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Even though it’s sometimes hard for parents to think about letting go of their child, the best relationships are the ones that teens come back to, as adults, recognizing how their parents have helped them into adulthood by not clinging or pushing them away too soon. We recommend that parents look for opportunities to teach independence, starting in childhood. Encourage your teen to be responsible for his or her own time. “How much time do you need for homework?” “How long to do you need to unwind after school?” If the answers to these questions are “None” and “Until midnight”, then your teen needs some help making a schedule. Many teens can come up with a reasonable time for getting things done, with some practice and initial limits from you. You may want to let her try out her schedule through, say, one grading period. If grades go down, the schedule needs work and maybe more supervision from you. Not knowing basic financial skills can be one the first things to trip up a newly independent young adult. Look for chances to teach basic money skills. Some parents give their teen a set amount of money and let her plan the weekly grocery shopping or family vacation. Have her help you pay utility bills and budget for expenses. Explain carefully about credit cards and limit access to credit. Teens are impulsive, and easily get stuck in the trap of  charging more than they can pay off. An after-school job is a great opportunity for your teen to start practicing. More than anything else, teens learn from making mistakes. As a parent, your job is to try to make sure that the mistakes your teen makes aren’t life-threatening, like getting into the car with a drunk driver. Most mistakes, though, will not fall into that category. No one is perfect, especially parents. It’s important that teen see that you do not expect perfection from him or from yourself, and that you can admit your mistakes when you make them. Letting your teen make mistakes, and letting him suffer the consequences of a mistake, can be hard to do. But when you give your teen permission to make mistakes, and let him know you love him anyway, you tell him that you believe in his ability to take a fall, get up and learn from it  
1. Which best serves as the title for the passage?

Choose the best answer:
City/ children/ have/ more/ interesting life/ country ones.

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The comings and goings of teenagers, while a frequent source of tension in the  parent–child relationship, are a crucial experience in the construction of social identities. For this age group, mobility is not just a practice that is socially determined – by social background, residential environment and schooling – but also a specific experience that durably shapes their relationships with the spaces and the social world they encounter.  Although mobility is a socialised practice, based on habits forged in the domestic, residential and school environments, it is itself a specific experience in teenage socialisation. At this age, mobility plays an important role in individuals’ learning of behaviours and ways of being, gradually reshaping the dispositions acquired during primary socialisation.  First of all, mobility affects teenagers’ ways of being and behaving within their peer group, which play an increasingly important role in teenage socialisation. At this age, peers become more and more involved in mobility practices: they are one of the key reasons for mobility but, above all, they become preferred partners in self-mobility situations.  Furthermore, the movements of teenagers, alone or in groups, gradually reshapes their dispositions vis-à-vis mobility, particularly those acquired in the domestic sphere. At this age, experiences in mobility have lasting effects on the future practices of teenagers. They sometimes help modify the dispositions of teenagers regarding transport modes. We could cite, among other examples, the case of a girl whose fear of the metro gradually diminished as a result of occasional trips with her best friend, who was more familiar with this mode of transport. These experiences also influence the spatial amplitude of future mobility, in particular preferences for travel within or outside one’s area of residence.  Lastly, mobility allows teenagers to discover the public domain, when it gives rise to interactions that take place under the gaze of an incidental audience and which are therefore subject to specific rules. In the course of their travels, teenagers gradually become familiar with these rules, and they mutually adapt their behaviours to those of other citizens so as to eventually find their place within the public domain. Listening to music on mobile phones on public transport, for example, is appropriate to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the circumstances at the time.
1. What is the subject of the passage?

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Improving girls’ educational levels has been demonstrated to have clear impacts on the health and economic future of young women, which in turn improves the prospects of their entire community. The infant mortality rate of babies whose mothers have received primary education is half that of children whose mothers are illiterate. In the poorest countries of the world, 50% of girls do not attend secondary school. Yet, research shows that every extra year of school for girls increases their lifetime income by 15%. Improving female education, and thus the earning potential of women, improves the standard of living for their own children, as women invest more of their income in their families than men do. Yet, many barriers to education for girls remain. In some African countries, such as Burkina Faso, girls are unlikely to attend school for such basic reasons as a lack of private latrine facilities for girls. Higher attendance rates of high schools and university education among women, particularly in developing countries, have helped them make inroads to professional careers with better-paying salaries and wages. Education increases a woman’s (and her partner and the family’s) level of health and health awareness. Furthering women’s levels of education and advanced training also tends to lead to later ages of initiation of sexual activity and first intercourse, later age at first marriage, and later age at first childbirth, as well as an increased likelihood to remain single, have no children, or have no formal marriage and alternatively, have increasing levels of long-term partnerships. It can lead to higher rates of barrier and chemical contraceptive use (and a lower level of sexually transmitted infections among women and their partners and children), and can increase the level of resources available to women who divorce or are in a situation of domestic violence. It has been shown, in addition, to increase women’s communication with their partners and their employers, and to improve rates of civic participation such as voting or the holding of office.
3. It is implied in the first paragraph that: 

Environmental Concerns

Earth is the only place we know of in the universe that can support human life. (1) ........ human activities are making the planet less fit to live on. The western world (2) ........ on consuming two-thirds of the world's resources while half of the world's population do so (3) ........ to stay alive. We are rapidly destroying the very resource we have by which all people can survive and prosper. Everywhere fertile soil is (4) ........ built on or washed into the sea. Renewable resources are exploited so much that they will never be able to recover completely. We discharge pollutants into the atmosphere without any thought of the consequences. As a (5) ........ the planet's ability to support people is being reduced at the very time when rising human numbers and consumption are (6) ........ increasingly heavy demands on it. The Earth's natural resources are there for us to use. We need food, water, air, energy, medicines, warmth, shelter and minerals to keep us fed, comfortable, healthy and (7) ……... If we are sensible in how we use the resources they will (8) ........ indefinitely. But if we use them wastefully and excessively they will soon run out and everyone will suffer.

(8) ........

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The climate crisis is poised to deliver a severe blow to America’s most threatened animals, with a new study finding that almost every species considered endangered is vulnerable in some way to global heating. Of the 459 animal species listed as endangered by the US government, researchers found that all but one, or 99.8%, have characteristics that will make it difficult for them to adapt to rising temperatures. The California condor, once close to being completely wiped out, faces increased risk of contamination in hotter conditions. Key deer, found only in the Florida Keys, face losing habitat to the rising seas. Whole classes of animals including amphibians, mollusks and arthropods are sensitive to the greatest number of climate-related threats, such as changes in water quality, shifting seasons and harmful invasive species that move in as temperatures climb. Mammals, such as the north Atlantic right whale and Florida panther, also face increased hardships, albeit on fewer fronts than amphibians, mollusks and arthropods.  Despite the overwhelming peril faced by America’s endangered species due to the climate crisis, the report, published in Nature Climate Change, found a patchy response from the US government. Federal agencies consider just 64% of endangered species to be threatened by the climate crisis, while just 18% of listed species have protection plans in place. Astrid Caldas, a study co-author and a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists said: “While agencies have increasingly listed climate change as a growing threat to species whose survival is already precarious, many have not translated this concern into tangible actions, meaning a significant protection gap still exists.” Nearly half of Australian species are threatened by the climate crisis, researchers have found. A spokesman for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the endangered species list, said that while a species may be sensitive to changes in the climate, this sensitivity may not be so severe as to warrant being put on the list. “Our process for determining this looks at five factors: threats to a species’ habitat, overutilization, disease or predation, existing regulatory mechanisms, and other factors that may affect its continued existence,” he said. “Through this scientifically rigorous process we examine and account for the effects of climate change.  
2. The word “poised” in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to _______.

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Light, litter and noise from boating and water sports are all major stressors on marine  life, a new study aims to enhance our knowledge of the effects of these stressors. Researchers will be gathering data from sporting events, leisure boating, tourism and beach activities. The project will assess the impact that these activities have on the environment and marine life in order to offer further guidance to organisers and water sports enthusiasts.  Mike Laflin said: “I’ve worked in the sports industry for 30 years, providing market intelligence and information services and a few years ago I started to measure the impact of sporting events on host cities and nations. I’m excited to support this new research so that we can understand more about how our activities impact the environment and how we can mitigate against any negative effects.” Theresa Laflin said: “We are very excited to be able to support all the wonderful work that the university is doing in the area of marine research, and for increasing our awareness of the detrimental impact we have on our environment.”  The PhD project will be supervised by Tamara Galloway, Professor of Ecotoxicology at Exeter, who conducts research into the human health effects of pollutants, particularly micro-plastics in water; and Steve Simpson, Associate Professor in Marine Biology and Global Change at the University of Exeter, who has shown that man-made noise is having a detrimental effect on the marine world. Simpson said: “Noise from offshore construction, shipping and motorboats all change the ocean soundscape, disrupting acoustic communication, robbing animals of fundamental sensory information and causing stress. However, working with industry we have found that by managing when and where noise is made, and developing new technology to reduce the noise, we can mitigate the impacts of noise. Finding solutions to reduce the impacts of sporting activities will further help to protect the marine environment.” Galloway said: “We’ll be looking at all forms of pollution both from everyday leisure activities and major sporting events. Investigating specific events gives us the opportunity to measure environmental quality before and after the event, and to return after a period of time to assess recovery. Such an event could be seen as an ‘acute stressor’. Then we’ll also assess ongoing sporting activities, akin to a ‘chronic stressor’ and will try to compare and contrast different types of impact.” 
2. The word “litter” in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to _______

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From their inception, most rural neighborhoods in colonial North America included at least one carpenter, joiner, sawyer, and cooper in woodworking; a weaver and a tailor for clothing production; a tanner, currier, and cordwainer (shoemaker) for fabricating leather objects; and a blacksmith for metalwork. Where stone was the local building material, a mason was sure to appear on the list of people who paid taxes. With only an apprentice as an assistant, the rural artisan provided the neighborhood with common goods from furniture to shoes to farm equipment in exchange for cash or for “goods in kind” from the customer’s field, pasture, or dairy. Sometimes artisans transformed material provided by the customer wove cloth of yam spun at the farm from the wool of the family sheep; made chairs or tables from wood cut in the customer’s own woodlot; produced shoes or leather breeches from cow, deer, or sheepskin tanned on the farm.  Like their farming neighbors, rural artisans were part of an economy seen, by one historian, as “an orchestra conducted by nature.” Some tasks could not be done in the winter, others had to be put off during harvest time, and still others waited on raw materials that were only produced seasonally. As the days grew shorter, shop hours kept pace, since few artisans could afford enough artificial light to continue work when the sun went down.  To the best of their ability, colonial artisans tried to keep their shops as efficient as possible and to regularize their schedules and methods of production for the best return on their investment in time, tools, and materials. While it is pleasant to imagine a woodworker, for example, carefully matching lumber, joining a chest together without resort to nails or glue, and applying all thought and energy to carving beautiful designs on the finished piece, the time required was not justified unless the customer was willing to pay extra for the quality - and few in rural areas were. Artisans, therefore, often found it necessary to employ as many shortcuts and economics as possible while still producing satisfactory products.
4. According to the passage, from whose skin were shoes produced?

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Thunderstorms, with their jagged bursts of lightning and roaring thunder, are actually one of nature’s primary mechanisms for transferring heat from the surface of the earth into the atmosphere. A thunderstorm starts when low-lying pockets of warm air from the surface of the earth begin to rise. The pockets of warm air float upward through the air above that is both cooler and heavier. The rising pockets cool as their pressure decreases, and their latent heat is released above the condensation line through the formation of cumulus clouds. What will happen with these clouds depends on the temperature of the atmosphere. In winter, the air temperature differential between higher and lower altitudes is not extremely great, and the temperature of the rising air mass drops more slowly. During these colder months, the atmosphere, therefore, tends to remain rather stable. In summer, however, when there is a high accumulation of heat near the earth’s surface, in direct contrast to the considerably colder air higher up, the temperature differential between higher and lower altitudes is much more pronounced. As warm air rises in this type of environment, the temperature drops much more rapidly than it does in winter; when the temperature drops more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit per thousand feet of altitude, cumulus clouds aggregate into a single massive cumulonimbus cloud, or thunderhead. In isolation, a single thunderstorm is an impressive but fairly benign way for Mother Earth to defuse trapped heat from her surface; thunderstorms, however, can appear in concert, and the resulting show, while extremely impressive, can also prove extraordinarily destructive. When there is a large-scale collision between cold air and warm air masses during the summer months, a squall line, or series of thunderheads, may develop. It is common for a squall line to begin when an advancing cold front meets up with and forces itself under a layer of warm and moist air, creating a line of thunderstorms that races forward at speeds of approximately forty miles per hour. A squall line, which can be hundreds of miles long and can contain fifty distinct thunderheads, is a magnificent force of nature with incredible potential for destruction. Within the squall line, often near its southern end, can be found supercells, long-lived rotating storms of exceptional strength that serve as the source of tornadoes.
7. All of the following are mentioned in the passage about supercells EXCEPT that they ________

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Sandwiches make a delicious snack any time. They are a common sight a picnics and  teas. Interestingly enough, the sandwich is (1) _______ invention of an 18th -century English Earl called John Montagu. Montagu was addicted to card games. He would play these games with his friends for long stretches of time. Often, he even found it too (2) _______ to stop his games for meals.  One day, in the middle of a game, Montagu was served a meal of sliced meat with bread. At the time, Montagu was playing the game that (3) _______ its players to cover cards one on top of another. As Montagu looked at both the game and his food, an idea came to his mind. “I can do the same with my food as well,” he thought. He took a slice of bread, placed a (4)______ of meat on it and covered that with another slice of bread. Montagu was very pleased with his invention because it allowed him to play cards with one hand and eat his meal with the other.  Montagu’s friends quickly (5) _______ to his idea and they named the new invention after him. As Montagu’s full title was “the Earl of Sandwich”, the new invention became known as a “sandwich”.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions.

The poaching crisis wiping out Africa's elephants is costing the continent's economies millions in lost tourism revenue, according to a new study. Researchers looked at visitor and elephant data across 25 countries, and modeled financial losses from fewer visitors in protected areas due to the illegal wildlife trade, which has caused elephant numbers to plummet by more than 100,000 in the last decade. (A)

The study team combined visitor numbers across 164 protected areas in 25 countries in forest and savannah elephants, and elephant population data from 2009 to 2013, to reach a “per elephant" value in terms of tourism income.

They concluded that Africa was most likely losing $26m in tourism revenue a year. (B) Around $9m of that is lost from tourists' direct spending, such as staying at hotels and buying crafts, with the rest through indirect value in the economy such as farmers and other suppliers supporting the tourist industry.

The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that in most cases the revenue losses were higher than paying for stronger anti-poaching measures to keep elephant populations stable. (C) Dr. Robin Naidoo, the paper's lead author and , senior conservation wildlife scientist at WWF and his team found. In the case of central Africa's forest elephants, which are harder for tourists to see and therefore attract fewer visitors, the costs of protecting them exceed the benefits from tourism. Demand from south-east Asia has seen the price of ivory triple since 2009 and it is estimated that one elephant is killed every 15 minutes. (D) Corruption, a lack of resources, and, most importantly, increasingly sophisticated poachers have hamstrung African countries' efforts to stem the trade.

Naidoo said that the research was not suggesting economic issues should be the only consideration when protecting elephants, but framing the poaching crisis as a financial one could motivate African governments and communities.

“It gives an additional reason for some groups of people, who may not necessarily be motivated by intrinsic reasons for conversation, to engage with biodiversity conservation. It makes it clear to them that it's not just in the best interests of the world to conserve this stuff, but tangible reasons for a whole different group," he said.

The word sophisticated in paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to ____.

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Taking piano lessons and solving math puzzles on a computer significantly improve specific math skills of elementary schoolchildren, according to a new study. The results, (1)______ were published in the journal Neurological Research, are the latest in a series that links musical training to the development of higher brain functions. Researchers worked with 135 second-grade students at a school in Los Angeles after (2)______ a pilot study with 102 students. Children that were given four months of piano training as well as time playing (3)______ newly designed computer software scored 27 percent higher on math and fraction tests than other children. Piano instruction is thought to enhance the brain's "hard wiring" for spatial-temporal reasoning, or the ability to visualise and transform objects in space and time, says Professor Gordon Shaw, who led the study. At the same time, the computer game allows children to solve geometric and math puzzles that boost their ability to (4)______ shapes in their mind. The findings are significant (5)______ a grasp of proportional math and fractions is a prerequisite to math at higher levels, and children who do not master these areas of math cannot understand more advanced math that is critical to high-tech fields.

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In the 1960s, it took pop and rock groups one or two days to record other their songs. Nowadays, it can take months and months. Many rock groups begin by recording only one instrument, for example, the voice. Then they record (1)________ instruments – electric piano, synthesizer, guitars, drums and so on. Next, they might use a computer to add special effects. Finally, they ‘mix’ all the instruments until they get the sound that they want. This means that a CD or cassette will always sound very different from a (2) ______ concert. Music engineers have developed a new computer programme that will change the future of music. A computer can analyze a singer’s voice. Then if you give the computer the (3)_________ and music of a song, the computer can ‘sing’ it in that voice. This means that a singer only needs to record one song and the computer can then sing other songs in the singer’s own voice. Singers can sing new songs many years after they have died. Most of us listen to music for pleasure, but for the record companies, music is a product, the same as soap powder. (4)___________ a record company finds a new group (or ‘band’), they first try to develop the band’s ‘profile’. They will try to create an ‘image’ for the band that they think will attract young people. Instead of allowing the band’s full artistic freedom, they will often (5)_______ the band what they should wear, what they should say and how they should sing and play. In recent year, many rock groups have started their own record companies because they say that the big companies are too commercial

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A generation gap in the workplace can make workers both young and old feel inferior, as well as hamper productivity and teamwork. Differences between generations can be seen in work ethics, habits and communication styles. Younger workers might fear not being taken seriously by their older colleagues, while older workers might fear that their experience is not valued but replaced by workers with knowledge of more current technology. However, members of each generation can close the gap between them if they’re willing to meet one another halfway. Older workers can show respect to the younger set by asking for their opinions and recognizing their contributions to the workplace as valid, or complimenting them on a job well done. Younger workers can show their elders respect by asking for advice on how to manage a situation with work, based on the older worker’s many years of experience. It’s important for both entry- and senior-level workers to see each other as equals, regardless of the type of position in which they work. No one wants to feel inferior or irrelevant just because of their age. Rather, a generation gap at work can be a learning opportunity. Workers can also put themselves in their colleagues’ shoes to determine what might be bothering them about their generational age difference. If a person is much older than another, perhaps it is bitterness about fewer job opportunities, or fear that a younger worker might seem more relevant and edge him out of his job. If workers open their minds to understand where co-workers are coming from, it can help ease any tension between them and appreciate each other’s work contributions.  If age seems to be a problem for someone at the workplace, it can be helpful to do the very opposite of what a co-worker might expect from someone of a different age set due to stereotypes. For example, if a worker is considerably younger such as right out of college, she can share researched information to indicate that she knows what she’s doing, or show curiosity instead of upset to indicate emotional maturity if the person makes a disparaging remark about her youth. Older workers can maintain an enthusiastic attitude about work instead of showing boredom or bitterness from past experiences. Workers can, moreover, directly address the concern of age differences at work with the colleague at odds with them by asking the person for constructive advice on how to handle the issue. For example, older workers who are unfamiliar with new software that younger colleagues understand might acknowledge to them that they did the same tasks differently in years past but show interest in learning the program to keep up with modern technology. Learning to speak their technological language can make them feel more connected. Likewise, a younger worker can admit to being green on the work scene, but eager to gain experience by learning from senior colleagues.  
3. What does the writer mean by stating “put themselves in their colleagues’ shoes” in paragraph 3?

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There are many thoughts on the origins of civilization. One of the major factors  involved was the increase in population. The development of techniques, primarily irrigation and food control, which permitted agriculture in special areas such as the flood plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, made possible the support of large population. Once populations reach a certain number, the older pattern of social organization breaks down and new ones develop. Specifically the older system whereby each individual participated in food production and maintained a similar standard of living, and whereby kinship served as the basic method of social organization, was replaced by the occupational division of labor, political and religious hierarchies, public works such as road and public building construction, class systems, codes of law, markets, new forms of warfare, and urban centres. Allied with these important sociological traits are material traits, such as monumental architecture and development of science and, in many cases, metallurgy and writing systems.  The earliest civilization, Sumer, developed in the Middle East. This was the Bronze Age of the Old World, during which people first developed the art of metallurgy, civilization also arose in other parts of the Old World first in Egypt, China and India, and later in Europe and Africa. At this time, civilization also developed independently in the New World, in the Mexican area and in Peru and its neighboring areas.  In the Old World the Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age, which saw the rise and fall of great empires and the shift of power from the Middle East to Greece and Rome and then to Western Europe. In the 1700s the Industrial Age began, leading directly to the modern civilization of today. 
3. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

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An American game that has traveled well is basketball, now played by more than 250 million people worldwide in an organized fashion, as well as by countless others in “pick-up” games. Basketball originated in 1891 when a future Presbyterian minister named James Naismith (1861-1939) was assigned to teach a physical education class at a Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) training school in Springfield, Massachusetts. The class had been noted for being disorderly, and Naismith was told to invent a new game to keep the young men occupied. Since it was winter and very cold outside, a game that could be played indoors was desirable.  Naismith thought back to his boyhood in Canada, where he and his friends had played “duck on a rock,” which involved trying to knock a large rock off a boulder by throwing smaller rocks at it. He also recalled watching rugby players toss a ball into a box in a gymnasium. He had the idea of nailing up raised boxes into which players would attempt to throw a ball. When boxes couldn’t be found, he used peach baskets. According to Alexander Wolff, in his book 100 Years of Hoops, Naismith drew up the rules for the new game in “about an hour.” Most of them still apply in some forms today.  Basketball caught on because graduates of the YMCA school traveled widely, because Naismith disseminated the rules freely, and because there was a need for a simple game that could be played indoors during winter. Naismith’s legacy included the first great college basketball coach, Forrest “Phog” Allen (1885-1974), who played for Naismith at the University of Kansas and went on to win 771 games as a coach at Kansas himself. Among Allen’s star players was Wilt Chamberlain, who became one of professional basketball’s first superstars – one night in 1962, he scored a record 100 points in a game.  The first professional basketball league was formed in 1898; players earned $2.50 for home games, $1.25 for games on the road. Not quite 100 years later, Juwan Howard, a star player for the Washington Bullets (now called the Washington Wizards), had competing offers of more than $100 million over seven seasons from the Bullets and the Miami Heat.  Many teams in the National Basketball Association now have foreign players, who return home to represent their native countries during the Olympic Games. The so-called Dream Team, made up of the top American professional basketball players, has represented
the United States in recent Olympic Games. In 1996 the Dream Team trailed some opponents until fairly late in the games. In Athens in 2004 Argentina took home the gold, the first time a Latin American country won the basketball honor. 
8. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

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In the future, maybe all cars that run on petrol will be replaced by solar cars, which  have been around for a while, but with recent (1)__________ in solar car design and the measurement of photovoltaic cells becoming smaller, the dream of a truly efficient solar car is more reality than fantasy.  A solar car is a vehicle (2)__________ by photovoltaic cells, also called solar cells, which convert sunlight (light energy) into electrical energy.  As a source of energy on earth, there is nothing like the sun: in a mere one thousandth of one second (.001), the sun emits enough energy to fulfill our planet’s (3)_______ needs for the next 5,000 years. It is a staggering fact, and an exciting one. Since the energy from the sun is responsible for renewable resources such as wind, tides, and heat, solar energy seems to offer the brightest future for not only cars, but for the entire energy crisis. Despite the appearance that solar energy may be the least feasible among the current crop of (4)_________ fuel propositions, new solar powered devices and more specifically solar powered cars are beginning to be developed. How do solar cars work?  The photo-voltaic cells absorb photons from sunlight. This action generates heat, which the cells then convert into electrical energy and stores in an on-board battery. This process of conversion is called the photovoltaic effect. Not surprisingly, such a vehicle has zero emissions, and is very (5)________ friendly. Unfortunately, at the moment photovoltaic cells are extremely inefficient, yet as time progresses the efficiency of these cells will grow. This will make solar energy and solar cars the fuel and car of the future-a closer reality

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That’s all well and good, but if a potential new friend doesn’t see the same joyous  charms in you, it’s (1)_________that anything deep and lasting will come of it. That said, there’s no telling when and where a friendship will develop. Often, they arise from a shared interest or hobby, and people are typically drawn together (2)________ they’re in the same stage of life, like new parents or retirees. People of similar backgrounds and cultures also tend to come together by bonding (3)______ shared lifelong experiences. Although most of these relationships take time to get really deep, occasionally friendship is more like a lightning (4) __________. “Sometimes you can be in a big group of new people and you catch someone’s eye and it’s like ‘boom!’ – instant friendship,” Degges-White says about an experience she’s termed the “clicking phenomenon.” “It’s kind of like that burst of ‘love at first sight,’ but it’s a friendship, not (5)_________ .”

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The aviation industry, especially the commercial aviation sector, is constantly striving to improve both the way it works and its customer satisfaction. It has begun using artificial intelligence. Though AI in the aviation industry is still in the nascent stage, some progress has been made already as certain leading carriers invest in AI. To make a long story short, AI can redefine how the aviation industry goes about its work. In 2017, American Airlines conducted an app development competition with the goal of having an app developed for making baggage screening easier for passengers. The competition, named HackWars, was themed upon artificial intelligence, drones and augmented and virtual reality. The winner, known as “Team Avatar,” developed an app that would not only allow passengers determine their baggage size before arriving at the airport, but also prepay any potential baggage-related expenses. United Airlines is using Amazon’s Alexa to have certain common customer queries answered. In September 2017, United announced a collaboration with Alexa. The feature is known as the United skill. To get started, all passengers need to do is to  add the United skill to their Alexa app and then start asking questions. Alexa answers common queries correctly, such as the status of a flight by number, check-in requests and availability of Wi-Fi on a flight. The reviews so far have been mixed, which points to the fact that there is a learning curve, and it is still a long way to go before AI can fully handle customer assistance. Tracking progress is an enormous challenge that airlines will face. The first thing they need to do is to develop analytics that will help them develop and process accurate data. However, that in itself is a challenge. What kind of analytics will help? For example, customer satisfaction is going to be one of the most important factors in success. What kind of analytics will determine that airlines have been improving on customer satisfaction parameters? AI needs huge investments, and probably the biggest risk in this is smaller, especially budget airlines are going to miss out on reaping the benefits of AI fully. Does that mean that the performance of the smaller carriers will be impacted? That might not be the case, because we might be moving toward more acquisitions and mergers. Bigger airlines will have a massive appetite for acquiring smaller airlines with an eye on the market. It is not all gloom and doom though, because smaller airlines like Southwest have already shown some initiatives toward embracing AI. It is surprising that a sector as important as aviation has woken up to AI so late. As AI in aviation picks up its pace, there could probably be a few mergers, acquisitions or even closure of small airlines which will not be able to afford the investments. Now, AI seems the best option to take aviation to the next level.
4. The word “queries” in paragraph 3 can best be replaced by _____

The National Automobile Show in New York has been one of the top auto shows in the United States since 1900. On November 3 of that year, about 8,000 people looked over the "horseless carriages." It was the opening day and the first opportunity for the automobile industry to show off its wares to a large crowd; however, the black-tie audience treated the occasion more as a social affair than as a sales extravaganza. It was also on the first day of this show that William McKinley became the first U.S. president to ride in a car.
The automobile was not invented in the United States. That distinction belongs to Germany. Nikolaus Otto built the first practical internal-combustion engine there in 1876. Then, German engineer Karl Benz built what are regarded as the first modern automobiles in the mid-1880s. But the United States pioneered the merchandising of the automobile. The auto show proved to be an effective means of getting the public excited about automotive products.

By happenstance, the number of people at the first New York show equaled the entire car population of the United States at that time. In 1900,10 million bicycles and an unknown number of horse-drawn carriages provided the prime means of personal transportation. Only about 4,000 cars were assembled in the United States in 1900, and only a quarter of those were gasoline powered. The rest ran on steam or electricity.

After viewing the cars made by forty car makers, the show's audience favored electric cars because they were quiet. The risk of a boiler explosion turned people away from steamers, and the gasoline-powered cars produced smelly fumes. The Duryea Motor Wagon Company, which launched the American auto industry in 1895, offered a fragrant additive designed to mask the smells of the naphtha that it burned. Many of the 1900 models were cumbersome—the Gasmobile, the Franklin, and the Orient, for example, steered with a tiller like a boat instead of with a steering wheel. None of them was equipped with an automatic starter.

These early model cars were practically handmade and were not very dependable. They were basically toys of the well-to-do. In fact, Woodrow Wilson, then a professor at Princeton University and later President of the United States, predicted that automobiles would cause conflict between the wealthy and the poor. However, among the exhibitors at the 1900 show was a young engineer named Henry Ford. But before the end of the decade, he would revolutionize the automobile industry with his Model T Ford. The Model T, first produced in 1909, featured a standardized design and a streamlined method of production—the assembly line. Its lower costs made it available to the mass market.

Cars at the 1900 show ranged in price from $1,000 to $1,500, or roughly $14,000 to $21,000 in today's prices. By 1913, the Model T was selling for less than $300, and soon the price would drop even further. "I will build cars for the multitudes," Ford said, and he kept his promise.

What was the highest price asked for a car at the 1900 National Automobile Show in the dollars of that time?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Most households in the UK will have a broadband connection and a lot of those  houses will also have experienced connection or speed issues. But what if there was a way to connect to the internet and benefit from a direct connection with much faster speeds? Enter Li-Fi.  Li-Fi stands for Light Fidelity and is a Visible Light Communications (VLC) system which runs wireless communications that travel at very high speeds. With Li-Fi, your light blub is essentially your router. It uses common household LED light bulbs to enable data transfer, boasting speeds of up to 224 gigabits per second.  Li-Fi and Wi-Fi are quite similar as both transmit data electromagnetically. However, Wi-Fi uses radio waves, while Li-Fi runs on visible light waves. This means that it accommodates a photo-detector to receive light signals and a signal processing element to convert the data into “streamable” content. For example, data is fed into an LED light bulb, it then sends data at rapid speeds to the photo-detector. The tiny changes in the rapid dimming of LED bulbs is then converted by the “receiver” into electrical signal. The signal is then converted back into a binary data stream that we would recognise as web, video and audio applications that run on internet-enabled devices.  While some may think that Li-Fi with its 224 gigabits per second leaves Wi-Fi in the dust, Li-Fi’s exclusive use of visible light could halt a mass uptake. Li-Fi signals cannot pass through walls, so in order to enjoy full connectivity, capable LED bulbs will need to be placed throughout the home. Not to mention, Li-Fi requires the light bulb is on at all times to provide connectivity, meaning that the lights will need to be on during the day. Additionally, where there is a lack of light bulbs, there is a lack of Li-Fi internet so Li-Fi does take a hit when it comes to public Wi-Fi networks.  However, using Li-Fi instead of Wi-Fi, you’ll negate lots of security problems associated with shared and often overloaded broadband networks. It will also be advantageous in areas where radio frequency waves do not reach. Due to its impressive speeds, Li-Fi could make a huge impact on the internet of things too, with data transferred at much higher levels with even more devices able to connect to one another. 
1. Which best serves as the title for the passage?