Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Modern technology, in all its various forms, has changed the way we live our lives,  but unfortunately, (1) _______ has not always been for the better. A number of things we used to value highly are gradually disappearing or have disappeared altogether. Take punctuality, for example; before mobile phones, people had to keep their appointments and get to meetings (2) _______ time. Now, it seems, it is perfectly acceptable to send a text five minutes before you are due to meet, telling your friend or colleague not to expect you for another half an hour or so.  The Internet, too, has had a negative effect on our (3) _________. Rudeness seems to be the language of debate on any site which (4) ________ users to give their opinions. Anonymity makes it easier for people to insult anyone that has views which are different from their own. They lose all sense of politeness and restraint, safe in the knowledge that they (5) _______ never be identified.

Books which give instructions on how to do things are very popular in the United States today. Thousands of these How-to books are useful. In fact, there are about four thousand books with titles that begin with the words “How to”. One book may tell you how to earn more money. Another may tell you how to save or spend it and another may explain how to give your money away.

Many How-to books give advice on careers. They tell you how to choose a career and ‘now to succeed in it. If you fail, however, you can buy the book ” How to Turn Failure into Success”. If you would like to become very rich, you can buy the book “How to Make a Millionaire”. If you never make any money at all, you may need a book called “How to Live on Nothing”.

One of the most popular types of books is one that helps you with personal problems. If you want to have a better love of life, you can read “How to Succeed in Love every Minute of Your Life”. If you are tired of books on happiness, you may prefer books which give step-by-step instructions on how to redecorate or enlarge a house.

Why have How-to books become so popular? Probably because life has become so complex. Today people have far more free time to use, more choices to make, and more problems to solve. How-to books help people deal with modern life.

 What is the passage mainly about?

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Would you believe that your diet can make a big difference in keeping a youthful appearance? It seems strange to think that the food we take in could result in fewer wrinkles. Wouldn’t it be better to put things on our skin rather than in our mouths? Well, according to one scientific theory, our bodies start aging because of oxidation. This is caused by certain oxygen-containing molecules in our cells, called free radicals. Free radicals have the capability to attach to and damage parts of our cells, including our DNA. Our bodies have the ability to repair this damage. However, as we get older, these repair mechanisms start to break down, resulting in signs of aging, such as wrinkles. Free radicals are actually produced by our bodies, but their numbers can also increase because of the food we eat. Besides avoiding foods that could potentially produce more free radicals, eating foods that contain certain vitamins and micro-nutrients can also keep us looking young. These vitamins help produce molecules called antioxidants, which actually help reduce the production of free radicals. Even better, foods containing antioxidants are not rare. Common antioxidants, like vitamins A and E, can be found in many dark-colored vegetables. For example, carrots, seaweed, spinach, and broccoli are all excellent sources of these helpful vitamins. Also, you can eat orange-colored fruits like apricots and peaches. Vitamins A and E are particularly good for helping your skin remain young-looking. These nutrients strengthen your skin and make it soft. However, if you really want to stock up quickly on nutrients that benefit your skin, you should eat cow’s liver. One small piece of cooked cow’s liver contains twice as much vitamin A as half a cup of cooked carrots.  More recently, green tea has also been tentatively added to the list of youthpromoting substances. Research on green tea’s effects on our bodies is still in the early stages. Scientists certainly believe that it is good for us, but they are cautious about predicting its ability to keep us looking youthful. However, recent experiments seem to show that green tea’s antioxidant properties can repair cell damage already sustained as well as prevent damage in the future. In fact, green tea works even better if you apply it directly to your skin as an ingredient in facial cream. “You are what you eat.” The more we find out about how our bodies work, the more this old proverb seems to be true. Think about that the next time you sit down at the table.  
4. As mentioned in the passage, the following are good foods for the skin, EXCEPT _____

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When it comes to cooking, boomers cook one, Generation X cooks another way and the beat generation does things that must be recorded now, because once they have passed out of fashion, they will never be discovered again. They have weird skills, derived from scarcity in their early years. They keep their spices in brown glass because they last longer. For practical purposes, this means everything is in an old Calpol bottle with “sumac” scrawled over it. Some of them are, and will fish an empty packet of sugar out of the bin, shake a quarter-teaspoon of sugar from it and put it back. They can often make a cake by eye, without weighing anything, which I find incredible, and they know what to do with leaf gelatine, which is great until it isn’t. My mother once made avocado in jelly and then said: “I don’t know, the proportions may have been slightly off.” I said, recklessly: “Don’t worry – I’m sure I’ll choke it down,” but when it came to it, my cutlery bounced off it, like a prank played on a very hungry person in a cartoon. The beat generation canon is Meat at Any Price and Fish at Any and anything to do with mince. The descent of mince from a sacred food to a bolognese-only staple is one of the great mysteries of progress, because it is delicious even when you don’t shove a load of tomato in it. But you can’t just shove cheap meat in a pan and watch while it sweats out watery grey juice. This seems to be something that only wartime generations understand. Hip parents in the 70s, or regular parents in the 80s, or quite trad parents in the 90s had a horror of overcooked carrots and waterlogged cabbage. The very smell of cooked vegetables evoked for them every bad memory of British cuisine, before anchovies and Italians and radicchio arrived, when all dinner was a school dinner. So they would all just tease their vegetables with a hint of boiling water, before turning them out, still basically a salad, only a bit warmer. Then you, their offspring, would leave home, and accidentally encounter a vegetable that had been cooked, and realise how delicious it was and now you probably overcook your vegetables a bit, and your children will go the other way.  
4. The word “descent” in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to _______

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Ask about “the population problem” to people of a certain age, and the first and perhaps only thing that comes to mind is the “population bomb” or “population explosion.” And they would be right - for their time. In the second half of the 20th century, rapid population growth - especially but not exclusively in the developing countries - created unprecedented increases in the number of people on the earth. And this growth was accompanied by crowding, malnutrition, disease, and poverty. Indeed, for many Americans, the coming “population explosion” was, along with the Cold War, the most unsettling fact about our world. But “population problems” have been part of American discourse for over 100 years. In the 1930s and 1940s, for instance, many observers feared that depopulation due to plummeting birth rates would cause chronic economic depression as the numbers of U.S. consumers and workers declined. In the 1920s, the U.S. “population problem” was rapid urbanization, reflected in a 1920 census count showing that for the first time more than onehalf the population lived in urban areas. Rural incumbents in the House of Representatives, fearing they would be voted out of office by their new urban constituents, succeeded in blocking reapportionment of the House’s seats on the basis of the census counts as mandated by the U.S. Constitution. The century’s first “population problem” was mass xenophobia about immigration. Beginning in 1880, wave after wave of European immigrants was creating congestion and social change at an unprecedented rate. In response to widespread anxiety and anger, Congress in 1924 passed the country’s most restrictive immigration legislation ever. Each problem was based in hard numbers. Each generated private emotions and public fears. Each suffered exaggeration and manipulation. And each commanded the attention of opinion leaders and elected officials.  
2. According to paragraph 1, what did the author imply when writing “And they would be right - for their time”?

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Hardly a week goes by without some advance in technology that would have seemed  incredible 50 years ago. And we can expect the rate of change to accelerate rather than slow down within our lifetime. The developments in technology are bound to have a dramatic effect on the future of work. By 2010, new technology will have revolutionized communications. People will be transmitting messages down telephone lines that previously would have been sent by post. Not only postmen but also clerks and secretaries will vanish in a paper-free society. All the routine tasks they perform. will be carried on a tiny silicon chip so that they will be as obsolete as the horse and cart after the invention of the motor car. one change will make thousands, if not millions, redundant.  Even people in traditional professions, where expert knowledge has been the key, are unlikely to escape the effects of new technology. Instead of going to a solicitor, you might go to a computer which is programmed with all the most up-to-date legal information. Doctors, too, will find that an electronic competitor will be able to carry out a much quicker and more accurate diagnosis and recommend more efficient courses of treatment. In education, teachers will be largely replaced by teaching machines far more knowledgeable than any human being. Most learning will take place in the home via video conferencing. Children will still go to school though, until another place is created where they can make friends and develop social skills.  What can we do to avoid the threat of unemployment? We shouldn’t hide our heads in the sand. Unions will try to stop change but they will be fighting a losing battle. People should get computer literate as this just might save them from professional extinction. After all, there will be a few jobs left in law, education and medicine for those few individuals who are capable of writing and programming the software of the future. Strangely enough, there will still be jobs like rubbish collection and cleaning as it is tough to programme tasks which are largely unpredictable.
2. The word “obsolete” in the first paragraph is closet in meaning to ______

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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.
8. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

Find synonym:
In the past, a lot of countries denied having contributed to global warming

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The winner/ be/ chosen/ a celebrity panel/ and/ home viewers.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Urbanization programmes are being carried out in many parts of the world, especially in densely (1) ________ regions with limited land and resources. It is the natural outcome of economic development and industrialization. It has brought a lot of benefits to our society. However, it also (2) ________ various problems for local authorities and town planners in the process of maintaining sustainable urbanization, especially in developing countries. When too many people cram into a small area, urban infrastructure can’t be effective. There will be a (3) ________ of livable housing, energy and water supply. This will create overcrowded urban districts with no proper facilities. Currently, fast urbanization is taking place predominantly in developing countries where sustainable urbanization has little relevance to people’s lives. Their houses are just shabby slums with poor sanitation. Their children only manage to get basic education. Hence, the struggle for (4) ________ is their first priority rather than anything else. Only when the quality of their existence is improved, can they seek (5) ________ other high values in their life

Choose the best answer:
The weather was fine so we decided to go ____________ foot

Each sentence has a mistake. Find it by chosing A B C or D 

Fruit and vegetables should be  carefully washed whether eaten fresh or cook

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The blazes, which have been burning across Australia for months, have razed homes  and wiped out entire towns. Across Australia, nearly 18 million acres of land have been burned – much of it bushland, forests and national parks, home to the country’s beloved and unique wildlife. Nearly half a billion animals have been impacted by the fires in NSW alone, with millions potentially dead, according to ecologists at the University of Sydney. That figure includes birds, reptiles, and mammals, except bats. It also excludes insects and frogs. The total number of animals affected nationwide could be as high as a billion, according to Christopher Dickman, the University of Sydney ecologist who led the report.  "The scale of these fires is unprecedented," said Dieter Hochuli, an environmental sciences professor at the University of Sydney. “There are substantial concerns about the capacity of these (ecosystems) to rebound from the fires.”  Some animals, like koalas and kangaroos for instance, are primarily killed by being incinerated in flames or choking on smoke. Nearly a third of all koalas in NSW have died and about a third of their habitat has been destroyed. Photos from the ground show koalas with singed fur, raw patches of burnt flesh, and blistered paws. Even if they are rescued and treated, sometimes their injuries are simply too extensive to survive. Wombats have also been hit hard – they don’t cope well with heat or stress, and panic at the smell of smoke. The small, stubby-legged marsupials can’t run very fast or far, and are largely at the mercy of the flames. Smaller mammals and reptiles can escape the blazes by burrowing underground or hiding in rocks – but afterward, there is no food or shelter left, only certain predators that are drawn to fire because they know it brings easy prey. Koalas and kangaroos are spread out across the country, so they’re not in danger of going extinct due to the blazes. But other animals that live in niche environments and have smaller populations may have been wiped out entirely; these include the eastern bristlebird, the mountain pygmy possum and the corroboree frog.  These animals’ recovery depends not only on their population size, but also on the condition of their habitat. For instance, plants grow slower in high-altitude alpine regions, meaning it could be a very long time before species are able to return.
6. According to paragraph 4, what is the problem for the “other animals” that makes them different from koalas or kangaroos?

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Malaysia’s/ its/ Kuala Lumpur/ and/ is/ largest city/ capital.

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Far from being barren wastelands, deserts are biologically rich habitats with a vast  array of animals and plants that have adapted to the harsh conditions there. Some deserts are among the planet’s last remaining areas of total wilderness. Yet more than one billion people, one-sixth of the Earth’s population, actually live in desert regions.  Deserts cover more than one fifth of the Earth’s land, and they are found on every continent. A place that receives less than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain per year is considered a desert. Deserts are part of a wider classification of regions called “dry lands.” These areas exist under a moisture deficit, which means they can frequently lose more moisture through evaporation than they receive from annual precipitation.  And despite the common conceptions of deserts as dry and hot, there are cold deserts as well. The largest hot desert in the world, northern Africa’s Sahara, reaches temperatures of  up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) during the day. But some deserts are always cold, like the Gobi desert in Asia and the desert on the continent of Antarctica. Others are mountainous. Only about 10 percent of deserts are covered by sand dunes. The driest deserts get less than half an inch (one centimeter) of precipitation each year, and that is from condensed fog not rain.  Desert animals have adapted ways to help them keep cool and use less water. Camels, for example, can go for days without food and water. Many desert animals are nocturnal, coming out only when the brutal sun has descended to hunt. Some animals, like the desert tortoise in the south-western United States, spend much of their time underground. Most desert birds are nomadic, crisscrossing the skies in search of food. Because of their very special adaptations, desert animals are extremely vulnerable to introduced predators and changes to their habitat.  Some of the world’s semi-arid regions are turning into desert at an alarming rate. This process, known as “desertification,” is not caused by drought, but usually arises from the demands of human populations that settle on the semi-arid lands to grow crops and graze animals. The pounding of the soil by the hooves of livestock may degrade the soil and encourage erosion by wind and water.
5. What may make the diversity of deserts’ plants and animals poorer?

Find synonym:
If we have solar panels on our roofs, we'll be able to generate our own electricity.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Language preservation is the effort to prevent languages from becoming unknown. A language is at (1)______ of being lost when it no longer is taught to younger generations, while fluent speakers of the language (usually the elderly) die. Language is an important part of any society, because it enables people to communicate and express themselves. When a language dies (2)_______, future generations lose a vital part of the culture that is necessary to completely understand it. This makes language a vulnerable aspect of cultural heritage, and it becomes especially important to (3) __________ it. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), from facts published in their “Atlas of Languages in Danger of Disappearing,” there are an estimated 6,000 languages spoken worldwide today, and half of the world’s population speaks the eight most common. More than 3,000 languages are reportedly spoken by fewer than 10,000 people each. Ethnologue, a reference work published by SIL International, has cataloged the world’s known (4)_______ languages, and it estimates that 417 languages are on the verge of extinction. There are different factors that can (5)________ a language in danger of becoming extinct. One is when a language is no longer being taught to the children of the community, or at least to a large number of the children. In these cases, the remaining fluent speakers of the language are generally the older members of the community, and when they pass away, the language dies out with them

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Most sources of illumination generate light over an appreciable period, and indeed if  an object is lit for a very brief time(less that 1/25 second), the human eye will not react in time to see the object. A photographic emulsion - that is, a light-sensitive coating on photographic film, paper, or glass - will, however, record much shorter bursts of light. A photographic flash can therefore be used to capture high-speed movement on film as well as to correct deficiencies of the normal surrounding lighting. Photoflash is now generated electronically, but the earliest form, first used in 1864, was a paper bag containing magnesium wire and some oxygen-rich substance, such as potassium chlorate. When the bag was ignited, the metal burned with an intense flash. A contemporary observer reported that “this quite unsafe device seems to have done nothing worse that engulf the room in dense smoke and lead to pictures of dubious quality and odd poses.”  The evolution of the photoflash was slow, flashbulbs, containing fine wire made of a metal, such as magnesium or aluminum, capable of being ignited in an atmosphere of pure oxygen at low pressure, were introduced only in the 1920’s. In the earliest type, the metal was separated from the oxygen by a thin glass bulb. The flash was fired by piercing the bulb and allowing the oxygen to come into contact with the metal, which ignited spontaneously. Later bulbs were fired by an electric battery, which heated the wire by passing a small current through it. Other combinations, such as the pairing of oxygen difluoride with zirconium, have also been used. In each case enough energy is given out to heat the oxidizable metal momentarily to a white hot emission of visible light. The smoke particles are so small that they cool rapidly; but since they are white, they contribute to the brilliance by reflecting the light from their still glowing neighbors. A slightly bigger form of the metal will burn for a longer time. 
7. According to the passage, what helps a flashbulb burn longer?

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Fairy tales are the stories that adults, especially parents, tell young children. In view of their name, it is surprising that hardly any of them are actually about fairies. (33) ________ most fairy tales have happy endings, the stories usually deal with very (34) ________ situations - children abandoned in the forest, terrifying giants, cruel stepmothers. However, despite being scared when they are told the stories, children will often ask to hear them over and over again. Many psychologists believe that what fairy tales do, in addition to (35) ________ children's  imagination, is to show that there are problems in the world and they can be overcome. Just like adults, children have fears and worries: theirs are of things such as abandonment, loss, injuries, witches. Fairy tales present real problems in a fantasy form (36) ________ children are able to understand. This, it is claimed, allow them to (37) ________ their fears and to realise, if ever in their unconscious mind, that no matter how difficult the circumstances, there are always ways of coping

Choose the best answer:
These city girls are used ............... in the field.

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There is a scam aimed at a child’s desire to be a published writer - usually as a poet, in a book of poems. How does the scam work? Keen teachers are unwittingly caught up in the promotion but are completely unaware of the dodgy side of the scheme. There are plenty of honest opportunities for children’s writing that don’t cost their parents a small fortune and provide a poor-quality product. Most books in scams are badly set out. They tend to be huge volumes, squashing in as many writers’ efforts as possible to make as much money as possible. They’re an embarrassment for the young poets. These competitions to discover hidden talent sound great in the glossy flyers. Schools too are offered a prize if a winner is from their school. Schools become unpaid ‘agents’ in promotion of the competitions. Parents are happy to pay a small entry fee. Each child hopes to get an ‘honourable mention’ with the possibility of being selected to be included in a book. The price of the book is not given. Naturally, if a child’s work were published, parents would want a copy of the book. In one such scheme the pre-order price was $67 with an extra $26 if the child’s photo was included. That’s nearly $100! Strangely, awards are given to those who pre-order a book! The books are not attractive. A copy at a market sold for $2. There were three to five kids’ poems squashed on a page, with over 3000 poems jammed into that one book. Clip Art was used to illustrate the poor publication. Look at the maths. 3000 kids multiplied by $100 equals $300 000. Now add the entry fees of, say, $2 - add another $6000! Enough to cover publicity! One place winner’ was upset when the parents realised this was a con to buy a book, but not buying the book made the parents feel guilty. Genuine competitions that publish books give a free copy to any ‘winner’ 
5. The writer of the article finds the scheme ____