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Some health experts deducted that the overuse of some vitamins could imperil humans’ lives

There are four seasons in my country. They are spring, summer, fall and winter. In the spring, the spring is usually warm. Sometimes, it is cold, but not very cold. There are many flowers in the spring. In the summer, the day is long and the night is short. We often go swimming in this season. This fall is the season of fruits. In the winter, it's usually very cold. The day is short and the night is long.

In the summer, the day is short and the night is long

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Success, like beauty, lies in the eye of their beholder. How one person chooses to define it can be very different from how others perceive it. For some people, it’s earning a fortune, while for (26) _______ it’s working in a voluntary position helping those less fortunate. It’s also relative rather than absolute because the person who masters a new skill has achieved success in their terms just as much as the self-made millionaire. Ironically, there may also be a(n) 27 _______ contradiction in the term. After all, an actress who has a glamorous life and seems to have everything she wants may actually be troubled by the loss of her private life as paparazzi (28) _______ her personal space. It also has something to do with the length of time success lasts. Many young people are happy with short-term fame but (29) ______ it’s true that reaching that one goal might be comparatively straightforward, maintaining that success is often much harder. And surely, it’s long-term success (30) _____ is ultimately the most satisfying and also the most enviable?

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Let’s do a little experiment: Take five minutes, and find some information about Angola. How did you get your information? How much information were you able to get? Chances are, you probably just went online and typed the word “Angola”. You were probably able to find out all sorts of things. This experiment shows us how useful the Internet is. Over the last 20 years, the Internet has changed the way that we live, work, and study. The biggest change has been the way that we access information. Twenty years ago, you would have needed an encyclopedia to learn about Angola. If you had wanted information, you would have had to get out of your chair, open your encyclopedia, and look up the word “Angola”. Today all you need is about five seconds and you’ll have the exact same information. This technology makes work a lot faster and more efficient. It has also made information storage a lot easier and neater. Twenty years ago, offices had papers and files all over the place. If you wanted to find a file, you had to open a desk drawer and find the right piece of paper. Today, many of us keep our files in cloud storage. Cloud storage is a technology that lets people store files on the Internet. All you have to do is to sign into the site, and you can find all of your files in seconds. Another big change is communication. These days more and more people are working from home. People have “home offices”. They just do their work at their house and e-mail it to their company. It makes life a lot easier. Some people don’t like these changes. They say that life is too convenient these days, and it is making people lazy. However, most people think that even if this technology makes us a little easier, it still has more benefits than disadvantages. In the end, it doesn’t matter what we think. The Internet has changed all of our lives forever
1. If you use cloud storage, where are your files?

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Princess Eugenie (1)______a member of the British Royal Family. She’s (2)_____ youngest daughter of Princess Andrew and Sara Ferguson. Her parents (3)_______ married any more. They are divorced. Her older siser’s name is Beatrice. Beatrice and Eugenie are Prince William and Harry’s cousins. Her grandmother is the Queen and her uncle is Prince Charles. Her full name is Princess Eugenie Victoria Helena of York, so she (4)_______three first names but no surname. She studies Art, English, and Politics at university in Newcastle. (5)_______ the holidays she sometimes  stays with her mother and sometimes with her father. She often travels abroad with her parents. Although she’s a member of the royal family, she is a normal 20-year-old. She likes going out with her friends, she goes to lots of weddings and parties, and enjoys dancing. She’s also really (6)______ fashion. But because she’s a princess, she never has to (7)______the housework or cook dinner. She hardly ever has to do any official royal duties but she always (8)_____ for the charities her mother supports.

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A recent issue of a language learning magazine has consulted a number of experts in the (16)_______ of second language acquisition. Their advice may prove invaluable for those (17)_______ a language course. One suggestion is that you (18)_______ whether you are likely to be successful at learning a language. Did you enjoy studying languages at school, for example? Do you have enough time to learn a language? The major (19)_______ will be your own time and effort. If proof of your level of proficiency is important you must make sure that the course on offer leads to a (20)_______ qualification. Also, be realistic in your (21)_______ . If you don't set achievable aims you are more likely to give up. Do not be deceived (22)_______ thinking that the most expensive courses are the best. (23)_______ around to get the best possible value for money. You should also bear in mind that the quicker you learn a language the more quickly you forget it. Sandra Miller, a French teacher, tried to teach herself German by enrolling on a (24)_______ course. Already fluent in four languages and with a sound knowledge of teaching methodology her chances of making progress were high. Three years on she remembers very little. She feels her biggest mistake was not to follow (25)_______ her first experience. "I should have consolidated what I'd learn by continuing to study, even if it were by myself."

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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.
2. According to paragraph 2, more and more people want supermarkets to _______

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Scientists agree that the earth's rising temperatures are fueling longer and hotter heat waves, more frequent droughts, heavier rainfall, and more powerful hurricanes. In 2015, for example, scientists said that an ongoing drought in California - the state's worst water shortage in 1,200 years - had been intensified by 15 percent to 20 percent by global warming. They also said the odds of similar droughts happening in the future had roughly doubled over the past century. And in 2016, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine announced that it's now possible to confidently attribute certain weather events, like some heat waves, directly to climate change.  The earth's ocean temperatures are getting warmer, too - which means that tropical storms can pick up more energy. So global warming could turn, say, a category 3 storm into a more dangerous category 4 storm. In fact, scientists have found that the frequency of North Atlantic hurricanes has increased since the early 1980s, as well as the number of storms that reach categories 4 and 5. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina - the costliest hurricane in U.S. history struck New Orleans; the second - costliest, Hurricane Sandy, hit the East Coast in 2012.  The impacts of global warming are being felt across the globe. Extreme heat waves have caused tens of thousands of deaths around the world in recent years. And in an alarming sign of events to come, Antarctica has been losing about 134 billion metric tons of ice per year since 2002. This rate could speed up if we keep burning fossil fuels at our current pace, some experts say, causing sea levels to rise several meters over the next 50 to 150 years.   
3. The word "intensified" in the passage mostly means ____

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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. 
4. In the early twentieth century, many rural dwellers migrated to the city in order to ____

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Many older cities are having modern makeovers and they are being given a new (1) ____. Sometimes the impetus for this (2) ____ of change comes from the need to provide new (3) ____ for particular events being held in the city - a sporting event, or something (4) ____. On other (5) ____ the change just seems to (6) ____ place almost naturally.  Take Birmingham, for instance, (7) ____ it was previously an (8) ____ place to live, it has now become trendy, and this change has been (9) ____ largely by the new-look architecture that can be found everywhere in the city. The old shopping centre has been (10) ____ down and completely rebuilt, and new shopping malls are competing to attract shoppers with the high quality of their services and goods. The area located around the canal, once hidden away and surrounded by decaying factories was often used as a rubbish (11) ____, but it has now become a trendy place (12) ____ up of modern offices, bars, sought-after apartments and restaurants. To (13) ____ up, Birmingham has become the place to be. Even in what was formerly the poorest part of the city an old factory has been (14) ____ into a lively complex of studios, galleries and coffee bars. With its theatres, museums and football teams Birmingham is (15) ____ worth visiting and has something for everyone

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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.
1. Which best serves as the title for the passage?

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Many older cities are having modern makeovers and they are being given a new (1) ____. Sometimes the impetus for this (2) ____ of change comes from the need to provide new (3) ____ for particular events being held in the city - a sporting event, or something (4) ____. On other (5) ____ the change just seems to (6) ____ place almost naturally.  Take Birmingham, for instance, (7) ____ it was previously an (8) ____ place to live, it has now become trendy, and this change has been (9) ____ largely by the new-look architecture that can be found everywhere in the city. The old shopping centre has been (10) ____ down and completely rebuilt, and new shopping malls are competing to attract shoppers with the high quality of their services and goods. The area located around the canal, once hidden away and surrounded by decaying factories was often used as a rubbish (11) ____, but it has now become a trendy place (12) ____ up of modern offices, bars, sought-after apartments and restaurants. To (13) ____ up, Birmingham has become the place to be. Even in what was formerly the poorest part of the city an old factory has been (14) ____ into a lively complex of studios, galleries and coffee bars. With its theatres, museums and football teams Birmingham is (15) ____ worth visiting and has something for everyone

Read the passage and choose the best answer.

The Vietnamese students take part (1) ______ different after - school activities. Some students play sports. They often (2) __________ soccer, table tennis or badminton. Sometimes they (3) ________ swimming in the swimming pools. Some students like music, drama and movies. They often practice playing musical instrument in the school music room. They (4) __________ in the school theater group and usually rehearse plays. Some are members of the stamp collectors’ (5) ________. They often get together and talk about their stamps. A few students stay at home and play video games or computer games. Most of them enjoy their activities after school hours.

(4) ______

Read the passage below and answer the question

Hello everyone, I’m Phu. I’m from Vietnam. There are four seasons in the North of Vietnam. I like the spring and winter most. In the spring, it is warm and there are many kinds of fruits. I live in the countryside so the air is very cool and fresh in the spring. The view looks like a stunning picture. In the summer, it is very hot so I and my friends usually go swimming and fly our kites. Sometimes we go fishing. I don't like the winter because the weather is very cold and there is a lot of cold wind. I love living in the rural areas.

What the season does Phu like best?

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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

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How do you feel about nature? After spending hours indoors, do you often like going outside for a walk? Or if you work for hours at your office desk, do you feel better when you take a break and visit your local park? Most people think that nature is good for us; it is good for our bodies and good for our brains. However, humans are spending more time inside and less time outside. For example, the number of visitors to Canada’s national parks is getting lower every year. And in countries such as the USA, only 10% of teenagers spend time outside every day. Many doctors feel that this is a problem in the twenty - century, and that is making our physical health worse. As a result, some doctors are studying the connection between nature and health: one example of this is the work Dr Matilda van den Bosch in Sweden. The doctor gave people a maths test. During their test, their heart rate was faster. After the test, one group of people sat in a 3D-virtual-reality room for fifteen minutes with pictures and sounds of nature. Their heart rates were slower than people in the other group. The virtual contact with nature helped them feel more relaxed. Another good example of how nature is good for health comes from Canada. In Toronto, researchers studied about 31,000 people living in cities. Overall, they found that healthier people lived near parks. Because of studies like these, some countries and cities want nature to be part of people’s everyday life. In Dubai, for example, there are plans for a new shopping mall with a large garden so shoppers can relax outside with trees, plants and water. In some countries, such as Switzerland, “forest schools” are popular, schoolchildren study their subjects in the forests and do lots of exercise outside. And South Korea is another good example: it has new forests near its cities and around 13 million people visit these forests every year. So, after building cities so long, it’s now time to start rebuilding nature.
2. According to paragraph 1, people nowadays tend to_______

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According to some sources, the first online dating service appeared in the mid-nineties. Different from international matching services that were already up and running, these sites were created to help the average busy person find someone to date and, perhaps eventually, someone to many. For this week’s column, I asked a few people what they thought of online dating. Many who have tried online dating it’s the greatest invention since sliced bread. Although he was hesitant to try it at first, Mitchell Waverton, a 25-year-old who’s looking for love, gives online dating thumbs-up. Waverton explains, “I don’t have a lot of time to meet women. Some of my friends told me I should try online dating. I wasn't sure about it because it just seems weird- meeting someone online. But then I tried it, and it was a lot of fun”. However, not everyone has the same opinion. Peter Wong explains, “A few of my friends tried to get me join an online dating site. I only agree to do it to prove to them that it wasn’t going to work for me”. After I went on five miserable dates, my friends were finally convinced that online dating wasn't for me.” I do believe that online daters are sometimes successful in their search of love, but I think success stories are the exception rather than the rule. Although online dating seems like it’s here to stay, I’ve heard enough horror stories to keep me away from it
1. What is the closest meaning to the word “convinced” used in paragraph 2?

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Many older cities are having modern makeovers and they are being given a new (1) ____. Sometimes the impetus for this (2) ____ of change comes from the need to provide new (3) ____ for particular events being held in the city - a sporting event, or something (4) ____. On other (5) ____ the change just seems to (6) ____ place almost naturally.  Take Birmingham, for instance, (7) ____ it was previously an (8) ____ place to live, it has now become trendy, and this change has been brought about largely by the new-look architecture that can be found everywhere in the city. The old shopping centre has been (10) ____ down and completely rebuilt, and new shopping malls are competing to attract shoppers with the high quality of their services and goods. The area located around the canal, once hidden away and surrounded by decaying factories was often used as a rubbish (11) ____, but it has now become a trendy place (12) ____ up of modern offices, bars, sought-after apartments and restaurants. To (13) ____ up, Birmingham has become the place to be. Even in what was formerly the poorest part of the city an old factory has been (14) ____ into a lively complex of studios, galleries and coffee bars. With its theatres, museums and football teams Birmingham is (15) ____ worth visiting and has something for everyone

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The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has issued a stark warning about the future of the world's natural World Heritage sites. It says half of the sites are at (1) ____ from different industries. The WWF warned that harmful industrial (2) ____ such as mining, dredging or drilling for oil are endangering the future of 114 of 229 sites. (3) ____ factors adding to the risk include illegal logging and unsustainable water use. All of these are in addition to the damage being (4) ____ by climate change. The WWF says the sites affected include Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the Grand Canyon National Park in the USA, and China's Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries, which are home (5) ____ more than 30 per cent of the world's endangered pandas.  The director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre said it was (6) ____ everyone to protect these sites. She said: "World Heritage is humankind's (7) ____ heritage, and the responsibility for its conservation is shared by everyone." She welcomed government efforts at reducing what they take from the Earth, saying: "The WWF's report comes at a time (8) ____ governments and the private sector around the world are stepping up their action against harmful extractive uses." However, the WWF said that more than 11 million people worldwide (9) _____ on World Heritage sites for food, water, shelter, jobs and medicine, and that non-stop development could harm (10) ____ as well as the environment

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Some people think of 'traditional ' gender roles as being like a 1950s TV sitcom: Dad puts (8) _____ his suit and goes to the office, while Mum, in her apron, stays at home and (9) ____ the housework. But for most of human history, it has taken the efforts of both men and women, whether working in an office (10) _____ in the fields, to look after the family. And that's the situation to which we now seem to be returning. By 2050, women will make up 47% of the workforce in the United States, up from 30% in 1950. But some experts are predicting that, at (11) _____ in the short term, the number of women in the workforce may actually overtake the number of men. What's the reason? During the economic recession that began in 2008, many jobs disappeared from industries traditionally dominated by male workers, such as manufacturing. Unless many more manual manufacturing jobs (12) _____, it may be that women, who traditionally work in healthcare, education and other service industries, will take the lead in the labour market

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Let’s do a little experiment: Take five minutes, and find some information about Angola. How did you get your information? How much information were you able to get? Chances are, you probably just went online and typed the word “Angola”. You were probably able to find out all sorts of things. This experiment shows us how useful the Internet is. Over the last 20 years, the Internet has changed the way that we live, work, and study. The biggest change has been the way that we access information. Twenty years ago, you would have needed an encyclopedia to learn about Angola. If you had wanted information, you would have had to get out of your chair, open your encyclopedia, and look up the word “Angola”. Today all you need is about five seconds and you’ll have the exact same information. This technology makes work a lot faster and more efficient. It has also made information storage a lot easier and neater. Twenty years ago, offices had papers and files all over the place. If you wanted to find a file, you had to open a desk drawer and find the right piece of paper. Today, many of us keep our files in cloud storage. Cloud storage is a technology that lets people store files on the Internet. All you have to do is to sign into the site, and you can find all of your files in seconds. Another big change is communication. These days more and more people are working from home. People have “home offices”. They just do their work at their house and e-mail it to their company. It makes life a lot easier. Some people don’t like these changes. They say that life is too convenient these days, and it is making people lazy. However, most people think that even if this technology makes us a little easier, it still has more benefits than disadvantages. In the end, it doesn’t matter what we think. The Internet has changed all of our lives forever
2. Why do some people dislike the changes that have come from the Internet?