Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
Culture and Nature
If you ever get the chance to visit Japan in the spring, be sure to attend a cherry blossom festival. This is an annual event that happens all over the country. Cherry blossoms are a very important part of traditional Japanese culture. One old Japanese custom is something called “hanami”. This means having picnics under cherry blossom trees. People started doing this about 1,200 years ago. At first, only powerful members of the Japanese government had the picnics. Later on samurai joined the custom, and finally common people started to do it as well. Cherry blossoms are an important symbol in Japan. People see the blossoms being similar to life. The blossoms bloom in the spring and they are very beautiful, but only for a short time. After that, the blossoms die. This is similar to the lives of people. Today there are still cherry blossom festivals all over Japan. Some people prefer to just walk through the parks and look at the trees, but the most popular activity is still having picnics under the trees. There is one problem that comes with attending a cherry blossom festival: the crowds. Because this is such a popular event, huge numbers of people come to the spots that have cherry blossoms. However, the trees are so beautiful that when you are there, the crowds might not seem so bad. When most people think of cherry blossoms, they think of Japan. However Japan is not the only country that has these beautiful trees. Brazil has many Japanese immigrants. Years ago, many of those immigrants planted cherry trees there. Those trees are still there today. Korea also has many cherry trees because when Japan ruled Korea, Japanese people planted the trees there. Other countries have cherry trees, usually because Japan gave them as presents. Cherry blossoms are a traditional part of Japanese culture, but people still love them today. Everyone should try to see them at least once. It is a chance to learn about traditional Japanese culture and enjoy some beautiful scenery at the same time.
6. According to the passage, how do most other countries get cherry trees?

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Tax Service Representative wanted
Heartfiled Financial Inc, a leading financial services firm (1)------- Tax Service Representatives for the tax reporting department, who will be (2)------- for reclassifying income payments to ensure accurate formal tax reporting. Other duties include reviewing, interpreting   and validating tax related information, mathematically determining  reclassification  amounts. (3)-------  candidates  must  have  a  college degree and previous tax or brokerage experience as well as strong analytical skills. They must be able to work overtime and weekends as needed. To apply, please send your resume to
Gabriel Hill
Heartfiled Financial Inc.
132 Woodland Street
Irvine, CA 92612

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
In 1971, Sue Coppard worked as a secretary in London. While she enjoyed city life, Sue also missed the countryside where she spent most of her time as a child. So she offered to help out on a farm, or more specifically, an organic farming programme organized by a nearby college. She got a few people to volunteer as well, and they spent the weekend doing “housework,” which involved clearing bushes and cleaning drains. Afterwards, the farm managers said they could come back anytime to help out. Sue put a small ad in a magazine, offering people the chance to volunteer at the organic farm. The volunteer programme grew quickly, and soon other organic farmers joined in, asking for people to help out. With so many people and farms involved, someone needed to organize the different groups. A few of the original volunteers started WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) to help volunteers and farmers find one another. Today, at least 50 different countries have WWOOF organizations, and many other countries have individual farms that participate in the movement. While WWOOF is still a weekend activity for some, it now welcomes travellers and people who visit to live and work on farms for longer periods of time. WWOOF volunteers can stay on a farm for weeks or even months at a time in exchange for hands-on farming and gardening experience. The work can be exhausting, but volunteers think it’s worth it. By working on farms, the volunteers interact with farmers and develop a love for the outdoors and organic farming. Many travellers now use WWOOFing as a way to visit new countries and experience new cultures. As travellers will discover, every WWOOF opportunity is a bit different. In Serbia, you can find Misa and Olja, a couple whose farm is known for its hard cheeses and for its bread made from homegrown grains. Finca Amiruca, a farm in Ecuador, teaches volunteers how to grow peanuts, plantains, and yucca. When volunteering in Japan, you may get to learn about growing rice. WWOOF is only one of the many unique volunteer opportunities available. Volunteering is something that anyone can do, and a wide variety of organizations accept or even welcome volunteers. So the next time you get the itch to be active on the weekend or on vacation, why not look for a good cause to spend your energy on?

1. Why did Sue first work on a farm?

Choose the best answer

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s was the only surviving son of Leopold and Maria Pertl Mozart. Leopold was a successful composer, violinist, and assistant concertmaster at the Salzburg court. Wolfgang's mother, a constantly ill housewife, was born to a middle-class family of local community leaders. His only sister was Maria Anna. With their father’s encouragement and guidance, they both were introduced to music at an early age. Leopold started Anna on the keyboard when she was seven, as three-year-old Wolfgang looked on. Mimicking her playing, Wolfgang quickly began to show a strong understanding of chords, tonality, and tempo. Soon, he too was being tutored by his father.

Leopold was a devoted and task-oriented teacher to both his children. He made the lessons fun, but also insisted on a strong work ethic and perfection. Fortunately, both children excelled well in these areas. Recognizing their special talents, Leopold contributed much of his time to their education in music as well as other subjects. Wolfgang soon showed signs of excelling beyond his father's teachings with an early composition at age five and demonstrating outstanding ability on harpsichord and the violin. He would soon go onto play the piano, organ and viola.

When looking Anna playing piano, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ____.

Rewrite the sentence:
Nuclear/ plants/ a lot of/ don’t/ power/ require/ space.

Choose the best answer:
Instead of _______about the good news, Tom seemed to be indifferent.

Choose the best answer:
I come to the countryside to get __________ from city’s bustle life.

Choose the answer that is nearest in meaning to the sentence printed before:
He cannot practice scuba diving because he has a weak heart.

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 :
Fossil fuels are used to generate the majority of the world’s energy, and they come in different forms. For example, coal may be burned in a power (1)_________ to generate electricity, but gasoline is burned in a car’s engine to make it run. Neither of these two sources is considered green energy because they produce a lot of pollution when they are burned. In addition, they come from a source that is inevitably going to (2)__________. Green energy can be defined as any energy source that is to some degree non­polluting. When it is called (3)__________, this means that a person can replace the same amount of energy that was consumed by that person (4)__________ that person’s lifetime. Since it took millions and millions of years to create the fossil fuels that we now burn, we know that they cannot be replaced by us. Wind power and solar power, (5)__________ harnessed properly, are two excellent sources of green energy. Once the necessary parts such as wind turbines to generate wind power and solar panels to create solar power have been produced, only the pollution from the production is left.

Choose the best answer:
I have expected ......................... the secret of happiness.

Rewrite the sentence
Africa is large. Asia is larger.

Choose the best answer:
She is so ___________ that she doesn’t talk much to strangers.

Choose the best answer:

She asked me if the Opera house ___________ in Sydney.

Choose the best answer:
An old farmer said that their living _________ a lot thanks to the knowledge their children had brought home.

Choose the best answer:
__________, he could not finish the job.

PUBLIC EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES

Public Education in the United States, programs of instruction (1) _______ to children, adolescents, and adults in the United States through schools and colleges (2) _______ by state and local governments. (3) _______ the nationally regulated and financed education (4) _______ of many other industrialized societies, American public education is (5) _______ the responsibility of the states and individual school districts.

(2) ________

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
One of the most important social developments that helped to make possible a shift in thinking about the role of public education was the effect of the baby boom of the 1950’s and 1960’s on the schools. In the 1920’s, but especially in the Depression conditions of the 1930’s, the United States experienced a declining birth rate – every thousand women aged fifteen to forty-four gave birth to about 118 live children in 1920, 89.2 in 1930, 75.8 in 1936, and 80 in 1940. With the growing prosperity brought on by the Second World War and the economic boom that followed it, young people married and established households earlier and began to raise larger families than had their predecessors during the Depression. Birth rates rose to 102 per thousand in 1946, 106.2 in 1950, and 118 in 1955. Although economics was probably the most important determinant, it is not the only explanation for the baby boom. The increased value placed on the idea of the family also helps to explain this rise in birth rates. The baby boomers began streaming into the first grade by the mid-1940’s and became a flood by 1950. The public school system suddenly found itself overtaxed. While the number of schoolchildren rose because of wartime and postwar conditions, these same conditions made the schools even less prepared to cope with the flood. The wartime economy meant that few new schools were built between 1940 and 1945. Moreover, during the war and in the boom times that followed large numbers of teachers left their profession for better-paying jobs elsewhere in the economy. Therefore, in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the baby boom hit an antiquated and inadequate school system. Consequently, the “custodial rhetoric” of the 1930’s and early 1940’s no longer made sense; that is, keeping youths aged sixteen and older out of the labor market by keeping them in school could no longer be a high priority for an institution unable to find space and staff to teach younger children aged five to sixteen. With the baby boom, the focus of educators and of laymen interested in education inevitably turned toward the lower grades and back to basic academic skills and discipline. The system no longer had much interest in offering nontraditional, new, and extra services to older youths
4. According to the passage, why did teachers leave the teaching profession after the outbreak of the war?

Thanks to pictures taken by satellites, deserts have not ____ a mystery in our time.

(335)_______

There are many sources of pollution in our modern world. At present, the most severe sources are acid rain, car exhaust fumes and oil spills. Factory chimneys give (1)_________ smoke that contains sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. These gases combine with the moisture in the atmosphere to (2)_________ sulfuric acid and nitric acid. When it rains, these acids dissolve in the rain and turn it acidic. Acid rain is thought to be the worst pollution problem of all. It has (3)_________ aquatic life by turning many lake into lifeless bodies of water. In these areas, there is no limestone in the rocks to neutralize the acid rain naturally. One remedy is to pump limestone into the acidic lakes. (4)_________, it is not possible to do this on a large enough scale to save all the lakes. Car exhaust fumes contain carbon monoxide and lead which are highly poisonous. In big cities, the exhaust fumes build (5)_________ and pose a health hazard to human beings. Pollution of the sea by oil threatens marine life. Much of the oil comes from ships that clean their fuel tanks while at sea. Offshore oil wells also discharge vast amounts of oil into the sea. Pollution of the sea can also be caused by oil spills. An oil spill may occur as a result of accidents involving oil tankers.

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
A computer keyboard is an input device (1) _______ allows a person to enter letters, numbers, and other (2) _______ into a computer. It is one of the most used input devices for computers. Using a keyboard to enter lots of data is called typing. Keyboard keys typically have a set of characters engraved on them. While the main use is for typing, keyboards are capable of executing commands by using a combination of keys to create (3) _______, such as copying and pasting, deleting, etc. When you enter the (4) _______ hole, you find that the world of keyboards is diverse. It can be a traditional keyboard for basic uses or a mechanical keyboard that provides very satisfying sounds and feelings whenever you type. A lot of keyboard (5) _______ customize their own keyboards that could cost an arm and a leg. Having said that, the reason behind the price comes down to the material, the switches and the keycaps. Next time when you see a keyboard, don’t judge the way it looks but judge the way it feels and the experience it provides to the users.

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Football, game played on a rectangular (1) _______ by two opposing teams with an inflated leather ball that is roughly (2) _______ in shape. The object of the game is to score points by carrying the ball (3) _______ the opponent’s goal line or by (4) _______ the ball through the opponent’s goalposts. Football is (5) _______ a full-contact sport, meaning that play involves bodily contact by means of checking, blocking, grabbing, and tackling.