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Speed reading is not just about reading first. It is also about how much information you can remember when you have finished reading. The World Championship Speed-Reading Competition says that its top competitors average between 1.000 and 2,000 words a minute. But they must remember at least 50 percent of this in order to qualify for the competition. Nowadays, speed reading has become an essential skill in any environment (46) _______ people have to master a large volume of information. Professional workers need reading skills to help them (47) _______ many documents every day, while students under pressure to deal with assignments may feel they have to read more and read faster all the time. (48) _______ there are various methods to increase reading speed, the trick is deciding what information you want first. For example, if you only want a    (49) _______ outline of an issue, then you can skim the material quickly and extract the key facts. However, if you need to understand every detail in a document, then you must read it slowly enough to understand this. Even when you know how to ignore irrelevant detail, there are (50) _______ improvements you can make to your reading style which will increase your speed

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It can be shown in facts and figures that cycling is the cheapest, most convenient, and most environmentally desirable form of transport (26)______ towns, but such cold calculations do not mean much on a frosty winter morning. The real appeal of cycling is that it is so (27)______. It has none of the difficulties and tensions of other ways of travelling so you are more cheerful after a ride, even through the rush hour.             The first thing a non-cyclist says to you is: “But isn’t it (28) ______ dangerous?” It would be foolish to deny the danger of sharing the road with motor vehicles and it must be admitted that there are an alarming (29) ______ of accidents involving cyclists. However, although police records (30) ______ that the car driver is often to blame, the answer lies with the cyclist. It is possible to ride in such a way as to reduce risks to a minimum. ut such cold calculations do not mean much on a frosty winter morning. The real appeal of cycling is that it is so (27)______. It has none of the difficulties and tensions of other ways of travelling so you are more cheerful after a ride, even through the rush hour.

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British people have a reputation for being rather quiet and reserved. However, a new study has (1) ____ that Britons are actually quite sociable and the (2) ____ person claims to have 14 close friends. Although a minority of those questioned (3) ____ that they had no best friend, a quarter said that they had more than 18 close friends. Experts said that this is (4) ____ to changes in the way people (5) ____ their free time. They are now more (6) ____ to invite friends to their homes or go out socialising than previous generations. The increasing use of mobile phones and emails has also made it easier to (7) ____ a greater number of friendships.  Men's relationships are not (8) ____ though they tend to have more friends. Women, (9) ____ prefer to have a small number of friends they can trust (10) ____, and with whom they can feel completely at (11) ____. The idea that people in the north of England are more neighbourly than those in the south seems to be backed (12) ____ by the survey. However, despite having friends, it seems that family still (13) ____ an important part in most people's lives. When asked who they would (14) ____ to for help if they were ill or had a problem, the majority said that they would (15) ____ upon a relative first rather than a friend 

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Birds that feed in flocks commonly retire together into roosts. The reasons for roosting communally are not always obvious, but there are some likely benefits. In winter especially, it is important for birds to keep warm at night and conserve precious food reserves. One way to do this is to find a sheltered roost. Solitary roosters shelter in dense vegetation or enter a cavity – horned larks dig holes in the ground and ptarmigan burrow into snow banks - but the effect of sheltering is magnified by several birds huddling together in the roosts, as wrens, swifts, brown creepers, bluebirds, and anis do. Body contact reduces the surface area exposed to the cold air, so the birds keep each other warm. Two kinglets huddling together were found to reduce their heat losses by a quarter, and three together saved a third of their heat. The second possible benefit of communal roosts is that they act as “information centers”. During the day, parties of birds will have spread out to forage over a very large area. When they return in the evening some will have fed well, but others may have found little to eat. Some investigators have observed that when the birds set out again next morning, those birds that did not feed well on the previous day appear to follow those that did. The behavior of common and lesser kestrels may illustrate different feeding behaviors of similar birds with different roosting habits. The common kestrel hunts vertebrate animals in a small, familiar hunting ground, whereas the very similar lesser kestrel feeds on insects over a large area. The common kestrel roosts and hunts alone, but the lesser kestrel roosts and hunts in flocks, possibly so one bird can learn from others where to find insect swarms. Finally, there is safety in numbers at communal roosts since there will always be a few birds awake at any given moment to give the alarm. But this increased protection is partially counteracted by the fact that mass roosts attract predators and are especially vulnerable if they are on the ground. Even those in trees can be attacked by birds of prey. The birds on the edge are at greatest risk since predators find it easier to catch small birds perching at the margins of the roost.
5. Which of the following statements can be inferred from the passage?

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The (31) _________ for many young people today is to communicate with others over the Internet and have a life online. The way they do this is through social networking web sites such as Facebook and Twitter. However, the people who (32) _________ their lives online are also putting themselves at risk, and they may not even understand how they are doing so. The key to limiting risk is to keep certain pieces of information private. If you do any banking online, for example, it is important to note that dates of birth are often used as a(n) (33) _________ feature by banks. They will need to know your identification number and possibly your address as well, but to (34) _________ your identity, they might ask you for your date of birth. If a criminal were to gain access to your account number at a bank, and then obtain your address from public records, the one thing that he would not have would be your birth date. These days, however, a lot of people list their dates of birth openly on Facebook (35) _________ their friends can wish them well on their birthdays. Unfortunately, doing so could end up being a recipe for disaster.

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The Industrial Revolution in Britain was built on the use of machines in factories. Since the 1950s, Britain's (24)......industries have replaced machine operators with computers, and this (25)......has led to a decline in the number of (26).......in many factories. Goods are bought and used much more than ever before but a lot of these goods are imported. By the beginning of the 20th century, other. industrial countries like the USA were (27).......with Britain's exports, and countries in the Far East have been able to provide cheaper (28)......since the 1970s. Areas located with heavy industries are suffering high unemployment. During the last 30 years, there has been a constant rise in smaller industries (29).........as "light industries". These ones use electricity and are not (30) .........on raw materials such as coal so they are "footloose", i.e. they can be located anywhere. They produce such things as washing machines or spare (31) .......... Some of these industries produce nothing at all, but provide services like distribution. The consumer boom of the 1980s and the increased leisure time of most Britons have led to rapid (32) ........ in service industries like banking, tourism, retailing and information processing, and in industries which distribute, maintain, and repair (33)............consumer goods

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An A level is an Advanced level GCE qualification. This exam is (1) ____ taken after two years of A level study, following the O level/IGCSE exams. Students can take any number of A level exams; in the UK, most college students take three or four A level exams for their final two years of study. The (2) ____ of A levels to be taken will often depend on the qualifications that the university (3) ____ requires. A level results can open doors to (4) ____ studies at some of the best higher educational institutions in the world, and to a (5) ____ range of professional and vocational courses that can help build skills for an exciting and (6) ____ career. In many countries round the world, some schools follow the GCE syllabus to prepare their pupils for taking A level exams. Students at these schools should enquire at their school about how they can register and sit (7) ____ the exams. Students who do not (8) ____ a school that follows the GCE syllabus can still take A level exams and can register as a private individual with the British Council.  In order to register for an A level exam one will need to (9) ____ an entry form which will become available at the British Council offices. Forms usually become (10) ____ for January examinations in early August of the preceding year. For May/June examinations, they are available in early December of the preceding year

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Most adults struggle to recall events from their first few years of life and now scientists have identified exactly when these childhood memories are lost forever. A new study into childhood amnesia has found that it tends to take (31) _____ around the age of seven. The rapid decline of memories persisting while children are five and six is owing to the change in the way memories are formed. Before the age of seven, children tend to have an (32) _____ form of recall with no sense of time and place in their memories. In older children, however, the early recollected events tend to be more adult like in their content and the way they are formed. Faster rate of forgetting in children and higher turnover of memories means early memories are less likely to survive. (33) _____, memories of younger children tend to lack autobiographical narrative leading to a process known as ‘retrieval induced forgetting’ (34) _____ the action of remembering causes other information to be forgotten. Consequently, if childhood memories can survive into the ninth or tenth year of life, they may stay a chance of (35) _____ it into adulthood

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The oceans of the world are precious because of (31) _________ they do for all life on the Earth. They help regulate the temperature of the planet, and they are home to a myriad of sea creatures - many of which we depend on (32) _________ sources of food. However, due to our consumption and improper disposal of plastic items, human beings have created a swirling mess of garbage. The one located in the Pacific now known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and it is not a pretty sight. In an ideal world, all of the plastic would be recycled and there would be zero waste. This is not the case, however, and a huge amount of the plastic ends up making its (33) _________ to our oceans due to carelessness. (34) _________ the plastic is part of rain runoff coming from a landfill or just a thoughtless discard of a piece of plastic onto the ground, if it ends up in the Pacific Ocean, it will eventually become part of the disgusting patch of garbage. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch may be impossible to (35) _________, but it is doing a lot of harm to sea life. If anything, we can do our best to avoid over-using plastic

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Typically, Pacific trade winds blow from east to west, transporting warm surface waters westward, east of Indonesia and northeast of Australia. Thus, the water maintains a cold temperature for much of the year. This is achieved by an upwelling of cold deep ocean-water, which benefits fisheries in the Pacific Ocean lying near the equator. However, these trade winds sometimes lose or gain strength in the Northern Hemisphere. This leads to an effect known as the Southern Oscillation which refers to the two recurring weather patterns of El Niño and La Niña.  El Niño, meaning the "boy," is the phenomenon that results in the temperature of the sea surface off the coast of Peru increasing. This condition typically lasts for at least six months. Thus, there is a reduction in dissolved oxygen in the ocean so marine life declines devastating fisheries. It also fuels major differences in air pressure near the Pacific Ocean, which in turn leads to more severe weather events including droughts, increased precipitation, flooding, and even cyclonic storms like hurricanes. Usually, the eastern Pacific region has an upswing in heavy rains to cause flooding, and in contrast, Australia and Indonesia have droughts, often with accompanying forest fires. These two opposing weather events hurt agriculture. For instance, the 1982 – 1983 El Niño, recognized as the worst weather event of the century, hit hard in the U.S. by dropping huge amounts of rainfall on the southern California coast, which resulted in millions of dollars of damage while necessitating the evacuation of 10,000 people.    El Niños counterpart, La Niña, meaning "the girl," contrastingly forms when Pacific trade winds grow more powerful than usual. It is the result of the cooler-than-average temperatures of South American equatorial surface waters which cause global cooling. La Niña's duration usually lasts for 9 to 12 months and although forming in the Pacific region, it can wreak havoc across large swaths of the world. During the winter months, the western Pacific areas including Australia, Malaysia, and the Philippines have much greater rainfall. Conversely, unusually dry conditions settle in over North America's Gulf Coast and large sections of South and Central America as well. Additionally, in the Canadian and American West, there is a cooling effect.  By studying the patterns of the El Niño and La Niña cycles, meteorologists have come to better understand their impacts on global weather phenomena. They are thus better able to make predictions especially in terms of not only the strength of each stage, but also when either will fizzle out or begin again, allowing governments to better prepare for floods and droughts which come with each cycle and to prevent billions of dollars in losses and damage. Thereby, the areas under their influence need accurate forecasts to reduce the wide-reaching effects these phenomena have across many facets of both the environment and the economy.   
2. Which of the following is stated in paragraph 1?

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People have five senses. We have a sense of sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. Believe (31) _________, your sense of smell is very important. Our nose tells us about our environment. When your nose smells something, it sends information to our brain. Smells tell us if there is danger nearby, or if there is something to eat. Of course, these tools were more useful in the past, but they still come (32) _________ today. The things you smell can affect your (33) _________. If you smell something nice, you are more likely to be happy. On the other hand, if you smell something unpleasant, you are more likely to be unhappy. That is (34) _________ there are so many businesses that work to create nice scents. Businesses also work on the best ways to deliver scents to people’s noses. Candles (35) _________ a whole room smell better. Oils and soaps also have health benefits.

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People in the UK enjoy fewer years of good health before they die than the citizens of most comparable European countries as well as Australia and Canada, a major report shows. While life expectancy has improved by 4.2 years in the UK over the two decades, other countries have improved faster. In 2010, Spain topped the league. Its people could expect 70.9 years of healthy life - before disease and disability began to take a toll. Second came Italy, with 70.2 years and third was Australia, on 70.1 years. In the UK, we can expect 68.6 healthy years of life. Hunt said the UK was a long way behind its global counterparts and called for action by local health commissioners to tackle the five big killers - cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory and liver diseases. Drinking and drug use have been the main issues behind the worsening of the UK’s ranking in early deaths among adults aged 20-54. In 2010, drugs were the sixth leading cause of death in this age group and alcohol was 18,h - up from 32nd and 43rd place respectively 20 years earlier. Hunt will on Tuesday announce a strategy to tackle cardiovascular disease, which he says could save 30,000 lives a year. “Despite real progress in cutting deaths, we remain a poor relative to our global cousins on many measures of health, something I want to change,” he said. “For too long we have been lagging behind and I want the reformed health system to take up this challenge and turn this shocking underperformance around.” However, the problem is only in part to do with hospital care - much of it is about the way we live. Our diet, our drinking and continuing smoking habits all play a part, which assumes its responsibilities on 1 April
2. The word “cardiovascular” in paragraph 2 could be best replaced by _______

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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. 
8. Which of the following will NOT probably lead an animal to death according to the passage?

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Fossil fuels are used to generate the majority of the world’s energy, and they come in different forms. For example, coal may be burned in a power (31) _________ to generate electricity, but gasoline is burned in a car’s engine to make it run. Neither of these two sources is considered green energy because they produce a lot of pollution when they are burned. In addition, they come from a source that is inevitably going to (32) _________. Green energy can be defined as any energy source that is to some degree nonpolluting. When it is called (33) _________, this means that a person can replace the same amount of energy that was consumed by that person (34) _________ that person's lifetime. Since it took millions and millions of years to create the fossil fuels that we now burn, we know that they cannot be replaced by us. Wind power and solar power, (35) _________ harnessed properly, are two excellent sources of green energy. Once the necessary parts such as wind turbines to generate wind power and solar panels to create solar power have been produced, only the pollution from the production is left

Mr Green: Hey, Tom. How's your first week at the new school?

Tom: Well, it's great. But I was a bit nervous at first.

Mr Green: Why were you nervous?

Tom: The teachers are all new to me, most of my classmates are new too.

Mr Green: Are they friendly to you?

Tom: Ah, yeah. They are all nice to me.

Mr Green: What subjects did you have today?

Tom: Well, we had maths, geography and computer studies, my favourite subject.

Mr Green: Oh, good. So everything is going well at school?

Tom: Right. I had a good first day. And ... Dad, can I join the judo club at school? I like to do judo. 

Mr Green: Yeah, OK, if you like. But don't forget to do your homework.

Tom: I won't. Thanks, Dad.

What is his favourite subject?

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.

Sometimes they (3) ________ swimming in the swimming pools.

Choose the correct answer A, B, C, or D for each of the gaps to complete the following text.
Tra Co Beach in Quang Ninh province is 9 kilometers from Mong Cai. It has the (31) longest and the most romantic beach in Viet Nam. Tourists can enjoy the beauty of white sand beaches and green seawater all year (33) __________. Visitors can also enjoy the sunset or sunrise in Con Mang islet. You can visit Tra Co Communal House, Linh Khanh Pagoda, and Tra Co Church. If tourists want some fresh (35) __________, they can find it from fishing boats. They can take part in "Tra Co Festival" from May 30 to June 6

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Singapore is an island city of about three million people. It’s a beautiful city with lots of parks and open spaces. It’s also a very (31)______ city.             Most of the people (32)______ in high-rise flats in different parts of the island. The business district is very modern with (33)______ of high new office buildings. Singapore also has some nice older sections. In Chinatown, there  (34)______ rows of old shop houses.  The government buildings in Singapore are very beautiful and date from the colonial days.             Singapore is famous (35)______ its shops and restaurants. There are many good shopping centers. Most of the goods are duty free. Singapore’s restaurants sell Chinese, Indian, Malay and European food, and the prices are quite reasonable.

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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.
5. What does the writer seem most surprised by at the end of this extract?

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.

Does he like the winter?

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Waves don’t always (31) _________ the beaches with enough height or force to allow a sport such as surfing. The surfers in the 1960s looked for something that would allow them to have the thrill of riding waves without having to actually go in the water on days when it looked more like a (32) _________ rather than a series of hills reaching the shore. The simple solution was to put wheels on a board, and before long, a new style of surfing was born, but it was done on land. Looking back, it is easy to see how skateboarding could become more popular than even surfing. To surf you need coastline and waves, but to skateboard, all you need is a paved surface. As its popularity grew, skateboarding took (33) _________ new forms, and adventurous skateboarders tried new stunts. Skateboard parks started popping up throughout several countries, and there was plenty of innovation in skateboards. Early skateboards had metal wheels, usually (34) _________ from roller skates. Clay wheels replaced these, followed by the special urethane wheels that are used today. The innovations with wheels made the sport safer in many ways, but they also (35) _________ the stunts to become more and more extreme