Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
One of the major problems in the art world is how to distinguish and promote an artist. In effect, a market must be created for an artist to be successful. The practice of signing and numbering individual prints was introduced by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, the nineteenth-century artist best known for the painting of his mother, called "Arrangement in Grey and Black", but known to most of US as "Whistler's Mother". Whistler's brother-in- law, Sir Francis Seymour Haden, a less well-known artist, had speculated that collectors might find prints more attractive if they knew that they were only a limited number of copies produced. By signing the work in pencil, an artist could guarantee and personalize each print. As soon as Whistler and Haden began the practice of signing and numbering their prints, their work began to increase in value. When other artists noticed that the signed prints commanded higher prices, they began copying the procedure. Although most prints are signed on the right-hand side in the margin below the image, the placement of the signature is a matter of personal choice. Indeed, prints have been signed within the image, in any of the margins, or even on the reverse side of the print. Wherever the artist elects to sign it, a signed print is still valued above an unsigned one, even in the same edition.
9. The word "speculated" in line 8 could best be replaced by .

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 :
As more and more people concentrate in cities, planners are looking for ways to (1) _______ cities into better living spaces. This can be (2) _______ by improving existing infrastructure while also creating more public spaces that are both beautiful and green. This can be hard to accomplish, especially in cities with a haphazard fashion. Some cities have been created with the idea of a green city as the goal. One such city, Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates, aims to become a (3) _______ . for other cities to follow. It is being known as a truly green city that relies strictly on renewable sources such as solar energy to provide all of its energy needs. In addition, it will be a zero waste city in which (4) _______ that is used can be recycled. (5) _______ it will truly accomplish its goal remains to be seen, but it will also act as an experiment for environmentally-friendly areas to be tested

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Does the mixture have vanilla in the ____________?

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks
Schools in the United States have not always had a large number of libraries. As recently as 1958 about half of the public schools in the United States had no libraries at all. The (1)........ of public school libraries increased dramatically when the federal government passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which provided funds for school districts to improve their education programs  and facilities, including their  libraries. (2).......... , many educators claim that since the legislation was passed federal spending has not increased sufficiently to meet the rising cost of new library technologies such as computer databases and Internet access.
Because the federal government provides  only  limited  funds  to  schools,  individual  school  districts (3)............. on funds from local property taxes to meet the vast majority of public schools tend to reflect the financial capabilities of the communities in which they are located. Districts in wealthy suburbs often have  fully  staffed  libraries  (4)........... abundant resources, spacious facilities, and curricular and instructional  support. In (5)....................... school districts in many poor areas house their libraries in ordinary classrooms or in small rooms. The libraries in such areas are generally staffed by volunteers, who organize and maintain books that are often out-of-date, irrelevant, or damaged.

(5)..............................

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Jimmy sent his mother a ______ of flowers for her birthday.

Rewrite the sentence
Did you fly to Los Angeles?

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My sister is very keen on swimming, and she goes swimming three …. a week.

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_____ is a running race of over 26 miles.

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:
Composers today use a wider variety of sounds than ever before, including many that were once considered undesirable noises. Composer Edgard Varese (1883-1965) called thus the “liberation of sound…the right to make music with any and all sounds.” Electronic music, for example – made with the aid of computers, synthesizers, and electronic instruments – may include sounds that in the past would not have been considered musical.
Enviromental sounds, such as thunder, and electronically generated hisses and blips can be recorded, manipulated, and then incorporated into a musical composition. But composers also draw novel sounds from voices and non-electronic instruments. Singers may be asked to scream, laugh, groan, sneeze, or to sing phonetic sounds rather than words. Wind and string players may lap or scrape their instruments. A brass or woodwind player may hum while playing, to produce two pitches at once; a pianist may reach inside the piano to pluck a string and then run a metal blade along it. In the music of the Western world, the greatest expansion and experimentation have involved percussion instruments, which outnumber strings and winds in many recent compositions. Traditional persussion instruments are struck with new types of beaters; and instruments that used to be couriered unconventional in Western music – tom-toms, bongos, slapsticks, maracas – are widely used.
In the search for novel sounds, increased use has been made in Western music of Microtones. Non-Western music typically divides and intervals between two pitches more finely than Western music does, thereby producing a greater number of distinct tones or micro tones, within the same interval. Composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki create sound that borders on electronic noise through tone clusters – closely spaced tones played together and heard as a mass, block, or band of sound. The directional aspect of sound has taken on new importance as well Loudspeakers or groups of instruments may be placed at opposite ends of the stage, in the balcony, or at the back and sides of the auditorium. Because standard music notation makes no provision for many of these innovations, recent music scores may contain graph like diagrams, new note shapes and symbols, and novel ways of arranging notation on the page.

The word “wider” in line 1 is closet in meaning to     _.

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:
Overpopulation, the situation of having large numbers of people with too few resources and too little space, is closely associated with poverty. It can result from high population density, or from low amounts of resources, or from both. Excessively high population densities put stress on available resources. Only a certain number of people can be supported on a given area of land, and that number depends on how much food and other resources the land can provide. In countries where people live primarily by means of simple farming, gardening, herding, hunting, and gathering, even large areas of land can support only small numbers of people because these labor-intensive subsistence activities produce only small amounts of food.
In developed countries such as the United States, Japan, and the countries of Western Europe, overpopulation generally is not considered a major caus of poverty. These countries produce large quantities of food through mechanized farming, which depends on commercial fertilizers, large-scale irrigation, and agricultural machinery. This form of production provides enough food to support the high densities of people in metropolitan areas.
A country’s level of poverty can depend greatly on its mix of population density and agricultural productivity. Bangladesh, for example, has one of the world’s highest population densities, with 1, 147 persons per sq km. A large majority of the people of Bangladesh engage in low – productivity manual farming, which contributes to the country’s extremely high level of poverty. Some of the smalleer countries in Western Europe, such as the Netherlands and Belgium, have high population densities as well. These countries practice mechanized farming and are involved in high-tech industries, however, and there fore have high standards of living.
At the other end of the spectrum, many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have population densities of less than 30 persons per sq km. Many people in these countries practice manual subsistence farming; these countries also have infertile land, and lack the economic resources and technology to boost productivity. As a consequence, these nations are very poor. The United States has both relatively low population density and high agricultural productivity; it is one of the world’s wealthiest nations.
High birth rates contribute to overpopulation in many developing countries. Children are assets to many poor families because they provide labor, usually for farming. Cultural norms in traditionally rural societies commonly sanction the value of large families. Also, the governments of developing countries often provide little or no support, financial or political, for family planning; even people who wish to keep their families small have difficulty doing so. For all these reasons, developing countries tend to have high rates of population growth.
(From “Poverty” by Thomas J. Corbett)

Which of the following is TRUE, according to the passage?

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
Lady Liberty
New York City is undoubtedly one of the most famous cities in the world. There are several landmarks such as the Empire State Building, Broadway, and Times Square which have come to symbolize the Big Apple. Although these landmarks are all impressive, nothing captures the true spirit of the city like a gigantic, greenish sculpture that stands proudly in New York Harbour: the famed Statue of Liberty. The Statue of Liberty was created as a special gift to the US by French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi. It was designed to represent the friendship between the French and American people, two close allies that fought against the British during the American Revolutionary War. Initially, Bartholdi anticipated that he would be able to finish the statue by 1876. The project was conceived as a joint venture. The French would fund and create the statue and send it to the US, while Americans would provide a location and build a pedestal to display it on. The initial completion date would eventually be delayed, however, due to financial issues with both nations. Bartholdi had some technical issues to deal with as well. He had never designed an enormous copper structure of this size and he required some expert assistance. Therefore, Bartholdi recruited Alexandre Gustave Eiffel the designer of the Eiffel Tower to help him. After nine years of hard work, the 151-foot, 22-ton statue was eventually completed and presented to the American Ambassador in France. It then had to he taken apart and separated into crates before being delivered to the US. It took another two years before Americans were able to raise enough public funds to build the pedestal that she would stand on. But the task was finally completed and the Statue of Liberty was assembled and dedicated on October 28, 1886. Over the years, the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty continued to glow more and more important until it became a key symbol of the entire nation. During the late 19th and early 20th century, it was the first landmark that waves of immigrants saw as they sailed into Ellis island. The sight of this symbol of freedom gave them hope and inspiration that their life would be better in their new country. Even today, people from all around the world see it as a powerful symbol of the American democracy.
5. The word “she” in paragraph 2 refers to __________

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
Journalists: Protection of Sources
Being a reporter for a major news publication can be a difficult job. The best journalists often work long hours and have to do a bit of dirty work to uncover scandals that others want to remain secret. In many cases, it is a bit of information provided by an undisclosed source that finally helps to break the story. But do reporters have a legal right to keep their sources a secret? The protection of sources is the idea that journalists have the right to keep their sources of their news stories a secret. Those who support this idea insist that if reported are forced to reveal their sources, it will be much harder for them to do their job. It certainly seems logical that fewer people would come forward with sensitive information if they know that eventually their identity will be revealed to the public. Furthermore, in cases where the source’s information uncovers a ring of corruption or somehow damages the reputation of a rich and powerful person or company, releasing the source’s identity could put their life in danger. For the most part, reporters are rarely required by law to reveal undisclosed sources if it is a minor case of little importance. Yet in some instances, when vital or leaked information is involved, a journalist may be asked to testify in court and reveal how they got their information. In the US, such a situation arose after a mass shooting in Colorado in 2012. One journalist, with information provided by an anonymous source, wrote an article claiming that the suspected killer had sent a diary detailing plans to kill people to his psychiatrist a few days before the murder occurred. The suspect’s lawyer then demanded the reporter should reveal her source because they felt it damaged their defense case. In the end, the judge declined to force the reporter to testify. So are there any cases when reporters should reveal their sources? Many would argue that when the issue is a matter of national security, journalists should be willing to reveal their sources if it can help to save lives. For instance, let’s say a reporter receives a tip from an anonymous source about a terrorist attack. In this scenario, saving innocent lives should be more important than protecting one’s source. In the end, it seems that forcing reporters to reveal their sources should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
1. What is the main reason that reporters should NOT reveal their sources?

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Can you please check that ................ has got a ticket?

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They_______ time and money doing such a thing.

Rewrite the sentence without changing the meaning

They asked him, “Do you like to play this game.”

 Water polo balls _____ with a special texture so it will not slip from the hands of a player.

(419)________

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Other disabilities include hearing, visual, or orthopedic impairments; autism; (1) _______ traumatic brain injury. An increasing number of children in the United States are identified as having attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and (2) _______ special education services. Many schools in the United States provide special education services (3) _______ gifted children, although federal law does not mandate these services. Gifted children demonstrate (4) _______ high abilities in intellectual, creative, academic, leadership, or artistic areas. Estimates of the gifted (5) _______ in the United States range from 3 to 5 percent of all schoolchildren.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.
Culture has a strong influence on non–verbal communication. Even the simple act of looking someone in the eye is not at all that simple. In the USA, Americans are (1).......... to look directly  at people when speaking to them. It shows interest in what they are saying and is thought to carry a (2).......of honesty. Meanwhile, in Japan and Korea, people avoid long periods of eye contact. It is considered more polite to look to the side during a conversation. The Lebanese, (3)............ , stand close together and look intensely into each other's eyes. The action shows sincerity and gives people a better sense of what their counterparts want. Given such differences with even the most common expressions, people (4)................. travel or work abroad have a real need to learn the other culture's body language. People tend to be unaware of the messages they are sending to others. So, it is (5).................. to consider your own body language before dealing with people from other cultures. Knowing about the body language of friends, clients, and colleagues can be very helpful in improving understanding and avoiding miscommunication.

(1).........................

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Among the problems facing the national park's manager, the most serious ones are those of ...... and expansion.

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He had the telephone installed in his car_________ his secretary to be able to contact him wherever necessary.

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You_____ yourself ill if you don't eat properly.