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.
            MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR TIME
These days we are under pressure to increase the amount of work we can achieve in the shortest time. The pace of life threatens to leave many of us behind, and (1)........ of this pressure we spend time looking for short-cuts in our working lives. However, these time-saving measures may actually cause more problems than they solve.
Some organisations seem to expect staff to work more than the usual eight hours, without recognising the fact that tiredness causes people to make silly mistakes and leads to (2)......... working practices. Try setting clear (3)......... in your everyday work, however, you must be careful that these are not unrealistic and can be achieved within the working day. We tend to (4)......... people who can multi-task because we think they are working hard – but do all the electronic gadgets they use increase their efficiency in the long run? Instead, they may distract them from the task in hand and cause a loss of concentration. Maybe (5)........... with every email or mobile phone call immediately is not the best use of anyone’s time. To sum up, my advice is to keep everything simple, and prioritise tasks - you will become happier at work – and so will your boss!
(5)...............................

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.
A healthy way to know a city Maybe you are staying in a city, and there is no park nearby where you can take your morning job. One of the more recent trend is to go on a running tour, but you are not leading the way. Rather, a running enthusiast (1).......   knows the best (2)..... in the city acts as your guide. You are going out for a run, but you are also being shown highlights of the city while you are doing it.
Guided running tours are a trend that seems to be catching (3)...... in quite a few of the bigger cities in the United States. New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco are just three of the major cities that  have  running  tours in (4)........... They offer these tours to individuals, groups, and even for corporate events. If you are going into a city with colleagues to attend a business meeting or a convention, what better way is there to see the city and network with others (5) .......while taking a healthy run? 
(2).......................................

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.
            Finding Beauty in the City
Cities are known to have lives of their own, and photographers are able to (1).............. some of it. Whether taking shots of people walking on a crowded street or time-lapse shots of cars driving at night, the (2).......photos can be breathtaking. Because many of the shots taken are of man-made objects like architecture, many emotions that come into (3)........ wouldn’t be found in nature photography. Photos can show the wonder of a child staring at a fountain as water shoots upward in the sunlight. They can also show the sadder side, such as a camp of homeless people living in terrible poverty. (4)............ of what they show, there is always beauty to be found, even if it is beauty in something that is showing an ugly truth. Depending on the time of the day, photos taken in an urban environment can change drastically. To see the (5)............ of a building as its shadow is cast on the lawn of a park is always amazing to see.
(2).........................

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.
              THE FUTURE OF WATER
Many of us often wonder what the future holds; some believe major advances in technology will occur which will result in improvements to our everyday lives. Scientists have predicted shortages in fossil fuels and changes in the weather patterns of the world. (1).......... , one significant change that will have an alarming impact on all of us is the global water shortage. Analysts have forecast that some of the consequences of this will be mass migration from Africa to Europe and wars between countries over clean water. The main causes of this disturbing water shortage are global warming, climate change and the increasing world population. The supply of fresh water (2)....... comes from mountain glaciers and  flows  into  lakes  and  rivers  is  diminishing,  and  this also (3).......... to the shortage. Water analysts and government leaders need to start making radical changes to the way water use is managed and they need to find new sources that will be able to meet the demands of an ever-growing population.  In addition, more things need to be done to control global warming as this will help to reduce water shortages.   People   should   be made  (4)......... of the situation and warned not to waste water. Multinational companies should invest in developing better water management systems. In summary, if we start (5) ............. action now, we might be able to prevent a world disaster.
(5).................................

Being aware of one's own emotions - recognizing and acknowledging feelings as they happen - is at the very heart of Emotional Intelligence. And this awareness encompasses not only moods but also thoughts about those moods. People who are able to monitor their feelings as they arise are less likely to be ruled by them and are thus better able to manage their emotions.
Managing emotions does not mean suppressing them; nor does it mean giving free rein to every feeling. Psychologist Daniel Goleman, one of several authors who have popularized the notion of Emotional Intelligence, insisted that the goal is balance and that every feeling has value and significance. As Goleman said, "A life without passion would be a dull wasteland of neutrality, cut off and isolated from the richness of life itself." Thus, we manage our emotions by expressing them in an appropriate manner. Emotions can also be managed by engaging in activities that cheer us up, soothe our hurts, or reassure us when we feel anxious.
Clearly, awareness and management of emotions are not independent. For instance, you might think that individuals who seem to experience their feelings more intensely than others would be less able to manage them. However, a critical component of awareness of emotions is the ability to assign meaning to them - to know why we are experiencing a particular feeling or mood. Psychologists have found that, among individuals who experience intense emotions, individual differences in the ability to assign meaning to those feelings predict differences in the ability to manage them. In other words, if two individuals are intensely angry, the one who is better able to understand why he or she is angry will also be better able to manage the anger.
Self-motivation refers to strong emotional self-control, which enables a person to get moving and pursue worthy goals, persist at tasks even when frustrated, and resist the temptation to act on impulse. Resisting impulsive behavior is, according to Goleman, "the root of all emotional self- control."
Of all the attributes of Emotional Intelligence, the ability to postpone immediate gratification and to persist in working toward some greater future gain is most closely related to success - whether one is trying to build a business, get a college degree, or even stay on a diet. One researcher examined whether this trait can predict a child's success in school. The study showed that 4-year-old children who can delay instant gratification in order to advance toward some future goal will be "far superior as students" when they graduate from high school than will 4-year-olds who are not able to resist the impulse to satisfy their immediate wishes.

All of the following are mentioned in paragraph 2 about our emotions EXCEPT..........

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 gesture is an action that sends a message from one person to another without using words. We use gestures to communicate with others. There are some gestures that have completely different meaning depending on when and where they are used.
When an American wants to show that something is OK. or good, he raises his hand and makes a circle with his thumb and foreigners. The circle sign has only one meaning for him. He might be surprised to learn that in other countries it can mean something different. In Japan, for instance, it is the gesture for money. In France, it means 'zero' or 'worthless'. Such differences can lead to all kinds of misunderstanding when foreigners meet. But why is it that the same gesture has so many different meanings?
When some people want to show that something is exact or precise, they make a sign to show that they are holding something between the tips of their thumb and forefinger. Many people from all over the world do this when they want to make a specific point as they are speaking. People later started using this signal to mean 'exactly right' or 'perfect'. This was how the famous OK was bom.
In Japan, money means coins and coins are around. Therefore, making a round hand sign came to represent money. It is simple as that. The French sign for 'nothing' or 'worthless' also has a simple origin. This time the circle doesn't represent a coin, but nought. Nought equals zero, zero equals nothing, nothing equals worthless.

When does an American raise his hand and make a circle sign?

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 nuclear family, consisting of a mother, father, and their children, may be more an American ideal than an American reality. Of course, the so-called traditional American family was always more varied than we had been led to believe, reflecting the very different racial, ethnic, class, and religious customs among different American groups.
The most recent government statistics reveal that only about one third of all current American families  fit the traditional mold and another third consists of married couples who either have no children or have none still living at home. Of the final one third, about 20 percent of the total number of American households are single people, usually women over sixty-five years of age. A small percentage, about 3 percent of the total, consists of unmarried people who choose to live together; and the rest, about 7 percent are single, usually divorced parents, with at least one child.
Today, these varied family types are typical, and therefore, normal. Apparently, many Americans are achieving supportive relationships in family forms other than the traditional one.

In the passage, married couples whose children have grown or who have no children represent     .

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.
The traditional definition of literacy is considered to be the ability to read and write, or the ability to use language to read, write, listen, and speak. In modern contexts, the word refers to reading 4 and writing at a level (1)......... for communication, or at a level that lets one understand and communicate ideas in a literate society so as to take (2)....... in that society. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has drafted the following definition: “Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning to enable an individual to achieve his or her goals, to develop his, or her knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in the wider society.”
Many policy analysts consider literacy rates a crucial measure of a region’s human capital. This claim is made on the (3)........ that literate people can be trained less expensively than illiterate people, generally have a higher socio-economic status and enjoy better health and employment prospects. Policy makers also argue that literacy increases job opportunities and access to higher education. In Kerala, India, for example, female and child mortality rates declined (4)......... in the 1960s, when girls who were educated in the education reforms after 1948 began to raise families. Recent researchers, (5)........., argue that correlations such as, the one listed above may have more to do with the effect of schooling rather than literacy in general.
(2)..............................

The attraction of gold is as old as history. Since ancient times, gold has been the object of dreams and obsessions. Western literature is full of characters who kill for gold or hoard it, from King Midas in the ancient Greek myths, to Fagin in Dickens' Oliver Twist. These characters go to evil extremes to get or keep their gold and they get the punishment they deserve. Most people would not be willing to go to such extremes, of course, but they would not question the assumption that gold has lasting value above and beyond any local currency. Societies change over time, customs and currencies evolve, but gold remains. A wedding ring, for example, must be gold, and so should any serious gift of jewelry. In fact, giving and wearing gold is still a mark of prestige in our post-industrial society, though gold is no longer valued as it used to be thousands of years ago.
Why is gold so valuable? True, it is shiny, durable, and rare, but it is far less useful than many other minerals or metals. It is also not like stock in a company, where the value of the stock depends on the performance of the company. Gold, on the contrary, like any currency, is valuable precisely because people believe it is valuable. That is, if people were willing to accept seashells for their labor and could use them to pay for food, fuel, and other commodities, then seashells would become a valuable currency. Thus, the value of gold depends on the collective belief that gold will continue to be valuable. As long as demand for gold remains steady, the price will hold steady; if demand is high, it will continue to increase in value. But if people should someday lose faith in gold, the price of gold could fall sharply.
Another factor that has affected the price of gold has been the increasing difficulty in acquiring it. Today, most of the gold left in the grounds is in microscopic pieces mixed with rock. To get it, miners must dig up tons and tons of rock, and then spray it with chemicals to separate out the gold. For one ounce of gold - a wedding ring, for example - the mine processes about 30 tons of rock. This is already a costly operation. But there are also hidden social and environmental costs. The mining and processing of gold is ruinous to the environment and to the health of people living nearby. Most of these mines are in poor regions where the people have had little voice in whether there should be mines and how the mines should be run. The large multinational mining companies simply bought the land and opened the mines. However, as people and governments begin to realize the extent of the damage caused by the mines, the situation might change.
Indeed, if the mining companies ever have to pay the full environmental and social costs of mining gold, the price of gold is likely to climb yet higher.

What do many people believe about gold?

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:
What unusual or unique biological train led to the remarkable diversification and unchallenged success of the ants for over 50 million years? The answer appears to be that they were the first group of predatory eusocial insects that both lived and foraged primarily in the soil and in rotting vegetation on the ground. Eusocial refers to a form of insect society characterized by specialization of tasks and cooperative care of the young; it is rare among insects. Richly organized colonies of the land made possible by eusociality enjoy several key advantages over solitary individuals.
Under most circumstances groups of workers are better able to forage for food and defend the nest, because they can switch from individual to group response and back again swiftly and according to need. When a food object or nest intruder is too large for one individual to handle, nestmates can be quickly assembled by alarm or recruitment signals. Equally important is the fact that the execution of multiple- step tasks is accomplished in a series-parallel sequence. That is, individual ants can specialize in particular steps, moving from one object (such as a larva to be fed) to another (a second larva to be fed). They do not need to carry each task to completion from start to finish - for example, to check the larva first, then collect the food, then feed the larva. Hence, if each link in the chain has many workers in attendance, a sense directed at any particular object is less likely to fail. Moreover, ants specializing in particular labor categories typically constitute a caste specialized by age or body form or both. There has been some documentation of the superiority in performance and net energetic yield of various castes for their modal tasks, although careful experimental studies are still relatively few.
What makes ants unusual in the company of eusocial insects is the fact that they are the only eusocial predators (predators are animals that capture and feed on other animals) occupying the soil and ground litter. The eusocial termites live in the same places as ants and also have wingless workers, but they feed almost exclusively on dead vegetation.

The word "they" in bold 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:
In Viet Nam festivals often take place during the three months in spring and in autumn when people have a lot of leisure time. In addition, the climate in spring and autumn is especially suitable for holding festivals and for festivals goers to enjoy. Traditional festivals constitute a form of cultural activities, a spiritual product which the people have created and developed during the course of history. From generation to generation, the Vietnamese people preserve the fine tradition of “remembering the source while drinking water.” Festivals are events which represent this tradition of the community as well as honour the holy figures named as “gods” -the real persons in national history or legendary persons. The images of gods converge the noble characteristics of mankind. They are national heroes who fought against foreign invaders, reclaimed new lands, treated people, fought against natural calamities, or those legendary characters who affect the earthly life.
Accordingly, first and foremost, festivals are events when people pay tribute to divinities that rendered merits to the community and the nation. These are occasions when people come back to either their natural or national roots, which form a sacred part in their mind. Furthermore, testivals represent the strength of the commune or village, the local region or even the whole nation. Worshipping the same god, the people unite in solidarity to overcome difficulties, striving for a happy and wealthy life.
Moreover, festivals display the demand for creativity and enjoyment of spiritual and material cultural values of all social strata. They become a form of education under which fine traditional moral values can be handed from one generation to the next in a unique way of combining spiritual characters with competition and entertainment games. Festivals are also the time people can express their sadness and worries in a wish that gods might bestow favour on them to help them strive for a better life.

What does the word “they” in the second paragraph refer to?

In addition to the great ridges and volcanic chains, the oceans conceal another form of undersea mountains: the strange guyot, or flat-topped seamount. No marine geologist even suspected the existence of these isolated mountains until they were discovered by geologist Harry H. Hess in 1946.
He was serving at the time as naval officer on a ship equipped with a fathometer. Hess named these truncated peaks for the nineteenth-century Swiss-born geologist Arnold Guyot, who had served on the faculty of Princeton University for thirty years. Since then, hundreds of guyots have been discovered in every ocean but the Arctic. Like offshore canyons, guyots present a challenge to oceanographic theory. They are believed to be extinct volcanoes. Their flat tops indicate that they once stood above or just below the surface, where the action of waves leveled off their peaks. Yet today, by definition, their summits are at least 600 feet below the surface, and some are as deep as 8,200 feet. Most lie between 3,200 feet and 6,500 feet. Their tops are not really flat but slope upward to a low pinnacle at the center. Dredging from the tops of guyots has recovered basalt and coral rubble, and that would be expected from the eroded tops of what were once islands. Some of this material is over 80 million years old. Geologists think the drowning of the guyots involved two processes: The great weight of the volcanic mountains depressed the sea floor beneath them, and the level of the sea rose a number of times, especially when the last Ice Age ended, some 8,000 to 11,000 years ago.

What does the passage say about the Arctic Ocean?

Choose the item among A, B, C or D that best answers the question about the passage:

"When Franklin Roosevelt was elected President of the United States in 1932. not only the United States but also the rest of the world was in the throes of an economic depression. Following the termination of World War I, Britain and the United States at first experienced a boom in industry. Called the Roaring Twenties, the 1920s ushered in a number of things - prosperity, greater equality for women in the work world, rising consumption, and easy credit. The Outlook for American business was rosy.
 October 1929 was a month that had catastrophic economic reverberation worldwide. The American stock market witnessed the “Great Crash,” as it is called, and the temporary boom in the American economy came to a standstill. Stock prices sank, and panic spread. The ensuing unemployment figure soared to 12 million by 1932.
 Roosevelt was elected because he promised a “New Deal” to lift the United States out of the doldrums of the depression. Following the principles advocated to Keynes, a British economist, Roosevelt mustered the spending capacities of the federal government to provide welfare, work, and agricultural aid to the millions of down-and-out Americans. Roosevelt succeeded in dragging the nation out of the Depression before the outbreak of World War II."

1. A good title for this passage would be ………..

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 .
A recent (1)....... of a language learning magazine has consulted a number of experts in the field of second language acquisition. Their advice may prove invaluable for those considering a language course. One suggestion is that you access whether you are likely to be successful (2)........ learning a language. Did you enjoy studying language at school, for example? Do you have enough time to learn a language ? The major cost will be your own time and effort. Therefore, you must make sure that course on  offer  leads  to  a  recognized  qualification.  Also,  be  realistic  in your (3).......... If you don’t set achievable aims, you are more likely to give up. Don’t be deceived into thinking that the most expensive courses are the best. Shop around to get the best possible value for money. You should also bear in your mind that the quicker you learn a language, the more quickly you forget it. Sandra Miller, a French teacher, tried to teach herself German by enrolling on a crash course. Already fluent in four languages and with a sound knowledge of teaching methodology her chances of (4)........ progress were high. Three years on she remembers very little. She feels her biggest mistake was not to follow up her first experience.  "I  think  the  teacher’s  role  is  important.  It's  so  nice  to  have  somebody  give  you  a/an (5) ........... ”.
(3)................................
 

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.
          Keeping the World in Our Pockets
Faster processors and advances in memory technology have made today’s smartphones much more powerful than a lot of computers from just a decade ago. With wireless technology, people can surf the Internet, play online games, send e-mail, and do (1)............ all the things they once could only do on a computer. (2)......... , they have the power to do things constantly at their fingertips.
Many people (3)....... that while smartphones are powerful tools, they are making people reliant on them. Why would a person need to learn to read a map when he can get directions to anywhere by simply asking his phone a question? Who needs to learn maths when you have immense calculating power in your pocket at all times? What (4).........is there to memorise facts about history, art, or geography when that information is readily available from a portable Internet interface?
There are just some of the questions being asked and answered as smartphone usage continues to spread. Like any technology, smartphones have their advantages, but they do have disadvantages as well that we must (5).......... an eye on.
(2)............................

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.
            MAKING THE MOST OF YOUR TIME
These days we are under pressure to increase the amount of work we can achieve in the shortest time. The pace of life threatens to leave many of us behind, and (1)........ of this pressure we spend time looking for short-cuts in our working lives. However, these time-saving measures may actually cause more problems than they solve.
Some organisations seem to expect staff to work more than the usual eight hours, without recognising the fact that tiredness causes people to make silly mistakes and leads to (2)......... working practices. Try setting clear (3)......... in your everyday work, however, you must be careful that these are not unrealistic and can be achieved within the working day. We tend to (4)......... people who can multi-task because we think they are working hard – but do all the electronic gadgets they use increase their efficiency in the long run? Instead, they may distract them from the task in hand and cause a loss of concentration. Maybe (5)........... with every email or mobile phone call immediately is not the best use of anyone’s time. To sum up, my advice is to keep everything simple, and prioritise tasks - you will become happier at work – and so will your boss!
(2)...............................
 

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 term 'megalopolis' (or megacity) was first used by French geographer Jean Gottman to describe the north-eastern United States in 1961. The term is used more widely now and is defined as an urban area of more than 10 million inhabitants dominated by a low-density housing. In 1995 there were 14 megacities. By 2020 there could be 30.
Megacities are the result of the process of urbanization. After cities grew into crowded urban centres, people who could afford to move into suburbs at the edge of the city. When the suburbs in turn became crowded, people moved into villages and dormitory towns outside the city, but within commuting distance. In this way, for the first time since industrialisation, the countryside began to gain population, whereas cities lost their inhabitants. In the 1980s St Louis and Detroit in the America lost between 35 and 47 per cent of their populations and London lost 15 per cent in the 20 years to 1971.
However, this movement away from cities does not mean that the city is dying. In fact it is spreading. From the old city develops a metropolitan area with many low-level urban developments. When these metropolitan areas merge together, they form megacities which contain over 10 million people. The largest of these is in America, called Boswash - a region over 300 miles long from Boston in the north to Washington, DC in the south with more than 44 million people. There are emerging megalopolises in Britain centred around London and the south-east, in Germany in the industrial region of the Ruhr and Japan in the Tokyo-Osaka-Kyoto region.

Which is the best title for paragraph 3?

For a time, the Hubble telescope was the brunt of jokes and subject to the wrath of those who believed the U.S government had spent too much money on space projects that served no valid purpose. The Hubble was sent into orbit with a satellite by the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1990 amid huge hype and expectation. Yet after it was in position, it simply did not work. Because the primary mirror was misshapen, it was not until 1993 that the crew of the Shuttle Endeavor arrived like roadside mechanics, opened the hatch that was installed for the purpose, and replaced the defective mirror with a good one.
Suddenly, all that had originally been expected came true. The Hubble telescope was indeed the “window on the universe”, as it had originally been dubbed. When you look deep into space, you are actually looking back through time, because even though light travels at 186,000 miles a second, it requires time to get from one place to another. In fact, it is said that in some cases, the Hubble telescope is looking back eleven billion years to see galaxies already forming. The distant galaxies are speeding away from Earth, some travelling at the speed of light.
Hubble has viewed exploding stars such as the Eta Carinae, which clearly displayed clouds of gas and dust billowing outward from its poles at 1.5 million miles an hour. Prior to Hubble, it was visible from traditional telescopes on Earth, but its details were not as certainable. But now, the evidence of the explosion is obvious. The star still burns five million times brighter than the Sun and illuminates clouds from the inside.
Hubble has also provided a close look at black holes, which are described as comic drains. Gas and dust swirl around the drain and are slowly sucked in by the incredible gravity. It has also looked into an area that looked empty to the naked eye and, within a region the size of a grain of sand, located layer upon layer of galaxies, with each galaxy consisting of billions of stars.
The Hubble telescope was named after Edwin Hubble, a 1920s astronomer who developed a formula that expresses the proportional relationship of distances between clusters of galaxies and the speeds at which they travel. Astronomers use stars known as Cepheid variables to measure distances in space. These stars dim and brighten from time to time, and they are photographed over time and charted. All the discoveries made by Hubble have allowed astronomers to learn more about the formation of early galaxies.

The author states that ..........

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.
         The Robots Are Doing the Thinking
Some robots may take care of the dishes, do your laundry, keep the house clean, or even go to the store to do your shopping. Robots that use artificial intelligence are the ones that a lot of people are holding out for. Not only will these robots be able to take care of (1)....... , but they will be able to learn as well.
There are some types of roots that already use a form of artificial intelligence called swarm intelligence. As a(n) (2) ........... of how this works, scientists have create underwater roots that will be used to repair coral reefs that have been damaged. What these robots do is work together to rebuild damaged reefs. As they (3)........ , each one knows what has been done in one area of a reef and can help build other areas or build onto something that another robot has done. Working together, the robots create a new reef that can then be (4)............to grow and thrive on its own. Amazon, the major electronic commerce company, has recently come (5).......an ingenious idea. Instead of having a package delivered to a customer via delivery truck, Amazon will send out lying drones that ill ring a package to a person’s house or delivery almost immediately.
(4)................................

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:
Washington was the first city in history to be created solely for the purpose of governance. Following the Revolution, members of Congress had hotly debated the question of a permanent home for themselves and for those departments – the Treasury, the Patent Office and so on – which even the sketchiest of central governments would feel obliged to establish. In 1790, largely in order to put an end to congressional bickering, George Washington was charged with selecting a site for the newly designated federal district. Not much to anyone’s surprise but to the disappointment of many he chose a tract of land on the banks of the Potomac River, a few miles upstream from his beloved plantation Mount Vernon.
The District of Columbia was taken in part from Virginia and in part from Maryland. At the time it was laid out, its hundred square miles consisted of gently rolling hills, some under cultivation and the rest heavily wooded, with a number of creeks and much swampy land along the Potomac. There is now a section of Washington that is commonly referred to as Foggy Bottom; that section bore the same nickname a hundred and eighty years ago.
Two ports cities, Alexandria and Georgetown, flourished within sight of the new capital and gave it access by ship to the most important cities of the infant nation – Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Newport, Salem and Portsmouth – and also to the far-off ports of England and the Continent.

The author implies that Georgetown was important in the eighteen century because it