Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions.
                      My first home
When my parents married, they rented a small house and they didn’t have a lot of money for furniture. The kitchen had a sink for washing up and a cooker, but that was all. They (6)............. a old table and a chair from the market. They borrowed a sofa (7)....... _was also old but they covered it with modern materials so it was bright and cheerful.
Outside, there was a small garden behind the house, but in front of it there was only the road. (8).........., the road wasn’t busy, so I could cross it to reach the park on the opposite side. We   lived there (9)..........I was ten and we were very happy. We had to move house because it was too small when my twin sisters were born. We all (10).......... sad when we left.

(8)..........................

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:
The diary and the letter were the most extensively practiced forms of life writings in eighteenth- century America. From the numerous examples of these two types of writing from the period, a portrait of daily life of the period can be gleaned.
Many of the diaries that were kept during this period were life diaries by authors interested in maintaining day-to-day records of reflective self-examination, but some of the most compelling were situational diaries; those prompted by and limited to lengthy descriptions of personal reflections about a particular event. Three of the many situational journals of this period are those written by Sarah Kemble Knight, William Burd II, and Dr. Alexander Hamilton. Sarah Kemble Knight's diary of her five-month trip at the end of 1704 and the beginning of 1705 from Boston to New Haven to New York and back again to Boston was published more than a century later as The Journal of Madam Knight. Though this diary does include an account of the hardship that she encountered along the way, it is principally composed of humorous descriptions of and commentary on the hospitality that she was offered and the manners of those that she encountered. William Burd II kept two diaries to describe his experiences on a 1729 surveying expedition to settle a border dispute between Virginia and North Carolina. One of the diaries, History of the Dividing Line between Virginia and North Carolina, was published in 1842, while its companion, Secret Diary, was published in 1929. In these diaries, Burd used a humorous and satirical approach to describe not just the day-to-day events of the trip but also the characteristics which set his beloved Virginia culture apart from the (in his opinion) decidedly less praiseworthy culture of those non- Virginians that he encountered in his trip. Dr. Alexander Hamilton's Itinerarium (1744) describes a four- month voyage of discovery undertaken by Hamilton through the mid-Atlantic and New England colonies; in the diary that he kept of this trip. Hamilton provides considerable commentary on the social customs of various areas, comparing the customs and culture of the better homes of the American colonies with those of the great salons of Europe.
Letter-writing also held a place of importance in eighteenth-century America (indeed, the ability to produce cultured letters was considered a form of art), and many letters extant from that period provide insights into the culture, mores, and styles of written communication of that era. Many of the letter writers employed devices in common usage in European models of the time, demonstrating that letter writers felt a sense of cohesiveness with the cultured classes of Europe: John and Abigail Adams signed the names Lysander and Constantia to their early letters, while Thomas Jefferson created an elaborate dialogue between his head and his heart to discuss the nature of friendship in  a 1786 letter to Maria Cosway. The variety of purposes that these letters served provides additional insight into the priorities of the society of the time. The letters were used to cement love matches and friendships, as the previously mentioned letters did; they were the primary method for relaying news among family and friends who were scattered across various geographic locations; they were often used as a means of carrying out business in this era before more rapid long-distance communication; they were often used used as a way of sharing professional, social, or political ideas among leaders in various fields who perhaps had no other way to get together and exchange ideas.

The word “companion” in paragraph 2 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.

In my experience, freshmen today are different from those I knew when I started as a counselor and professor 25 years ago. College has always been demanding both academically and socially. But students now are less mature and often not ready for the responsibility of being in college.

It is really too easy to point the finger at parents who protect their children from life’s obstacle. Parents, who handle every difficulty and every other responsibility for their children writing admission essays to picking college courses, certainly may contribute to their children’s lack of coping strategies. But we can look even more broadly to the social trends of today.

How many people do you know who are on medication to prevent anxiety or depression? The number of students who arrive at college already medicated for unwanted emotions has increased dramatically in the past 10 years. We, as a society, don’t want to “feel” anything unpleasant and we certainly don’t want our children to “suffer”.

The resulting problem is that by not experiencing negative emotions, one does not learn the necessary skills to tolerate and negotiate adversity. As a psychologist, I am well aware of the fact that some individuals suffer from depression and anxiety and can benefit from treatment, but I question the growing number of medicated adolescents today.

Our world is more stressful in general because of the current economic and political realities, but I don’t believe that the college experience itself is more intense today than that of the past 10 years. What I do think is that many students are often not prepared to be young “adults” with all the responsibilities of life.

What does this mean for college faculty and staff? We are required to assist in the basic parenting of these students – the student who complains that the professor didn’t remind her of the due date for an assignment that was clearly listed on the syllabus and the student who cheats on an assignment in spite of careful instructions about plagiarism.

As college professors, we have to explain what it means to be an independent college student before we can even begin to teach. As parents and teachers we should expect young people to meet challenges. To encourage them in this direction, we have to step back and let them fail and pick themselves up and move forward. This approach needs to begin at an early age so that college can actually be a passage to independent adulthood.

The word “handle” in parapgraph 2 mostly means ____________.

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:
Trees are useful to man in three very important ways: they provide him with wood and other products, they give him shade, and they help to prevent drought and floods.
Unfortunately, in many parts of the world man has not realized that the third of these services is the most important. In his eagerness to draw quick profit from the trees, he has cut them down in large numbers, only to find that without them he has lost the best friends he had.
Two thousand years ago a rich and powerful country cut down its trees to build warships, with which to gain itself an empire. It gained the empire but, without its trees, its soil became hard and poor. When the empire fell to pieces, the country found itself faced by floods and starvation.
Even though a government realizes the importance of a plentiful supply of trees, it is difficult for it to persuade the villager to see this. The villager wants wood to cook his food with, and he can earn money by making charcoal or selling wood to the townsman. He is usually too lazy or too careless to plant and look after trees. So unless the government has a good system of control, or can educate the people, the forests will slowly disappear.
This does not only mean that there will be fewer trees. The results are even more serious. For where there are trees their roots break the soil up, allowing the rain to sink in and also bind the soil, thus preventing it being washed away easily, but where there are no trees, the soil becomes hard and poor. The rain falls on hard ground and flows away on the surface, causing floods and carrying away with it the rich topsoil, in which crops grow so well. When all the topsoil is gone, nothing remains but a worthless desert. 

In the writer's opinion,     , or the forests slowly disappear.

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.
When John Mills was going to fly in an airplane for the first time, he was frightened. He did not like the idea of being thousands of feet up in the air. "I also didn't like the fact that I wouldn't  be in control," says John.
"I'm a terrible passenger in the car. When somebody else is driving, I tell them what to so. It drives everybody crazy."
However John couldn't avoid flying any longer. It was the only way he could visit his grandchildren in Canada.
"I had made up my mind that I was going to do it, I couldn't let my son, his wife and their three children travel all the way here to visit me. It would be so expensive for them and I know Tom's business isn't doing so well at the moment - it would also be tiring for the children - it's a nine-hour flight!" he says.
To get ready for the flight John did lots of reading about airplanes. When he booked his seat, he was told that he would be flying on a Boeing 747, which is better known as a jumbo jet. "I  needed to know as much as possible before getting in that plane. I suppose it was a way of making myself feel better. The Boeing 747 is the largest passenger aircraft in the world at the moment.
The first one flew on February 9th 1969 in the USA. It can carry up to 524 passengers and 3.400 pieces of luggage. The fuel for airplanes is kept in the wings and the 747's wings are so big that they can carry enough fuel for an average car to be able to travel 16,000 kilometers a year for 70 years. Isn't that unbelievable? Even though I had discovered all this very interesting information about the jumbo, when I saw it for the first time, just before I was going to travel to Canada, I still couldn't believe that something so enormous was going to get up in the air and fly. I was even more impressed when I saw how big it was inside with hundreds of people!"
The biggest surprise of all for John was the flight itself. "The take-off itself was much smoother than I expected although I was still quite scared until we were in the air. In the end, I managed to relax, enjoy the food and watch one of the movies and the view from the window was spectacular. I even managed to sleep for a while!
"Of course," continues John, "the best reward of all was when I arrived in Canada and saw my son and his family, particularly my beautiful grandchildren. Suddenly, I felt so silly about all the years when I couldn't even think of getting on a plane. I had let my fear of living stop me from seeing the people I love most in the world. I can visit my son and family as often as I like now!" Question 24: Why did John Mills fly in an airplane?

What does the word "which" in the paragraph refer to?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer for each blank.

The General Certificate of Secondary Education or the GCSE examinations for (26) _____ are the standard school-leaver qualifications taken by (27) _____ all UK students in the May and June following their 16th birthday. If you come to a UK (28) _____ school before you (29) _____ the age of 16, you will study towards GCSE examinations in up to 12 subjects. Some subjects are compulsory, including English arid mathematics, and you can select (30) _____, such as music, drama, geography and history from a series of options. GCSEs provide a good all-round education (31) _____ you can build on at college and eventually at university. AS- and A-levels are taken after GCSEs. They are the UK qualifications most (32) _____ accepted for entry to university and are available in subjects from the humanities, arts, sciences and social sciences as well as in (33) _____ subjects such as engineering, and leisure and tourism. You can study up to four subjects at (34) _____ same time for two years, (35) _____ AS-level examinations at the end of your first year (called the lower-sixth) and A-level qualifications at the end of your second year (called the upper-sixth).

(30) _____

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.
                     ALFRED NOBEL
Alfred Nobel was born on October 21, 1833 in Sweden. His important invention was dynamite - a powerful (1)........ _. This dynamite business made him a very rich man.
One day, Alfred Nobel read about his death in a newspaper. In fact, it was his brother's death. The mass media (2).........him a saleman of death, "The dynamite king". Nobel was very upset. He had invented dynamite to save lives - lives ( 3 )............ _ were lost because other explosives were dangerous to use. He hated violence and war. And he did not like the world to    think of him as a man of war.
He thought (4)..........the  best way for people to  use  his fortune for  years. (5)................... _  he knew  what to do with his fortune. Alfred Nobel established the Nobel Prize, an annual award to honour leaders of science, literature, and world peace. Alfred Nobel died on December 10, 1896. He was unmarried and had no children. His important decision changed the way the  world thought of him. He was remembered the way he wanted: Alfred Nobel, man of peace.

(5)..........................
 

Conference Room 120 can be booked for meetings and conference calls. First, make a reservation request online at www.gzpoffice.com/confroom. When your request ---135---, the system automatically checks for availability. Your request will be accepted if no other event is scheduled at that time. The system will then immediately send you an e-mail message to ---136--- your reservation. However, if another meeting is scheduled that conflicts with yours, you will be notified that the request has been declined.
---137---. It is therefore ---138--- that you schedule your will event well ahead of time. This way, if a given time slot is already reserved, you will be able to reschedule your meeting.

136.............

Read the following passage and then choose the best answer.

It is commonly believed that school is where people go to get an education. Nevertheless, it has been said that today children interrupt their education to go to school. The difference between schooling and education implied by this remark is important.

Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling. Education knows no limits. It can take place anywhere, whether in the shower or on the job, whether in the kitchen or on a tractor. It includes both the formal learning that takes place in school and the whole universe of informal learning. The agent (doer) of education can vary from respected grandparents to the people arguing about politics on the radio, from a child to a famous scientist. Whereas schooling has a certain predictability, education quite often produces surprises. A chance conversation with a stranger may lead a person to discover how little is known of other religions. People receive education from infancy on. Education, then, is a very broad, inclusive term. It is a lifelong process, a process that starts long before the start of school, and one that should be an integral part of one's entire life.

Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process, whose general pattern varies little from one setting to the next. Throughout a country, children arrive at school at approximately the same time, take assigned seats, are taught by an adult, use similar textbooks, do homework, take exams, and so on. The slices of reality that are to be learned, whether they are the alphabet or an understanding of the workings of government, have usually been limited by the boundaries of the subject being taught. For example, high school students know that they are not likely to find out in their classes the truth about political problems in their communities or what the newest filmmakers are experimenting with. There are definite conditions surrounding the formalized process of schooling.

According to the passage, the doers of education are ……………

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.

   Animation traditionally is done by hand-drawing or painting successive frame of an object, each slightly different than the proceeding frame. In computer animation, although the computer may be the one to draw the different frames, in most cases the artist will draw the beginning and ending frames and the computer will produce the drawings between the first and the last drawing. This is generally referred to as computer-assisted animation, because the computer is more of a helper than an originator.

   In full computer animation, complex mathematical formulas are used to produce the final sequences of pictures. These formulas operate on extensive databases of numbers that defines the objects in the pictures as they exist in mathematical space. The database consists of endpoints, and color and intensity information. Highly trained professionals are needed to produce such effects because animation that obtains high degrees of realism involves computer techniques from three-dimensional transformation, shading, and curvatures.

   High-tech computer animation for film involves very expensive computer systems along with special color terminals or frame buffers. The frame buffer is nothing more than a giant image memory for viewing a single frame. It temporarily holds the image for display on the screen.

   A camera can be used to film directly from the computer’s display screen, but for the highest quality images possible, expensive film recorders are used. The computer computers the positions and colors for the figures in the picture, and sends this information to the recorder, which captures it on film. Sometimes, however, the images are stored on a large magnetic disk before being sent to the recorder. Once this process is completed, it is replaced for the next frame. When the entire sequence has been recorded on the film, the film must be developed before the animation can be viewed. If the entire sequence does not seem right, the motions must be corrected, recomputed, redisplayed, and rerecorded. This approach can be very expensive and time – consuming. Often, computer-animation companies first do motion tests with simple computer-generated line drawings before selling their computers to the task of calculating the high-resolution, realistic-looking images.

The word “they” in the second paragraph refers 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.

   Martin Luther King, Jf., is well- known for his work in civil rights and for his many famous speeches, among which is his moving “I have a dream” speech. But fewer people know much about King’s childhood.

   M.L, as he was called, was born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, at the home of his maternal grandfather. M.L.’s grandfather purchased their home on Auburn Avenue in 1909, twenty years before M.L was born. His grandfather allowed the house to be used as a meeting place for a number of organizations dedicated to the education and social advancement of blacks. M.L. grew up in the atmosphere, with his home being used as a community gathering place, and was no doubt influenced by it.

   M.L.’s childhood was not especially eventfully. His father was a minister and his mother was a musician. He was the second of three children, and he attended all black schools in a black neighborhood. The neighborhood was not poor, however. Auburn Avenue was an area of banks, insurance companies, builders, jewelers, tailors, doctors, lawyers, and other businesses and services. Even in the face of Atlanta’s segregation, the district thrived. Dr. King never forgot the community spirit he had known as a child, nor did he forget the racial prejudice that was a huge barrier keeping black Atlantans from mingling with whites.

M.L. was _______ by the atmosphere in which he grew up.

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
               School lunch
Research has shown that over half the childrn in Britain who take their own lunches to school do not eat (1) .......in the middle of the day. In Britain, schools have to (2)...... meals at lunchtime. Children can choose to bring their own food or have lunch at the school canteen.
One shocking finding of the research is that school meals are much healthier than lunches prepared by parents. There are strict (3)..... _ for the preparation of school meals, which have to include one (4)............of fruit and one of vegetables, as well as meat, a dairy item and starchy food like break or pasta. Lunchboxes examined by researchers contained sweet drinks, crisps and chocolate bars. Children consume twice as much sugar as they should at lunchtime.
The research will provide a better understanding (5)......... why the percentage of overweight in Britain has increased in the last decade. Unfortunately, the government can’t criticize parents, but it can remind them of the nutritional value of milk, fruit and vegetables. Small changes in their children’s diet can affect their future health. Children can easily develop bad eating habits at this age, and parents are the only ones who can prevent it.
(4).................

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

(3)..............................

Read and choose best answers the question about the passage:

"Education is not an end, but a means to an end. In other words, we do not educate children only for the purpose of educating them. Our purpose is to fit them for life.
 
In some modem countries it has, for some time, been fashionable to think that by free education for all - whether rich or poor, clever or stupid - one can solve all the problems of society and build a perfect nation. But we can already see that free education for all is not enough; we find in such countries a larger number of people with university degree; they refuse to do what they think “low” work; and, in fact, work with hands is thought to be dirty and shameful in such countries. But we have only to think a moment to understand that the work of a completely uneducated farmer is far more important than that of a professor; we can live without education, but we die if we have no food. If no one cleaned our streets and took the rubbish away from our house, we should get terrible diseases in your towns.
 
In fact, when we say that all of us must be educated to fit us for life, it means that we must be educated in such a way that, firstly, each of us can do whatever work suited to our brains and ability and, secondly, that we can realize that all jobs are necessary to society, and that is very bad to be ashamed of one’s work. Only such a type of education can be considered valuable to society."

3. According to 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:
A number of factors related to the voice reveal the personality of the speaker. The first is the broad area of communication, which includes imparting information by use of language, communicating with a group or an individual and specialized communication through performance. Aperson conveys thoughts and ideas through choice of words, by a tone of voice that is pleasant or unpleasant, gentle or harsh, by the rhythm that is inherent within the language itself, and by speech rhythms that are flowing and regular or uneven and hesitant, and finally, by the pitch and melody of the utterance. When speaking before a group, a person’s tone may indicate uncertainty or fright, confidence or calm. At interpersonal levels, the tone may reflect ideas and feelings over and above the words chosen, or may believe them.Here the participant’s tone can consciously or unconsciously reflect intuitive sympathy or antipathy, lack of concern or interest, fatigue, anxiety, enthusiasm or excitement, all of which are usually discernible by the acute listener. Public performance is a manner of communication that is highly specialized with its own techniques for obtaining effects by voice and /or gesture. The motivation derived from the text, and in the case of singing, the music, in combination with the performer’s skills, personality, and ability to create empathy will determine the success of artistic, political, or pedagogic communication. Second, the voice gives psychological clues to a person’s self-image, perception of others, and emotional health. Self- image can be indicated by a tone of voice that is confident, pretentious, shy, aggressive, outgoing, or exuberant, to name only a few personality traits. Also the sound may give a clue to the facade or mask of that person, for example, a shy person hiding behind an overconfident front. How a speaker perceives the listener’s receptiveness, interest, or sympathy in any given conversation can drastically alter the tone of presentation, by encouraging or discouraging the speaker. Emotional health is evidenced in the voice by free and melodic sounds of the happy, by constricted and harsh sound of the angry, and by dull and lethargic qualities of the depressed.

According to the passage, an overconfident front may hide    .

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:
Newspapers can be traced back to 16th century Venice. In 1566, handwritten news sheets - called 'avis' or ‘gazette' – filled with information on wars and politics in Europe were distributed weekly in Venice. Similar news sheets soon started to appear in other European countries. By 1615, Germany and Austria were publishing weeklies. And in 1621, the first news sheets appeared in England.
At first, these news sheets only printed news which came from outside the country in which they were printed. Discussion of local or national issues was avoided. Europe’s governments did not tolerate anything negative being said about them as it could lead to national unrest.
Such censorship slowed the development of newspapers. Nevertheless, a belief in the importance of a 'free press’ slowly began to take hold in Europe. England was among the first countries to escape government control of the press. This occurred during the reign of King Charles I in the 17th century, when, during a period of breakdown in the king's authority, people began to publish what they wanted.
Eventually, free press had the right to criticize government and voice other ideas freely. In the middle of the 18th century, Sweden became the first country to make press freedom a part of its law.
In the 19th century, the newspaper industry was transformed by the invention of the telegraph. The telegraph was a communication system that allowed messages to be sent over long distances in a matter of minutes. It wasn’t long before newspapers became society's primary means of spreading and receiving information. In 1880, the first photographs appeared in newspapers and, by the end of the century, all the basic technical tools for the modern newspaper were in place.
The story of newspapers in the 20th century was one of adaptation to changing consumer and media markets. The invention of radio, TV, and later the Internet, repeatedly drove newspapers to re-invent themselves. Also, during the 20th century, mass-market advertising increased profitability for newspapers. This attracted large, publicly-owned corporations who began buying newspapers from the descendants of company founders.
Over the years, people have periodically predicted the extinction of newspapers. In fact, every time a new media has come into being, dire predictions have been made for existing forms (e.g. television was supposed to have replaced radio, radio was supposed to have replaced newspapers). Yet history has repeatedly shown that new media do not replace existing media. Instead, what happens is that media consumption grows, which creates the necessary space for the new media to become a part of the media landscape.
According to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), each day more than 1.5 billion people around the world read a newspaper. The WAN has also estimated the total annual worth of the global newspaper industry and put it at just under 180 billion USD. Such statistics suggest the newspaper industry is healthier than at any other time in its history. Indeed, if the industry proves itself as capable of adapting to change as it has done in the past, it is unlikely that newspapers will be disappearing from newsstands anytime soon.

The pronoun “it” in the last paragraph refers 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:
The progressive movement was a powerful and broad-based movement of reform that had lasting effects on the American political system in the first two decades of the twentieth century. It arose in reaction to the domination of the social and political system by business interests and rampant corruption throughout the political party system during the period following the end of the Civil War in 1865. Progressivism emerged as a force during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, from 1901 to 1909, and reached its height in the presidential campaign of 1912. By the time the United States entered World War I in 1917, progressivism as a force had faded from the political scene. The progressive movement was focused on instigating, or initiating change in three different areas. One area that was of major interest to the progressive movement was the imposition of legal and government control over big business, which had usurped an extraordinary amount of power in the era of the wealthy industrial barons such as Rockefeller and Carnegie. A second area of interest to the progressive movement was the improvement of the social system in order to rid society of the poverty, slum housing, and exploitation of immigrant and child labor that were a part of the era. A final area of interest was the cleaning up of the political system to move political decisions back into the realm of direct democratic control and away from the corrupt backroom deals that plagued the world of politics.
Progressivism was a grassroots movement that first gained force at the local level. In cities such as Cincinnati and Cleveland, effective urban reform movements took hold, and city officials were appointed or elected to run their respective cities along nonpartisan lines and out from under the control of political parties and bosses. The progressive movement then worked its way from the local level to the state level and then on to the national level. In the state of Wisconsin, for example, "Fighting Bob" La Follette led the drive for change, first in his role as governor of the state (1901-1906) and later as the U.S. senator representing the state (1906-1925). Under his leadership, numerous reforms were instituted: state regulation of the railroads increased, policies directed at improving the lives of workers -- such as workers' compensation and unemployment insurance -- were instituted, and in the political arena, selection of party candidates was determined by direct democratic vote rather than through backroom political wrangling.

Which of the sentences below expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in paragraph 2?

Choose the best answer:
 Peter ___________ tennis twice a week.

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:
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the production of food and feed crops in the United States rose at an extraordinarily rapid rate. Com production increased by four and a half times, hay by five times, oats and wheat by seven times. The most crucial factor behind this phenomenal upsurge in productivity was the widespread adoption of labor-saving machinery by northern farmers. By 1850 horse- drawn reaping machines that cut grain were being introduced into the major grain-growing regions of the country. Horse-powered threshing machines to separate the seeds from the plants were already in general use. However, it was the onset of the Civil War in 1861 that provided the great stimulus for the mechanization of northern agriculture. With much of the labor force inducted into the army and with grain prices on the rise, northern farmers rushed to avail themselves of the new labor-saving equipment. In 1860 there were approximately 80,000 reapers in the country; five years later there were 350,000.
After the close of the war in 1865, machinery became ever more important in northern agriculture, and improved equipment was continually introduced. By 1880 a self-binding reaper had been perfected that not only cut the grain, but also gathered the stalks and bound them with twine. Threshing machines were also being improved and enlarged, and after 1870 they were increasingly powered by steam engines rather than by horses. Since steam-powered threshing machines were costly items-running from $ 1,000 to $4,000 - they were usually owned by custom thresher owners who then worked their way from farm to farm during the harvest season. “Combines” were also coming into use on the great wheat ranches in California and the Pacific Northwest. These ponderous machines - sometimes pulled by as many as 40 horses - reaped the grain, threshed it, and bagged it, all in one simultaneous operation.
The adoption of labor-saving machinery had a profound effect upon the sale of agricultural operations in the northern states-allowing farmers to increase vastly their crop acreage. By the end of century, a farmer employing the new machinery could plant and harvest two and half times as much com as a farmer had using hand methods 50 years before.

Combines and self-binding reapers were similar because each     .

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:
The development of genetically modified (GM) plants and animals had led to a huge global controversy. Opponents say that GM “Franken foods” are a threat to our well-being, and proponents say that the risks are minimal. There is one aspect of the war over GM that is often overlooked. Anyone who wears a cotton shirt these days is using a GM crop. Cotton is the only major non-food GM crop at present, but others are coming.
GM cotton plants that is not food has not stopped the most passionate GM opponents from objecting. If GM cotton is grown in a field next to fields of non-GM cotton, they argue, then how to keep genes from being transferred from field to field. This danger, however, is not as compelling to the public as possible health hazards in food, so there is no great fury over GM cotton.
GM cotton seeds produce higher yields, and they do without the need for pesticides. Planting of  GM cotton has increased five fold since 1997; three-quarter of cotton in America, and over half in China, is now GM. Farmers like it because it increases their profits.
Other options for non-food GM include new variety of flowers with different colors or scents, tougher grasses for lawns, and plants designed to soak up pollutants from the soil. The paper industry provides another example of potential for GM to help produce better and cheaper products. Paper is made from pulp, and pulp is generally made from trees. Researchers in New Zealand and Chile have been working on insect-resistant pines, and a Japanese firm has combined carrot genes with tree genes to make them grow better in poor soil.
Another interesting case is that of tobacco. It is not food crop, but it is consumed, and GM tobacco plants with both more and less nicotine have been created. The tobacco plant, however, is an ideal target for GM, since its genetics are very well understood and it produces a lot of leaves. The value of the drugs that could be produced by GM tobacco is so high, many farmers could switch from growing tobacco for cigarettes to growing it for medicine. Since medical cost is rising, consumers would also be happy to use drugs produced in bulk by GM tobacco.

It can be inferred from the passage that GM tobacco     .

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:
According to sociologists, there are several different ways in which a person may become recognized as the leader of a social group in the United States. In the tamily, traditional cultural patterns confer leadership on one or both of the parents. In other cases, such as friendship groups, one or more persons may gradually emerge as leaders, although there is no formal process of selection. In larger groups, leaders are usually chosen formally through election or recruitment.
Although leaders are often thought to be people with unusual personal ubility, decades ot research have failed to produce consistent evidence that there is any category ot “natural leaders”. It seems that there is no set of personal qualities that all leaders have in common; rather, virtually any person may be recognized as a leader if the person has qualities that meet the needs ot that particular group.
Furthermore, although it is commonly supposed that social groups have a single leader, research suggests that there are typically two different leadership roles that are held by different individuals. Instrumental leadership is leadership that emphasizes the completion of tasks by a social group.
Group members look to instrumental leaders to “get things” done.” Expressive leadership, on the other hand, is leadership that emphasizes the collective well-being of a social group’s member. Expressive leaders are less concerned with the overall goals of the group than with providing emotional support to group members and attempting to minimize tension and conflict among them. Group members expect expressive leaders to maintain stable relationships within the group and provide support to individual members.
Instrumental leaders are likely to have a rather secondary relationship to other group members. They give orders and may discipline group members who inhibit attainment of the group’s goals. Expressive leaders cultivate a more personal or primary relationship to others in the group. They offer sympathy when someone experiences difficulties or is subjected to discipline, are quick to lighten a serious moment with humor, and try to resolve issues that threaten to divide the group. As the differences in these two roles suggest, expressive leaders generally receive more personal affection from group members; instrumental leaders, if they are successful in promoting group goals, may enjoy a more distant respect.

Which of the following statements about leadership can be inferred from paragraph 2?