In 1953, Peveril Meigs divided desert regions ____ Earth ____ three categories according to the amount of precipitation they received.

(338)_______

What are your plans for _____ future?

(323)______

Choose the best answer:
The waste from the chemical factory is extremely .......

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the sentence that best combines each pair of sentences in the following questions.:
Cats is one of the longest-running musicals in Britain. It was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions.
Together, the thousands of scientists and conservation organizations that contribute to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List and other systems of assessment provide the world's largest knowledge base on the global status of species. The aim of these systems is to provide the general public, conservationists, nongovernmental organizations, the media, decision makers, and policy makers with comprehensive and scientifically rigorous information on the conservation status of the world's species and the threats that drive the observed patterns of population decline. Scientists in conservation and protected area management agencies use data on species status in the development of conservation planning and prioritization, the identification of important sites and species for dedicated conservation action and recovery planning, and educational programs. Although the IUCN Red List and other similar species-assessment tools do not prescribe the action to be taken, the data within the list are often used to inform legislation and policy and to determine conservation priorities at regional, national, and international levels. In contrast, the listing criteria of other categorization systems (such as the United States Endangered Species Act, the CITES) are prescriptive; they often require that landowners and various governmental agencies take specific mandatory steps to protect species falling within particular categories of threat It is likely that many undescribed or unassessed species of plants, animals, and other organisms have become or are in the process of becoming extinct. To maintain healthy populations of both known and unknown species, assessments and reassessments are valuable tools. Such monitoring work must continue so that the most current knowledge can be applied to effective environmental monitoring and management efforts. For many threatened species, large well-protected conservation areas (biological reserves) often play major roles in curbing population declines. Such reserves are often cited by conservation biologists and other authorities as the best way to protect individual species as well as the ecosystems they inhabit. In addition, large biological reserves may harbor several undescribed and unassessed species. Despite the creation of several large reserves around the world, poaching and illegal trafficking plague many areas. Consequently, even species in those areas require continued monitored and periodic assessment.
8. The word "cited" in paragraph 2 mostly means ____.

Food critics from two ---131--- newspapers, the Toronto Day and Toronto Rising are expected to dine here this week. Let's make a special effort to do our work flawlessly. Photographs of the critics will be placed at our welcome station. Using these ---132---, hosts will be responsible for identifying the critics and telling the wait staff, who should alert the kitchen. Servers must strive to be prompt. They should also recommend our daily specials. ---133---. I am confident that everyone ---134--- these critics with our great food and service.

131...............

Read an article about Elizabeth Taylor and choose the best answer.

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born on February 27, 1932, in London, England. One of film's most celebrated stars, Elizabeth Taylor has fashioned a career that's covered more than six decades, accepting roles that have not only showcased her beauty, but her ability to take on emotionally charged characters.

Taylor's American parents, both art dealers, were residing in London when she was born. Soon after the outbreak of World War II, the Taylors returned to the United States and settled into their new life in Los Angeles.

Performance was in Taylor's blood. Her mother had worked as an actress until she married. At the age of 3, the young Taylor started dancing, and eventually gave a recital for Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. Not long after relocating to California a family friend suggested the Taylors' daughter take a screen test.

She soon signed a contract with Universal Studios, and made her screen debut at the age of 10 in There's One Born Every Minute (1942). She followed that up with a bigger role in Lassie Come Home (1943) and later The White Cliffs of Dover (1944).

Her breakout role, however, came in 1944 with National Velvet, in a role Elizabeth Taylor spent four months working to get. The film subsequently turned out to be a huge hit that pulled in more than $4 million and made the 12-year-old actress a huge star.

The word ‘fashioned’ in the passage is closest in meaning to ________.

Mrs. Pike ______ the door before the customers arrived.

(512)______

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
What Do You Think?
We have all had bad experiences with restaurants, stores, or hotels. Maybe you have gone to a restaurant that served terrible food. Perhaps you have gone to a store that had high prices or bad service. Or maybe you have booked a hotel and found out later that the room was nothing like the advertisement. These days, we have a better chance of preventing these unpleasant surprises. We can do this by using apps. “App” is short for “application”. An app is a computer programme on a smartphone. You can use apps to do almost anything. Apps can help you play games, get directions, talk to friends, and so on. If you want to find information about a store or a hotel, you can use a review app. Review apps help us evaluate services and products before we hand over our money. The idea is very simple. After you go to a restaurant or stay in a hotel, you can post a review with one of your apps. You can say anything you want. If you like a hotel you stayed in, you can tell people that it was wonderful. If you think that the food in a certain restaurant was bad, then you tell people not to eat there. Other people can use their apps to read your reviews. Plenty of people prefer not to use these review apps. Many of these people prefer to go out and decide for themselves whether or not a service is good. However, review apps are getting more and more popular every day. Some apps are for specific services. For example, Tripadvisor focuses on travel, and Goodreads focuses on books. There are also other, larger apps that provide information for just about every service that you can think of
7. Which of the following would be another good title for the passage?

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions :
For athletes who like to (1) _________ a variety of endurance sports in a single race, triathlons are a great fit. These competitions (2) _________ running, cycling, and swimming into one race, and they take place one after the other in a single continuous timed race. Athletes who participate must be in top physical form and have the skills needed to complete each portion of the race. Training for triathlons means the athletes have to become proficient not only in the sport required in each stage, but they also have to become familiar with what (3) _________ from one to the other does to their bodies. Many inexperienced triathletes are surprised to (4) _________ hard it can be to switch from swimming to cycling to running, and how tired their muscles can suddenly feel. One thing all triathletes can agree (5) _________ is that no one ever told them that running a triathlon would be easy.

Choose the word whose underlined part is pronounced differently from that of the others.

She will phone you_____________.
(131)____

Why is it that flying to New York from London will leave you feeling less tired than flying to London from New York? The answer may be a clear case of biology not being able to keep up with technology. Deep inside the brain there is a "clock" that governs every aspect of the body's functioning: sleep and wake cycles, levels of alertness, performance, mood, hormone levels, digestion, body temperature and so on. It regulates all of these functions on a 24-hour basis and is called the circadian clock (from the Latin, circa "about" + dies "day").

This body clock programmes us to be sleepy twice a day, between 3-5 a.m and again between 3-5 p.m. Afternoon tea and siesta times are all cultural responses to our natural biological sleepiness in the afternoon. One of the major causes of the travelers' malady known as jet lag is the non-alignment of a person's internal body clock with clocks in the external world. Crossing different time zones confuses the circadian clock, which then has to adjust to the new time and patterns of light and activity. To make matters more complex, not all internal body functions adjust at the same rate. So your sleep/wake may adjust to a new time zone at one rate, while your temperature adjusts at a different pace. Your digestion may be on a different schedule altogether.

Though we live in a 24-hour day, the natural tendency of the body clock is to extend our day beyond 24 hours. It is contrary to our biological programming to shrink our day. That is why travelling in a westward direction is more body-clock friendly than flying east. NASA studies of long haul pilots showed that westward travel was associated with significantly better sleep quantity and quality than eastward flights. When flying west, you are "extending" your day, thus travelling in the natural direction of your internal clock. Flying eastward will involve "shrinking" or reducing your day and is in direct opposition to your internal clock's natural tendency.

One of the more common complaints of travelers is that their sleep becomes disrupted. There are many reasons for this: Changing time zones and schedules, changing light and activity levels, trying to sleep when your body clock is programmed to be awake, disruption of the internal circadian clock and working longer hours. Sleep loss, jet lag and fatigue can seriously affect our ability to function well. Judgment and decision-making can be reduced by 50%, attention by 75 percent, memory by 20 percent and communication by 30 percent. It is often suggested that you adjust your watch as soon as you board a plane, supposedly to try to help you adjust to your destination's schedule as soon as you arrive. But it can take the body clock several days to several weeks to fully adjust to a new time zone.

On the subject of avoiding jet lag the article ________

Choose the best answer:
Do you need thick paper or thin .................?

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
The Power of Crowdsourcing
There is a famous old saying that when trying to solve a problem “two heads are better than one”. Yet until recently, businesses would often rely on one key person to get important tasks done. But thanks to a phenomenon called crowdsourcing, more and more companies are allowing their consumers to have their say when designing new products. The term “crowdsourcing” refers to the process of outsourcing jobs which were once done by a single person to a large group (or a crowd) of people. In the past, crowdsourcing wasn’t practical, as it was impossible to gather thousands of like-minded people together to share opinions. Now, thanks to the Internet, online forums, and social media, this isn’t a difficult task at all. There are many important applications for crowdsourcing in business. For example, if a small business was looking to develop a business logo, it might employ a single designer and hope for the best. However, with crowdsourcing, companies can specify some guidelines about their project, set a budget, and start a design contest online. Within hours, it will likely receive hundreds of designers sending them logos. In the end, they can choose the design they like best and the winner will get compensated. Crowdsourcing has other applications as well. A website called Duolingo is using crowdsourcing to translate documents into different languages. It offers free lessons to language learners. As part of their tests, users translate lines to test their knowledge. Then, a computer programme will analyze thousands of test results for consistency and arrange an accurate translation. Not everyone is sold on crowdsourcing, though. In many cases, it may be better to rely on the opinion of a few specialized professionals than information from a crowd. For instance, it makes more sense to trust the opinion of one top doctor than to take the advice of 1,000 random people regarding a health issue. Another criticism is the low wage that crowdworkers usually receive. Since crowdworkers are freelancers and not employees, they can be paid less than minimum wage. Whether you love or hate crowdsourcing, it appears to be here to stay. So before you make any financial judgements, consider following the crowd and give crowdsourcing a try.
3. Which of the following is NOT a good situation to use crowdsourcing?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
However objective we believe ourselves to be, most of us do not judge a product solely on its merits, considering quality, value and style before making a decision. (1)______, we are easily influenced by the people around us. There is nothing wrong with this. It is probably a smarter way to make decisions than (2)_________  on only our own opinions. But it does make life hard for companies. They have long understood that groups of friends and relatives tend to buy the same products, but understanding the reasons has been tricky. It is because they are so similar with (3)________to how much money they make and what television ads they watch that they independently arrive at the same decision? Or do they copy one another, perhaps (4)_________ envy or perhaps because they have shared information about the products? Research in Finland recently found overwhelming evidence that neighbours have a big influence on buying decisions. When one of a person’s ten nearest neighbours bought a car, the chances that that person would buy a car of the same brand during the next week and a half (5)_____ by 86 per cent. The researchers argued that it was not just a matter of envy. Used cars seemed to attract neighbours even more than new cars. This suggested that people were not trying to keep up with their neighbours, they were keen to learn from them. Since used cars are less reliable, a recommendation of one can strongly influence a buying decision

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
Future Cures for a Better Future
We all wish we could stay forever young, maintaining perfect health throughout our lives. Unfortunately, this is just a pipe dream. In reality, our bodies start to fall apart as we age. Due to genetic weaknesses, neglecting our bodies, and reckless actions, people often find themselves facing a host of issues. Currently, many of these problems can’t be cured by modern medicine. Yet there is hope in the future that remedies will be developed to eliminate these conditions once and for all. One disease which prevents people from enjoying their golden years is Alzheimer’s. It is a brain condition which causes sufferers to slowly lose their memory and intellectual capabilities, and nearly 25 million people are affected by it. Although most of its victims get sick when they are senior citizens, about 5 percent start to show some effects when they are in their 40s or 50s. Within the next five to seven years, medicines should hit the market which greatly reduce the effects of Alzheimer’s, and may even cure it completely. In addition, researchers are working on a vaccine that could prevent people from getting it in the first place. Cancer is one of the deadliest diseases on the Earth. It can strike any organ or quickly spread throughout the body. Despite pumping millions of dollars into cancer research, it has proved to be a difficult disease to defeat. However, scientists are optimistic that they can turn it into a manageable condition within the next decade using a new approach. Doctors envision working with individuals’ DNA to develop more personalized treatments. Although this may not provide a complete cure, it should allow them to extend patients’ lives for many years. Although it is not a disease, baldness is something that many men dread. Although whether we lose hair is based primarily on genetics, many men feel that they did something wrong to cause it. As a result, men have been tricked with pills and routines that promise to cure baldness but actually do nothing at all. As it looks, there may be some effective treatments on the horizon. One involves cloning healthy hair follicles to ensure that men maintain a healthy head of hair. Another involves reawakening old hair follicles that have stop functioning. In the meantime, shaved heads are in style, so men should realize that they have other options.
2. Which of the following people would be most likely to get Alzheimer’s disease?

In the world of ---143--- apps, those developed by Arvedlon, Inc., stand out for their innovation and ease of use. The newly released Forward Path app ---144--- tablets and smartphones are no exception. Forward Path connects with home exercise equipment such as stationary bicycles and rowing machines. Users can select video footage of dozens of real-world routes. Then they can choose from several speed options ---145--- the video to the pace of their workouts. ---146---. While nothing can replace an outdoor workout, Forward Path comes closer than any other app currently on the market. Our testers highly recommend it.

144....................

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Poor Pluto! Once the ninth planet in our solar system, Pluto has now been demoted to the status of a "dwarf planet". It is no longer even part of our solar system, but rather of a separate area called the Kuiper Belt. The decision came about after the International Astronomical Union (IAU) tried to shed some light on Pluto's status. It came up with a new definition for planets that Pluto did not fit. Many in the astronomical disagreed with it, especially since the Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Neptune would not be planets either according to this definition! Only five percent of the astronomical community voted on this issue, and critics say this decision was not based on the community as a whole. In the state of New Mexico, a resolution has been passed that Pluto will always be a planet. This was done in honor of Clyde Tombaugh who discovered Pluto and lived most of his life in New Mexico. Pluto's demotion was also influenced by its size - it's only half the size of our moon! It consists of rock and ice. Pluto has one big moon (Charon) an two smaller ones (Nix and Hydra). Lowell realized that there must be a ninth planet as the gravitational pull of a large body was influencing the orbit of Uranus. He called it "Planet X". He spent his whole life searching for "Planet X" but to no avail. It was until 1930 that it was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh. Now that "Planet X" has finally been discovered, it needed a name. Suggestions poured in from all over the world, but it was an 11 -year-old girl. Venetia Burnet, who came up with the name "Pluto". Venetia was interested in Greek history, and "Pluto", was another name for Hades, god of the Underworld (Hell). As she imagined it to be a cold and dark place, she felt that "Pluto" would be an appropriate name. The Lowe Observatory (where Clyde Tombaugh worked) agreed and Pluto was born! Pluto is so far away from Earth that it is difficult to study. That will change in 2015 when the "New Horizons" spacecraft arrives on Pluto. It was launched on January 19.2006. It carries with it the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh Pluto's discover who died in 1997. It is hoped that the mission will give scientists more information about Pluto. Even though Pluto has lost its place in the sun, it is still important enough for scientists to study!
9. What does the phrase "many moons ago" mean?

I like this_______song because it reminds me of my schooldays.
(145)_____

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
Fighting Back against Bullying
It is often said that childhood is the most joyful period in a person’s life. This is supposed to be a time when children can focus on their studies and enjoy their free time with friends. However, these days more and more children are experiencing a stressful and miserable adolescence due to bullying. Bullying occurs when one student, or a group of students, uses aggression to harm another child and try to make them feel bad. This abuse can either be physical, such as pushing or beating another student, or it could take the form of mental abuse, such as taunting and teasing the student. Although it may seem harmless to some, studies show that bullying can greatly impact a child’s life and have long-lasting negative effects. People who have been bullied may experience self-esteem issues and start to lack confidence in almost everything they do. These traits can make it difficult to manage relationships and even cause them to have trouble holding down a steady job. One of the most harmful types of bullying that is on the rise is cyberbullying. The bullied student is targeted in cruel or threatening e-mails, instant messages, or hateful public posts about them. In many cases, bullies will post embarrassing pictures of the victim or spread nasty rumors about them through social media. In some tragic cases, children have even turned to suicide, feeling that they can’t deal with the humiliation. If you are being bullied by another student, you don’t have to accept it or suffer. There are some steps you can take to deal with the problem. At first, you may try to ignore the bully, as they will often lose interest in bothering you if you don’t react. If the bullying persists, however, you should tell a trusted adult as soon as possible. This could be a parent, a family friend, a teacher, a school guidance counselor, or even the school principal. Until recently, many teachers and school officials turned a blind eye to bullying, believing that the students would eventually sort it out by themselves. But this mindset has changed in recent years in light of some of the tragedies that have occurred. If for any reason you feel that your complaints are not being taken seriously, there are other groups available online who will help you deal with bullying. By dealing with bullying at an early stage, you can stop it before it gets much worse.
4. What effects can bullying have on a person?