Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best option for each of the blanks.
 The Rocky Mountains run almost the length of North America. They start in the North West, but lie only a (1)...........hundred miles from the centre in the more southern areas. Although the Rockies are smaller (2)............. the Alps, they are no less beautiful.
There are many roads across the Rockies, but the best way to see them is to travel by train. You start from Vancouver, the most attractive of Canada’s big cities. Standing with its feet in the water and its (3).........in the mountains, this city (4)................its residents to ski on slopes just 15 minutes by car from the city centre.
Thirty passenger trains a day used to (5)................off from Vancouver on the cross–continent railway. Now there are just three a week, but the ride is still a great adventure. You sleep on board, which is fun, but travel through some of the best site at night.

(2)...............................

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Whether a species is endangered—meaning at risk of extinction—depends on which definition you use. The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species classifies an animal as endangered when its numbers in the wild have dropped so low that it’s at “extremely high risk” of extinction. Meanwhile, the United States’ Endangered Species Act of 1973 takes into consideration any destruction to a species’ habitat, whether it has been over-consumed, any disease or predation that threaten it, whether any other man-made factors put it in danger, and what policies currently exist to protect it. When members of the public or a state agency propose to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service that a species be listed as endangered under the law, research and management plans are formed to help those species survive. It is illegal under the Endangered Species Act to capture, hunt, shoot, or otherwise harm an animal that’s listed as endangered. Sometimes, federal agencies decide that although a species could be considered endangered, other species are higher priorities. In those cases, the animal or plant gets limited protections. One animal whose numbers have increased through conservation is the bald eagle. There were only about 500 bald eagles in the continental United States in the 1960s because of pesticides that damaged the shells of their eggs. Conservation efforts including captive breeding programs, habitat protection, and a ban on the insecticide DDT helped the bald eagle’s numbers soar back into the thousands. Another is the giant panda, which was declared no longer endangered in 2016 thanks to 50 years of efforts to save it. U.S. Rep. John Dingell, who wrote the Endangered Species Act, argued that “only natural extinction is part of natural order.” Scientists believe that 227 species - including the grizzly bear, the peregrine falcon and the gray wolf - were saved from extinction in the first 33 years of the law’s existence. Still, critics argue that the act is expensive and ineffective because it protects so many species. Several federal courts have heard and rejected arguments that the Endangered Species Act is unconstitutional, and members of Congress have tried to weaken the law in small ways.
8. Which of the following can be inferred from 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:
Accustomed though we are to speaking of the films made before 1927 as “silent”, the film has never been, in the full sense of the word, silent. From the very beginning, music was regarded as an indispensable accompaniment; when the Lumiere films were shown at the first public film exhibition in the United States in February 1896, they were accompanied by piano improvisations on popular tunes. At first, the music played bore no special relationship to the films; an accompaniment of any kind was sufficient. Within a very short time, however, the incongruity of playing lively music to a solemn film became apparent, and film pianists began to take some care in matching their pieces to the mood of the film.
As movie theaters grew in number and importance, a violinist, and perhaps a cellist, would be added to the pianist in certain cases, and in the larger movie theaters small orchestras were formed. For a number of years the selection of music for each film program rested entirely in the hands of the conductor or leader of the orchestra, and very often the principal qualification for holding such a position was not skill or taste so much as the ownership of a large personal library of musical pieces. Since the conductor seldom saw the films until the night before the y were to be shown (if, indeed, the conductor was lucky enough to see them then), the musical arrangement was normally improvised in the greatest hurry.
To help meet this difficulty, film distributing companies started the practice of publishing suggestions for musical accompaniments. In 1909, for example, the Edison Company began issuing with their films such indications of mood as “pleasant’, “sad”, “lively”. The suggestions became more explicit, and so emerged the musical cue sheet containing indications of mood, the titles of suitable pieces of music, and precise directions to show where one piece led into the next.

Certain films had music especially composed for them. The most famous of these early special scores was that composed and arranged for D. w. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation, which was released in 1915.

According to the passage, what kind of business was the Edison Company?

Find mistake:
The study will be carried out over a six-month period, which are announced in the school board.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
You get off your plane and make your way to the Baggage Reclaim area. After quite some time spent waiting, their is no sign of your bags and you begin to consider the possibility that they may have gone (1) _________. What should you do? Firstly, don’t panic. The most likely (2) _________ is that your bags simply didn’t make it onto the flight, perhaps because they were mislaid at the departure airport, or perhaps because the aircraft had already (3) _________ its weight allowance. If they fail to appear on the carousel, report the loss before you leave the baggage hall and go through customs. Recovering your luggage should be no problems, (4) ______ you’ve kept hold of your baggage checks – those little barcodes stuck to the back of your tickets at check-in. Go to the handling agent’s desk and complete a Property Irregularity Report (PIR) form, (5) _________ describes the checked bag and its contents. Then, ask the baggageservices manager for a contact telephone number and confirm that your bags will be forwarded to your final destination

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Sylvia Plath’s semi-autobiographical 1963 book “The Bell Jar” is most likely to be found in a sophomore English class, pored over by high-school students. But recently at Squarefoot, a commercial real estate company based in Manhattan, it was the chosen book title for the office book club. “People really latched onto [“The Bell Jar”] and talked about women’s roles in the workplace,” says Eliza Bell, people-operations manager. “The book club has been a bonding opportunity. People are able to learn about each other, and it’s really nice to talk about stuff that isn’t work-related. ‘The Bell Jar’ really brought that out, and we were able to talk about diversity initiatives.” Over the summer, the book pick was “The Hate U Give,” the 2017 young adult novel by Angie Thomas. The monthly club meets during a lunch that is provided by the company. In its first iteration, the club met after work and read business books: Not surprisingly, people weren’t quite as enthusiastic about that initiative. The club is the brainchild of CEO Jonathan. Wasserstrum, who is passionate about reading. There are some rules: At the beginning everyone has a chance to express what they liked or didn’t like. “If someone goes on a rant, it’s important to change the topic and move to another one,” says Bell. “When we read ‘The Last Lecture’ [the 2008 bestseller co-authored by the late Randy Pausch] for instance, it got a little heated.” What makes for a good pick? “We need an aspect of it to get people excited. It’s important that the books are ones people will have opinions on. People can learn from all sorts of different books,” says Bell. “And they have to be less than 250 pages.”  
2. The word “diversity” in paragraph 1 can be replaced by ______

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Commentary from researchers in the College of Pharmacy at The University of Texas at Austin in the journal Science provide new findings in alcohol use disorder (AUD) research The article, “Compelled to drink: Why some cannot stop,” considers recent findings by researchers Siciliano et al. that discovered individual differences in the activity of neurons in a frontal cortex to brain stem circuit that predicts the later escalation of alcohol drinking to compulsive intake in a mouse model. “These researchers not only defined a new brain circuit involved in compulsive drinking, but showed individual differences at the level of electrical activity in the neurons that comprise this circuit,” Nixon said. “The individual differences in electrical activity predicted which mice would go on to drink compulsively after a binge-like drinking episode despite drinking the same amount of alcohol during that episode.” The research group previously found that this circuit is important for responses to aversive events, and they have now asked why aversive outcomes don’t deter everyone from drinking alcohol. These new findings point to a neurological explanation for why only some mice continue to drink alcohol even when it comes with negative consequences. “They found these differences in circuit activity before mice developed compulsive drinking behavior,” Mangieri said. “In other words, some mice had a biological predisposition that made them susceptible to developing alcohol drinking behaviors that are similar to humans with AUD.” The researchers said the work has important implications. It has potential as a biomarker of propensity to develop severe AUD based on electrical activity. Also, the discovery of this circuit’s role in compulsive drinking suggests that there may be novel pharmacological targets that could be identified and developed for the treatment of AUDs
4. The word “It” in paragraph 3 refers to _______

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Common methods of deforestation are burning trees and clear cutting. These tactics leave the land completely barren and are controversial practices. Clear cutting is when large swaths of land are cut (1) ______ all at once. A forestry expert quoted by the Natural Resources Defense Council describes clear cutting as “an ecological trauma that has no precedent in nature (2) _____ for a major volcanic eruption.” Burning can be done quickly, in vast swaths of land, or more slowly with the slash-andburn technique. Slash-and-burn agriculture entails cutting down a patch of trees, (3) __________ them and growing crops on the land. The ash from the (4) _____ trees provides some nourishment for the (5) ______ and the land is weed-free from the burning. When the soil becomes less nourishing and weeds begin to reappear over years of use, the farmers move on to a new patch of land and begin the process again

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Classrooms have changed considerably in the last hundred years. In the early 1900s, the (1) ______ class in England was twice as big as the average in the 1960s – sixty pupils per class compared with thirty. Nowadays, the average class size in a secondary school is twentythree, (2) ______ is still higher than in many other countries. A hundred years (3) ______, teachers were stricter than today. Punishment was also more severe: pupils were often hit for bad behaviour - a practice not allowed in schools today. The curriculum in the past was also (4) ______ extensive and concentrated on the three Rs - Reading, Writing and Arithmetic – whereas today’s curriculum includes everything from business studies to philosophy. Some people think that the teaching methods used in schools today are not as (5) ______ as those used in the past but, given the wide range of interactive tools available today, the 21st century is definitely the most interesting time to be in the classroom for teachers and pupils alike

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Deforestation has important global consequences. Forests sequester carbon in the  form of wood and other biomass as the trees grow, taking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When forests are burned, their carbon is returned to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that has the potential to alter global climate, and the trees are no longer present to sequester more carbon.  In addition, most of the planet’s valuable biodiversity is within forests, particularly tropical ones. Moist tropical forests such as the Amazon have the greatest concentrations of  animal and plant species of any terrestrial ecosystem; perhaps two-thirds of Earth’s species live only in these forests. As deforestation proceeds, it has the potential to cause the extinction of increasing numbers of these species.  On a more local scale, the effects of forest clearing, selective logging, and fires interact. Selective logging increases the flammability of the forest because it converts a closed, wetter forest into a more open, drier one. This leaves the forest vulnerable to the accidental movement of fires from cleared adjacent agricultural lands and to the killing effects of natural droughts. As wildfires, logging, and droughts continue, the forest can become progressively more open until all the trees are lost. Additionally, the burning of tropical forests is generally a seasonal phenomenon and can severely impact air quality. Record-breaking levels of air pollution have occurred in Southeast Asia as the result of burning for oil palm plantations.  In the tropics, much of the deforested land exists in the form of steep mountain hillsides. The combination of steep slopes, high rainfall, and the lack of tree roots to bind the soil can lead to disastrous landslides that destroy fields, homes, and human lives. With the significant exception of the forests destroyed for the oil palm industry, many of the humid forests that have been cleared are soon abandoned as croplands or only used for lowdensity grazing because the soils are extremely poor in nutrients. The vegetation that contains most of the nutrients is often burned, and the nutrients literally “go up in smoke” or are washed away in the next rain. Although forests may regrow after being cleared and then abandoned, this is not always the case, especially if the remaining forests are highly fragmented. Such habitat fragmentation isolates populations of plant and animal species from each other, making it difficult to reproduce without genetic bottlenecks, and the fragments may be too small to support large or territorial animals. Furthermore, deforested lands that are planted with commercially important trees lack biodiversity and do not serve as habitats for native plants
and animals, many of which are endangered species.
5. The word “significant” in paragraph 4 can be best replaced by ______

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
If you want to improve group productivity, it is advisable that you organize competitions that build morale and teamwork skills for all participants, (1) _______ than just a few star performers. For example, if you (2) _______ a competition between sales teams, you can reward all members of the (3) _______ group with a lunch out at a nice restaurant or a group trip. This way, even the lower-performing members of the team have a reason to try as hard as they can to help the team win. In an individual sales contest, a few top salespeople compete with one another for the top prize, (4) _______ everyone else gives up because they know they can’t win. The productivity of (5) _______ top people increases, but the productivity of the rest of the group does not. In a team competition, even the lowestperforming member of the group can help earn the prize, so all team members put in their best effort and the productivity of the entire group goes up

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D)
Men have always played critical roles in the women’s movement. But there is still a long way to go because despite all the progress made, men still dominate positions of power. And, as a string of recent harassment scandals has shown, the behaviour of some men has had profound effects on women’s careers, their success and their lives. The good news, as we mark International Women’s Day, is that many men are acknowledging the importance of playing their part to make gender equality a reality. A new study by Ipsos Mori has found that while a third of British men think they are being expected to do too much to support women’s equality, far more – half – do not. In fact, three in five men in Britain agree that gender equality won’t be achieved unless they also take action to support women’s rights. Despite attempts in some quarters to paint gender equality as a zero-sum game, there are plenty of win-win propositions for these men to advocate. Better parental leave for fathers would be a good start. Government policy needs to catch up with this new reality, and the evidence is clear that, unless paternity leave is non-transferable and well paid, uptake will be low. Sweden and Norway show us that the introduction of the “daddy quota” – the period of parental leave reserved specifically for fathers – has a positive effect on male take-up of parental leave, and then on men’s long-term involvement in household work and childcare. This reaps economic dividends, as women’s talents are no longer lost to the labour force, and having an involved father has a positive effect on children’s wellbeing. Globally, three-quarters (72%) agree that employers should make it easier for men to combine childcare with work. Businesses need not fear: research links flexible working to increased productivity, as better work-life balance leads to happier, more effective workers. Women gain from having flexible partners, too. A study of German couples found that having a partner who works flexibly boosted the wages of men and women, with the effect most pronounced for mothers. Conversely, women whose partners work very long hours are significantly more likely to quit the labour force – taking their talent and experience with them
5. The word “pronounced” in paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to _______

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Although the “lie detectors” are being used by governments, police departments, and businesses that all want guaranteed ways of detecting the truth, the results are not always accurate. Lie detectors are properly called emotion detectors, for their aim is to measure bodily changes that contradict what a person says. The polygraph machine records changes in heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, and the electrical activity of the skin (galvanic skin response, or GSR). In the first part of the polygraph test, you are electronically connected to the machine and asked a few neutral questions (“What is your name?”, “Where do you live?”). Your physical reactions serve as the standard (baseline) for evaluating what comes next. Then you are asked a few critical questions among the neutral ones (“When did you rob the bank?”). The assumption is that if you are guilty, your body will reveal the truth, even if you try to deny it. Your heart rate, respiration, and GSR will change abruptly as you respond to the incriminating questions. That is the theory; but psychologists have found that lie detectors are simply not reliable. Since most physical changes are the same across all emotions, machines cannot tell whether you are feeling guilty, angry, nervous, thrilled, or revved up form an exciting day. Innocent people may be tense and nervous about the whole procedure. They may react physiologically to a certain word (“bank”) not because they robbed it, but because they recently bounced a check. In either case the machine will record a “lie”. The reverse mistake is also common. Some practiced liars can lie without flinching, and others learn to beat the machine by tensing muscles or thinking about an exciting experience during neutral questions
1. What is the main idea of this passage?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Water is of vital importance to all living things. Without it, all living things will  surely die. We also use a great (1)_____ of water daily in our homes, in factories, and in power stations. Most of this water is fresh water and it comes to us from reservoirs, rivers and lakes.  The Earth’s surface is (2)_____ by large areas of water which we call oceans and seas. If you have tasted the water from the sea, you will know that, unlike fresh water, seawater tastes salty. This is due to the (3)_____ of sodium chloride which comes from the land. Rivers carry it to the sea.  Although (4)_______salt nor fresh water has (5)________color, the sea often looks blue in the sunlight. The reason is that sunlight is made up of many colors. Some colors disappear quickly in the sea but blue light bounces back or is reflected, to the surface. This makes the sea look blue. Hence, a stormy sky will make the sea look grey

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Learning shouldn’t end when you reach a certain point in your career; it should be something you continuously pursue across your lifetime. As you mature, your areas of interest may change. Perhaps your personal and career goals may morph into something altogether different than what you originally intended. In some cases, life happens and you might find it necessary to take a break from your career or your education. But for people with a strong desire for lifelong learning, this pause is only temporary. Even though you may have begun an educational program and needed to take a pause later, it’s never too late to go back and finish what you started. People in modern age have more options to gain the knowledge they want and need. From a higher education standpoint, universities and colleges are working hard to transform themselves in different ways. For example, there has been a transition from traditional Ph.D.-style doctorates to applied doctorates like the Doctorate in Strategic Intelligence or Doctorate in Global Security. These academic programs have their students work to address real-world problems of practice. In this manner, they take the education they receive in their classes and work to apply it within the fields in which they are currently employed or hope to work in. In addition, some universities now offer dual degree programs, such as the dual master’s degree in emergency and disaster management and homeland security. Some institutions are also starting to provide accelerated degrees to allow their students to rapidly advance from a B.A. to an M.A., saving those students time and money on their educational pursuits. However, lifelong learning doesn’t just encompass full degree programs. With employers focusing on skillset development, there is an increasing desire for short program offerings as well. “Short programming” includes sets of courses that lead to a specific credential or badge. For instance, ASIS International offers a series of certifications, related to security and global studies, which can be used to add value to your professional portfolio. Another relevant certification is the Certified Threat Manager (CTM) certification offered by the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals. Short programming involves learning tracks, competency-based micro-credentials or stackable credentials. In some cases, certificates are perceived to be more valuable as they signal that their owner has current knowledge of a particular area; however, this perception differs from field to field
7. Which of the following statements is TRUE, according to the passage?

Choose the best answer:
I'll pay you double _______ you get the work finished by Friday.

Choose the best answer:
I have to try harder so that I can keep _____ him.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
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  
6. According to paragraph 4, what is NOT correct about the approach of reflecting on mistakes?

Rewrite the sentence:
He did not work hard. He failed the exam.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
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.
2. The word “inception” in the passage is closest in meaning to ____

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Do you find the American education system to be confusing and different from the education system in your own country? Do you want to attend a university or a school in the USA? The American education system offers international students the most diverse set of options in the world. In fact, an international student who elects to take advantage of the American education system can pursue anything from nuclear science to film and dance. The possibilities are almost endless! The American education system requires that students complete 12 years of primary and secondary education prior to attending university or college. This may be accomplished either at public (or government-operated) schools, or at private schools. These 12 years of schooling (or their equivalent) may also be completed outside the USA, thus giving foreign students the opportunity to pursue the benefits of the American education system and obtain a quality American education. Perhaps one of the most impressive facts is the large number of presidents, prime ministers and leaders from other countries who have experienced the American education system and graduated from a university or school in the USA. In many fields and industries, the American education system offers the most cutting-edge, soughtafter programs at the world’s best schools. That is why graduating from an accredited American school and being exposed to the rigors of the American education system is an investment in your future. Whether you want to study at a USA university, a top college, or at an ESL, vocational or high school, a thorough understanding of how the American education system works is essential. Without a clear grasp of the system, an international student will find it difficult to make the right academic choices. The information provided in the Overview of the American education system section will help you develop that understanding. You can also search our list of Universities, colleges, community colleges, graduate schools, and boys and girls boarding schools. It is no surprise that the United States hosts more international students than any other country in the world!  
1. According to the text, students in the US ___________