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    The increase in urbanization causes different problems. Air and water pollution are amongst the major issue we have to tackle.
    In the first place, cars, factories and burning waste emit dangerous gases that change the air quality in our cities and pose threats to our health. Dangerous gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides cause respiratory diseases, for instant, bronchitis and asthma. Those are also proved to have long-term effects on the environment.
    Furthermore, with the increased population, it becomes difficult to manage the waste generated in cities. Most of the waste is discharged or dumped into rivers or onto streets. The waste pollutes water and makes it unfit for human consumption. Subsequently, it becomes more and more difficult for city dwellers to get clean water. Some cities in Africa are unable to provide adequate water supply because most of the water is lost in pipe leakages. In fact, most city dwellers in developing countries are forced to boil their water or to buy bottled water, which is very expensive. 
    There are several actions that could be taken to eradicate the problems described above. Firstly, a simple solution would be joining community efforts to address problems affecting your city. Ask your parents, friends and relatives to join in as well. These efforts might include clean-up campaigns, recycling projects and a signature campaign to ask the government to do something about the situation. A second measure would be encouraging your teacher to talk about these problems and to discuss how young people can help to solve them. Finally, writing to local organizations working on these issues for ideas on how you can contribute to solve them.

Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?

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Sir Anthony Van Dyck, one of the world’s greatest masters of portraiture, was born in Antwerp and was the seventh of twelve children. His affluent father apprenticed him to a painter when he was just a little over ten. Having become a member of the Antwerp Guild of painters before he was nineteen, he worked in the studio of Peter Paul Rubens for several years. In Italy, Van Dyck studied the great Venetian masters and painted flattering portraits of gorgeous ladies and haughty nobles in gilded velvet robes with lace and pearls. While he was sought after by the aristocracy for his acclaimed loose brushwork, his engravings and etchings also evinced his outstanding talent. Upon his return to Antwerp in 1628, he was influenced by Rubens’s interpretation of the artistic form and produced numerous religious paintings while holding an appointment as the court painter. During his tenure, he proved that his use of color, his sensitive elegance, and his remarkable insight were unexcelled.
His fame preceded him to England, where he was invited by King Charles I. After years of faithful service, he was knighted in recognition of his achievements in painting countless portraits of the king, the queen, the royal children, and the titled nobility of England.
However, Van Dyck’s greatest piece is one of his religious works, a true masterpiece displayed in the Antwerp gallery. This group scene exhibits his artful polish in painting the folds of fabric, the delicacy of human skin, landscape, and other externals, and puts him above other accomplished contemporary masters. Although Charles paid Van Dyck a salary and granted him a pension, the painter’s extravagant life-style and penchant for luxuries led him into debt, and he died without means.

The author of the passage implies that Van Dyck’s fame had largely to do with his

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For many American university students, the weeklong spring break holiday means on endless party on a sunny beach in Florida or Mexico. In Panama City Beach in Florida, a city with permanent population of around 36.000, more than half a million university students arrive during the month of March to play and party, making it the number one spring break destination in the United States
A weeklong drinking binge is not for everyone, however and a growing number of American university students have found a way to make spring break matter. For them, joining or leading a group of volunteers to travel locally or internationally and work to alleviate problems such as poverty, homelessness, or environmental damage makes spring break a unique learning experience that university students can feel good about.
During one spring break students at James Madison University in Virginia participated in 15 alternative spring break" trips to nearby states, three others to more distant parts of the United States and five international trips. One group of JMU students travelled to Bogalusa, Louisiana to help rebuild homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Another group traveled to Mississippi to organize creative activities for children living in homeless shelter. One group of students did go to exhausting physical labor such Florida. but not to lie on the sand. They performed as maintaining hiker rails and destroying invasive plant species that threaten the native Florida ecosystem.
Students who participate in alternative spring break projects find them very rewarding. While most university students have to get their degrees before they can start helping people, students volunteers are able to help people now. On the other hand, the accommodations are far from glamorous. Students often sleep on the floor of a school or church, or spend the week camping in tents. But students only pay around
$250 for meals and transportation, which is much less than some their peers spend to travel to more traditional spring break hotspots
Alternative spring break trips appear to be growing in popularity at universities across the United States. Students cite a number of reasons for participating. Some appreciate the opportunity to socialize and meet new friends. Others want to exercise their beliefs about peoples obligation to serve humanity and make the world a better place. Whatever their reasons, these students have discovered something that gives them rich rewards along with a break from school work.

The word “binge” in the second paragraph probably means    .

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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.

What is the passage mainly about?

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Loneliness is a curious thing. Most of us can remember feeling most lonely when we were not in fact alone at all, but when we were surrounded by people. Everyone has experienced, at some time, that utter sense of isolation that comes over you when you are at a party, in a room full of happy laughing people, or in an audience at a theatre or a lecture. It suddenly seems to you as if everybody knows everybody else, everybody is sure of himself, everybody knows what is going on; everybody, that is, except you. This feeling of loneliness which can overcome you when are in a crowd is very difficult to get rid of. People living alone - divorced, widowed or single people - are advised to tackle their loneliness by joining a club or society, by going out and meeting people. Does this really help? And what do you do if you are already surrounded by people? There are no easy solutions. Your first day at work, or at a new school or university, is a typical situation in which you are likely to feel lonely. You feel lonely because you feel left out of things. You feel that everybody else is full of confidence and knows what to do, but you are adrift and helpless. The fact of the matter is that, in order to survive, we all put on a show of self-confidence to hide our uncertainties and doubts. So it is wrong to assume that you are alone. In a big city it is particularly easy to get the feeling that everybody except you is leading a full, rich, busy life. Everybody is going somewhere, and you tend to assume that they are going somewhere nice and interesting, where they can find life and fulfilment. You are also going somewhere, and there is no reason at all to believe that your destination is any less, or, for that matter, any more exciting than the next man's. The trouble is that you may not be able to hide the fact that you are lonely, and the miserable look on your face might well put people off. After all, if you are at a party you are not likely to try to strike up a conversation with a person who has a gloomy expression on his face and his lips turned down at the comers. So trying to look reasonably cheerful is a good starting point in combating loneliness, even if you are choking inside. The next thing to avoid is finding yourself in a group where in fact you are a stranger, that is, in the sort of group where all the other people already know each other. There is a natural tendency for people to stick together, to form 'cliques'. You will do yourself no good by trying to establish yourself in a group which has so far managed to do very well without you. Groups generally resent intrusion, not because they dislike you personally, but because they have already had to work quite hard to turn the group into the functioning unit. To include you means having to go over a lot of ground again, so that you can learn their language, as it was, and get involved in their conversation at their level. Of course if you can offer something the group needs, such as expert information, you can get in quickly. In fact the surest way of getting to know others is to have an interest in common with them. There is no guarantee that you will then like each other, but at least part of your life will be taken up with sharing experiences with others. It is much better than always feeling alone. If all this seems to be a rather pessimistic view of life, you have to accept the fact that we are all alone when it comes down to it. When the most loving couple in the world kiss and say goodnight, as soon as the husband falls asleep, the wife realizes that she is alone, that her partner is as far away as if he were on another planet. But it is no cause for despair: there is always tomorrow.

People who have formed a group tend to.....................

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Perhaps it was his own lack of adequate schooling that inspired Horace Mann to work so hard for the important reforms in education that he accomplished. While he was still a boy, his father and older brother died, and he became responsible for supporting his family. Like most of the children in his town, he attended school only two or three months a year. Later, with the help of several teachers, he was able to study law and became a member of the Massachusetts bar, but he never forgot those early struggles.
While serving in Massachusetts legislature, he signed a historic education bill that set up a state board of education. Without regret, he gave up his successful legal practice and political career to become the first secretary of the board. There he exercised an enormous influence during the critical period of reconstruction that brought into existence the American graded elementary school as substitute for the older distinct school system. Under his leadership, the curriculum was restructured, the school year was increased to a minimum of six months, and mandatory schooling was extended to age sixteen. Other important reforms included the establishment of state normal schools for teacher training, institutes for in- service teacher education, and lyceums for adult education. He was also instrument in improving salaries for teachers and creating school libraries.
Mann’s ideas about school reform were developed and distributed in twelve annual reports to the state of Massachusetts that he wrote during his tenure as secretary of education. Considered quite radical at the time, the Massachusetts reforms later served as a model for the nation. Mann was recognized as the farther of public education.

What did Horace Mann advocate?

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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.

Borglum’s mixture for filling cracks was     _

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We live in a world of tired, sleep deprived people. In his book Counting Sheep, Paul Martin - a behavioural biologist - describes a society which is just too busy to sleep and which does not givesleeping the importance it deserves.
Modern society has invented reasons not to sleep. We are now a 24/7 society where shops and services must be available all hours. We spend longer hours at work than we used to, and more time getting to work. Mobile phones and email allow us to stay in touch round the clock and late-night TV and the Internet tempt us away from our beds. When we need more time for work or pleasure, the easy solution is to sleep less. The average adult sleeps only 6.2 hours a night during the week, whereas research shows that most people need eight or even eight and a half hours' sleep to feel at their best.
Nowadays, many people have got used to sleeping less than they need and they live in an almost permanent state of 'sleep debt'.
Until the invention of the electric light in 1879 our daily cycle of sleep used to depend on the hours of daylight. People would get up with the sun and go to bed at nightfall. But nowadays our hours of sleep are mainly determined by our working hours (or our social life) and most people are woken up artificially by an alarm clock. During the day caffeine, the world's most popular drug, helps to keep us awake. 75% of the world's population habitually consume caffeine, whichup to a point masks the symptoms of sleep deprivation.
What does a chronic lack of sleep do to us? As well as making us irritable and unhappy as humans, it also reduces our motivation and ability to work. This has serious implications for society in general.
Doctors, for example, are often chronically sleep deprived, especially when they are on 'night call', and may get less than three hours' sleep. Lack of sleep can seriously impair their mood, judgment, and ability to take decisions. Tired engineers, in the early hours of the morning, made a series of mistakes with catastrophicresults. On our roads and motorways lack of sleep kills thousands of people every year. Tests show that a tired driver can be just as dangerous as a drunken driver. However, driving when drunk is against the law but driving when exhausted isn't. As Paul Martin says, it is very ironic that we admire people who function on very little sleep instead of criticizing them for being irresponsible. Our world would be a much safer, happier place if everyone, whatever their job, slept eight hours a night.

The writer mentions the Internet in the passage as     .

Choose the word or phrase ( A, B, C or D ) that best fits the blank space in the following passage.

What do you do well? What do you enjoy doing? Your answers to these two questions will help you identify your (1)_____. An employer will consider you seriously for a (2)___ when you can show them that you know who you are, what you can offer and which you have studied. Sometimes it is difficult to know what your weaknesses are. Clearly not everyone is equally good (3) ___ everything. You may need to improve yourself and so (4) ___courses in that field could turn a weakness into strength.

You will need to (5) ___some time on your self-assessment. Your honesty and the desire for self-improvement will lead to success in getting the right job. Explore the following seven areas to start to get to know yourself: your aptitude, your skills, your personality, the level of responsibility you feel comfortable with, your interests and your needs.

(1)_____

The election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1928 marked the political ascendancy of the “common man” in American politics. Whereas all previous presidents had been Easterners from well-to-do families, Jackson was a self-made man of modest wealth from the West. Born in 1767, Jackson fought in the American Revolution, in which many of his relatives died.
Afterwards, he studied law and moved to the Western District of North California. When that territory became the state of Tennessee, Jackson was elected the state’s first congressman. His name became a household word during the war of 1812, when, as a U.S Army major general, he led troops against the Creek Indians in the Mississippi Territory and later defeated the British at New Orleans.
After his presidential inauguration, Jackson rode on horseback to the White House to attend a private party. Crowds of well-wishers suddenly appeared at the reception and nearly destroyed the White House as they tried to glimpse the new president. The common man had made a dramatic entrance onto the national political scene.
Jackson’s two terms moved American society toward truer democracy. Many states abandoned property requirements for voting. Elected officials began to act more truly as representatives of the people than as their leaders. As president of the common man, Jackson waged a war against the Bank of the United States, vetoing the bill that re-chartered the institution, declaring it a dangerous monopoly that profited the wealthy few.
Although he had built his reputation as an Indian fighter during the War of 1812, Jackson was not an Indian hater. He adopted what was at the time considered an enlightened solution to the Indian problem-removal. Many tribes submitted peacefully to being moved to the West. Others were marched by force to the Indian Territory, under brutal conditions, along what the Cherokees called the Trail of Tears.
One of Andrew Jackson’s most enduring legacies was the Democratic Party, which under him became a highly organized political party. In opposition to the Democrats were the Whigs, a party that attracted supporters of the Bank of the United States and opposed the tyranny of the man called “King Andrew”. A less specific but more basic legacy is the populist philosophy of politics that still bears the name “Jacksonian Democracy.”

Which of the following could NOT be inferred about Andrew Jackson?

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Welcome to the Netherlands, a tiny country that only extends, at its broadest, 312 km north to  south, and 264 km east to west - (1) ......... the land area increases slightly each year as a result of continuous land reclamation and drainage. With a lot of heart and much to offer, ‘Holland,’ as it is (2).......known to most of us abroad - a name stemming from its once most prominent provinces - has more  going  on  per  kilometer  than  most  countries,  and  more  English-speaking  natives.  You’ll  be impressed by its (3).....cities and charmed by its countryside and villages, full of contrasts. From the exciting variety on offer, you could choose a romantic canal boat tour in Amsterdam, a Royal Tour by coach in The Hague, or a hydrofoil tour around the biggest harbour in the world - Rotterdam. In season you could visit the dazzling bulb fields, enjoy a full day on a boat, or take a bike tour through the pancake-flat countryside spiced with windmills. The possibilities are countless and the nationwide tourist office is on hand to give you information and help you (4)...... reservations.  You’ll  have (5)........language problems here, as the Dutch are true linguists and English is spoken here almost universally.
(3)...........................

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.

What is the ultimate purpose in showing off one’s home to friends?

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The ocean bottom - a region nearly 2.5 times greater than the total land area of Earth - is a vast frontier that even today is largely unexplored and uncharted. Until about a century ago, the deep-ocean floor was completely inaccessible, hidden beneath waters averaging over 3,600 meters deep. Totally without light and subjected to intense pressures hundreds of times greater than at the Earth's surface, the deep-ocean bottom is a hostile environment to humans, in some ways as forbidding and remote as the void of outer space.
Although researchers have taken samples of deep-ocean rocks and sediments for over a century, the first detailed global investigation of the ocean bottom did not actually start until 1968, with the beginning ofthe National Science Foundation's Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP). Using techniques first developed for the offshore oil and gas industry, the DSDP's drill ship, the Glomar Challenger, was able to maintain a steady position on the ocean's surface and drill in very deep waters, extracting samples of sediments and rock from the ocean floor.
The Glomar Challenger completed 96 voyages in a 15-year research program that ended in November 1983. During this time, the vessel logged 600,000 kilometers and took almost 20,000 core samples of seabed sediments and rocks at 624 drilling sites around the world. The Glomar Challenger's core samples have allowed geologists to reconstruct what the planet looked like hundreds of millions of years ago and to calculate what it will probably look like millions of years in the future. Today, largely on the strength of evidence gathered during the Glomar Challenger's voyages, nearly all earth scientists agree on the theories of plate tectonics and continental drift that explain many of the geological processes that shape the Earth.
The cores of sediment drilled by the Glomar Challenger have also yielded information critical to understanding the world's past climates. Deep-ocean sediments provide a climatic record stretching back hundreds of millions of years, because they are largely isolated from the mechanical erosion and the intense chemical and biological activity that rapidly destroy much land-based evidence of past climates. This record has already provided insights into the patterns and causes of past climatic change - information that may be used to predict future climates.

The word “inaccessible” is closest in meaning to     .

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In the United States, friendship can be close, constant, intense, generous and real, yet fade away in a short time if circumstances change. Neither side feels hurt by this. Both may exchange Christmas greetings for a year or two, perhaps a few letters for a while - then no more. If the same two people meet again by chance, even years later, they pick up the friendship where they left off and are delighted.
In the United States, you can feel free to visit people's homes, share their holidays, or enjoy their lives without fear that they are taking on a lasting obligation. Do not hesitate to accept hospitality because you can’t give it in turn. No one will expect you to do so for they know you are far from home. Americans will enjoy welcoming you and be pleased if you accept their hospitality easily.
Once you arrived there, the welcome will be fun, warm, and real. Most visitors find themselves readily invited into many homes there. In some countries it is considered inhospitable to entertain at home, offering what is felt as only home cooked food, not doing something for your guests." It is felt that restaurant entertaining shows more respect and welcome. Or for other different reasons, such as crowded space, language difficulties, or family customs, outsiders are not invited into homes.
In the United States, both methods are used, but it is often considered friendlier to invite a person to one's home than to go to a public place, except in purely business relationship. So, if your host or hostess brings you home, do not feel that you are being shown inferior treatment.
Don't feel neglected if you do not find flowers awaiting you in your hotel room, either. Flowers are very expensive there; hotel delivery is uncertain; arrival times are delayed, changed or cancelled - so flowers are not customarily sent as a welcoming touch. Please do not feel unwanted! Outward signs vary in different lands; the inward welcome is what matters, and this will be real.

Which of the following is the best title for this passage?

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Scientists have experimented with a new procedure for alleviating the damage caused by strokes. Strokes are frequently caused by a blood clot lodging in the tree of arteries in the head, choking the flow of blood. Some brain cells die as a direct result of the stroke, but others also die over several hours because the proteins spilling out of the first cells that die trigger a chemical chain reaction that kills the neighboring cells.
The current method of reducing the amount of damage is to give a clot dissolver, known as TPA, as soon as possible. But generally TPA is not given to the patient until he or she reaches the hospital, and it still does not immediately stop the damage.
The new technology, still in the research stage, involves chilling the area or the entire patient. It is already known that when an organ is cooled, damage is slowed. This is why sometimes a person who has fallen into an icy pond is not significantly harmed after being warmed up again. The biggest issue is the method of cooling. It is not feasible to chill the head alone. Doctors have chilled the entire body by wrapping the patient in cold materials, but extreme shivering was a problem.
The new idea is to cool the patient from the inside out. Several companies are studying the use of cold-tipped catheters, inserted into the artery in the groin and threaded up to the inferior vena cava, which is a large vein that supplies blood to the abdomen. The catheter is expected to cool the blood that flows over it, thus allowing cooler blood to reach the area of the stroke damage.
It is not expected that the cooling will be substantial, but even a slight decrease in temperature is thought to be helpful. In effect, the patient is given a kind of forced hypothermia. And doctors believe it is important to keep the patient awake so that they can converse with the patient in order to ascertain mental condition.
Studies continue to determine the most effective and least damaging means of cooling the patient in order to reduce this damage.

According to the passage, what causes a stroke?

Choose the best answer: 
Jeans are very popular with (23) _________ people all over the world. Some people say that
jeans are the “uniform” of youth. But they haven’t always been popular. The story of jeans started (24) _________ two hundred years ago. People in Genoa, Italy made pants so the cloth made in Genoa (25) _________ “jeanos”. Accordingly, the pants were called “jeans”.
   In 1850, a salesman in California began selling pants made of canvas. His name was Levi Strauss. Because they were so strong, “Levi’s pants” became (26)_________ gold miners, farmers and cowboys. Six years later, Levi began making his pants with blue cotton cloth called denim. Soon after, factory (27) _________in the US and Europe began wearing jeans. At the time, young people actually didn’t wear them very much until later on.

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Perhaps better known than the Cullinan Diamond is the Hope Diamond, a valuable and blue gem with a background of more than 300 years as a world traveler.The 112-carat blue stone later became the Hope Diamond was mined in India sometime before the middle of the seventeenth century and was first known to be owned by Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal in memory of his beloved wife. From India, the celebrated blue stone has changed hands often, moving from location to location in distant corners of the world.
In the middle of the seventeenth century, a trader from France named Jean Baptiste Tavernier acquired the large blue diamond, which was rumored to have been illegally removed from a temple Tavemier returned to France with the big blue gem, where the stone was purchased by the Sun King Louis XIV. Louis XIV had it cut down from 112 to 67 carats to make its shape symmetrical and to maximize its sparkle. The newly cut diamond, still huge by any standards, was passed down through the royal family of France, until it arrived in the hands of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
During the French Revolution, Louis XVI and his wife met their fate on the guillotine in 1793, and the big blue diamond disappeared from public sight.
The diamond somehow managed to get from France to England, where banker Henry Hope purchased it from a gem dealer early in the nineteenth century. The huge blue stone was cut into a 45.5-carat oval, and at this point it took on the name by which it is known today. The diamond stayed in the Hope family for around a century, when deep indebtedness brought on by a serious gambling habit on the part of one of Henry Hope's heirs forced the sale of the diamond.
From England, the Hope Diamond may have made its way into the hands of the Sultan of Turkey; whatever route it took to get there, it eventually went on to the United States when American Evelyn Walsh McLean purchased it in 1911. Mrs.
McLean certainly enjoyed showing the diamond off guests in her home were sometimes astounded to notice the huge stone embellishing the neck of Mrs. McLean’s Great Dane as the huge pet trotted around the grounds of her Washington, D.C. home. The Hope Diamond later became the property of jeweler Harry Winston, who presented the stunning 45.5- carat piece to the Smithsonian in 1958. The Hope Diamond is now taking a well-earned rest following its rigorous travel itinerary and is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where it has been since 1958.

The pronoun "it" in the passage refers to

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Interpreting the feelings of other people is not always easy, as we all know, and we (1).......    as much on what they seem to be telling us, as on the actual words they say. Facial expression and tone of voice  are  obvious  ways  of  showing   our  (2)...... to something, and it may well be that we unconsciously express views that we are trying to hide. The art of being (3)....... lies in picking up these signals, realizing what the other person is trying to say, and acting so that they are not embarrassed in any way. Body movements, in general, may also indicate feelings, and interviewers often pay particular attention to the way a candidate for a job walks into the room and sits down. However, it is not difficult to present the right kind of appearance, while what many employers want to know relates to the candidate’s character  traits, and (4)..... stability. This raises the awkward question of whether job candidates should be asked to complete psychological tests, and the further problem of whether such tests actually produce (5).........results. For many people, being asked to take part in such a test would be an objectionable intrusion into their private lives.
(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:
Geothermal energy is natural heat from the interior of the Earth that is converted to heat buildings and generate electricity. The idea of harnessing Earth’s internal heat is not new. As early as 1904 , geothermal power was used in Italy . Today, Earth’s natural internal heat is being used to generate electricity in 21 countries , including Russia, Japan, New Zealand, Iceland, Mexico, Ethiopia, Guatemala, EI Salvador, the Philippines, and the United States .Total worldwide production is approaching 9,000 MW (equivalent to nine large modern coal-burning or nuclear power plants)-double the amount in 1980 .Some 40 million people today receive their electricity from geothermal energy at a cost competitive with that of other energy sources. In EI Salvador , geothermal energy is supplying 30% of the total electric energy used.
However, at the global level, geothermal energy supplies less than 0,15%of the total energy supply.
Geothermal energy may be considered a nonrenewable energy source when rates of extraction are greater than rates of natural replenishment. However, geothermal energy has its origin in the natural heat production within Earth , and only a small fraction of the vast total resource base is being utilized today. Although most geothermal energy production involves the tapping of high heat sources, people are also using the low-temperature geothermal energy of groundwater in some applications.

Geothermal Systems
The average heat flow from the interior of the Earth is very low, about 0,06% W/m2.This amount is trivial compared with the 177 W/m2from solar heat at the surface in the United States. However, in some areas, heat flow is sufficiently high to be useful for producing energy . For the most part, areas of high heat flow are associated with plate tectonic boundaries. Oceanic ridge systems (divergent plate boundaries) and areas where mountains are being uplifted and volcanic island arcs are forming (convergent plate boundaries) are areas where this natural heat flow is anomalously high. One such region is located in the western, United States, where recent tectonic and volcanic activity has occurred.
On the basis of geological criteria, several types of hot geothermal systems (with temperatures greater than about 800C , or 1760F)have been defined, and the resource base is larger than that of fossil fuels and nuclear energy combined. A common system for energy development is hydrothermal convection, characterized by the circulation of steam and / or hot water that transfers heat from depths to the surface.

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.

Which of the following is TRUE about the research mentioned in the passage?

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.

When did Motorola introduce the first cell phones for commercial use?