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Before the grass has thickened on the roadside verges and leaves have started growing on the trees is a perfect time to look around and see just how dirty Britain has become. The pavements are stained with chewing gum that has been spat out and the gutters are  full  of discarded fast food cartons. Years ago I remember travelling abroad and being saddened by the  plastic bags, discarded bottles and soiled nappies at the edge of every road. Nowadays, Britain seems to look at least as bad. What has gone wrong?
The problem is that the rubbish created by our increasingly mobile lives lasts a  lot  longer  than before. If it is not cleared up and properly thrown away, it stays in the undergrowth for years; a semi-permanent reminder of what a tatty little country we have now. Firstly, it is estimated that 10 billion plastic bags have been given to shoppers. These will take anything  from  100  to 1,000 years to rot. However, it is not as if there is no solution to this. A few years ago, the Irish government introduced a tax on non-recyclable carrier bags and in three months reduced their  use by 90%. When he was a minister, Michael Meacher attempted to introduce a  similar arrangement  in Britain. The plastics industry protested, of course. However, they need not have bothered; the  idea was killed before it could draw breath, leaving supermarkets free to give away plastic bags.
What is clearly necessary right now is some sort of combined initiative, both individual and collective, before it is too late. The  alternative is  to  continue sliding downhill until we  have a country that looks like a vast municipal rubbish tip. We may well be at  the  tipping  point.  Yet we know that people respond to their environment. If things around them are clean and tidy, people behave cleanly and tidily. If they are surrounded by squalor, they behave squalidly. No  much  of Britain looks pretty squalid. What will it look like in five years?

What is the tone of the passage?

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One of the greatest concerns parents have when facing an international move is “What schooling will be available to my child? Will my child be disadvantaged academically as a result of this move?”.  (1)..... this fear is certainly strongest in families moving overseas for the first time, even those who may be more experienced often have concerns about their children’s education.
Dr. Ernest Mannino, Director of the State Department’s Office of Overseas Schools, and Dr.Keith Miller, Deputy Director of the office, spoke candidly (2)...... some of the common concerns parents have regarding the education of their children. Dr. Mannino and Dr. Miller (3)........ parents against making assumptions about their children’s  education.  To  make  an  educated  choice,  parents need to (4)...... through schooling issues and to research post schools as far in advance of a move as possible. 
Children (5)........ are internationally mobile have many choices of schools to attend. In most major cities, there are schools based on the U.S, French, German, and British systems. Some parents also choose to become their children’s teachers through home education. Which school is appropriate for your child is an individual decision based on many factors.
(1)........................

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Accidents do not occur at random. People eighty-five years of age and older are twenty-two times likelyto die accidentally than are children five to nine years old. The risk for native Americans is four times that for Asian-Americans and twice that for white Americans or African-Americans. Males suffer accidents at more than twice the rate of females, in part because they are more prone to risky behavior. Alaskans are more than three times as likely as Rhode Islanders to die in an accident. Texans are twenty- one times more likely than New Jerseyites to die in a natural disaster. Among the one hundred most populous counties, Kern County, California (Bakersfield), has an accident fatality rate three times greater than Summit County, Ohio (Akron).
Accidents happens more often to poor people. Those living in poverty receive inferior medical care, are more apt to reside in houses with faulty heating and electrical systems, drive older cars with fewer safety features, and are less likely to use safety belts. People in rural areas have more accidents than city or suburban dwellers because farming is much riskier than working in a factory or office and because emergency medical services are less readily available. These two factors - low income and rural residence
- may explain why the south has a higher accident rate than the north.

What does the word “that” in the passage refer to?

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Amelia Earhart was born in Kansas in 1897. Thirty one years later, she received a phone call that would change her life. She was invited to become the first woman passenger to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a plane. The flight took more than 20 hours – about three times longer than it routinely takes today to cross the Atlantic by plane. Earhart was twelve years old before she ever saw an airplane, and she didn’t take her first flight until 1920. But she was so thrilled by her first experience in a plane that she quickly began to take flying lessons. She wrote, “As soon as I left the ground, I knew I myself had to fly.”
After that flight Earhart became a media sensation. She was given a ticker tape parade down Broadway in New York and even president Coolidge called to congratulate her. Because her record – breaking career and physical appearance were similar to pioneering pilot and American hero Charles Lindbergh, she earned the nickname “Lady Lindy.” She wrote a book about her flight across the Atlantic, called 20 Hrs, 40 Min.
Earhart continued to break records, and also polised her skills as a speaker and writer, always advocating women’s achievements, especially in aviation. Her next goal was to achieve a transatlantic crossing alone. In 1927 Charles Lindbergh became the first person to make a solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic. Five years later, Earhart became the first woman to repeat that feat. Her popularity grew even more and she was the undisputed queen of the air. She then wanted to fly around the world, and in June 1973 she left Miami with Fred Noonan as her navigator. No one knows why she left behind important communication and navigation instruments. Perhaps it was to make room for additional fuel for the long flight. The pair made it to New Guinea in 21 days and then left for Howland Island, a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The last communication from Earhart and Noonan was on July 2, 1937 with a nearby Coast Guard ship. The United States Navy conducted a massive search for more than two week but no trace of the plane or its passengers was ever found. Many people believe they got lost simply ran out of fuel and died.

The word “it” in the third paragraph refers to     .

 Choose the word or phrase among A, B, C or D that best fits the blank space in the following passage:

"Around the age of eighteen, you must make one of the biggest decisions of your life. “Do I stay on at school and hopefully go on to university (1)….. ? Do I leave and start work or beginning a training (2)…… ?”
 The decision is yours, but it may be (3)…… remembering two things: there is more unemployment (4)….. people who haven’t been to university, and people who have the right (5)….. will have a big advantage in the competition for jobs. If you decide to go (6)…. into a job, there are many opportunities for training.
Getting qualifications will (7)…… you to get on more quickly in many careers, and evening classes allow you to learn (8)…. you earn. Starting work and taking a break to study when you are older is (9)…. possibility. This way, you can save up money for your student days, as well as (10)…. practical work experience."

6. If you decide to go (6)…. into a job, there are many opportunities for training.

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Most adults struggle to recall events from their first few years of life and now scientists have identified exactly when these childhood memories are lost forever. A new study into childhood amnesia has found that it tends to take (1).......around the age of seven. The rapid decline of memories persisting while children are five and six is owing to the change in the way memories are formed.
Before the age of seven, children tend to have  an (2)......form of recall with no sense of time and place in their memories. In older children, however, the early recollected events tend to be more adult like in their content and the way they are formed. Faster rate of forgetting in children and higher turnover of memories means early memories are less likely to survive. (3)........, memories of younger children tend to lack autobiographical narrative leading to a process known as ‘retrieval induced forgetting’ (4).....the action of remembering causes other information to be forgotten. Consequently, if childhood memories can survive into the ninth or tenth year of life, they may stay a chance of (5).... it into adulthood.
(3).......................

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It weighed about 10,000 tons, entered the atmosphere at a speed of 64,000 km/h and exploded over a city with a blast of 500 kilotons. But on 15 February 2013, we were lucky. The meteorite that showered pieces of rock over Chelyabinsk, Russia, was relatively small, at only about 17 metres wide. Although many people were injured by falling glass, the damage was nothing compared to what had happened in Siberia nearly one hundred years ago. Another relatively small object (approximately 50 metres in diameter) exploded in mid–air over a forest region, flattening about 80 million trees. If it had exploded over a city such as Moscow or London, millions of people would have been killed.
By a strange coincidence, the same day that the meteorite terrified the people of Chelyabinsk, another 50m–wide asteroid passed relatively close to Earth. Scientists were expecting that visit and know that the asteroid will return to fly close by us in 2046, but the Russian meteorite earlier in the day had been too small for anyone to spot.
Most scientists agree that comets and asteroids pose the biggest natural threat to human existence. It was probably a large asteroid or comet colliding with Earth which wiped out the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. An enormous object, 10 to 16 km in diameter, struck the Yucatan region of Mexico with the force of 100 megatons. That is the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb for every person alive on Earth today.
Many scientists, including the late Stephen Hawking, say that any comet or asteroid greater than 20 km in diameter that hits Earth will result in the complete destruction of complex life, including all animals and most plants. As we have seen, even a much smaller asteroid can cause great damage.
The Earth has been kept fairly safe for the last 65 million years by good fortune and the massive gravitational field of the planet Jupiter. Our cosmic guardian, with its stable circular orbit far from the sun, sweeps up and scatters away most of the dangerous comets and asteroids which might cross Earth’s orbit. After the Chelyabinsk meteorite, scientists are now monitoring potential hazards even more carefully but, as far as they know, there is no danger in the foreseeable future.

On the same day as the meteorite exploded over Chelyabinsk,    .

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It is 2025. Your mobile is now much more than just a Communication device – more like a remote control for your life. You still call it a "mobile" from habit, but it is an organiser, entertainment device, payment device and security centre, all developed and manufactured by engineers.
On a typical day it will start work even before you wake. Because it knows your travel schedule it can check for problems on the roads or with the trains and adjust the time it wakes you up accordingly, giving you the best route into work. It can control your home, re-programming the central heating if you need to get up earlier and providing remote alerts if the home security system is triggered. It is your payment system - just by placing the phone near a sensor on a barrier, like the Oyster card readers in use on London transport, you can pay for tickets for journeys or buy items in shops. With its understanding of location, the mobile can also provide directions, or even alert the user to friends or family in the Vicinity.
It is your entertainment centre when away from home. As well as holding all your music files, as some phones today are able to do, it will work with your home entertainment system while you sleep to find programmes that will interest you and download them as a podcast to watch on the train or in other spare moments. It will intelligently work out what to do with incoming phone calls and messages.

Which statement about mobile phones is probably FALSE according to the passage?

Choose the letter A, B, C or D to answer these following questions

   Dinosaurs were reptiles that lived during a period of earth’s history called the Mesozoic Era, which is also known as the Age of Reptiles. The first dinosaurs appeared more than 200 million years ago. For many millions of years, they dominated the land with their huge size and strength. Then about 65 million years ago, they died out rather suddenly, never to re-emerge. The word “dinosauras” comes from two Greek words meaning “terrible lizard”. Dinosaurs were not lizards, but their appearance could be truly terrifying. The biggest ones weighed more than ten times as much as a mature elephant and nearly equalled the size of most modern-day whales. The famous kinds of dinosaurs, including the brontosaur and tyrannosaurus rex, reached 80 to 90 feet in length. Not all dinosaurs were giant, however, some were actually not larger than a chicken. Scientists still do not know what caused dinosaurs to disappear. One theory involves a change of the earth’s climate. It is believed that temperatures dropped significantly towards the end of the Cretaceous protection, it is possible that the climate became too chilly for dinosaurs. In contrast, other species having protection, such as the mammals and birds, were able to survive.

What is the best title for this passage?

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 first each of the numbered blanks
It is back-to-school time in much of the world. Calm, easy mornings are replaced with busy, hurried ones. Children wake up early and get ready for school. Many parents are also getting ready for work, helping their children and preparing food for lunches. But don't forget about breakfast! When things get wildly busy in the morning, some people (1)....... breakfast to save time. But that may be a big mistake for students.
That is the finding of a 2015 study from Cardiff University in Wales. Researchers there looked at 5000 9-11 year-olds from more than 100 primary schools in the U.K. They looked at what the students ate (2)............. breakfast and then their grades 6 to 18 months later. They found that the students who  ate  a  healthy  breakfast  (3)......... twice as likely to perform above average in educational activities. The researchers also found that unhealthy breakfasts - such as potato chips or a donut did not appear helpful to educational performance.
A good breakfast is not just helpful for school-aged children. We all may gain from eating something healthy first thing in the morning. A study from researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada found that a breakfast rich in protein and complex carbohydrates (4).............. performance on short- and long-term memory. Carbohydrates and protein are especially important because (5)................... a major effect on long-term memory.
(4)..........................

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Telecommuting-substituting the computer for the trip to the job-has been hailed as a solution to all kinds of problems related to office work. For workers, it promises freedom from the office, less time wasted in traffic, and help with child-care conflicts. For management, telecommuting helps keep high performers on board, minimizes tardiness and absenteeism by eliminating commutes, allows periods of solitude for high-concentration tasks, and provides scheduling flexibility. In some areas, such as Southern California and Seattle, Washington, local governments are encouraging companies to start telecommuting programs in order to reduce rush-hour congestion and improve air quality, but these benefits do not come easily. Making a telecommuting program work requires careful planning and an understanding of the differences between telecommuting realities and popular images.
Many workers are seduced by rosy illusions of life as a telecommuter. A computer programmer from New York City moves to the tranquil Adirondack Mountains and stays in contact with her office via computer. A manager comes into his Office three days a week and works at home the other two. An accountant stays home to care for child; she hooks up her telephone modem connections and does office work between calls to the doctor.
These are powerful images, but they are a limited reflection of reality. Telecommuting workers soon learn that it is almost impossible to concentrate on work and care for a young child at the same time. Before a certain age, young children cannot recognize, much less respect, the necessary boundaries between work and family. Additional child support is necessary if the parent is to get any work done.
Management, too, must separate the myth from the reality. Although the media has paid a great deal of attention to telecommuting, in most cases it is the employee’s situation, not the availability of technology, that precipitates a telecommuting arrangement.
That is partly why, despite the widespread press coverage, the number of companies with work-at-home programs or policy guidelines remains small.

Which of the following is NOT mentioned as a problem for office employees?

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More often than not, you can't just "order up a job" by responding to an online posting and have it delivered in one or two days as if you were buying whatever your heart desires on Amazon.  Even as employers are hiring at a higher rate than they have in the last several years, it can often take months to work your way through the job search process. If you are a new graduate yet to receive a job offer, if you recently moved to a new locale with your spouse or partner or if you   are unemployed for any other reason, you may find success in your job search by spending time volunteering at a nonprofit organization.
Both the nonprofit and for-profit worlds need people with many of the same talents. The best volunteer jobs for you to consider are ones where the experience you acquire will be applicable in the "for-pay" position you want to attain. It's often the case that once you display your passion for the organization and its mission, and have demonstrated your abilities, you'll earn strong consideration when a paying position opens up that can benefit from your talents. Even if you don't have a path to employment at the place you volunteer, by highlighting your volunteer experience on your resume,  you can demonstrate that you haven't been wasting your time away staying at home watching the grass grow.
There are a few strategies you might adopt when considering at  which organization you'll  want to volunteer. You' ll probably want to make a priority of volunteering to do what you've already done, or want to do, in the for-profit sector. Alternatively, however, it might make sense to volunteer to do something where you can turn an area of professional weakness into a new strength. Remember, as well, that nonprofit organizations maintain strong relationships with their corporate sponsors, and you might look for a volunteer position that would enable you to be that nexus point between the two. And, especially if you are recently out of school, you should look for positions  that let you learn about an occupation, a field of interest or an industry.
As you try to determine what you want to volunteer to do, and where you want to do it, make three lists: your marketable skills, the roles you seek and the kinds of charitable organizations you would want to support. For example, perhaps your skills cluster around accounting, marketing or event planning. Think about how these might come in handy for organizations that need financial help figuring out how to brand the organization to attract other volunteers or donors or run anything from charitable golf tournaments to gala dinners.

Which of the  following could best describe the  author's attitude about volunteering when being unemployed?

Choose the option that best completes each of the following sentences

Computer programmer David Jones earns £35,000 a year designing new computer games, yet he cannot find a bank prepared to let him have a cheque card. Instead, he has been told to wait another two years, until he is 18.

The 16-year-old works for a small firm in Liverpool, where the problem of most young people of his age is finding a job. David's firm releases two new games for the expanding home computer market each month.

But David's biggest headache is what to do with his money.

Despite his salary, earned by inventing new programs within tight schedules, with bonus payments and profit-sharing, he cannot drive a car, take out a mortgage, or obtain credit cards. He lives with his parents in their council house in Liverpool, where his father is a bus driver. His company has to pay £150 a month in taxi fares to get him the five miles to work and back every day because David cannot drive.

David got his job with the Liverpool-based company four months ago, a year after leaving school with six O-levels and working for a time in a computer shop. "I got the job because the people who run the firm knew I had already written some programs," he said.

"I suppose £35,000 sounds a lot but actually that's being pessimistic. I hope it will come to more than that this year." He spends some of his money on records and clothes, and gives his mother £20 a week. But most his spare time is spent working.

"Unfortunately, computing was not part of our studies at school," he said. "But I had been studying it in books and 'magazines for four years in my spare time. I knew what I wanted to do and never considered staying on at school. Most people in this business are fairly young, anyway."

David added: "I would like to earn a million and I suppose early retirement is a possibility. You never know when the market might disappear."

He left school after taking O-levels because ..............

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Boots has reduced the price of "feminine" razors to bring them in line with men's.  The  chemist chain says it is just an isolated incident, but campaigners say it is part of a "pink tax" that discriminates against women. Who's right and what's the bigger story, ask Jessica McCallin and Claire Bates. Campaigners against what's been dubbed the "pink tax" - where retailers charge women more than men for similar products - are celebrating after Boots said it would change the price of some of     its goods.
Stevie Wise, who launched the petition, was driven by a Times investigation which claimed that women and girls are charged, on average, 37% more for clothes, beauty products and toys. The New  York Department of Consumer Affairs had compared the prices of 800 products with male and female versions and concluded that, after controlling for quality, women's versions were, on average, 7% more expensive than men's.
“This is a very exciting response,” says Wise. We are delighted with Boots' decision, but we now need to get them to look at all of their products, not just the ones highlighted in the petition. We  hope this decision is just the first of many and we may broaden our campaign to focus on other retailers  as well." Wise says that women have been getting in touch with examples of other price discrepancies from lots of companies and says there seems to be a particular problem with toys and clothes. Argos has been criticized for identical scooters that cost £5 more if they were pink rather than blue. Argos said it was an error that had already been rectified and that it would never indulge in differential pricing.
Among the examples sent to Wise was Boots selling identical child car seats that cost more in pink. Another retailer was selling children's balance bikes which cost more for a flowery print aimed at girls than a pirate print aimed at boys. But the latter example already appears to have been tweaked on the retailer's website, albeit by applying a £10 discount to the flowery version.
When challenged over sexist pricing, both Levi's and Tesco argued that different versions of things could have different production costs even if appearing fairly similar. Prof Nancy Puccinelli says her research suggests that women are much more careful shoppers than men, better able to scrutinise adverts and pricing gimmicks. She wonders if women are perceiving more value in the more expensive products. “If products are separated into male and female sections far away from each other it's harder to scrutinise prices.” Such a situation could either be deliberate or accidental but the campaigners are not convinced.
There is an opportunity for some companies, argues Olchawski. “The finding shows the power of marketing in our lives, how it shapes our perception of what it means to be a man or a woman. Some companies could choose not to play into this, not to play into the stereotypes and rip women off,  but  launch products more in tune with moves toward gender equality.”

he word scrutinise is closest in meaning to?

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How busy is too busy? For some it means having to miss the occasional long lunch; for others,     it means missing lunch altogether. For a few, it is not being able to take a "sickie" once a month. Then there is a group of people for whom working every evening and weekend is normal, and frantic is the tempo of their lives. For most senior executives, workloads swing between extremely busy  and frenzied. The vice-president of the management consultancy AT Kearney and its head of telecommunications for the Asia-Pacific region, Neil Plumridge, says his work weeks vary from a “manageable” 45 hours to 80 hours, but average 60 hours.
Three warning signs alert Plumridge about his workload: sleep, scheduling and family. He knows he has too much on when he gets less than six hours of sleep for three consecutive nights; when he is constantly having to reschedule appointments; "and the third one is on the family side", says Plumridge, the father of a three-year-old daughter, and expecting a second child in October. "If I happen to miss a birthday or anniversary, I know things are out of control." Being "too busy" is highly subjective. But for any individual, the perception of being too busy over a prolonged period can start showing up as stress: disturbed sleep, and declining mental and physical health. National workers' compensation figures show stress causes the most lost time of any workplace injury. Employees suffering stress are off work an average of 16.6 weeks. The effects of stress are also expensive. Comcare, the Federal Government insurer, reports that in 2003-04, claims for psychological injury accounted for 7% of claims but almost 27% of claim costs. Experts say the key to dealing with stress is not to focus on relief - a game of golf or a massage - but to reassess workloads. Neil Plumridge says he makes it a priority to work out what has to change; that might mean allocating extra resources to a job, allowing more time  or  changing expectations. The decision  may take several days. He also relies on the advice of colleagues, saying his peers coach each other with business problems. "Just a fresh pair of eyes over an issue can help," he says.
Executive stress is not confined to big organizations. Vanessa Stoykov has been running her own advertising and public relations business for seven years, specializing in work for financial and professional services firms, Evolution Media has grown so fast that it debuted on the BRW Fast 100 list of fastest-growing small enterprises last year - just after Stoykov had her first child. Stoykov thrives   on the mental stimulation of running her own business. "Like everyone, I have the occasional day when I think my head's going to blow off," she says. Because of the growth phase the business is in, Stoykov has to concentrate on short-term stress relief - weekends in the mountains, the occasional "mental health" day -rather than delegating more work, She says:  “We're hiring more people, but  you need to train them, teach them about the culture and the clients, so  it's actually more work  rather than less.”a

It can be inferred from the passage that    _

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During the past half-century, our species has embarked on a remarkable social experiment. For the first time in human history, great numbers of people - at all ages, in all places, of every political persuasion - have begun settling down as singletons. Until the second half of the last century, most of us married young and parted only at death. If death came early, we remarried quickly; if late, we moved in with family, or they with us. Now we marry later. We divorce, and stay single for years or decades.
The rise of living alone has produced significant social benefits, too. Young and middle-aged solos have helped to revitalise cities, because they are more likely to spend money, socialise and participate in public life. Contemporary solo dwellers in the US are primarily women: about 18 million, compared with 14 million men. The majority, more than 16 million, are middle-aged adults between the ages of 3S and 64. The elderly account for about 11 million of the total. Young adults between 18 and 34 number increased more than 5 million, compared with 500,000 in 1950, making them the fastest-growing segment of the solo-dwelling population.
Despite fears that living alone may be environmentally unsustainable, solos tend to live in apartments rather than in big houses, and in relatively green cities rather than in car-dependent suburbs. There's good reason to believe that people who live alone in cities consume less energy than if they coupled up and decamped to pursue a single-family home.

The word “them” in paragraph 2 refers to     ?

Choose the best answer: 
I am in favor of English-speaking contests in schools. Such contests encourage students to practice speaking English in their classes and help them improve their speaking skills. (1)..........., while preparing themselves for the contests, students have a chance to review their lessons thoroughly. Contests among classes provide students (2)............ opportunities to work with team spirit, thus enabling them to learn how to cooperate with other people. (3)............. students may think that their preparations for the speaking contests are time-consuming. However, in my opinion, such preparations are (4)............ spending time on. My classmates and I have found that we speak English better after each contest. In sum, English-speaking contests in schools are useful to students.

1.

American movies create myths about college life in the United States. These stories are entertaining, but they are not true. You have to look beyond Hollywood movies to understand what college is really like.
Thanks to the movies, many people believe that college students party and socialize more than they study. Movies almost never show students working hard in class or in the library. Instead, movies show them eating, talking, hanging out, or dancing to loud music at wild parties. While it is true that American students have the freedom to participate in activities, they also have academic responsibilities. In order to succeed, they have to attend classes and study hard.
Another movie myth is that athletics is the only important extracurricular activity. In fact, there is a wide variety of nonacademic activities on campus such as special clubs, service organizations, art, and theater programs. This variety allows students to choose what interests them. Even more important, after graduation, students’ résumés look better to employers if they list a few extracurricular activities.
Most students in the movies can easily afford higher education. If only this were true! While it is true that some American college students are wealthy, most are from families with moderate incomes. Up to 80% of them get some type of financial aid. Students from middle and lower- income families often work part-time throughout their college years. There is one thing that many college students have in common, but it is not something you will see in the movies. They have parents who think higher education is a priority, a necessary and important part of their children's lives.
Movies about college life usually have characters that are extreme in some way: super athletic, super intelligent, super wealthy, super glamorous, etc. Movies use these stereotypes, along with other myths of romance and adventure because audiences like going to movies that include these elements. Of course, real college students are not like movie characters at all.
So the next time you want a taste of the college experience, do not go to the movies. Look at some college websites or brochures instead. Take a walk around your local college campus. Visit a few classes. True, you may not be able to see the same people or exciting action you will see in the movies, but you can be sure that there are plenty of academic adventures going on all around you!

The word “moderate” in the fourth paragraph is closest in meaning to “ ...........    ”.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions. 
From time immemorial, cities have been the central gathering places of human life, from where the great ideas and movements of the world have sprouted. In this country, the beginnings of our independence fomented with the Boston Tea Party, while Philadelphia served as the home of the Constitutional Convention. The seeds of economic and financial power were sowed on the streets of New York City. Around the world, the great thinkers of the Renaissance assembled in Florence, the impressionist painters flocked to Paris, and the industrial revolution sparked in Birmingham England.
Hundreds of years later, great ideas and innovations are still sprouting in cities – but this time accompanied by a growth in urbanized life over the last several decades never before seen. For the first time in history, more people are living in cities than rural areas. And, this way of living is only going to continue: by 2050, the urban share of global population is projected to surpass 66 percent (up from 30 percent in 1950). This trend to urbanization is even more dramatic beyond the borders of the United States. Take Nigeria's capital, Lagos, which had a population of approximately 7.2 million in 2000, and is expected to rise to 24 million by 2030. And, eight times more Nigerians live in cities today than in 1975. Moreover, the metro areas of Tokyo, New York and Mexico City were the only metro areas in 1975 with at least 10 million people. Today, that list would include 31 such megacities – with 10 more to join by 2030 – all of which are outside the United States.
Cities are undergoing what Brookings Institution author Bruce Katz terms the "metropolitan revolution." Financial capitals New York and London are transforming into major world tech hubs as new and innovative companies emerge within these cities. And, this shift is not exclusive to New York or London, as many cities are undergoing similar transformations driven by this global trend toward urbanization. This wave of urban growth stems, in large part, from the mass adoption of the internet and interconnected technologies. Interestingly, many sociologists predicted years ago that the advent of such interconnectivity would enable people to live and work anywhere. But the practical result has been the opposite.
Indeed, in this new 21st century economy, innovative workers seek one another to collaborate in building and developing new knowledge-based industries that are increasingly disrupting and dominating a rapidly evolving global economy. Bright, curious minds in the sciences and technology demand proximity in order to be more productive, more creative and further stimulated. This need for collaboration has propelled millennials to move to urban areas in droves. But once they get there, they desire new open physical environments – such as incubators and shared work places – to enhance their collaborative efforts. Beyond work, a growing single population – one that now outnumbers married people in the United States – seeks out other singles amid the myriad activities and diverse nightlife that only cities offer.

The word “sparked” in the first paragraph is closest in meaning to ____________.

Choose the best answer:
Many young people choose to spend a year or two of their lives while they are still (1)______ living in a foreign country and working as a volunteer. Working as a volunteer means that you cannot only help others, but also develop a (2)______understanding of the world and yourself.

You must have a university degree and (3)______at least one year‟s experience before you can (4)______. Suitable applicants are invited to attend a series of interviews and are then sent on a training programme. Applicants are usually offered a post (5)______ months and can be sent anywhere from the Sahara to Siberia.

The advantages of being a volunteer far (6)______ the disadvantages. Being a volunteer can enable you to get (7)______ experience that you would otherwise not have had. It can help you move up the career ladder faster. You will make (8)______ friends and return with an appreciation of another culture and language.

However, volunteering is not for everyone. It can be difficult being (9)______ from friends and family. Living on a (10)______ allowance is challenging. But, if you do choose to go, you will return a stronger and wiser person.
4.