he looked at the cautionary elements of the story. ‘Studies on hunter-gatherer folk tales suggest that these narratives include really important information about the environment and the possible dangers that may be faced there – stuff that’s relevant to survival. Yet in his analysis such elements were just as flexible as seemingly trivial details. What, then, is important enough to be reproduced from generation to generation? The answer, it would appear, is fear – blood-thirsty and gruesome aspects of the story, such as the eating of the grandmother by the wolf, turned out to be the best preserved of all. Why are these details retained by generations of storytellers, when other features are not? Tehrani has an idea: ‘In an oral context, a story won’t survive because of one great teller. It also needs to be interesting when it’s told by someone who’s not necessarily a great storyteller.’ Maybe being swallowed whole by a wolf, then cut out of its stomach alive is so gripping that it helps the story remain popular, no matter how badly it’s told. Mathias Clasen at Aarhus University in Denmark isn’t surprised by Tehrani’s findings. ‘Habits and morals change, but the things that scare us, and the fact that we seek out entertainment that’s designed to scare us – those are constant,’ he says. Clasen believes that scary stories teach us what it feels like to be afraid without having to experience real danger, and so build up resistance to negative emotions
6. Which of the following is NOT true, according to the passage?

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Over the past fifty years or so, the methods used for collecting money from the public to aid the developing world have changed out of all recognition, along with the gravity of the problems (1) ____, and the increasing awareness among the population that something must be done. At the beginning of this period, it would have been common to put money in a collecting box, perhaps on the street or at church. The 1960s saw the (2) ____ of shops which sold second-hand goods, donated by the public, and which also began to sell articles manufactured in the developing world in charitable projects set up to guarantee a fair income to local people. The next development was probably the charity 'event', in which participants were (3) ____ to run, cycle, swim or what have you, and collected money from friends and relatives (4) ____ how far or long they managed to keep going. The first hint of what was to become the most successful means of (5) ____ money was the charity record, where the artists donated their time and talent, and the (6) ____ from the sales went to a good cause. This was perhaps a (7) ____ of the fact that young people felt increasingly concerned about the obvious differences between life in Europe and the United States, and that in most of Africa, for example. A feeling of frustration was building up. Why was so little being done? The huge success of Band Aid, and (8) ____ televised concerts, showed the power of the media, and of music in particular, to inspire and shock. It differed significantly in style from other events. People phoned up in their thousands on the day and pledged money by (9) ____ their credit card numbers. (10) ____ if you have enough money to buy an MP3 player, you can afford something for the world's starving children