compass/ There/ a/ books/ is/ three/ bookshelf/ and/ a/ on the/ pencil.

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We're all faced with difficult problems on a regular basis. In fact, sometimes you might feel like you'll be crushed by the weight of your problems. But how many of us use special creative problem-solving techniques to tackle these problems? "I didn't know there were special techniques," you say. Believe it or not, many experts have given a lot of thought to the problem of problem solving. The obvious first step to solving a problem is to churn out possible solutions, right? Well, some experts say that the first thing you should do is define the problem in detail, even if it seems obvious. Write the problem down on a piece of paper and start asking yourself questions about it: Why is this a problem for me? What is the source of the problem? What will happen if I don't solve the problem? What do I really want to accomplish? Keep asking questions until the well has run dry. Once you've asked these questions and answered them, potential solutions may start popping up like popcorn. Or they may not. If you're still stuck, some experts recommend going for a walk. That's right- you should literally walk away from the problem. A change of scenery can inspire new ideas, and not focusing on the problem can actually open your mind to new possibilities. If you still come up empty-handed at this point, you might try an unusual technique that some experts recommend. Open a dictionary, or any book or magazine, and pick out the first word you see. Write down anything that word makes you think of. Then look at your problem again. Something that you've written down may change your perspective and help you see the problem in a different light.
2. The phrase “churn out” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to _______

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Planet earth is part of a system of planets and their moons, as well as numerous asteroids and comets which (26)_________around a huge star we call the Sun. The Sun itself (27)_________of gas. Nuclear reactions inside its core (28)_______the heat and light that make life on the Earth (29)________. The Earth is the third of four small terrestrial (Earth like) planets that orbit close to the (30)_________. Further out in our Solar System are four huge gas planets, while distant Pluto, (31)_________planet, is made (32)_________rock and ice. Our Earth is one of the ten planets that orbit the Sun- a huge, burning-hot star in the center of our Solar System. The Solar System and all the stars in the (33)_________are part of our galaxy-the Milky Way, which (34)________as many as 200 billions stars. Beyond our galaxy (35)_________millions more galaxies. They all add together to make up the Universe

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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

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.

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
I live in a house near the sea. It is ................. (1) old house, about 100 years old and ................. (2) very small. There are two bedrooms upstairs ................. (3) no bathroom. The bathroom is down stairs ................. (4) the kitchen. There is a living room where there is a lovely old fire place. There is a garden ................. (5) the house. The garden ................. (6) down to the beach and in Spring and Summer ................. (7) flowers everywhere. I like sitting alone ................. (8) my dog, Rack, but we have a lot of visitors. My city friends often stay with ................. (9) I love my house for ................. (10)reasons: the garden, the flowers in Summer, the fire in winter, but the best thing is the view from my bedroom window

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Recent studies have shown that more and more students are choosing unhealthy ways to boost energy. The two main ways (1) ____ are eating snacks high in sugar and drinking beverages high in caffeine. In fact, research shows these two choices may (2) ____ in the opposite effects as those desired.  Eating a sweet snack, (3) ____ a candy bar, does not provide the body more energy. (4) ____ candy bars have little (5) ____ value; however, their high sugar content can create a full feeling in the consumer. While the sugar may produce an initial boost in energy, the lack of nutritional value soon (6) ____ the body feeling fatigued. In effect, eating a sweet snack will have the opposite effect to what most people expect.  Likewise, many people will drink a caffeinated beverage like coffee or cola to give themselves more energy. To a certain (7) ____, drinking coffee or cola will give a person some energy. The caffeine can increase the heart rate and blood flow, (8) ____ producing a feeling of increased energy. (9) ____, caffeine products are often consumed in excessive quantities or at unwise times. This, (10) ____, can interfere with normal sleep patterns and also lead to fatigue. In the end, caffeine drinkers often lose valuable hours of sleep and become even more tired during the day

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The philosopher Aristotle said, “In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. They keep the young out of mischief; they comfort and aid the old in their weakness, and they incite those in the prime of life to noble deeds. “Growing up”, my mother always used to tell me “your friends are a reflection of you”. I did not quite understand this (20) _____ I started meeting individuals who kept, not so healthy friends in their lives and suddenly, as a young teenager, I learned to understand that the friends I keep in my life (21) _____ who I am and desire to be as a person and therefore I have learned to choose my friends wisely over the years. I do not care about the superficial (22) _____ such as looks, money, success or status but rather I emulate those (23) _____ bring laughter, joy, honesty and who can be there for me and also give me a firm kick in the butt when I need it. I always find it intriguing to meet friends of people I know because I can really get a sense of that person by the company they choose to (24) _____ in their life

Hi everyone, I’m Phong. 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.

Phong usually goes swimming and fly kites in the autumn.

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At one time, these trees are totally destroyed by the Glass Fire in North California

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Most children love (1) ______ activities. They play football, go skateboarding or go (2) _________. In countries with snow like (3) _________, children go to the mountains with their parents to go skiing. They can make a (4) ______  in the playground in front of their house. When the weather is bad, they can stay at home and watch interesting (5) ______ on TV

Read the passage and decide each sentence is True or False.

Hi! My name is Steve. I'm 10 years old and I live in Bristol, in the UK, with my parents and my siblings, Paul and Lucy. I am a dynamic boy. I ride to school. I like doing sports. We train after school and play matches against other schools every week. Playing basketball is my favourite sport. I'm an excellent swimmer, but I don't go much. I don't like water sports. It is too cold in winter.

In my free time, I play computer games, collect stamps or read books. My favourite one is playing computer games. But all teachers at school say "reading is fundamental", so I must read much more.

On the weekends, I usually go camping with my parents and my siblings. When my parents go trekking, my siblings, other children and I usually play tag or leapfrog. My favourite game is playing leapfrog. Camping is very enjoyable and fun. We set fire and sing songs. Lucy sings and Paul plays the guitar. Music is their common hobby.

3. His favorite sport is swimming.

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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

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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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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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Scientists have identified two ways in which species disappear. The first is through ordinary or “background” extinctions, where species that fail to adapt are slowly replaced by more adaptable life forms. The second is when large numbers of species go to the wall in relatively short periods of biological time. There have been five such extinctions, each provoked by cataclysmic evolutionary events caused by some geological eruption, climate shift, or space junk slamming into the Earth. Scientists now believe that another mass extinction of species is currently under way – and this time human fingerprints are on the trigger. How are we are doing it? Simply by demanding more and more space for ourselves. In our assault on the ecosystems around us we have used a number of tools, from spear and gun to bulldozer and chainsaw. Certain especially rich ecosystems have proved the most vulnerable. In Hawaii more than half of the native birds are now gone – some 50 species. Such carnage has taken place all across the island communities of the Pacific and Indian oceans. While many species were hunted to extinction, others simply succumbed to the „introduced predators’ that humans brought with them: the cat, the dog, the pig, and the rat. Today the tempo of extinction is picking up speed. Hunting is no longer the major culprit, although rare birds and animals continue to be butchered for their skin, feathers, tusks, and internal organs, or taken as savage pets. Today the main threat comes from the destruction of the habitat of wild plants, animals, and insects need to survive. The draining and damming of wetland and river courses threatens the aquatic  food chain and our own seafood industry. Overfishing and the destruction of fragile coral reefs destroy ocean biodiversity. Deforestation is taking a staggering toll, particularly in the tropics where the most global biodiversity is at risk. The shinking rainforest cover of the Congo and Amazon river basins and such place as Borneo and Madagascar have a wealth of species per hectare existing nowhere else. As  those precious hectares are drowned or turned into arid pasture and cropland, such species disappear forever.
2. The word assault in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to _____

Nam is living in Hanoi city with her family. She is in grade 6. In summer, she doesn’t go to school. Because the weather is very hot, she often goes swimming with some of her friends. She sometimes goes to the park to fly the kite or goes fishing. She also goes on vacation with her family. Her favorite place is Ha Long. Nam likes summer very much.

Who does she go on vacation with?

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The term "folk song" has been current for over a hundred years, but there is still a good deal of disagreement as to what it actually means. The definition provided by the International Folk Music Council states that folk music is the music of ordinary people, which is passed on from person to person by being listened to rather than learned from the printed page. Other factors that help shape a folk song include: continuity (many performances over a number of years): variation (changes in words and melodies either through artistic interpretation or failure of memory); and selection (the acceptance of a song by the community in which it evolves). When songs have been subjected to these processes, their origin is usually impossible to trace. For instance, if a farm laborer were to make up a song and sing it to a couple of friends who like it and memorize it, possibly when the friends come to sing it themselves, one of them might forget some of the words and make up new ones to fill the gap, while the other, perhaps more artistic, might add a few decorative touches to the tune and improve a couple of lines of text. If this happened a few times, there would be many different versions, the song's original composer would be forgotten, and the song would become common property. This constant reshaping and re-creation is the essence of folk music. Consequently, modem popular songs and other published music, even though widely sung by people who are not professional musicians, are not considered folk music. The music and words have been set by a printed or recorded source, limiting scope for further artistic creation. These songs' origins cannot be disguised and therefore they belong primarily to the composer and not to a community. The ideal situation for the creation of folk music is an isolated rural community. In such a setting folk songs and dances have a special purpose at every stage in a person's life, from childhood to death. Epic tales of heroic deeds, seasonal songs relating to calendar events, and occupational songs are also likely to be sung
5. The word "it" in paragraph 1 refers to _______.

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
The heart has long been considered to be (1) _______ feelings of love dwell. In love songs throughout the ages, love almost always goes together (2) _______  the heart. The heart has continuously been viewed (3) _______ the place where love begins and develops. Even the Bible gives (4) _______ to love and the heart. The role of the heart in love must come from what happens to it when a person feels strongly (5) _______ to someone. The strong feelings (6) _______ the other person, especially in the early stages of a relationship, have the results that the heart starts beating faster and breathing starts speeding (7) _______.According to psychologists, a love relationship is a situation that (8) _______ a lot of stress and the body reacts to this by getting ready to face the unknown. This has been called the "fight or flight" (9) _______, meeting danger by fighting it or running away. So with love, the heart accelerates and (10) _______ becomes quick

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Maria Alcalá of Madrid speaks for many Mediterranean people when she says that “a meal without olive oil would be a bore.” No one knows when the Mediterranean civilizations initially fell in love with olives. That occurred before recorded history. However, there is evidence that the cultivation of olive trees began in countries around the Mediterranean Sea in approximately 4000 B.C., and 2,000 years after that people in the eastern Mediterranean region began to produce oil from olives. The Mediterranean still accounts for 99 percent of all world olive oil production. From ancient times until today, the basic process of producing the oil is the same. First, whole olives are crushed. Then, the liquid is separated from the solids. After that, the valuable oil is separated from the water. Many olive growers maintain their ancient traditions and still harvest the olives by hand. “We harvest in the traditional way,” says Don Celso, an olive farmer from Tuscany, Italy. "It would be less expensive to do it with machines, but it's more a social thing. Twenty people come to help with the harvest, and we pay them in oil." Olive oil has had a variety of uses through its long history. In ancient times, olive oil was used as money and as medicine. It was even used during war-heated up and dropped down on attackers. It is still used in religious ceremonies. It is great for protecting the freshness of fish and cheese. There are even olive oil lamps and olive oil soaps. Olive oil enhances the lives of people everywhere. Its benefits, recently confirmed by science, were already understood in ancient times. Mediterranean people are happy to share their secret with the world.
4. The word ‘it’ in paragraph 2 refers to _______

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Laughing is good for the body and the mind. When we laugh, we breathe more oxygen into our body, (46) _______ helps to keep us healthy. Endorphins, or happy chemicals, are released in the body, and you feel more relaxed and happier. Laughter also brings people together to (47) _______ some fun. Companies who have (48) _______ laughter yoga workshops find that they have advantages for both employers and employees. People who are happy at work are more hard-working and make more money for the company. Also, people who can laugh together communicate more successfully. (49) _______, people do better at work when they feel happy and relaxed. A Danish company who used Laughter Yoga for (50) _______ year reported an increase in sales of 40 percent over the previous year. Following Laughter Yoga session, a Hawaiian timeshare company reported the highest sales of the year - double their target figures.