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Fighting Back against Bullying
It is often said that childhood is the most joyful period in a person’s life. This is supposed to be a time when children can focus on their studies and enjoy their free time with friends. However, these days more and more children are experiencing a stressful and miserable adolescence due to bullying. Bullying occurs when one student, or a group of students, uses aggression to harm another child and try to make them feel bad. This abuse can either be physical, such as pushing or beating another student, or it could take the form of mental abuse, such as taunting and teasing the student. Although it may seem harmless to some, studies show that bullying can greatly impact a child’s life and have long-lasting negative effects. People who have been bullied may experience self-esteem issues and start to lack confidence in almost everything they do. These traits can make it difficult to manage relationships and even cause them to have trouble holding down a steady job. One of the most harmful types of bullying that is on the rise is cyberbullying. The bullied student is targeted in cruel or threatening e-mails, instant messages, or hateful public posts about them. In many cases, bullies will post embarrassing pictures of the victim or spread nasty rumors about them through social media. In some tragic cases, children have even turned to suicide, feeling that they can’t deal with the humiliation. If you are being bullied by another student, you don’t have to accept it or suffer. There are some steps you can take to deal with the problem. At first, you may try to ignore the bully, as they will often lose interest in bothering you if you don’t react. If the bullying persists, however, you should tell a trusted adult as soon as possible. This could be a parent, a family friend, a teacher, a school guidance counselor, or even the school principal. Until recently, many teachers and school officials turned a blind eye to bullying, believing that the students would eventually sort it out by themselves. But this mindset has changed in recent years in light of some of the tragedies that have occurred. If for any reason you feel that your complaints are not being taken seriously, there are other groups available online who will help you deal with bullying. By dealing with bullying at an early stage, you can stop it before it gets much worse.
1. What can we infer from the passage?

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As I .................... the glass, it suddenly ...................... into two pieces. 

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The custom of paying a bride price before marriage is still a well-established part of many African cultures. In paying a bride price, the family of the groom must provide payment to the family of the bride before the marriage is allowed. The bride price can vary greatly from culture to culture in Africa. In the Zulu and Swazi tribes of southern Africa, the bride price often takes the form of cattle. In Western African, kola nuts, shells, and other goods are often used for the payment of the bride price. The actual payment of money sometimes takes place, but the payment of goods is more frequent. The amount of paid in a bride price can also vary. In modern times, the bride price is occasionally quite small and its value is mainly symbolic. However, the bride price can still be quite high, especially among prominent or highly traditional families.There are a number of justifications used to explain the payment of bride price. The first is that the bride price represents an acknowledgement of the expense the bride's family has gone in order to raise her and bring her up as a suitable bride for the groom. It also represents payment for the loss of a family member, since the bride will officially become a member of her husband's family and will leave her own. On a deeper level the bride price represents payment for the fact that the bride will bring children into the family of the groom, thereby increasing the wealth of the family. This concept is reinforced by the fact that the bride price must often be returned if the bride fails to bear children.The payment of the bride price has quite a number of effects on African society. First, the payment of bride price acts to increase the stability of African family structures. Sons are dependent on their fathers and older relatives to help them pay the bride price of their wives, and this generally leads to greater levels of obedience and respect. The negotiations between the two families concerning the bride price allow the parents and other family members to meet and get to know one another before the marriage. Finally, since the bride price must often be repaid in case of divorce, the bride's family often works to make sure that any marital problems are solved quickly. Bride prices also work as a system of wealth distribution in African cultures. Wealthier families can afford to support the marriage of their son, and thus their wealth is transferred to other families.Not all of the effects of bride price are so positive, however. One major disadvantage to the system of bride price is that women are often married to men much older than themselves. In many African cultures, the typical age for marriage amongst women is still quite young, lower than in many cases. Yet few men at this age would have the ability to raise the bride price to marry. Thus there is sometimes a significant age gap between husbands and wives. This cuts short the education of many young women. In addition, the husband, being far older, may die whilst the wife is still relatively young, leaving her with the burden of raising the children alone.
4. The phrase "The first" in the passage refers to the first _________

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 :
Earthquakes are one of the scariest natural phenomena because they are so unpredictable. Scientists have tried to come up with a method to predict them but they have always failed. Unlike other destructive phenomena such as hurricanes or even solar storms, earthquakes come without any (1)_________ whatever. Some people believe that animals are able to (2)________ when earthquakes are coming. There are many anecdotes about dogs barking before an earthquake happens. In some cases, strange phenomena have been observed in creatures like toads, where a few days before a major earthquake hit, they left their breeding ground. The toads did not reappear (3)_________ the quake had happened.Another strange creature that some believe may hold the key (4)________ quakes is the oarfish. These strange fish normally live in very deep water. (5)_________ of these fish are very rare, but in 2013, oarfish were found to beach themselves in San Francisco, and this caused some to believe that a major earthquake was coming. What was the reason for this?

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This is a picture of Tom’s family. He is my pen pal. He lives in a lovely old town in England. There are six people in his family: his parents, his aunt, his uncle, his brother and Tom. They live happily together.
Tom’s family lives in a nice house in the town. His house is near a park and next to a bookstore. There are seven rooms, a garage and a beautiful garden in the house. The seven rooms include three bedrooms, two bathrooms, one living room, and a large kitchen. Tom and his brother share a bedroom and they don’t really like it. The house was built in 1999 but it is still new and fashionable. The garden is so beautiful with many kinds of flowers. Tom loves the garden so much.
People in Tom’s family have different jobs. His father is fifty and he is a teacher. He teaches in a secondary school in the town. His mother is forty-eight and she is a housewife. She takes care of all the people in the house. She grows vegetables in the garden and usually prepares wonderful meals. His brother, Peter is a pilot. He flies a plane in the sky. He is very handsome. His aunt is a nurse. She helps doctors take care of sick people in the hospital. His uncle is a journalist. He writes articles for a local newspaper. Tom is a student and he wants to be a doctor in the future. I will go to England to see him again next summer vacation.

 What is TRUE about Tom?

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Viet/ said/ he/ would/ be doing/ experiment/ 10 o’clock/ following day.

Fill in each numbered blank with one suitable word or phrase

There are many reasons (1) _____ taking regular time with our family is important:

It (2) _____ a place to listen, teach, learn, and (3) _____ ourselves freely and safely. It provides (4) _____ to discuss family joys, issues, and problems. Family members can practice skills in a non-threatening (5) _____. Families are a (6) _____ part of our society and the fabric of our communities - we spend (7) _____ time together to get our feelings (8) _____ belonging, our values, support and understanding. It helps (9) _____ family members together and feel safe in today's world where (10) _____ can lead to family disintegration.

(4) ________

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It's time governments ______ something to limit population growth.

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I was ………..to learn that the director of that gripping film has won the first prize.

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Traveling in the Future
These days, if you want to travel from New York to Beijing, the flight takes about 16 hours. You also have to wait at the airport, and sometimes you have to transfer onto a different airplane. If you add all of that extra time, the trip takes at least 20 hours. But in the future, the trip from New York to Beijing might only take two hours. Right now, a private company is developing something called ET3. ET3 stands for “evacuated tube transport technology”. Here is how it works. A tube goes all the way from New York to Beijing. The tube is only a few meters wide. Capsules move through the tube. Six people can sit in one capsule. The capsules use electricity instead of gasoline. For international travel, the capsules can travel at about 6,500 kilometers per hour. That is much faster than airplane – most modern airplanes usually only fly at about 800 kilometers per hour. So how is this possible? How can these capsules travel so fast? The answer is that there is no air inside the tube. When airplanes fly, they have to move through the air. The air slows the airplanes down. Because there is no air in the ET3 tubes, the capsules are able to move at a very high speed. Besides, the capsules are quite light. They only weigh 183 kilograms. There are other advantages to ET3. Because it uses electricity, it is quite clean. In addition, it is much quieter than airplanes and cars. Finally, ET3 tubes and capsules don’t require very much building material. Of course, ET3 doesn’t exist yet. The technology is still being developed. Developers still have to solve a lot of problems. The biggest problem is that right now, ET3 would be far too expensive. In order to make ET3 cheaper, we will need much better technology. It is exciting to think of how ET3 will change travel in the future. Maybe someday, you will be able to have lunch in New York and dinner in Beijing.
6. According to the passage, which statement is true?

The ability to conduct electricity is one of the key properties of a metal. Other solid material such as silicon can conduct electricity but only effectively at certain temperatures. Also, some substances such as salt (sodium chloride) can conduct when molten or when dissolved in water. The ability of metals to conduct electricity is due to how their atoms bond together. In order to bond together the metal atoms lose at least one of their outermost electrons. This leaves the metal atoms with a positive charge and they are now strictly ions. The lost electrons are free to move in what are known as a sea of electrons. Since the electrons are negatively charged they attract the ions and this is what keeps the structure together.

An electric current is a flow of charge and since the electrons in the sea of electrons are free to move they can be made to flow in one direction when a source of electrical energy such as a battery is connected to the metal. Hence we have an electric current flowing through the wire, and this is what makes metals such good conductors of electricity. The only other common solid conducting material that pencil users are likely to encounter is graphite (what the 'lead' of a pencil is made from). Graphite is a form of carbon and again the carbon atoms bond in such a way that there is a sea of electrons that can be made to flow as an electric current. Likewise, if we have an ionic substance like salt we can make the electrically charged ions flow to create a current but only when those ions are free to move, either when the substance is a liquid or dissolved in water. In its solid state an ionic substance like salt cannot conduct electricity as its charged ions cannot flow.

Electrical insulators are substances that cannot conduct electricity well either, because they contain no charged particles or any charged particles they might contain do not flow easily. Water itself is a poor conductor or electricity as it does not contain a significant amount of fully charged particles (the ends of a water molecule are partly charged but overall the molecule is neutral). However, most water we encounter does contain dissolved charged particles, so it will be more conductive than pure water. Many of the problems that occur when touching electrical devices with wet hands result from the ever-present salt that is left on our skin through perspiration and it dissolves in the water to make it more conductive.

The word "outermost” in paragraph 1 mostly means________.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on you answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks .
             WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE
Some people think of 'traditional ' gender roles as being like a 1950s TV sitcom: Dad puts (1)..............his suit and goes to the office, while Mum, in her apron, stays at home and (2)............. the housework. But for most of human history, it has taken the efforts of both men and women, whether working in an office (3)..................... in the fields, to look after the family. And that's the situation to which we now seem to be returning.
By 2050, women will make up 47% of the workforce in the United States, up from 30% in 1950. But some experts are predicting that, at (4)................. in the short term, the number of women in the workforce may actually overtake the number of men. What's the reason? During the economic recession that began in 2008, many jobs disappeared from industries traditionally dominated by male workers, such as manufacturing. Unless many more manual manufacturing jobs (5)........... , it may be that women, who traditionally work in healthcare, education and other service industries, will take the lead in the labour market.

(3)..........................

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The second/ priority/ train/ young people/ job application skills.

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Linda is thanking Daniel for his birthday present. - Linda: "Thanks for the book. I've been looking for it for months."- Daniel: "______."

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Make Home a Little Nicer
Some people think that if they don’t have a yard, they can’t keep a garden. Fortunately, that’s not true. For people who live in apartment buildings, there is another option: rooftop gardens. A rooftop garden is just a garden that you keep on your roof. Rooftop gardens are very popular in cities. Most building roofs go to waste – people don’t use that space for anything. Putting a garden on your roof is a nice way to turn an empty space into something that is pretty and relaxing. Rooftop gardens are not a new idea. About 2,600 years ago, people in Ancient Mesopotamia planted rooftop gardens. There were similar gardens in Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt. These gardens had a very important purpose. Many ancient cities had walls. The enemy army usually tried to destroy the city’s food, so the people in the city kept their gardens on top of their walls. That way, they could continue to grow food. Today’s rooftop gardens don’t keep us alive, but they still have nice benefits. Plants absorb heat, so if there are a lot of them on a rooftop, they make the whole building cooler. As a result, people in the building use the air conditioning less which means they use less electricity. One study said that if every roof in Tokyo had a garden, the city would save more than one million dollars a day on electricity. Rooftop gardening is harder than regular gardening. Here are some tips. First of all, be safe. Build a fence around your garden. You don’t want the wind to blow plants off your roof! Also, remember that rooftop gardens get more sun. If you have a plant that shouldn’t get too much sun, remember to put it in the shade sometimes. There are many other things that you need to know before you start a rooftop garden. Do some research and then give it a try. You’ll make your little part of the city much nicer.

1. Why did people in ancient cities have rooftop gardens?

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:
People are increasingly (1) _______ alternative medicine, such as homeopathy, acupuncture and herbal medicine. Alternative medicine is useful as it can help millions of people with illnesses which conventional medicine cannot (2) _______ . Alternative medicine is ‘holistic’ since it deals with the whole person, (3) _______  conventional medicine just focuses on the illness. While many conventional doctors rely on quickly prescribing drugs for most problems, alternative therapists tend to have more time to treat their patients. Treatments like acupuncture have proved (4) _______ , for problems like back pain, chronic fatigue and asthma when conventional treatment does not work. Critics say that there is no scientific proof that alternative therapies actually work; some (5) _______ even claim that they are dangerous due to their side effects and because patients delay proper treatment for serious conditions. However, alternative medicine actually has fewer side effects than most conventional treatments.

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They usually _____ T-shirts on the weekends.

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.
Amy Tan was born on February 19, 1952 in Oakland, California. Tan grew up in Northern California, (1)............when her father and older brother both died from brain tumors in 1966, she moved with her mother and younger brother to Europe, where she attended high school in Montreux, Switzerland. She returned to the United States for college. After college, Tan worked as a language development consultant and as a corporate freelance writer. In 1985, she wrote the story "Rules of the Game" for a writing workshop, which laid the early (2)............... for her first novel The Joy Luck Club. Published in 1989, the book  explored the (3)............. between Chinese women and their Chinese–American daughters, and became the longest–running New York Times bestseller for that year. The Joy Luck Club received numerous awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Award. It has been translated into 25 languages, including Chinese, and was made into a major motion picture for (4)...............Tan co–wrote the screenplay. Tan's other works have also been (5)................. into several different forms of media.

(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:
Of all modern instruments, the violin is apparently one of the simplest. It consists in essence of a hollow, varnished wooden sound box, or resonator, and a long neck covered with a fingerboard, along which four strings are stretched at high tension. The beauty of design, shape, and decoration is no accident. The proportions of the instrument are determined almost entirely by acoustical; considerations. Its simplicity of appearance is deceptive. About 70 parts are involved in the construction of a violin. Its tone and its outstanding range of expressiveness make it an ideal solo instrument. No less important, however, is its role as an orchestral and chamber instrument. In combination with the larger and deeper-sounding members of the same family, the violins form the nucleus of the modern symphony orchestra.
The violin has been in existence since about 1550. Its importance as an instrument in its own right dates from the early 1600’s, when it first became standard in Italian opera orchestras. Its stature as an orchestral instrument was raised further when in 1626 Louis XIII of France established at his court the orchestra known as Les vinq-quatre violons du Roy (The King’s 24 Violins), which was to become widely famous later in the century.
In its early history, the violin had a dull and rather quiet tone resulting from the fact that the strings were thick and were attached to the body of the instrument very loosely. During the eighteenth and nineteenth century, exciting technical changes were inspired by such composer- violinists as Vivaldi and Tartini. Their instrumental compositions demanded a fuller, clearer, and more brilliant tone that was produced by using thinner strings and a far higher string tension. Small changes had to be made to the violin’s internal structure and to the fingerboard so that they could withstand the extra strain. Accordingly, a higher standard of performance was achieved, in terms of both facility and interpretation. Left-hand technique was considerably elaborated, and new fingering patterns on the fingerboard were developed for very high notes.

What is the main idea presented in paragraph 3?

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I had never been to Denmark before, so when I set out to catch the ferry in early May, I little suspected that by the end of the trip I’d have made such lasting friendships. Esjberg is a (1) ________ port for a cyclist’s arrival, where tourist information can be obtained and money changed. A cycle track leads (2) ________ town and down to Ribe, where I spent my first night. The only appointment I had to keep was a meeting with a friend who was flying out in June. I wanted to use my time well, so I had planned a route which would include several small islands and various parts of the countryside. In my (3) ________, a person travelling alone sometimes meets with unexpected hospitality, and this trip was no (4) ________. On only my second day, I got into conversation with a cheerful man who turned out to be the local baker. He insisted that I should join his family for lunch, and, while we were eating, he contacted his daughter inOdense. Within minutes, he had (5) ________ for me to visit her and her family. Then I was sent on my way with a fresh loaf of bread to keep me going and the feeling that this would turn out to be a wonderful holiday

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Say Sayonara to Sushi?
There are few meals as nutritious as a plate of fresh fish. Whether eaten steamed or raw, fish provides our bodies with healthy fats and it tastes great, too. Yet for years, the fishing industry has practised overfishing, depleting the world’s oceans. It has been estimated that 85 percent of stocks worldwide have been diminished to a dangerous level. Statistics show that the average person consumes more than four times as much fish as someone from the 1950s. As the world’s population grows and more people are able to afford pricier foods, the problem will likely get worse. In truth, knowledge of the shortage of fish is not something new. Since the late 1980s, despite increased technology and a greater demand for fish, the total global catch has not increased. Eager to make a buck, some fishermen have resorted to illegal tactics to catch more fish and increase their income. They will violate regulations by fishing in waters that are supposed to be off-limits. To make matters worse, they often use mile-long drift nets which trap and kill large numbers of unwanted marine life for no reason at all. These practices only serve to destroy fishes’ habitats and speed up the rate of population decline. As a result of dwindling fish supplies, many nations are turning to farmed fish. About half of the fish sold today is derived from this practice. Supporters point out its efficiency and that it is more feasible to support populations in this manner than with land animals. However, there are still many hurdles to overcome. Many of the current farm fisheries are poorly run by their owners. Poor practices can lead to marine pollution, as waters can be filled with fish manure and extra feed that is not consumed. Some farmed fish have limited space, which causes disease. This in turn can lead to health issues for the people who consume the fish. Still, some regard fish farming as the way of the future. They suggest that with a few modifications, it would be possible to meet the growing demand for fish. Others have suggested more drastic measures, such as placing a ten-year ban on capturing some species, to deal with the shortage. These people argue that a decade would provide sufficient time for the fish population to replenish itself hack to healthy levels. Hopefully, nations can come together and agree upon an effective course of action before it is too late.
4. Which of the following best matches the meaning of the word “hurdles” in paragraph 3?