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 makes it rain? Rain falls from clouds for the same reason anything falls to Earth. The Earth’s gravity pulls it. But every cloud is made of water droplets or ice crystals. Why doesn’t rain or snow fall constantly from all clouds? The droplets or ice crystals in clouds are exceedingly small. The effect of gravity on them is minute. Air currents move and lift droplets so that the net downward displacement is zero, even though the droplets are in constant motion.
Droplets and ice crystals behave somewhat like dust in the air made visible in a shaft of sunlight. To the casual observer, dust seems to act in a totally random fashion moving about chaotically without fixed direction. But in fact dust particles are much larger than water droplets and they finally fall. The cloud droplet of average size is only 1/2500 inch in diameter. It is so small that it would take sixteen hours to fall half a mile in perfectly still air, and it does not fall out of moving air at all. Only when the droplet grows to a diameter of 1/125 inch or larger can it fall from the cloud. The average raindrop contains a million times as much water as a tiny cloud droplet. The growth of a cloud droplet to a size large enough to fall out is the cause of rain and other forms of precipitation. This important growth process is called “coalescence”.

What is the diameter of the average cloud droplet?

Choose the best answer: 
It is often considered that the schoolyard is where bullies go to make other kids a miserable school life, but a new study suggests that classrooms are another popular place.
    The study, presented recently at the American Public Health Association’s yearly meeting in Philadelphia, is based on the results of the research from more than 10,000 middle school students who answered questions online.
    Of those researched, 43% said they’d been physically bullied within the last month. A bit more than half said they had been laughed at in an unfriendly way, and half reported being called hurtful names. About one third said groups had excluded them to hurt their feelings. 28% said their belongings had been taken or broken; 21% said someone had threatened to hurt them. According to the results, two-thirds of the students said they had been bullied in more than one way over the previous month.
 The study authors mentioned that 8% of the students who answered said they had missed school at least once during the school year because of fear of being bullied, 25% said they had taken other actions, such as missing recess, not going to the bathroom or lunch, missing classes, or staying away from some area of the school to escape from experiencing a bully. Bullies did too much to the school life.
Question 31. How does the writer feel about bullies at school?
 

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Many of the world’s cities lie under a permanent blanket of smog. People are concerned about global warming, and fuel prices just keep going up and up. It’s no surprise therefore, that in recent years, car manufacturers have been put under pressure to invent a vehicle that is both cheaper to run and better for the environment. Finally, after much trial and error, it seems as though they might be making progress, and the future of the car industry is beginning to look a little “greener”.
One of the first ideas which car manufacturers tried was to replace engines which run on fossil fuels with electric motors. Unfortunately, these vehices had several drawbacks and they didn’t sell very well. The problems were that the batteries of these electric cars ran out very quickly and took a long time to recharge. Also, the replacement energy parts were very expensive.
However, the idea of electric cars has not been scrapped altogether. Car manufacturers have improved the concept so that environmentally friendly cars can now be efficient and economical as well. This is where the hybrid car, which has both an electric motor and a traditional petrol engine, comes in. The electric motor never needs to be recharged and it is much better for the planet than a traditional car.
In a hybrid car, the engine is controlled by a computer which determines whether the car runs on petrol, electricity, or both. When the car needs maximum power, for example, if it is accelerating or climbing a steep hill, it uses all of its resources, whereas at steady speeds it runs only on petrol. When slowing down or braking, the electric motor recharges its batteries.
Hybrid cars are better for the environment because the electric motor can help out whenever it is needed and they have a much smaller engine than a traditional car. Also, hybrid cars on the market are made using materials such as aluminium and carbon fibre, which makes them extremely light. Both of these factors mean that they use far less petrol than normal cars, so they produce less pollution.
Of course, hybrid cars aren’t perfect; they still run on fossil fuel and so pollute the environment to some extent. However, they may be the first step along the road to cleaner, “greener” cars. Car manufacturers are already working on vehicles which run on hydrogen. The only emission from these cars is harmless water vapor. These are still some way in the future, though, as designers need to think of cheap and safe ways of producing, transporting and storing hydrogen, but at last, it looks like we might be heading in the right direction.

The word “drawbacks” in paragraph 2 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:
Every year about two million people visit Mount Rushmore, were the faces of four U.S presidents were carved in granite by sculptor Gutzon Borglum and his son, the late Lincoln Borglum. The creation of the Mount Rushmore monument Line took 14 years – from 1927 to 1941 – and nearly a million dollars. There were times when money was difficult to come by and many people were jobless. To move more than 400,000 tons of rock, Borglum hired laid-off workers from the closed-down mines in the Black Hills area. He taught these men to dynamite, drill, carve, and finish the granite as they were hanging in midair in his specially devised chairs, which had many safety features. Borglum was proud of the fact that no workers were killed or severely injured during the years of blasting and carving.
During the carving, many changes in original design had to be made to keep the carved heads free of large fissures that were uncovered. However, not all the cracks could be avoided, so Borglum concocted a mixture of granite dust, white lead, and linseed oil to fill them.
Every winter, water from melting snows gets into the fissures and expands as it freezes, making the fissures bigger. Consequently, every autumn maintenance work is done to refill the cracks. The repairers swing out in space over a 500-foot drop and fix the monument with the same mixture that Borglum used to preserve this national monument for future generations.

This passage is mainly about      

Choose the word or phrase that best fits each space in the following passage

 Many people love boats. Going out on the water on a warm summer day is a lot of fun. (1) _______ ,different people like different kinds of boats. Two of the most popular kinds of boat are sailboats and speedboats. Sailboats use the (2) _______to give them power. They only have small engines. In contrast, speedboats have large engines and go very fast. Furthermore, speedboats are usually not as (3) _______ as sailboats. Speedboats are small so that they can go fast. Sailboats, on the other hand, are big so that they are more comfortable. ( 4) _______, sailboats can travel into the ocean, but this would be very dangerous in a speedboat. You can only use speedboats on rivers or lakes.

(2) _______

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Cyclones in India, hurricanes in the Caribbean - severe weather events make news headlines almost weekly. Yet even in Britain, which has comparatively few climate extremes, the country is still governed by weather. If it’s pouring with rain the British might stay indoors or go to the cinema; if it’s fine they’ll have a picnic.
Most people nervously study the weather forecast the evening before if they’ve got an important appointment the following day. Even if they have nothing planned, the weather often affects their mood.
For individuals, the worst that can usually happen if the weather catches them on the hop is that they get wet. For business, the effects are far more serious. Airlines and shipping companies need to avoid severe weather and storm-force conditions. Power companies need to make sure they can supply the demand for electricity in cold weather; farmers plan their harvests around the forecast and food manufacturers increase their production of salads and other summer foods when fine weather is promised.
So who or what do meteorologists - weather forecasters as they are more commonly known - rely on when it comes to producing a forecast? Ninety percent of the information comes from weather satellites, the first of which was launched into space nearly forty years ago and was a minor revolution in the science of forecasting. Up until then, forecasters had relied on human observers to provide details of developing weather systems. As a result, many parts of the world where there were few humans around, especially the oceans, were information-free weather areas. Today, however, satellites can watch weather patterns developing everywhere.
In the UK meteorologists have also relied on releasing four weather balloons a day from eight fixed sites. These balloons measure wind, temperature and humidity as they rise upwards to a height of about 26,000 metres.
Some commercial aircraft can also be fitted with a range of forecasting instruments although this  system has certain disadvantages. For example, it can provide a great deal of information about the weather on popular routes, such as London to New York, but little about the weather on more out-of-the way routes.
Instruments aboard ships can also supply basic weather information as well as important data on wave height. Generally, the range of these instruments is fairly limited but they can indicate which direction rain is coming from, how low the cloud is and give an idea of when the weather system will reach land.
One forecaster who has made a name for himself is a man called Piers Corbyn, who bases his forecasts on watching the Sun. Most forecasters will offer forecasts for only 10 days ahead, but Corbyn’s forecasts are for 11 months. Although most meteorologists believe that there is no scientific basis for his work, Corbyn’s forecasts are used by insurance companies who want to plan months in advance.

What does ‘it’ in paragraph 6 refer to?

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

Vietnam is considered a third world country, its people live (26) _____ poverty by the millions. After the (27) _____, Vietnam's economy remained dominated by small-scale production, low labor productivity, (28) _____, material and technological shortfalls, and insufficient food and (29) _____ goods. The Doi Moi reforms that were instated in 1986 have shed new light and added new features to the Vietnamese economy. (30) ____ Vietnamese Communist Party plays a leading role in establishing the foundations and principles of communism, mapping strategies for economic development, setting growth targets, and (31) _____ reforms. Doi Moi combined government planning with free-market incentives and (32) _____ the establishment of private businesses and foreign investment, including foreign-owned enterprises. By the late 1990s, the success of the business and agricultural reforms ushered in under Doi Moi was evident. (33) _____ than 30,000 private businesses had been created, and the economy was growing at an annual (34) _____ of more than 7 percent. Farming systems research and the international development projects are a source of new hope for the people of Vietnam. If these recent projects are successful and Doi Moi continues on its current path the Vietnamese people may (35) _____ a new standard of living. More reforms like Doi Moi need to take place in order to create a more stable Vietnamese future.

(27) _____

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 increase in international business and in foreign investment has created a need for executives with knowledge of foreign languages and skills in cross-culture communication. Americans, however, have not been well trained in either area and, consequently, have not enjoyed the same level of success in negotiation in an international arena as have their foreign counterpart.
Negotiating is the process of communicating back and forth for the purpose of reaching an agreement. It involves persuasion and compromise, but in order to participate in either one, the negotiators must understand the ways in which people are persuaded and how compromise is reached within the culture of the negotiation.
In many international business negotiations abroad, Americans are perceived as wealthy and impersonal. It often appears to the foreign negotiator that the American represents a large multimillion- dollar corporation that can afford to pay the price without bargaining further. The American negotiator’s role becomes that of an impersonal purveyor of information and cash, an image that succeeds only in undermining the negotiation.
In studies of American negotiators abroad, several traits have been indentified that may serve to confirm this stereotypical perception, while subverting the negotiator's position. Two traits in particular that cause cross-culture misunderstanding are directness and impatience on the part of American negotiator. Furthermore, American negotiators often insist on realizing short-term goals. Foreign negotiators, on the other hand, may value the relationship established between negotiators and may be willing to invest time in it for long-term benefits. In order to solidify the relationship, they may opt for indirect interactions without regard for the time involved in getting to know the other negotiator.
Clearly, perceptions and differences in values affect the outcomes of negotiations and the success of negotiators. For Americans to play a more effective role in international business negotiations, they must put forth more effort to improve cross-cultural understanding.

Which of the following is mentioned as a criterion necessary for negotiation?

Of all the aspirations which make up the American Dream, perhaps the most prominent is to own one’s own home. Americans are very proud of their homes and spend a great deal of time maintaining their houses and keeping the property in good condition. A man's home is often called his castle, and the hours spent keeping his fortress safe and secure become one of his greatest pleasures.
If a home is in an especially fashionable neighborhood, the owners may consult an interior decorator to give the home a certain coordinated appearance. If there is a large back yard, great care may be spent in having it properly landscaped with exotic trees, shrubs and plants.
It is almost a certainty that you should be the first visitor to an American home, you will be taken on a grand tour of the premises. The owner will take great pride in showing to you the place he calls home. Every closet, every cabinet and closed door will be opened so that you can actually see the extent and value of his home. You will even be taken into the father's den and the mother's sewing room. These are special rooms for the respective man and woman of the house to insure their privacy. They may be off-limits to the rest of the family but, for the visitor they are open to scrutiny and inspection.
It is, of course, considered polite on the tour to comment favorably on each room picking out its most salient, important feature, such as the special view from the window, the vaulted ceiling in the foyer or the exotic choice of wallpaper in the bathroom.
The finished basement is a special cause for pride for the family with its exercise room, video games, carpenter shop and launderette. In most homes it is here that the family entertains itself in the evening while the rest of the house becomes more of a showcase. On your tour you may be reminded of the hours the owners had spent "fixing up the house" so it would be "nice for the kids to bring over their friends". You may even sense a feeling of competition in knowing that they have not only "kept up with the Joneses" but also have far surpassed them.
The tour will terminate after an hour or so somewhere on the back lawn next to the two-car air- conditioned garage where you may be treated to a snack and light refreshment.
Showing off one's home is more than an exercise in vanity. It is a tribute to one's accomplishment. It is a way of saying that a man has been a good provider for his family and that he has realized one of his dreams.

If it is your first visit to an American home, what will the owner probably do?

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:
Genetic modification of foods is not a new practice. It has been practiced for thousands of years under the name of "selective breeding". Animals and plants were chosen because they had traits that humans found useful. Some animals were larger and stronger than others, or they yielded more food, or they had some other trait that humans valued. Therefore, they were bred because of those traits. Individuals with those traits were brought together and allowed to breed in the hope that their offspring would have the same traits in greater measure.
Much the same thing was done with plants. To produce bigger or sweeter fruit, or grow more grain per unit of land, strains of plants were combined and recombined to produce hybrids, or crossbreeds that had the desired traits in the right combinations. All the while, however, biologists wondered: is there a more direct and versatile way to change the traits of plants and animals? Could we rewrite, so to speak, the heredity of organisms to make them serve our needs better?
In the 20th century, genetic modification made such changes possible at last. Now, it was possible to alter the genetic code without using the slow and uncertain process of selective breeding. It even became possible to blend plants and animals genetically: to insert animal genes into plants, for example, in order to give the plants a certain trait they ordinarily would lack, such as resistance to freezing. The result was a tremendous potential to change the very nature of biology.

According to the passage, selective breeding     .

Choose the word which is stresses differently from the rest: efficient, communist, impatient, delicious

Since the dawn of time, people have found ways to communicate with one another. Smoke signals and tribal drums were some of the earliest forms of communication. Letters, carried by birds or by humans on foot or on horseback, made it possible for people to communicate larger amounts of information between two places. The telegram and telephone set the stage for more modern means of communication. With the invention of the cellular phone, communication itself has become mobile.
For you, a cell phone is probably just a device that you and your friends use to keep in touch with family and friends, take pictures, play games, or send text message. The definition of a cell phone is more specific: it is a hand- held wireless communication device that sends and receives signals by way of small special areas called cells.
Walkie - talkies, telephones and cell phones are duplex communication devices: They make it possible for two people to talk to each other. Cell phones and walkie- talkies are different from regular phones because they can be used in many different locations. A walkie- talkie is sometimes called a half- duplex communication device because only one person can talk at a time. A cell phone is a full- duplex device because it uses both frequencies at the same time. A walkie-talkie has only one channel. A cell phone has more than a thousand channels. A walkie- talkie can transmit and receive signals across a distance of about a mile. A cell phone can transmit and receive signals over hundreds of miles. In 1973, an electronic company called Motorola hired Martin Cooper to work on wireless communication. Motorola and Bell Laboratories (now AT& T) were in a race to invent the first portable communication device.
Martin Cooper won the race and became the inventor of the cell phone. On April 3, 1973, Cooper made the first cell phone call to his opponent at AT& T while walking down the streets of New York city. People on the sidewalks gazed at cooper in amazement. Cooper's phone was called A Motorola Dyna- Tac. It weighed a whopping 2.5 pounds (as compared to today's cell phones that weigh as little as 3 or 4 ounces)
After the invention of his cell phone, Cooper began thinking of ways to make the cell phone available to the general public. After a decade, Motorola introduced the first cell phone for commercial use. The early cell phone and its service were both expensive. The cell phone itself cost about $ 3, 500. In 1977, AT & T constructed a cell phone system and tried it out in Chicago with over 2, 000 customers. In 1981, a second cellular phone system was started in the Washington,D.C and Baltimore area. It took nearly 37 years for cell phones to become available for general public use. Today, there are more than sixty million cell phone customers with cell phones producing over thirty billion dollars per years.

The word "duplex" is closest meaning to ............

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."

3. When Roosevelt was elected, …….

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.

   Before the mid-nineteenth century, people in the United States ate most foods only in season. Drying, smoking and salting could preserve meat for a short time, but the availability of fresh meat, like that of fresh milk, was very limited; there was no way to prevent spoilage. But in 1810, a French inventor named Nicolas Appert developed the cooking-and-sealing process of canning. And in the 1850’s an American named Gail Borden developed a means of condensing and preserving milk. Canned goods and condensed milk became more common during the 1860’s, but supplies remained low because cans had to be made by hand. By 1880, however, inventors had fashioned stamping and soldering machines that massproduced cans from tinplate. Suddenly all kinds of food could be preserved and bought at all times of the year.

   Other trends and inventions had also helped make it possible for Americans to vary their daily diets. Growing urban population created demand that encouraged fruit and vegetable farmers to raise more produce. Railroad refrigerator cars enabled growers and meat packers to ship perishables great distances and to preserve them for longer periods. Thus, by the 1890’s, northern city dwellers could enjoy southern and western strawberries, grapes, and tomatoes, previously available for a month at most, for up to six months of the year. In addition, increased use of iceboxes enabled families to store perishables. As easy means of producing ice commercially had been invented in the 1870’s, and by 1900 the nation had more than two thousand commercial ice plants, most of which made home deliveries. The icebox became afixture in most homes and remained so until the mechanized refrigerator replaced it in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

   Almost everyone now had a more diversified diet. Some people continued to eat mainly foods that were heavily in starches or carbohydrates, and not everyone could afford meat. Nevertheless, many families could take advantage of previously unavailable fruits, vegetables, and dairy products to achieve more varied fare.

The word “Nevertheless” in line 19 is closest 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:
In the exploration of the linguistic life cycle, it is apparent that it is much more difficult to learn a second language in adulthood than a first language in childhood. Most adults never completely master foreign language, especially in phonology - hence the ubiquitous foreign accent. Their development often "fossilizes" into permanent error patterns that no teaching or correction can do. Of course, there are great individual differences, which depend on effort, attitudes, amount of exposure, quality of teaching and plain talent, but there seems to be a cap for the best adults in the best circumstances.
Many explanations have been advanced for children's superiority: they exploit Motherless (the simplified, repetitive conversation between parents and children), make errors oneself- consciously, are more motivated to communicate, like to conform, are not set in their ways, and have no first language to interfere. But some of these accounts are unlikely, based on what is known about how language acquisition works. Recent evidence is calling these social and motivation explanations into doubt. Holding every other factor constant, a key factor stands out: sheer age.
Systematic evidence comes from the psychologist Elisa Newport and her colleagues. They tested Korean and Chinese-born students at the University of Illinois who had spent at least ten years in the United States. The immigrants were given a list of 276 simple English sentences, half of them containing some grammatical errors. The immigrants who came to the United States between the ages of 3 and 7 performed identically to American bom students. Those who arrived between the ages of 8 and 15 did worse the later they arrived, and those who arrived between 17 and 39 did the worst of all, and showed huge variability unrelated to their age of arrival.

The passage is mainly about...................

No educational medium better as means of spatial communication than the atlas. Atlases deal with such invaluable information as population distribution and density. One of the best, Pennycooke's World Atlas, has been widely accepted as a standard owing to the quality of its maps and photographs, which not only show various settlements but also portray them in a variety of scales. In fact, the very first map in the atlas is a cleverly designed population cartogram that projects the size of each country if geographical size were proportional to population. Following the proportional layout, a sequence of smaller maps shows the world’s population density, each country’s birth and death rates, population increase or decrease, industrialization, urbanization, gross national product in terms of per capita income, the quality of medical care, literacy, and language. To give readers a perspective on how their own country fits in with the global view, additional projections depict the world's patterns in nutrition, calorie and protein consumption, health care, number of physicians per unit of population, and life expectancy by region. Population density maps on a subcontinental scale, as well as political maps. Convey the diverse demographic phenomena of the world in a broad array of scales.

Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage?

Are organically grown foods the best food choices? The advantages claimed for such foods over conventionally grown and marketed food products are now being debated. Advocates of organic foods - a term whose meaning varies greatly - frequently proclaim that such products are safer and more nutritious than others.
The growing interest of consumers in the safety and nutritional quality of the typical North American diet is a welcome development. However, much of this interest has been sparked by sweeping claims that the food supply is unsafe or inadequate in meeting nutritional needs.
Although most of these claims are not supported by scientific evidence, the preponderance of written material advancing such claims makes it difficult for the general public to separate fact from fiction. As a result, claims that eating a diet consisting entirely of organically grown foods prevents or cures disease or provides other benefits to health have become widely publicized and form the basis for folklore.
Almost daily the public is besieged by claims for “no-aging” diets, new vitamins, and other wonder foods. There are numerous unsubstantiated reports that natural vitamins are superior to synthetic ones, that fertilized eggs are nutritionally superior to unfertilized eggs, that untreated grains are better than fumigated grains, and the like.
One thing that most organically grown food products seem to have in common is that they cost more than conventionally grown foods. But in many cases consumers are misled if they believe organic foods can maintain health and provide better nutritional quality than conventionally grown foods. So there is real cause for concern if consumers, particularly those with limited incomes, distrust the regular food supply and buy only expensive organic foods instead.

The word “maintain” has closest meaning with ............

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
Choosing clothes can be difficult. Some people want to be fashionable, but they don’t want to look exactly like everybody else. Not all clothes are (1)........ for work or school, perhaps because they are not formal enough, or simply not comfortable. It is easy to buy the (2).......... size, and find that your trousers are too tight, especially if you are a little bit overweight. Very (3)........clothes make you feel slim, but when they have shrunk in the washing machine, then you have the same problem! If you buy light cotton clothes, then they might not be (4)........ enough for winter. If your shoes are not waterproof and if you aren’t (5)....... for the cold, you might look good, but feel terrible!
(4).................................

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 choose among A, B, C or D the correct answer to each of the questions.

There has been much debate over the past few decades concerning fears that nation will

lead to robots replacing human workers on a massive scale.

The increasing use of robotics, computers and artificial intelligence is a reality, but its full

implications are far from cut and dried. Some forecasts present the future in a utopian way,

claiming that robots will take over the tedious heavy work thus freeing up human time and

potential, allowing for more creativity and innovation,  the other end of spectrum are those who

foresee an employment apocalypse, predicting that almost fifty percent of all American jobs

could vanish within the next few decades. Former Microsoft chairman Bill Gates states that in 20

years robots could be in place in a number of job categories, particularly those at lower end of

the scale in terms of skills. The bottom line is that while the future is always uncertain, robots are a fixture of our society, which is not going to disappear. As with the Industrial Revolution, where machines were utilized in many tasks in place of manual laborers and social upheaval followed, the Digital Revolution is likely to place robots in various jobs. In spite of that, many of today's jobs were not in existence before the Industrial Revolution, such as those of programmers, engineers and data scientists. This leads other experts to criticize this alarmist approach of robot scare-mongering, which is invariably compared to the 19th -century "Luddites". This group was textile workers who feared being displaced by machines and resorted to violence, burning down factories and destroying industrial equipment - their rejection of inevitable progress has come to symbolize mindless ignorance.

Needless to say, exactly what new kinds of jobs might exist in the future is difficult to envision at present. Therefore, the crux of the issue is not whether jobs will be lost, but whether the creation of new vacancies will outpace the ever-increasing number of losses and what skills will be required in the future.

It is clearly not all doom and gloom, as demand for employees with skills in data analysis, coding, computer science, artificial intelligence and human-machine interface is rising and will continue to do so. Furthermore, the demand for skills in Jobs where humans surpass computers, such as those involving care, creativity and innovative craftmanship, are likely to increase considerably. Ultimately, the key lies in the adaptation of the workforces, through appropriate education and training, to keep pace with our world's technological progress.

What can be inferred from the comments made by Bill Gates?