Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.
Early writing and Alphabets
When people first began to write, they did not use an alphabet. Instead, they drew small pictures to (1)........ the objects they were writing about. This was very slow because there was a different picture for every word.
The Ancient Egyptians had a (2).......... of picture writing that was called hieroglyphics. The meaning of this writing was forgotten for a very long time but in 1799 some scientists (3)............ a stone near Alexandria, in Egypt. The stone had been there for over a thousand years. It had both Greek and hieroglyphics on it and researchers were finally able to understand what the hieroglyphics meant.
An alphabet is quite different from picture writing. It (4)............ of letters or symbols that represent a sound and each sound is just part of one word. The Phoenicians, who lived about 3,000 years ago, developed the modern alphabets. It was later improved by the Roman's and this alphabet is now used (5)........... throughout the world.
(3)...........................
Hãy suy nghĩ và trả lời câu hỏi trước khi xem đáp án
Lời giải:
Báo saiA. discover: phát hiện ra một cái gì đã có, nhưng chưa được biết đến
B. realize: nhận ra (thứ gì trừu tượng)
C. deliver: giao nhận
D. invent: phát minh ra
Giải thích: Các nhà khoa học đã phát hiện ra một tảng đá.
Câu hỏi liên quan
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Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numberPri blanks.
I was raised on a farm in a remote village in the 1950s. The winter months were endless and everything was covered in snow. I was always (1).... for the warmer weather to come. When spring arrived, everything came alive - flowers would bloom and the animals would come out of hibernation. I would follow the bear tracks and search for them. Once, however, I (2)......... an angry mother bear who saw me as a threat. (3)......... the sight of the bear, I did what my father had told me. I stood still until she stopped growling and walked away. The trick was effective, but looking back now, I realized that the situation was far more serious than I thought at the time. By the age of twelve, I had lots of camping experience, as I used to go camping with my dog on my school holidays. We would spend days (4)......the forest, catching fish for dinner, look at the frogs and the (5)........ of birds and the insects hopping up and down on the surface of the water. Of course, this was possible only during the warm months. When the autumn came, everything went quiet, which was quite usual in those parts. It wasn't long before the animals disappeared, the birds flew south and the snow took over. The place became desert once again.
(5)..................... -
Read the passage and mark A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the blanks.
ROSES
According to fossil fuel records, roses are over 35 million years old and they were cultivated in China about 5,000 years ago. A Chinese emperor in the 6th century B.C. apparently had over 600 books on roses in his library, and oil was extracted from those grown in his gardens. (1)........ , only the highest members of society were allowed to use it. If anyone else was found with even a small amount, they were (2)............ to death. Roses were also popular with the Romans, who used their petals as medicine, a source of perfume and as confetti at weddings.
Cultivated rose were only introduced to Western Europe in the 18th century. Napoleon’s wife, Josephine, started a botanical garden near Paris, (3)........... she collected all the known varieties of rose and encouraged the breeding of new ones. This led to the flowers becoming increasingly popular, and in Britain at that time roses became so (4)........ that they were often used as currency in local markets.
All roses in Europe used to be pink or white until the first red ones arrived from China 200 years ago. These now (5)........ love and are the world’s most common cut flower.
(2)...................... -
Read the passage carefully and choose the correct answer.
University Entrance Examination is very important in Vietnamese students. High school graduates have to take it and get high results to be admitted to universities. The pressure on the candidates remains very high despite the measures that have been taken to reduce the heat around these exams, since securing a place in a state university is considered a major step towards a successful career for young people, especially those from rural areas or disadvantaged families. In the year 2004, it was estimated that nearly 1 million Vietnamese students took the University Entrance Examination, but on average only 1 out of 5 candidates succeeded. Normally, candidates take 3 exam subjects, and each lasts; 180 minutes for the fixed group of subjects they choose. There are 4 fixed groups of subjects: Group A: Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry; Group B: Mathematics, Biology, and Chemistry; Group C: Literature, History, and Geography; Group D: Literature, Foreign Language, and Mathematics.
In addition to universities, there are community colleges, art and technology institutes; professional secondary schools, and vocational schools which offer degrees or certificates from a-few-month to 2-year courses.
According to Vietnam's Ministry of Education and Training, there are currently 23 non-public universities, accounting for 11% of the total number of universities. These non-public universities are currently training 119,464 students, or 11.7% of the total number of students. The government is planning to increase the number of non-public universities to 30% by 2007.
In 2004, the proportion of the students who got success in University Entrance Examination was about _______ percent.
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Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the question.
Nowadays, most people realize that it’s risky to use credit card numbers online. However, from time to time, we all use passwords and government ID numbers on the Internet. We think we are safe, but that may not be true! A new kind of attack is being used by dishonest people to steal IDs and credit card numbers from innocent websurfers. This new kind of attack is called “phishing.”
Phishing sounds the same as the word “fishing,” and it implies that a thief is trying to lure people into giving away valuable information. Like real fishermen, phishers use bait in the form of great online deals or services. For example, phishers might use fake emails and false websites to con people into revealing credit card numbers, account usernames, and passwords. They imitate well-known banks, online sellers, and credit card companies. Successful phishers may convince as many as five percent of the people they contact to respond and give away their personal financial information.
Is this really a big problem? Actually, tricking five percent of the online population is huge! Currently, more than 350 million people have access to the Internet, and seventy-five percent of those Internet users live in the wealthiest countries on Earth. It has been estimated that phishers send more than three billion scam messages each year. Even by tricking only five percent of the people, phishers can make a lot of money.
Since there is so much money to make through this kind of scam, it has caught the interest of more than just small-time crooks. Recently, police tracked down members of an organized phishing group in Eastern Europe, who had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from people online. The group created official-looking email messages requesting people to update their personal information at an international bank’s website. However, the link to the bank in the message actually sent people to the phishers’ fake website. To make matters worse, further investigation revealed that this group had connections to a major crime gang in Russia.
How can innocent people protect themselves? Above all, they have to learn to recognize email that has been sent by a phisher. Always be wary of any email with urgent requests for personal financial information. Phishers typically write upsetting or exciting, but fake, statements in their emails so that people will reply right away. Also, messages from phishers will not address recipients by name because they really don’t know who the recipients are yet. On the other hand, valid messages from your bank or other companies you normally deal with will typically include your name.Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the question.
Nowadays, most people realize that it’s risky to use credit card numbers online. However, from time to time, we all use passwords and government ID numbers on the Internet. We think we are safe, but that may not be true! A new kind of attack is being used by dishonest people to steal IDs and credit card numbers from innocent websurfers. This new kind of attack is called “phishing.”
Phishing sounds the same as the word “fishing,” and it implies that a thief is trying to lure people into giving away valuable information. Like real fishermen, phishers use bait in the form of great online deals or services. For example, phishers might use fake emails and false websites to con people into revealing credit card numbers, account usernames, and passwords. They imitate well-known banks, online sellers, and credit card companies. Successful phishers may convince as many as five percent of the people they contact to respond and give away their personal financial information.
Is this really a big problem? Actually, tricking five percent of th -
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:
How is the news different from entertainment? Most people would answer that news is real but entertainment is fiction. However, if we think more carefully about the news, it becomes clear that the news is not always real. The news does not show us all the events of the day, but stories from a small number of chosen events. The creation of news stories is subject to specific constraints, much like the creation of works of fiction. There are many constraints, but three of the most important ones are: commercialism, story formulas, and sources.
Newspapers, radio, and TV stations are businesses, all of which are rivals for audiences and advertising revenue. The amount of time that the average TV station spends on news broadcasts has grown steadily over the last fifty years - largely because news is relatively cheap to produce, yet sells plenty of advertising. Some news broadcasts are themselves becoming advertisements. For example, during one week in 1996 when the American CBS network was airing a movie about the sinking of the Titanic, CBS news ran nine stories about that event (which had happened 84 years before). The ABC network is owned by Disney Studios, and frequently runs news stories about Mickey Mouse. Furthermore, the profit motive drives news organizations to pay more attention to stories likely to generate a large audience, and to shy away from stories that may be important but dull. This pressure to be entertaining has produced shorter, simpler stories: more focus on celebrities than people of substance, more focus on gossip than on news, and more focus on dramatic events than on nuanced issues.
As busy people under relentless pressure to produce, journalists cannot spend days agonizing over the best way to present stories. Instead, they depend upon certain story formulas, which they can reuse again and again. One example is known as the inverted pyramid. In this formula, the journalist puts the most important information at the beginning of the story, than adds the next most important, and so on. The inverted pyramid originates from the age of the telegraph, the idea being that if the line went dead halfway through the story, the journalist would know that the most crucial information had at least been relayed. Modern journalists still value the formula for a similar reason. Their editors will cut stories if they are too long. Another formula involves reducing a complicated story into a simple conflict. The best example is "horse race" election coverage. Thorough explication of the issues and the candidates' views is forbiddingly complex. Journalists therefore concentrate more on who is winning in the opinion polls, and whether the underdog can catch up in the numbers than on politicians' campaign goals.
Sources are another constraint on what journalists cover and how they cover it. The dominant sources for news are public information officers in businesses and government offices. The majority of such officers try to establish themselves as experts who are qualified to feed information to journalists. How do journalists know who is an expert? In general, they don't. They use sources not on the basis of actual expertise, but on the appearance of expertise and the willingness to share it. All the major news organizations use some of the same sources (many of them anonymous), so the same types of stories always receive attention. Over time, the journalists may even become close friends with their sources, and they stop searching for alternative points of view. The result tends to be narrow, homogenized coverage of the same kind.According to the passage, which of the following tends to lead to homogenized coverage?
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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:
Sharks have gained an unfair reputation for being fierce predators of large sea animals. Humanity's unfounded fear and hatred of these ancient creatures is leading to a worldwide slaughter that may result in the extinction of many coastal shark species. The shark is the victim of a warped attitude of wildlife protection; we strive only to protect the beautiful, non-threatening parts of our environment. And, in our efforts to restore only non-threatening parts of our earth, we ignore other important parts.
A perfect illustration of this attitude is the contrasting attitude toward another large sea animal, the dolphin. During the 1980s, environmentalists in the United States protested the use of driftnets for tuna fishing in the Pacific Ocean since these nets also caught dolphins. The environmentalists generated enough political and economic pressure to prevent tuna companies from buying tuna that had been caught in driftnets. In contrast to this effort on behalf of the dolphins, these same environmentalists have done very little to help save the Pacific Ocean sharks whose population has decreased nearly to the point of extinction.
Sharks are among the oldest creatures on earth, having survived in the seas for more than 350 million years. They are extremely efficient animals, feeding on wounded or dying animals, thus performing an important role in nature of weeding out the weaker animals in a species. Just the fact that species such as the Great White Shark have managed to live in the oceans for so many millions of years is enough proof of their efficiency and adaptability to changing environments. It is time for US humans, who may not survive another 1,000 years at the rate we are damaging the planet, to cast away our fears and begin considering the protection of sharks as an important part of a program for protection of all our natural environment.Which of the following best describes the organization of this passage?
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Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the answer to each of the question.
Covering more than 70 percent of our planet, oceans are among the earth’s most valuable natural resources. They govern the weather, clean the air, help feed the world, and provide a living for millions. They also are home to most of the life on earth, from microscopic algae to the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet. Yet we’re bombarding them with pollution. By their very nature—with all streams flowing to rivers, all rivers leading to the sea—the oceans are the end point for so much of the pollution we produce on land, however far from the coasts we may be. And from dangerous carbon emissions to choking plastic to leaking oil to constant noise, the types of ocean pollution humans generate are vast. As a result, collectively, our impact on the seas is degrading their health at an alarming rate. Here are some ocean pollution facts that everyone on our blue planet ought to know.
When we burn fossil fuels, we don’t pollute just the air but the oceans, too. Indeed, today’s seas absorb as much as a quarter of all man-made carbon emissions, which changes the pH of surface waters and leads to acidification. This problem is rapidly worsening—oceans are now acidifying faster than they have in some 300 million years. It’s estimated that by the end of this century, if we keep pace with our current emissions practices, the surface waters of the ocean could be nearly 150 percent more acidic than they are now.
The majority of the garbage that enters the ocean each year is plastic—and here to stay. That’s because unlike other trash, the single-use grocery bags, water bottles, drinking straws, and yogurt containers, among eight million metric tons of the plastic items we toss (instead of recycle), won’t biodegrade. Instead, they can persist in the environment for a millennium, polluting our beaches, entangling marine life, and getting ingested by fish and seabirds.
Where does all this debris originate? While some is dumped directly into the seas, an estimated 80 percent of marine litter makes its way there gradually from land-based sources―including those far inland―via storm drains, sewers, and other routes. Oil from boats, airplanes, cars, trucks, and even lawn mowers is also swimming in ocean waters. Chemical discharges from factories, raw sewage overflow from water treatment systems, and storm water and agricultural runoff add other forms of marine-poisoning pollutants to the toxic brew.
The ocean is far from a “silent world.” Sound waves travel farther and faster in the sea’s dark depths than they do in the air, and many marine mammals like whales and dolphins, in addition to fish and other sea creatures, rely on communication by sound to find food, mate, and navigate. But an increasing barrage of human-generated ocean noise pollution is altering the underwater acoustic landscape, harming—and even killing—marine species worldwide.Which of the following could best reflect the main idea of the passage?
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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:
Because geologists have long indicated that fossil fuels will not last indefinitely, the U.S government finally acknowledged that sooner or later other energy sources would be needed and, as a result, turned its attention to nuclear power. It was anticipated that nuclear power plants could supply electricity in such large amounts and so inexpensively that they would be integrated into an economy in which electricity would take over virtually all fuel-generating functions at nominal cost. Thus, the government subsidized the promotion of commercial nuclear power plants and authorized their construction by utility companies. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the public accepted the notion of electricity being generated by nuclear power plants in or near residential areas. By 1975, 54 plants were fully operational, supplying 11 percent of the nation’s electricity, and another 167 plants were at various stages of planning and construction. Officials estimated that by 1990 hundreds of plants would be on line, and by the turn of the century as many as 1000 plants would be in working order.
Since 1975, this outlook and this estimation have changed drastically, and many utilizes have cancelled existing orders. In some cases, construction was terminated even after billions of dollars had already been invested. After being completed and licensed at a cost of almost $6 billion, the Shoreham Power Plant on Long Island was turned over to the state of New York to be dismantled without ever having generated electric power. The reason was that residents and state authorities deemed that there was no possibility of evacuating residents from the area should an accident occur.
Just 68 of those plants under way in 1975 have been completed, and another 3 are still under construction. Therefore, it appears that in the mid1990s 124 nuclear power plants in the nation will be in operation, generating about 18 percent of the nation’s electricity, a figure that will undoubtedly decline as relatively outdated plants are shut down.In line 7, the word “notion” is closet in meaning to
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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:
A tropical cyclone is a violent low pressure storm that usually occurs over warm oceans of over 80°F or 27°C. It winds counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere as it is described for the term, cyclone itself. This powerful storm is fueled by the heat energy that is released when water vapor condenses at high altitudes, the heat ultimately derived from the Sun.
The center of a tropical cyclone, called the eye, is relatively calm and warm. This eye, which is roughly 20 to 30 miles wide, is clear, mainly because of subsiding air within it. The ring of clouds around the eye is the eyewall, where clouds reach highest and precipitation is heaviest. The strong wind, gusting up to 360 kilometers per hour, occurs when a tropical cyclone’s eyewall passes over land.
There are various names for a tropical cyclone depending on its location and strength. In Asia, a tropical cyclone is named according to its strength. The strongest is a typhoon; its winds move at more than 117 kilometers per hour. In India, it is called a cyclone. Over the North Atlantic and in the South Pacific, they call it a hurricane.
On average, there are about 100 tropical cyclones worldwide each year. A tropical cyclone peaks in late summer when the difference between temperature in the air and sea surface is the greatest. However, it has its own seasonal patterns. May is the least active month, while September is the most active.
The destruction associated with a tropical cyclone results not only from the force of the wind, but also from the storm surge and the waves it generates. It is born and sustained over large bodies of warm water, and loses its strength over inland regions that are comparatively safe from receiving strong winds. Although the tract of a tropical cyclone is very erratic, the Weather Service can still issue timely warnings to the public if a tropical cyclone is approaching densely populated areas. If people ever experience a cyclone, they would know how strong it could be.According to paragraph 2, which of the following is true about the eyewall?
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Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word for each of the blanks.
When you read something in a foreign language, you frequently come across words you do not fully understand. Sometimes you (1).... the meaning in a dictionary and sometimes you guess. The strategy you adopt depends very much upon the degree of accuracy you require and the time at your disposal.
If you are the sort of person who tends to turn to the dictionary frequently, it is (2)..remembering that every dictionary has its limitations. Each definition is only an approximation and one builds up an accurate picture of the meaning of a word only after meeting it in a (3)...... of contexts. It is also important to recognize the special dangers of dictionaries that translate from English into your native language and vice versa. If you must use a dictionary, it is usually far safer to consult an English-English dictionary.
In most exams you are not permitted to use a dictionary. (4) .... you are allowed to use one, it is very time-consuming to look up words, and time in exams is usually limited. You are, therefore, forced to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words. When you come across unknown words in an exam text, it is very easy to panic. However, if you develop efficient techniques for guessing the meaning, you will overcome a number of possible problems and help yourself to understand far more of the text than you at first thought likely.
Two strategies which may help you guess the meaning of a word are: using contextual clues, both within the sentence and outside, and making use of clues (5)....... from the formation of the word
(3)........................ -
Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions:
The Atmosphere of Venus
Venus, also called the Morning Star and Evening Star, is the second-closest planet to the sun and the brightest object in the night sky. The planet orbits the sun every two hundred and twenty four Earth-days and is sometimes referred to as Earth’s sister planet because the two share both a similar size and bulk. What is not similar, however, is Venus’s atmosphere in comparison to Earth’s atmosphere.
The atmosphere on Venus is much heavier and has a higher density than that of Earth. Venus’s atmosphere also expands significantly higher than Earth’s atmosphere although a thick cloud cover makes the surface of Venus nearly impossible to see unless observed through radar mapping.
While the pressure and temperature of Venus’s upper atmosphere are comparable to those of Earth, the heat and pressure of the lower atmosphere are not unlike a furnace. Venus’s atmosphere is very thick due to a composition consisting mainly of carbon dioxide, and a small amount of nitrogen. If man could survive the extreme heat of Venus’s surface (400 degrees Celsius), then he would have to contend with a surface pressure that is more than 90 times that of Earth. Venus’s extremely high temperature is thanks to the greenhouse effect caused by such a large amount of carbon dioxide. The greenhouse effect is a process by which the sun’s infrared radiation is more readily absorbed by the atmosphere. Just like in a real greenhouse used to grow plants years round, the proliferation of carbon dioxide traps radiation and warms Venus’s atmosphere. Due to this phenomenon, Venus boasts a higher atmospheric temperature than Mercury, even though Venus is twice the distance from the sun.
However, scientists postulate that Venus’s atmosphere was not always so hot. Studies show that large bodies of water were once on Venus’s surface but that eventually evaporation of all the water caused the runaway greenhouse effect which regulates the planet today.Thus Venus has become a critical study for today’s scientists, as human being are only beginning to struggle with the early stages of the greenhouse effect. Our problems do not stem from evaporated water supplies but from a propagation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases due to industrial and automobile emissions.
Another interesting characteristic to note regarding Venus’s atmosphere is that its daytime temperatures and nighttime temperatures are not that far removed from each other. This is due to the thermal inertia, the ability of a substance to store heat despite changing temperatures and the transfer of heat by Venus’s strong winds. Although winds on the surface of Venus move slowly in comparison with Earth’s winds, Venus’s air is so dense that a slow-moving there can move large obstructions and even skip stones along the planet’s surface.
In 1966, humankind made its first attempt at sending a recording instrument into Venus’s atmosphere. The Venera 3 probe did collide with Venus surface; however, the abrupt impact caused its communication system to fail, and it was unable to send and feedback. In 1967, Venera 4 successfully enter Venus’s atmosphere and was able to take many readings, one of which recorded that Venus’s atmosphere was between ninety and ninety-five percent carbon dioxide. Subsequent Venera probes were sent into Venus’s atmosphere, but most of them succumbed to the crushing air pressure.According to paragraph 3, the greenhouse effect on Venus is owed to
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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.
Astronomers have for the first time definitively ID’d the birth of a specific heavy element during a neutron-star smashup. They found strontium. And it showed up in the wavelengths of light — or spectra — making up this collision’s afterglow.
Scientists had assumed that a collision by two super-dense objects, such as neutron stars, would trigger a chain of nuclear reactions. They’re known as the r-process. In such an environment, the nuclei of atoms could rapidly gobble up neutrons. Afterward, those nuclei would become transformed in a process known as radioactive decay. The r-process was seen as a way to transform old, smaller elements into newer, bigger ones. About half of all elements heavier than iron were thought to be made in the r-process. Finding strontium in the recent collision at last offered the most direct evidence yet that neutron-star collisions really do trigger the r-process.
Physicists had long predicted that silver, gold and many other elements more massive than iron formed this way. But scientists weren’t sure where those r-process reactions took place. After all, no one had directly seen the r-process underway in a celestial event. Or they didn’t until the merger of two neutron stars in 2017. Scientists quickly analyzed light given off by that cataclysm. In it, they found evidence of the birth of a hodgepodge of heavy elements. All would seem to have come from the r-process.
The researchers were examining mostly very heavy elements — ones whose complex atomic structures can generate millions of spectral features. And all of those features were not yet fully known, Watson points out. This made it extremely difficult to tease apart which elements were present, he says.
Strontium, however, is relatively light compared to other r-process elements. And its simple atomic structure creates a few strong and well-known spectral clues. So Watson and his colleagues expanded their analysis to consider it. In doing so, they turned up the clear "fingerprint" of strontium. It emerged in light collected by the Very Large Telescope in Chile within a few days of the neutron-star collision. Seeing strontium in the afterglow wasn’t all that unexpected, says Brian Metzger. He’s an astrophysicist at Columbia University in New York City and not involved in the new work. Strontium, he notes, “does tell us something interesting” about the elements formed during the neutron-star collision.The word “tease” in paragraph 4 can be replaced by _______.
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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.
Sociologists have been carrying out research into the social pressures of being a teenager. Many adolescents are unhappy at school because they find it difficult to (1)....... friends. This stress can bring on illness or result in poor grades. They may also worry about their appearance and often feel (2)......enormous pressure to dress, talk and behave the same as (3)....... . This phenomenon is called peer pressure, and it is very common in today’s society. Advertising contributes a lot to the social pressures teenagers feel. Advertisers know how important it is to feel that you belong to a group when you are in your teens, so they try to persuade teenagers that certain products will make them (4)..... with their classmates. Sadly, many teenagers act irresponsibly and even do dangerous things just to make others accept them. Peer pressure is often the reason for teenage smoking, drug (5)........ or dangerous driving. Teenagers need to learn to say no to social pressure and to find friends who they can talk things over with when they have a problem.
(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:
In the United States, it is important to be on time, or punctual, for an appointment, a class, a meeting, ect... This may not be true in some other countries, however. An American professor discovered this difference while teaching a class in a Brazilian university. The two-hour class was scheduled to begin at 10 A.m., and end at 12 A.m. On the first day, when the professor arrived on time, no one was in the classroom. Many students came after 11 A.m. Although all of the students greeted the professor as they arrived, few apologised for their lateness. Were these students being rude? He decided to study the students’ behavior.
In American university, students are expected to arrive at the appointed hour. On the other hand, in Brazil, neither the teacher nor the students always arrive at the appointed hour. Classes not only begin at the scheduled time in the United States, but they also end at the scheduled time. In the Brazilian class, only a few students left the class at noon, many remained past 12:30 to discuss the class and ask more questions. While arriving late may not be important in Brazil, neither is staying late.
The explanation for these differences is complicated. People from Brazilian and North American cultures have different feelings about lateness. In Brazil, the students believe that a person who usually arrives late is probably more successful than a person who is always on time. In fact, Brazilians expect a person with status or prestige to arrive late, while in the United States, lateness is usually considered to be disrespectful and unacceptable. Consequently, if a Brazilian is late for an appointment with a North America, the American may misinterpret the reason for the lateness and become angry.
As a result for his study, the professor learned that the Brazilian students were not being disrespectful to him. Instead, they were simply behaving the appropriate way for a Brazilian student in Brazil. Eventually, the professor was able to adapt his own behavior to feel comfortable in the new culture.What is the main idea of this passage?
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Fill in each numbered blank with one suitable word or phrase.
The University of Oxford, informally called "Oxford University", or simply "Oxford", (1) ______ in the city of Oxford, in England, is (2) ______ oldest university in the English-speaking world. It is also considered as one of the world's leading (3) ______ institutions. The university traces, its roots back to at least the end of the 11th century, (4) ______ the exact date of foundation remains unclear. Academically, Oxford is consistently ranked in the world's top ten universities. The University is also open (5) ______ overseas students, primarily from American universities, who may (6) _____ in study abroad programs during the summer months for more than a century, it has served as the home of the Rhodes Scholarship, (7) ______ brings highly accomplished students from a number of countries to study at Oxford as (8) ______ The University of Oxford is also a place where many talented leaders from all over the world used to study. Twenty-five British Prime Ministers attended Oxford, including Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. At (9) ______ 25 other international leaders have been educated at Oxford, and this number includes King Harald V of Norway and King Abdullah II of Jordan. Bill Clinton is the first American President to attend Oxford. Forty-seven Nobel (10) __ winners have studied or taught at Oxford.
(8) ______
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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:
At 7 pm on a dark, cold November evening, thousands of people are making their way across a vast car park. They're not here to see a film, or the ballet, or even the circus. They are all here for what is, bizarrely, a global phenomenon: they are here to see Holiday on Ice. Given that most people don’t seem to be acquainted with anyone who's ever been, the show's statistics are extraordinary: nearly 300 million people have seen Holiday on Ice since it began in 1943; it is the most popular live entertainment in the world.
But what does the production involve? And why are so many people prepared to spend their lives travelling round Europe in caravans in order to appear in it? It can't be glamorous, and it's undoubtedly hard work. The backstage atmosphere is an odd mix of gym class and workplace. A curtained-off section at the back of the arena is laughably referred to as the girls' dressing room, but is more accurately described as a corridor, with beige, cracked walls and cheap temporary tables set up along the length of it. Each girl has a small area littered with pots of orange make-up, tubes of mascara and long false eyelashes.
As a place to work, it must rank pretty low down the scale: the area round the ice-rink is grey and mucky with rows of dirty blue and brown plastic seating and red carpet tiles. It's an unimpressive picture, but the show itself is an unquestionably vast, polished global enterprise: the lights come from a firm in Texas, the people who make the audio system are in California, but Montreal supplies the smoke effects; former British Olympic skater Robin Cousins is now creative director for the company and conducts a vast master class to make sure they're ready for the show's next performance.
The next day, as the music blares out from the sound system, the case start to go through their routines under Cousins' direction. Cousins says, 'The aim is to make sure they're all still getting to exactly the right place on the ice at the right time - largely because the banks of lights in the ceiling are set to those places, and if the skaters are all half a metre out they'll be illuminating empty ice. Our challenge, ' he continues, 'is to produce something they can sell in a number of countries at the same time. My theory is that you take those things that people want to see and you give it to them, but not in the way they expect to see it. You try to twist it. And you have to find music that is challenging to the skaters, because they have to do it every night.'
It may be a job which he took to pay the rent, but you can’t doubt his enthusiasm. 'They only place you'll see certain skating moves is an ice show,' he says, 'because you're not allowed to do them in competition. It's not in the rules. So the ice show word has things to offer which the competitive world just doesn't. Cousins knows what he's talking about because he skated for the show himself when he stopped competing - he was financially unable to retire. He learnt the hard way that you can't put on an Olympic performance every night. I'd be thinking, these people have paid their money, now do your stuff, and I suddenly thought, "I really can't cope. I'm not enjoying it".' The solution, he realized, was to give 75 per cent every night, rather than striving for the sort of twice-a-year excellence which won him medals.
To be honest, for those of us whose only experience of ice-skating is watching top-class Olympic skaters, some of the movements can look a bit amateurish, but then, who are we to judge? Equally, it's impossible not to be swept up in the whole thing; well, you'd have to try pretty hard not to enjoy it.For Robin Cousins, the key point when rehearsing skating routines is
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Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word for each of the blanks.
When you read something in a foreign language, you frequently come across words you do not fully understand. Sometimes you (1).... the meaning in a dictionary and sometimes you guess. The strategy you adopt depends very much upon the degree of accuracy you require and the time at your disposal.
If you are the sort of person who tends to turn to the dictionary frequently, it is (2)..remembering that every dictionary has its limitations. Each definition is only an approximation and one builds up an accurate picture of the meaning of a word only after meeting it in a (3)...... of contexts. It is also important to recognize the special dangers of dictionaries that translate from English into your native language and vice versa. If you must use a dictionary, it is usually far safer to consult an English-English dictionary.
In most exams you are not permitted to use a dictionary. (4) .... you are allowed to use one, it is very time-consuming to look up words, and time in exams is usually limited. You are, therefore, forced to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words. When you come across unknown words in an exam text, it is very easy to panic. However, if you develop efficient techniques for guessing the meaning, you will overcome a number of possible problems and help yourself to understand far more of the text than you at first thought likely.
Two strategies which may help you guess the meaning of a word are: using contextual clues, both within the sentence and outside, and making use of clues (5)....... from the formation of the word
(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 questions.
We get great pleasure from reading. The more advanced a man is, the greater delight he will find in reading. The ordinary man may think that subjects like philosophy or science are very difficult and that if philosophers and scientists read these subjects, it is not for pleasure. But this is not true. The mathematician finds the same pleasure in his mathematics as the school boy in an adventure story. For both, it is a play of the imagination, a mental recreation and exercise.
The pleasure derived from this activity is common to all kinds of reading. But different types of books give us different types of pleasure. First in order of popularity is novel-reading. Novels contain pictures of imaginary people in imaginary situations, and give us an opportunity of escaping into a new world very much like our world and yet different from it. Here we seem to live a new life, and the experience of this new life gives us a thrill of pleasure.
Next in order of popularity are travel books, biographies and memoirs. These tell us tales of places we have not seen and of great men in whom we are interested. Some of these books are as wonderful as novels, and they have an added value that they are true. Such books give us knowledge, and we also find immense pleasure in knowing details of lands we have not seen and of great men we have only heard of.
Reading is one of the greatest enjoyments of life. To book-lovers, nothing is more fascinating than a favorite book. And, the ordinary educated man who is interested and absorbed in his daily occupation wants to occasionally escape from his drudgery into the wonderland of books for recreation and refreshment.
According to paragraph 1, which of the following is NOT true?
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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 today's competitive world, what responsible parent would not want to give their children the best possible start in life? For this reason, many parents want their children, often as young as ten months old, to become familiar with computers. They seem to think that if their children grow up with computers, they will be better equipped to face the challenges of the future.
No one has proved that computers make children more creative or more intelligent. The truth may even be the opposite. Educational psychologists claim that too much exposure to computers, especially for the very young, may negatively affect normal brain development. Children gain valuable experience of the world from their interaction with physical objects. Ten–month–old babies may benefit more from bumping their heads or putting various objects in their mouths than they will from staring at eye–catching cartoons. A four–year–old child can improve hand–eye coordination and understand cause and effect better by experimenting with a crayon than by moving a cursor around a computer screen. So, as educational psychologists suggest, instead of government funding going to more and more computer classes, it might be better to devote resources to music and art programs.
It is ludicrous to think that children will fall behind if they are not exposed to computers from an early age. Time is too precious to spend with a "mouse". Now is the time when they should be out there learning to ride a bike. There will be time later on for them to start banging away at keyboards.What is TRUE according to the passage?
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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 we think of the renewable energy transition, we often have in mind dark blue photovoltaic rectangles carpeting the landscape or large three-blade horizontal axis wind turbines marching along mountain ridges or into the sea. We think about grid reliability and consumer cost per kilowatt-hour, or we think about the climate change apocalypse that we will impose on future generations if we fail to act swiftly enough. All of these elements are important from technical and policy perspectives, but there is something missing that will be key to success if we are to meet the goals that we have set for ourselves. We must recognize the importance of human culture to the realization of change.
It is a lack of imagination that has brought us to the brink, and it will be an influx of imagination that can possibly pull us back from it. If we are going to succeed in reducing carbon emissions, we must make the solutions more visible, inspire the general public, and get people excited about the renewable energy transition.
This is the mission of the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI), a nonprofit that works with cities around the world on civic art installations that also function as renewable energy infrastructures. These generous works of art give back more than just beauty and return more than just kilowatt hours on their capital investment. LAGI design competitions have changed the way that cities and developers manage the integration of public art and creative placemaking into the master planning process for new developments. Competitions for Dubai/Abu Dhabi (2010), New York City (2012), Copenhagen (2014), Glasgow (2015), Santa Monica (2016), Willimantic (2017), and Melbourne (2018) have brought in over 1,000 designs from 60+ countries.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 we think of the renewable energy transition, we often have in mind dark blue photovoltaic rectangles carpeting the landscape or large three-blade horizontal axis wind turbines marching along mountain ridges or into the sea. We think about grid reliability and consumer cost per kilowatt-hour, or we think about the climate change apocalypse that we will impose on future generations if we fail to act swiftly enough. All of these elements are important from technical and policy perspectives, but there is something missing that will be key to success if we are to meet the goals that we have set for ourselves. We must recognize the importance of human culture to the realization of change.
It is a lack of imagination that has brought us to the brink, and it will be an influx of imagination that can possibly pull us back from it. If we are going to succeed in reducing carbon emissions, we must make the solutions more visible, inspire the general public, and get people excited about the renewable energy transition.
This is the mission of the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI), a nonprofit that works with cities around the world on civic art installations that also function as renewable energy infrastructures. These generous works of art give back more than just beauty and return more than just kilowatt hours on their capital investment. LAGI design competitions have changed the way that cities and developers manage the integration of public art and creative placemaking into the master planning process for new developments. Competitions for Dubai/Abu Dhabi (2010), New York City (2012), Copenhagen (2014), Glasgow (2015), Santa Monica (2016), Willimantic (2017), and Melbourne (2018) have brought in over 1,000 designs from 60+ countries.The word “influx” in paragraph 2