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.
More and more people are discovering that sharing and talking about their favorite books with others can be as rewarding as the act of reading itself. For people who feel that they are too busy to sit down with a book, a book club helps them schedule time to read, others have gained self-confidence by (46)......  in or leading a discussion. And most people enjoy the chance to  (47)........... new friends
A successful book club should have a group that is small enough so even the quiet people can be heard but also big enough for many different opinions. The best arrangement is a (48)......  of ages, sexes, and backgrounds for more reading variety and livelier discussions
The book club could  (49).........  in  one subject or type of book,  like mysteries,  science fiction, or biographies. Or the members could read books of all types, as long as the book is highly recommended by someone who thinks it would be (50)........... discussing
Some book clubs meet in places like bookstores, public libraries, or restaurants, but most have their meetings in members’ homes. The approach simply offers more privacy and time for longer meetings. To make the meeting go smoothly, a leader should be appointed. The leader will usually start the discussion by asking what the author’s main idea was. Book club members should never be afraid to offer their opinions, even if they don’t like a book. They just need to be prepared to explain why.
(49)...........................

Choose the best answer:
Fans are generally taken (1)______ when a famous actor or actress suddenly (2)______the profession at the height of his or her career. Greta Garbo, who made her last film when she was not yet 40, was a notable (3)______in point.

Sportsmen and women face this decision earliest. Though they generally have evidence that their powers are in (4)______ , very few have the self-awareness to get out while the going is still (5)______ .

Politicians are perhaps the last to realise that the game is up. As long as they can (6)______ on to power, they refuse to accept the advice of party members, no doubt suspecting it is prompted by their colleagues' own ambitions!
6.

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.
If you’re interested in having the trip of a lifetime, but also doing something useful at the same time, then why not try joining a Greenforce expedition as a volunteer. Greenforce, which was (1)...... _in 1997, is an international research agency that gathers information about the wildlife and natural habitats in various parts of the world. There is a qualified biologist in (2)....... of each team of volunteers and these carry out surveys all year round in some of the world’s remotest and most beautiful places. Volunteers come from all walks of life. The minimum age is 18 years, but there is no upper age limit. No previous experience is necessary as Greenforce provides location training in animal identification and survey methods. You’ll need to be somebody who enjoys the outdoor life, however, as working in remote (3)..........can be challenging. You’ll also need to be passionate about wildlife and prepared to learn a lot about the place you visit. Each expedition lasts for ten weeks, and training begins in the UK with a residential weekend where you can get a (4) .......... of expedition life and meet up with some of your team mates, as well as learning about first-aid and basic survival skills. Each volunteer (5 )..............£2,550 towards the cost of the expedition, but past volunteers say it is worth every penny.
(3).............................

Read the passage carefully and choose the correct answer:
In the future, genetic engineering will allow us to create the perfect human. It will be hard to get used to. Parents will order a baby who 'will grow up to become his new job because he is not quite prepared a genius or to have a Miss World appearance. Also, genetic engineering will allow us to mix plants and animals.
As computers have advanced, they have helped us remember, calculate, organize, and clarify. So it will become easier to deal with things, and much quicker. At a point in a future time, some may claim that computers become about as smart as Newton or Einstein. More advanced computers will be able to be creative, respond to feelings in a feeling way, develop intuition, recognize patterns, and suggest innovative alternatives. There is a hope if we choose to take action. We can select Internet information wisely, choose healthy computer games, limit our exposure to television commercials, and select television programs carefully. People will be aware of the importance of keeping active, getting outside to do more physical activities. We will also plan to make a major sacrifice the next time we buy a car, take the bus. Everybody will be more concerned about making environmentally friendly choices, eating healthy, and helping build a healthier society by shopping at better stores that sell better food. 
Most people will be aware that a happy, loving family is a joy to be part of, and that it is a necessary foundation for building a strong society. But it is extremely important for our future that we maintain a healthy perspective. We need to value and appreciate the importance of what can be achieved by loving and committed parents. People need a strong foundation, so it is vital for our society that we encourage parents to work at creating love, joy, and happiness for their children in a .decent, stable, and productive atmosphere.

The last paragraph is about _______.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to the following question.

Bees, classified into over 10,000 species, are insects found in almost every part of the world except the northernmost and southernmost regions. One commonly known species is the honeybee, the only bee that produces honey and wax. Humans use wax in making candles, lipsticks, and other products, and they use honey as food. While gathering the nectar and pollen with which they make honey, bees are simultaneously helping to fertilize the flowers on which they land. Many fruits and vegetables would not survive if bees did not carry the pollen from blossom to blossom.

Bees live in a structured environment and social structure within a hive, which is a nest with storage space for the honey. The different types of bees each perform a unique function. The worker bee carries nectar to the hive in a special stomach called a honey stomach. Other workers make beeswax and shape it into a honeycomb, which is a waterproof mass of six-sided compartments, or cells. The queen lays eggs in completed cells. As the workers build more cells, the queen lays more eggs.

All workers, like the queen, are female, but the workers are smaller than the queen. The male honeybees are called drones; they do no work and cannot sting. They are developed from unfertilized eggs, and their only job is to impregnate a queen. The queen must be fertilized in order to lay worker eggs. During the season when less honey is available and the drones are of no further use, the workers block the drones from eating the honey so that they will starve to death.

It is stated in paragraph 2 that a hive is ________.

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.
Sugar was for a long time a luxury and in the opinion of the medical profession it still should be. During the nineteenth century, however, manufactures discovered (6)........... of producing it in vast quantities and it has since become one of the staple articles of diet, particularly for the lower social classes. It has the advantages of being comparatively cheap, easily digested, rich in energy and useful for flavoring. Its major drawbacks are that it lacks every nourishing quality except that of giving energy, and because of its attractive flavor it (7).......... to displace other much more valuable foods from the diet. Most serious of all is its adverse (8).........   on  health, since excessive consumption can cause heart trouble, obesity and dental decay. The latter is widespread among the inhabitants of western countries. From the very young to the very old, (9).............anyone  escapes.  Yet  if  parents  would  drastically  reduce  the  (10).............. of confectionery they allow their children to eat, the extend of dental decay would soon be made
(9).....................................

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 from 41 to 45.
Working as a novelist is not really a career like being a doctor or a scientist. Although a fewwell-known ones, like Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling, have become wealthy, most writers find it difficult even to make a living from their book sales. Novels take a long time towrite, and authors can get into financial (41)     if they don’t have money coming in regularly from another job. But for those determined to     write novels, it is without (42) one of the most enjoyable kinds of work to do. The writer has to be creative, thinking up completely new stories, and (43)      , meaning they put all their time and effort     into their work. They also need to be able to cope in a crisis, as nobody else can write their book for them. For this, a good sense of (44) often helps. Or the thought that maybe their novel might one day be turned into a film and become a Hollywood (45)          !
(45)........................

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

Robots are already a part of our lives. Industrial robots widely used in manufacturing. Military and police organizations use robots to (26) _____ in dangerous situations. Robots can (27) _____ be found from vacuuming the floors in your home to exploring the surface of Mars.

Within a few more years a whole host of robotic adaptations will be running many aspects' of our lives. "I think in (28) _____ next thirty years, we are going to see a transformation between the industrial sorts of robots to personal robots," says Brooks from Brooks' company, IRobot, markets floor cleaning robots for homes.

"The advances in robotics make it clear that many household (29) ____ will be easily handled by a robot in the near future," says Bob Christopher, who works for a robotic technology company that is marketing a toy robot (30) _____ Pleo. "We have only one child but I could easily (31) _____ five or six robots in the home as well."

Within the next 10 years one will be able to (32) _____, to lease or purchase a domestic robot that not only does the household cleaning and prepare and serve his meals, (33) _____ also can carry him to the bathtub if he cannot walk.

Demographic changes, such as a rapidly aging population and a shrinking workforce, will drive forward the application of new (34) ___. There is going to be a real pull for increasing the productivity of working age people. So there is going to be a real push for robotics to help people. (35) _____ addition, it is likely that in the near future we will see robots- taking on some of the care functions elderly, or long-term ill people.

(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.

   Dodder is an unusual and unwanted plant that attacks other plants. Except for its flowers, the plant looks like spaghetti noodles. Its almost leafless, thread–like stems hang down atop other plants that dodder needs to stay alive. Dodder does not produce its own food. Instead, it steals it from other plants. It feeds by sucking juices from the plant it is wrapped around, often making its host very weak or even killing it. Dodder can find other plants by their smell. When a dodder seedling starts growing, it follows the scent of plants it prefers, like tomato plants, potato plants, or other farm crops.

   Unlike most plants that usually grow in the direction of light or warmth, a dodder plant will grow in the direction of, for example, tomato odor––if a tomato happens to be growing nearby.

   However, a young dodder plant must find a host plant quickly. If it cannot catch a whiff of a potential host within a few days, it will dry up and disappear—even if there is plenty of water around. Once it finds a host, the young dodder plant will attach itself to it and start growing faster. At that point, the dodder plant will drop its root.

   Dodder is thus a difficult weed to manage and a real headache for farmers. When it does get out of hand, dodder can greatly reduce a farmer’s harvest or even destroy crops completely. Before sowing their produce, farmers in warm parts of the world often check to make sure no unwanted dodder seeds have intermingled with their crop seeds. This is a good way to stop dodder plants from sneaking their way into a crop field.

What is the main topic of the 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 fits each of the numbered blanks.
All men should study, we have to study to (31)......    our knowledge and develop our intelligence. An uneducated man can only utilize his body strength to work and live. An educated man, without this strength, still has the faculty of his intelligent brain and good inflection. This intelligence and thought enable him to help his physical strength to act more quickly (32)......... cleverly.
In a same profession or work, the educated man differs from the uneducated considerably. Therefore, intellectual workers have to study, this is a matter of course but (33)......... workers must also (34)........ an education
In civilized countries compulsory education has been applied. Man must spend seven or eight years studying. From ploughmen to laborers in these nations, no one is (35).......  to read a   book or a paper fluently.
(32)...........................

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.

Ever since it was first possible to make a real robot, people have been hoping for the invention of a machine that would do all the necessary jobs around the house. If boring and repetitive factory work could be (1)_____ by robots, why not boring and repetitive household chores too?

For a long time the only people who really gave the problem their attention were amateur inventors And they came up against a major difficulty. That is, housework is actually very complex It has never been one job it has always been many. A factor robot (2)_____ one task endlessly until it is reprogrammed to do something else. It doesn’t run the whole factory. A housework robot on the other hand, has to do several different (3)_____ of cleaning and carrying jobs and also has to cope (4)______ all the different shapes and positions of rooms, furniture, ornaments, cats and dogs. (5)______ , there have been some developments recently. Sensors are available to help the robot locate objects and avoid obstacles. We have the technology to produce the hardware. All that is missing the softwarethe programs that will operate the machine.

(1)..........................

Read the passage below and choose one correct answer for each question.

In the future, maybe all cars that run on petrol will be replaced by solar cars, which have been around for a while, but with recent developments in solar car design and the measurement of photovoltaic cells becoming smaller, the dream of a truly efficient solar car is more reality than fantasy. A solar car is a vehicle powered by photovoltaic cells, also called solar cells, which convert sunlight (light energy) into electrical energy. As a source of energy on earth, there is nothing like the sun: in a mere one thousandth of one second (.001) , the sun emits enough energy to fulfill our planet's energy needs for the next 5,000 years. It is a staggering fact, and an exciting one. Since the energy from the sun is responsible for renewable resources such as wind, tides, and heat, solar energy seems to offer the brightest future for not only cars, but for the entire energy crisis. Despite the appearance that solar energy may be the least, feasible among the current crop of alternative fuel propositions, new solar powered devices and more specifically solar powered cars are beginning to be developed. How do Solar Cars work?

The photovoltaic cells absorb photons from sunlight. This action generates heat, which the cells then convert into electrical energy and stores in an onboard battery. This process of conversion is called the photovoltaic effect. Not surprisingly, such a vehicle has zero emissions, and is very environmentally friendly. Unfortunately, at the moment photovoltaic cells are extremely inefficient, yet as time progresses the efficiency of these cells will grow. This will make solar energy and solar cars the fuel and car of the future - a closer reality.

Which can not help us to solve the problem of energy crisis?

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.

INTERNSHIPS

In many countries going through difficult economic times, job openings for new graduates can be few and far between. In this competitive environment, relevant work experience can help job seekers stand out from the crowd, and (1) ______ organisations now offer temporary placements, called internships. The problem with numerous internships, (2) ______, is that they are unpaid, and this often puts young people off applying for them.

Employers and interns sometimes come to mutually beneficial arrangements, however. Dinesh Pathan, applying for an internship with an IT company, negotiated a deal in which he would be given travel (3) ______ only for two weeks, and then, as long as he could show his marketing work was adding value, he would be paid a wage. The arrangement worked well: Dinesh had a(n) (4) ______ to work hard, and he ended up feeling "not so much an intern as a temporary staffer". HR consultant Denise Baker says similar arrangements are common. What is more, "if interns do well, employers would often rather make them full employees than recruit people (5) ______ they don't know".

(Adapted from Exam Essential Practice Tests - Cambridge English by Tom Bradbury and Eunice Yeates)

(3) ______

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.
The elementary means of communicating with other people is (41).......... messages by voice. This fact is widely acknowledged and we recognize the voice as a feature characterizing the identity of a person. The array of voices is immeasurable as no two are exactly similar. They can be nasal, resonant or shrill produced in accordance with the individual physical (42) .........   of the throat
One possible implementation of the art of voice recognition is voice profiling used by police analysts as a method of (43).......  court evidence in  trials.  Every year thousands of  audiotapes with recorded interviews or casual utterances are put to the purpose to help identity the probable culprit. Specialists dealing with the voice investigation claim that people can give themselves away by their accents, infections or other voice attributes like pitch, intensity and loudness. A recorded sample is usually (44)....... into electric impulses and later transformed    into a pictorial recording which is processed by a computer program. Very frequently voice analysts have a stab at deciphering the relevant information which may be mingled with background noise or other interfering sounds until they attain the desired results.
Thankfully, these efforts help the police detect individuals who threaten their victim by phone or inform about bomb planting or those who make offensive calls (45).....  the peace  of decent citizens.
(41)...........................
 

Choose the best answer:
My city has been changing since the municipal authority had a plan to renovate the canal systems. The project cost a huge amount of money which was from the support of the world bank and the city’s budget. Before the renovation, the canal was the dirtiest place full of rubbish along its sides. Many ramshackle shacks were built to be shelters of the impoverished working families migrating to this city to earn their living. Household wastes were directly dumped into the canal, resulting in the very contaminated environment. It was said that the very unpleasant smell releasing from the canal was unable to be eliminated, and the living condition there would not be better. However, thanks to the advanced technology and methods as well as the city authority’s effort, everything has been changing. There is no longer the disgusting smell or shabby houses along both sides of the canal. Instead, the road running parallel to the canal is now full of shade of greenery and the water now is so clean that it is a friendly habitat for a variety of fish. The residents now can walk or do morning exercise on the sidewalks along the banks to enjoy the fresh atmosphere. Former inhabitants are also relocated in new apartments with much better living conditions than before. The canal creates not only a beautiful urban landscape, but also brings a lot of economic benefits to local dwellers. Because of its reformation, the city is changing fast too.

2. The word ‘impoverished’ in line 7 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 word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.

Ever since it was first possible to make a real robot, people have been hoping for the invention of a machine that would do all the necessary jobs around the house. If boring and repetitive factory work could be (1)_____ by robots, why not boring and repetitive household chores too?

For a long time the only people who really gave the problem their attention were amateur inventors And they came up against a major difficulty. That is, housework is actually very complex It has never been one job it has always been many. A factor robot (2)_____ one task endlessly until it is reprogrammed to do something else. It doesn’t run the whole factory. A housework robot on the other hand, has to do several different (3)_____ of cleaning and carrying jobs and also has to cope (4)______ all the different shapes and positions of rooms, furniture, ornaments, cats and dogs. (5)______ , there have been some developments recently. Sensors are available to help the robot locate objects and avoid obstacles. We have the technology to produce the hardware. All that is missing the softwarethe programs that will operate the machine.

(2)..........................

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions:
With Robert Laurent and William Zorach, direct carving enters into the story of modern sculpture in the United States. Direct carving - in which the sculptors themselves carve stone or wood with mallet and chisel - must be recognized as something more than just a technique. Implicit in it is an aesthetic principle as well: that the medium has certain qualities of beauty and expressiveness with which sculptors must bring their own aesthetic sensibilities into harmony. For example, sometimes the shape or veining in a piece of stone or wood suggests, perhaps even dictates, not only the ultimate form, but even the subject matter.
The technique of direct carving was a break with the nineteenth-century tradition in which the making of a clay model was considered the creative act and the work was then turned over to studio assistants to be cast in plaster or bronze or carved in marble. Neoclassical sculptors seldom held a mallet or chisel in their own hands, readily conceding that the assistants they employed were far better than they were at carving.
With the turn-of-the-century Crafts movement and the discovery of nontraditional sources of inspiration, such as wooden African figures and masks, there arose a new urge for hands-on, personal execution of art and an interaction with the medium. Even as early as the 1880's and 1890's, nonconformist European artists were attempting direct carving. By the second decade of the twentieth century, Americans - Laurent and Zorach most notably - had adopted it as their primary means of working.
Born in France, Robert Laurent (1890-1970) was a prodigy who received his education in the United States. In 1905 he was sent to Paris as an apprentice to an art dealer, and in the years that followed he witnessed the birth of Cubism, discovered primitive art, and learned the techniques of woodcarving from a frame maker.
Back in New York City by 1910, Laurent began carving pieces such as The Priestess, which reveals his fascination with African, pre-Columbian, and South Pacific art. Taking a walnut plank, the sculptor carved the expressive, stylized design.
It is one of the earliest examples of direct carving in American sculpture. The plank's form dictated the rigidly frontal view and the low relief. Even its irregular shape must have appealed to Laurent as a break with a long-standing tradition that required a sculptor to work within a perfect rectangle or square.

Where did Robert Laurent learn to carve?

Read the passage carefully and choose the correct answer A, B, C or D

Diwali is a main Hindu festival. It is known as the “Festival of Lights”. It makes the victory of good over evil. In other words, lights are symbols of victory of brightness over darkness. People in India turn on lamps in every house and watch firecrackers in the night sky. These lights are a way showing honor to the gods of India for giving the people health, knowledge, riches and peace.

On the day of Diwali, children get up at 3:00 a.m and take a bath. They dress up in festival clothes, light up the candles and share sweets. There is competition among the children to light the first firecracker and to make the loudest noise. Soon, the whole sky is bright. Children seem to have the most fun during this festival.

The world honor in the first paragraph 1 is closet in meaning to____.

Choose the best answer: 
The holiday season is a time for celebrating with friends and family. It is often called the “giving season” because during the holidays people give gifts and have celebrations. Unfortunately, this can all lead to a lot of waste. (1) _______, there are ways to reduce the amount of waste you create. Experts recently gave some ideas to the Associated Press.

The (2) _______ about paper waste have caused many people to look at other choices for wrapping a present. You can use reusable bags for gifts. Vaccariello recommends keeping gift bags and other decorations that you receive. You can reuse them the next time you give a gift. You can buy from companies (3) _______make environmentally-friendly gift wrap. Some companies make recyclable wrapping paper and do not use materials that are not recyclable. You can also wrap gifts in old maps, pages from magazines, and art paper. The person receiving the gift could use the wrapping for something else. Ozawa, editor at Martha Stewart Living, says she likes the Japanese tradition of furoshiki. This is where gifts are wrapped in cloth. The pretty and strong wrapping cloths can be used for (4) _______things, instead of just being thrown away. You could also wrap a gift in a colorful scarf or tablecloth. This makes the wrapping cloth part

of the gift itself. Instead of decorating a gift with something plastic, you can use something (5) _______such as pine cones, rosemary, or other evergreen

2.

Read the following passage and write the letter A, B, C or D on the top of the first page to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 26 to 30.
Founded after World War II by 51 "peace-loving states" combined to oppose future aggression, the  United Nations now counts 192 member nations, (26)_______ its newest members,  Nauru, Kiribati, and Tonga in 1999, Tuvalu and Yugoslavia in 2000, Switzerland and East Timor in 2002, and Montenegro in 2006.
United Nations Day has been (27)_______ on October 24 since 1948 and celebrates the objectives and accomplishments of the organization, which was established on October 24, 1945.
The UN (28)_______ in peacekeeping and humanitarian missions across the globe. Though some say its (29)_______ has declined in recent decades, the United Nations still plays a tremendous role in world politics. In 2001 the United Nations and Kofi Annan, then Secretary-General of the UN, won the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world."
Since 1948 there have been 63 UN peacekeeping operations that are currently under way. Thus far, close to  130  nations have contributed personnel (30)_______ various times;  119  are currently providing peacekeepers. As of August 31, 2008, there were 16 peacekeeping operations underway with a total of 88,230 personnel. The small island nation of Fiji has taken part in virtually every UN peacekeeping operation, as has Canada.
(28).......................

Choose the letter A, B, C or D to complete the passage below

   How would you like (1) _______work in the fast-growing tech sector? Information technology is the #1 field in (2)_______ of expected job growth over the next decade,(3) _______makes systems engineers among the most highly sought after professionals today. The average salary for a systems engineer is $87,100, and the career field is expected to grow 45% over the next 10 years. To become a systems engineer, you need a bachelor’s (4)_______in engineering.

   Software architects have taken the title as the best job in the country with job growth of 34% and an average annual salary of $119,000 per year. These innovative engineering professionals are responsible for (5)_______ to analyze and store data.

(5)........................