Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions :
When people are looking for a great way to (1)_________ themselves of boredom, videos found on the Internet are often the perfect solution. Such websites as YouTube, Dailymotion, and Vimeo have become so popular that they are known to get millions of visits each day. YouTube is known for allowing people to create their own videos and share them with the world. It is (2)________ YouTube that enormous amounts of interest in certain videos can be created. So many people watch them that the interest (3)________ from person to person is almost exponential. Another site that is similar to YouTube is called Vimeo. Although it (4)_________ as a direct competitor to YouTube, Vimeo has more of a concentration on longer videos. However, the (5)_________ is the same in which the service allows users to share their videos with a very wide audience on the Internet.

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Today, Canada is made (1) _______ of ten provinces and three northern territories. As a big country, it has many different (2) _______. British Columbia is the westernmost Canadian province and the (3) _______ province on the Pacific Ocean. Mountains (4) _______ most of it. Vancouver, a major port city, is here. The Maritime Provinces lie along the Atlantic (5) _______.

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 following questions from 35 to 42. 
What is commonly called pepper in reality comes from two very different families of plants. Black and white pepper both come from the fruit of the Piper nigrum, a vine with fruits called peppercorns. The peppercorns turn from green to red as they ripen and finally blacken as they dry out. The dried-out peppercorns are ground to obtain black pepper. White pepper, which has a more subtle flavour than black pepper, comes from the same peppercorns as black pepper. To obtain white pepper, the outer hull of the peppercorn, the pericarp, is removed before the peppercorn is ground. Red and green pepper, on the other hand, come from a completely different family from black and white pepper. Red and green peppers are from the genus Capsicum. Plants of this type generally have tiny white flowers and fruit which can be any of a number of colours, shapes and sizes. These peppers range in flavour from very mild and sweet to the most incredibly burning taste imaginable. Bell peppers are the most mild, while habanros are the most burning. 
Christopher Columbus is responsible for the present-day confusion over what pepper is. The Piper nigrum variety of pepper was highly valued for centuries, and high demand for pepper by Europeans was a major cause of the fifteen-century push to locate ocean routes to the spice-growing regions of Asia. When Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, he was particularly interested in finding black pepper because of the high price it would command in Europe. Columbus came across plants from the Capsicum family in use among people of the New World, and he incorrectly identified them as relatives of black pepper. Columbus introduced the spicy Capsicum chili peppers to Europeans on his return from the 1492 voyage, and traders later spread them to Asia and Africa. These Capsicum peppers have continued to be called peppers in spite of the fact that they are not related to the black and white pepper of the Piper nigrum family. 

According to the passage, both black and white peppers ______. 

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Technology, general term for the processes by (1) _______ human beings fashion tools and machines to increase (2) _______ control and understanding of the material (3) _______. The term is derived from the Greek words tekhnē, which refers to an art or craft, and logia, (4) _______ an area of study; thus, technology means, literally, the study, or science, of crafting. Many historians of science argue not only that technology is an essential condition of advanced, industrial civilization (5) _______ also that the rate of technological change has developed its own momentum in recent centuries.

Read the passage, and choose the correct answer A, B, C or D for each question.

A Tale of Two Cities: Seoul and Dhaka

The city of Seoul, with a population of 10.3 million on 1998, forms part of South Korea’s capital region. As the capital city, Seoul has been at the center of South Korea’s remarkable economic transformation over the last four decades.

In the 1960s, much of South Korea’s industrial growth was focused on greater Seoul, which by 1970 had 52 percent of the country’s industrial workers. The major contributor to this growth was rural-urban migration, which accounted for 50 percent of the country’s urban increase in the 1960s. This very rapid growth of Seoul’s population placed pressure on the city’s infrastructure, leading to marked growth in new settlements, increasing  traffic congestion, and growing air pollution. This led the government to adopt a national decentralization strategy in the 1970s that attempted to divert industry to other areas of the country. In the 1980s, continuing efforts were made to decentralize economic activity.

Dhaka’s population of 6.5 million is crowded into 360 square kilometers, creating one of the highest urban densities in the world. Unlike South Korea, Bangladesh has not experienced rapid economic change, and agriculture remains the major component of GDP and the main resource of employment. While general economic conditions have improved somewhat over the last twenty years, Bangladesh is still a very poor country.

Dhaka’s rate of population growth has declined slightly over the past three decades, but it still remains among the highest in Asia (4.2 percent annually). The continuing growth reflects ongoing migration from rural areas to the Dhaka urban region. Recently, the city’s population has also grown as a result of the expansion of its administrative boundaries, a process that added 1 million people to the city in the 1980s. Dhaka’s growth has not been associated with an expansion of productive employment opportunities in relatively high wage areas. Instead, there has been growing employment in the low productivity, low-income sector, such as petty retailing or rickshaw driving.

We can infer from the passage that the reason of the national decentralization strategy in the 1970s and 1980s in Seoul is that ___________.

The Simpson Desert was named _____ Mr. Simpson, President of the South Australian Branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australia.

(337)______

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Have you ever noticed that our machines are getting smaller? Cell phones, cameras, computers and everything else look smaller every year. One kind of new science involves machines that are smaller than we can imagine. The name of this science is nanotechnology. Nanotechnology means doing science, engineering, and technology at a very very small level. In other words, nanotechnology is the science of tiny things. But how tiny is the science of nanotechnology? In nanotechnology, scientists work with things that are the size of a nanometer. One meter has one billion nanometers. Here is another way to describe nanotechnology: it is the science of observing and controlling individual atoms and molecules. Nanotechnology is a new word, but the idea of studying atoms and molecules has existed for a long time. In 1959, an American scientist Richard Phillips Feynman gave a speech in which he claimed that we can see and control molecules and atoms. About ten years later, a Japanese professor came up with the term “nanotechnology”. Because nanotechnology is so new, we are only starting to understand how we can use it. Nanotechnology could be very useful in medicine. In the future, doctors may use nanotechnology to help with organ transplants. An organ transplant is the act of putting an organ into another person’s body. Scientists think that with nanotechnology, they might be able to make a person’s body accept a foreign organ. Nanotechnology might also help doctors fight infections, find diseases in patients, and deliver medicine to the right spot in patients’ bodies. Nanotechnology might also be useful in protecting the environment. It might be able to help us save energy, reduce waste, and keep water clean. For example, nanotechnology might be able to make some materials such as steel stronger. If we have stronger steel, we will be able to use it longer. That way, we can produce less steel and save our resources. Nanotechnology might be useful in so many ways. This science of studying tiny things could change the world.
5. According to the passage, what will nanotechnology NOT do?

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
The Invention of the Periodic Table
If you are looking to gain a better understanding of the world around you, chemistry is the perfect subject to study. It is an examination of matter, its properties, and its interactions with everything around it. Where physics often deals with concepts and theories that are difficult to test and observe, chemistry principles can easily be applied to medicine, cooking, and several other areas. At the heart of all these discoveries is one vital chart that organizes elements based on their atomic number and chemical properties: the periodic table. Although the first periodic table was published in 1869, it was a work in progress for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Since ancient times, people have been fascinated with elements such as gold, tin, and copper in their natural forms. They were mined and used to make jewellery, weapons, coins, and many other things. Over time, people became more curious about these metals and how they were composed. In ancient Greece, Aristotle and other philosophers claimed things were made from the elements of earth, water, fire, and air. For years, this theory was accepted. Then people began to reevaluate this concept during the Age of Enlightenment. In 1661, Irish scientist Robert Boyle defined an element as something that “cannot be broken down into a simpler substance by a chemical reaction”. Over a century later, French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier would publish the first modern textbook on chemistry. In it, he listed several substances which he believed should be classified as elements into two categories: metals, and non-metals. Although his work wasn’t completely accurate, it represented a major step forward at the time. Over the next century, scientists started to classify the elements into different groups depending on their properties and atomic weights. However, it is Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev who is usually credited as the first person to make a periodic table. Although other scientists had submitted tables, they were eventually rejected by the scientific community for a lack of detail. Mendeleev arranged all of the elements according to their atomic mass. He was even smart enough to leave empty spaces for elements which hadn’t been discovered at the time. Although Mendeleev’s periodic table wasn’t perfect, it set the format which is similar to the one used today.
1. What is the passage mainly about?

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
The Prime Minister's comments yesterday on education spending miss the point, as the secondary education system also needs a major overhaul. Firstly, the system only views the weakest learners as having special (1)...... .The brightest and most (2)....... students are not encouraged to develop to their full potential. Secondly, there's too much testing and not enough learning. My fifteen-year-old daughter, for example, has just spent the last month or so (3)_____ for exams. These aren't even real, important exams, as her GCSEs will be next year. They're just (4)....  exams. Is the work she's been doing really going to make her more (5)..... about her subjects, or will she forget it all tomorrow? I suspect the latter. Thirdly, the standard (6)_____ doesn't give students any (7)....... in developing practical work-related, living and social skills, or in skills necessary for higher education. How many students entering university have the first idea what the difference is between (8)....... someone else's work and making good use of someone else's ideas? Shouldn't they have been taught this at school? How many of them are really able to go about (9).......a  skill that's essential at university because there are no teachers to tell you what to do - in an efficient way? Indeed, hoe many students (10)....... from university totally unable to spell even simple English words correctly? The system is letting our children down

Rewrite sentences without changing the meaning
No mount in the world is higher than Mount Everest.

Choose the best answer:
Please turn __________ the gas. I want to cook my lunch.

The children seem to be totally .............................. of working quietly by themselves.

(529)_______

Rewrite the sentence
No one in the class is more intelligent than Long.

As many of you are aware, Jacob Wu, our long-standing Chief Executive Officer, ---139--- on 1 October. Twenty years ago, Mr. Wu set out to create a Hong Kong-based services firm with an international scope. ---140---. Wu Investment Services currently serves clients in seventeen countries, 95 percent of whom have chosen to invest with us for the long term. Mr. Wu will be ---141--- by Thomas Wu, his son, who has served as Vice President of Wu Investment Services for the past four years. A gathering will be held on 28 September to celebrate Mr. Wu's ---142--- career. I will send further information about the event closer to the date. Thank you.

139.......................

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
The Particle that Started the Big Bang
In 2013, the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Francois Englert and Peter W. Higgs for their discovery of a particle that is vital to our understanding of the universe. Although its official name is the Higgs boson, many refer to it as the God particle, because it’s considered to be the building block of the universe. Many believe that the Higgs boson may be the cause for the Big Bang explosion which led to the creation of the universe. In the 1960s, Higgs came up with the concept that particles had no mass when the universe started. In a split-second, however, it came into contact with something that gave it mass. This, Higgs theorized, was the Higgs boson. Many scientists initially laughed at the idea, but in the upcoming years, Higgs along with Englert and several of their peers continued to work on these concepts. Their ideas would eventually help lead the way to the discovery of the Higgs boson decades later. The search for the Higgs boson certainly didn’t come up cheap, as it cost nearly $10 billion to build the machinery necessary to perform the tests to find it. Yet nearly every physicist would agree that it was worth it, as the Higgs boson has already been labeled as one of the most important discoveries in particle physics. The finding is also a huge boost for physics in general because it proves that the Standard Model of Physics which researchers have been using for years is correct. The Higgs was the last remaining question mark as all of the other particles and elements had been found. Still, many ordinary people may question how such a discovery affects their lives at all. Although quantum mechanics may seem weird, it has actually led to several important technological breakthroughs over the past century. These findings have led to laser and X-ray technologies that work in the real world. There is still much to be learned with further observation of the Higgs boson in action. Scientists hope to learn more about dark matter, a strange substance that constitutes 25 percent of the mass of the universe. The research could also lead to some other technologies as well.
1. Why did Higgs and Englert win the Nobel Prize for Physics?

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The new invention may receive a lot of __________ from the public.

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While her husband was in the army, Janet ............ to him twice a week.

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Space Tourism
If you are like most people, you probably dream of spending your next vacation sightseeing or relaxing in a tropical spot. But pretty soon, you may have the option of blasting into space and exploring the universe. It appears that space tourism may start to experience a boom that is sure to be out of this world. Since ancient times, humans have surely dreamed about visiting space. However, it was just a fantasy until 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly into space. Yet in the years following, only a few highly-trained Soviet and American astronauts managed to leave the Earth’s atmosphere. In the mid-1980s, the US began to relax some of its restrictions. In 1986, an engineer named Charles Walker became the first non-government employee to fly into space. A year later, an American teacher named Christa McAuliffe was chosen to be the first teacher in space. Unfortunately, the Space Shuttle she was on, The Challenger, crashed during takeoff, killing everyone on board. Space tourism got an unexpected boost from the collapse of the Soviet Union. With Russia’s space programme in dire need of money, it became open to offers for space tourism. In 1990, a Japanese reporter was allowed to fly with a Russian crew into space, but the trip would cost his employer $28 million. In the late 1990s, a private company, MirCorp, started organizing trips to space for wealthy individuals. Now, many other companies are trying to do the same. Still, most people who want to become space tourists face a major barrier: the price. Early space tourists have paid dozens of millions of dollars for a seven-to- ten-day stay outside the Earth. However, there are some indications that the price will come down in the near future. Some corporations are gearing up for this with big plans to make space a more hospitable place. The luxurious hotel chain Hilton has expressed interest in opening a space hotel in the next 15 to 20 years. Meanwhile, some experts believe that flights to and from the moon could become a common occurrence within a few decades. Hopefully someday soon we will all have the chance to get to know our solar system a little bit better.
7. What does the passage imply about the future of space tourism?

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I usually watch TV ________ the evening.

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 zoos, aquariums, and many other situations, animals are used to entertain people. Most of us (1)____________ this for granted and see it as natural. However, some people argue that animals (2)____________ more respect. Those who believe it is OK to use animals for entertainment say that most animals have a safer and more enjoyable life in the entertainment (3)____________. Animals in the wild often have short and unpleasant lives and they are protected from (4)_____________ when they are used for entertainment. In addition, supporters argue that zoos, aquariums and other places which keep animals have an important educational function. It is the only way that most people will ever see a real wild animal. Interestingly, animals are adaptable and actually enjoy life in (5)____________. Opponents disagree because animals have no rights, especially the right to freedom.

Read the passage carefully and choose the correct answer

I was born to dance. I've been dancing all my life, ever since my mother, who gave up a dancing career on the stage when she married my father, picked me up and twirled me around as an infant. As much as I loved dancing with her, her greatest gift to me was her “unconditional love” during her lifetime.

My parents divorced after only 5 years of marriage, but my father remarried a lovely lady who also loved to dance. They used to take me to a dancing club where I would listen to the music and watch them dance-occasionally my step-mother, Mary, invited me to dance.

I also met my wife, Charlotte, in a dancing party. I danced with her for about 15 minutes, and during that brief span, I realized that I fell in love with her. We kept dancing throughout our marriage. My earliest memories of dancing with my daughters started when I came home from work to our small home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and my daughter Laura was about 3 years old. It was very relaxing for me to turn on the record player, pick up Laura in my arms, and dance her around the room!

Our family danced a lot. My daughters, Laura and Anne, and I continued to dance on every occasion. One favorite memory I have of dancing with Laura and Anne was when I took each of them when they were seniors in high school to the Daddy-Daughter dance. We won both dance competitions!

As their father, I have tried to provide my daughters with unconditional love, as my Mother provided to me, endless emotional and loving support, and good educations and life experiences which have helped prepare them for happy and successful adult lives. Being a father who is worthy of their love and respect, I consider fatherhood a privilege, not an entitlement.

In 1994, my oldest daughter Laura gave me a lovely book, which I still have, entitled “Fathers and Daughters.” My Father’s Day suggestion to every father is to dance with your daughters at every opportunity. It will not only bring you closer, it will give them memories of you “to hang onto” long after we are gone.

Of the characters mentioned in the passage, who did not like dancing?