The idea of life in outer space has been talked about for a long time. Some scientists say that life development on Earth was far too unlikely for it to have happened anywhere else. Things had to be perfect for us to make it on this planet. Other scientists say that space is too big. Stars and other planets are far too numerous for there to be no other life in the universe.
For many years, there have been reports of visitors from other planets. People all around the world have claimed to see alien spaceships or even aliens themselves. There have been glimpses of these so-called UFOs (unidentified flying objects) flying through the air and they have even been captured on video. Some Americans believe that the U.S. Army found an alien spaceship crashed in the desert and then lied to the press about it. Although these sightings may be true, scientists have not found significant evidence that aliens exist.
If you go out into the countryside on a clear night and look up, you can see thousands of stars. Those stars make up a tiny part of our unniverse. There are more stars, planets, and galaxies than we can count. Even the smartest scientists can’t even come close to defining how big space is. The number of possible stars and planets out there is bigger than our ability to count. If we are really on the only planet that can sustain life, then we are very special in a universe full of amazing things.

According to the passage, what is NOT true about the night sky?

     

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.

   Fungi are a group of organisms that, despite being plants, have no leaves or flowers. In fact, fungi do not even share the green colour that most other plants display. Scientists estimate that there are over 1.5 million different species of fungi in the world. Though, to date, only 100.000 have been identified, leaving many more that have not been found. One interesting feature of fungi is that they often interact with oilier organisms in order to survive. These relationships are at times beneficial to both organisms. Other times, the fungus benefits without causing harm to the other organism.

   Many types of fungus have beneficial relationships with plants. Initially many gardeners would be concerned to know that their plants were colonised by a fungus. This is because some fungi can cause plants to die. In fact, the Irish potato famine was caused by a fungus that killed entire crops of potatoes. However, many plants actually depend on certain types of fungi to help it stay healthy. Fungi are important to plants because they help plants absorb more minerals from the soil than they could on their own. The reason for this has to do with how fungi obtain food. Unlike green plants, fungi cannot make their own food. They must absorb their food. When the fungi absorb minerals from the soil, they draw the nutrients closer to the roots of the plants, so the plant is able to use them as well. The fungus also benefits from this relationship. Using the minerals from the soil, as well as sunlight, the plants is able to produce sugars and other nutrients. Then the fungus absorbs the nutrients from plant roots and uses them to survive.

   Not all relationships are beneficial for both organisms: in some interactions, only the fungus benefits. Still, for some fungus species, contact with other organisms is essential. And though the fungi do not provide any benefits for the other organism, they do not harm it either. One example of this is a species called Pilobolus. This fungus relies on other animals to help it reproduce. The Pilobolus grows in animal dung. When it becomes mature, it shoots its spores away from the dung pile. The spores land in the grass where cows graze. The spores are consumed by the animal but do not grow while inside the stomach. They travel through the body of the animal until they are passed and deposited in another area, where they continue to grow.

The word "absorb" in the passage 2 is closest in meaning to_________.

Read the passage and choose the best answers. 
Brunei is one of the smallest countries in the world. Its population is only 25,000 and most of them live in Bandar Seri Begawan (the capital city with the longest name in the world. It is also the richest country in Asia and maybe the richest country in the world because it has a lot of oil and natural gas which it exports to Japan. Every week huge tankers carry oil and gas from the oil-fields of Brunei to Japan. The head of the state in Brunei is Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah. He is the richest man in the world. He has two wives and each lives in their own beautiful palace. The first wife lives in the biggest palace in the world which has 200 rooms. The Sultan has more than 200 cars and he also has hundreds of horses.

According to the passage, Sultan, the head of the state in Brunei ______________.

Read the passage carefully and choose the correct answer

On 8 August 1967, five leaders - the Foreign Ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand- sat down together in the main hall of the Department of Foreign Affairs building in Bangkok, Thailand and signed a document. By virtue of that document, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was born. The five Foreign Ministers who signed it have been considered as the founders of probably the most successful intergovernmental organization in the developing world today. The document that they signed would be known as the ASEAN Declaration.

It is a short, simply-worded document containing just five articles. It declares the establishment of an Association for Regional Cooperation among the Countries of Southeast Asia to be known as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and spells out the aims and purposes of that Association. These aims and purposes are about the cooperation in economy, society, culture, techniques, education and other fields, and in the promotion of regional peace and stability through abiding respect for justice and the principles of the United Nations Charter. It stipulates that the Association will be open for participation by all States in the Southeast Asian region subscribing to its aims, principles and purposes. It proclaims ASEAN as representing the collective will of the nations of Southeast Asia to bind themselves together in friendship and cooperation and, through joint efforts and sacrifices, secure for their peoples and for posterity the blessings of peace, freedom and prosperity. The goal of ASEAN, then, is to create, not to destroy.

The original ASEAN logo presented five brown sheaves of rice stalks, one for each founding member. Beneath the sheaves is the legend "ASEAN" in blue. These are set on a field of yellow encircled by a blue border. Brown stands for strength and stability, yellow for prosperity and blue for the spirit of cordiality in which ASEAN affairs are conducted. When ASEAN celebrated its 30^th Anniversary in 1997, the sheaves on the logo had increased to ten -representing all ten countries of Southeast Asia and reflecting the colors of the flags of all of them. In a very real sense, ASEAN and Southeast Asia will be one and the same, just as the founders had envisioned.

The pronoun "it" in the first paragraph refers to ________.

The issue of equality for women in British society first attracted national attention in the early 20th century, when the suffragettes won for women the right to vote. In the 1960s feminism became the subject of intense debate when the women's liberation movement encouraged women to reject their traditional supporting role and to demand equal status and equal rights with men in areas such as employment and pay.
Since then, the gender gap between the sexes has been reduced. The Equal Pay Act of 1970, for instance, made it illegal for women to be paid less than men for doing the same work, and in 1975 the Sex Discrimination Act aimed to prevent either sex having an unfair advantage when applying for jobs. In the same year the Equal Opportunities Commission was set up to help people claim their rights to equal treatment and to publish research and statistics to show where improvements in opportunities for women need to be made. Women now have much better employment opportunities, though they still tend to get less well-paid jobs than men, and very few are appointed to top jobs in industry.
In the US the movement that is often called the "first wave of feminism' began in the mid 1800s. Susan B. Anthony worked for the right to vote, Margaret Sanger wanted to provide women with the means of contraception so that they could decide whether or not to have children, and Elizabeth Blackwell, who had to fight for the chance to become a doctor, wanted women to have greater opportunities to study. Many feminists were interested in other social issues.
The second wave of feminism began in the 1960s. Women like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem became associated with the fight to get equal rights and opportunities for women under the law. An important issue was the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was intended to change the Constitution. Although the ERA was not passed, there was progress in other areas. It became illegal for employers, schools, clubs, etc. to discriminate against women. But women still find it hard to advance beyond a certain point in their careers, the so-called glass ceiling that prevents them from having high-level jobs. Many women also face the problem of the second shift, i.e. the household chores.
In the 1980s, feminism became less popular in the us and there was less interest in solving the remaining problems, such as the fact that most women still earn much less than men.
Although there is still discrimination, the principle that it should not exist is widely accepted.

Which of the following is true according to the passage?

Some animal behaviorists argue that certain animals can remember past events, anticipate future ones, make plans and choices, and coordinate activities within a group. These scientists, however, are cautious about the extent to which animals can be credited with conscious   processing.
Explanations of animal behavior that leave out any sort of consciousness at all and ascribe actions entirely to instinct leave many questions unanswered. One example of such unexplained behavior: Honeybees communicate the sources of nectar to one another by doing a dance in a figure-eight pattern. The orientation of the dance conveys the position of the food relative to the sun's position in the sky, and the speed of the dance tells how  far  the food source is from  the  hive. Most researchers assume that the ability to perform and  encode the dance is innate and  shows no special intelligence. But in one study, when experimenters kept changing the site of     the food source, each time moving the food 25 percent father from the previous site, foraging honeybees began to anticipate where the food source would appear next. When the researchers arrived at the new location, they would find the bees circling the spot, waiting for their food. No one has yet explained how bees, whose brains weigh four ten-thousandths of an  ounce,  could  have inferred the location of the new  site.
Other behaviors that may indicate some cognition include tool use. Many animals, like the otter who uses a stone to crack mussel shells, are capable of using objects in the natural environment as rudimentary tools. One researcher has found that mother  chimpanzees  occasionally show their young how to use tools to open hard nuts. In one study, chimpanzees compared two pairs of food wells containing chocolate chips. One pair might contain, say, five chips and three chips, the other four chips and three chips. Allowed to choose which pair they wanted, the  chimpanzees  almost always chose the  one with the higher total, showing some sort  of summing ability. Other chimpanzees have learned to use numerals to label quantities of items and do simple sums.

Scientists concluded from the experiment with chimpanzees and chocolate chips that chimpanzees ....................

Although they are an inexpensive supplier of vitamins, minerals, and high-quality protein, eggs also contain  a high  level of blood cholesterol, one of the major causes of heart diseases. One egg   yolk, in fact, contains a little more than two-thirds of the suggested daily cholesterol limit. This knowledge has caused egg sales to plummet in recent years, which in turn has brought about the development of several alternatives to eating regular eggs. One alternative is to eat substitute eggs. These egg substitutes are not really eggs, but they look somewhat like eggs when  they are  cooked. They have the advantage of having low cholesterol rates, and they can be  scrambled  or  used  in baking. One disadvantage, however, is that they are not good for frying, poaching,  or boiling.  A second alternative to regular eggs is a new type of egg, sometimes called 'designer' eggs. These eggs  are produced by hens that are fed low-fat diets consisting of Ingredients such as canola oil, flax, and rice bran. In spite of their diets, however, these hens produce eggs that contain the same amount of cholesterol as regular eggs. Yet, the producers of these eggs claim that eating their eggs will not raise the blood cholesterol in  humans.
Egg producers  claim  that their product has been  portrayed unfairly. They cite scientific studies  to back up their claim. And, in fact, studies on the relationship between eggs and human cholesterol levels have brought mixed results. It may be that it is not the type of egg that is the main determinant   of cholesterol but the person who is eating the eggs. Some people may be  more  sensitive  to  cholesterol derived from food than other people. In fact, there is evidence that certain dietary fats stimulate the body's production of blood cholesterol. Consequently, while it still makes sense to limit one's intake of eggs, even designer eggs, it seems that doing this without regulating dietary fat will probably not help reduce the blood cholesterol  level.

Which of the following could best replace the word   'somewhat'?

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:
Most weddings in Japan start with a religious ceremony in which usually only family members attend. Afterwards, a banquet is customarily held to which many people, including friends and colleagues, are invited. To celebrate the happy occasion, guests give the bride and groom goshuugi – gift money in special envelopes. Goshuugi from friends is usually 20,000 yen or 30,000 yen.
A typical Japanese wedding party starts when the bride and groom enter the banquet hall together, and take their seats on a slightly raised platform facing their guests. Invited guests are seated closer to the bride and groom, with family and relatives seated further in back. The bride's and groom's bosses usually give congratulatory speeches then their friends sing in celebration. Other wedding highlights include a candle ceremony where the couple holds a candle while greeting their guests at each table, and the cutting of the wedding cake. Afterwards, the bride and groom thank their parents with a speech, then leave to end the party.
In the past, dishes that supposedly brought good fortune, such as prawns and sea breams, were served in abundance. So much of the food was ordered that guests ended up taking the surplus home. Today, the majority of the weddings serve just enough for everyone. Additionally, before leaving, guests would traditionally receive souvenir gifts called hikidemono.
Many wedding ceremonies take place at wedding halls or hotels. Rough estimates show that it costs about 3 million yen to host a wedding party for 80 guests. During Japan's economic bubble, overseas weddings and flamboyant receptions with special effects, such as smoke machines and having the bride and groom fly in on gondolas, were very popular. But these days, couples choose to tie the knot in various ways, from not having any ceremony to having a modest affair, or still going all out.

How were the wedding dishes in the past different from those of today?

Read the following passage, then choose the correct answer to questions 31 - 35.
Smoking causes lung cancer, which is the number one cancer among men. Ninety percent of the people who get lung cancer die. Smoking is also the leading cause of mouth cancer, tongue cancer, and throat cancer. Many smokers have heart disease arid pneumonia. Smoking causes one million early deaths in the world every year.
Smokers not only harm themselves but also harm others. Smokers breathe smoke out into the air. They breathe it out on their children and their wives or husbands. Children whose parents smoke have more breathing and lung problems than other children. Women who are married to smokers are more likely to have lung cancer than those married to non- smokers.
We are all aware that smoking is bad. So why do people smoke?

The number one cancer among men is _________.

Learning means acquiring knowledge or developing the ability to perform new behaviors. It is common to think of learning as something that takes place in school, but much of human learning occurs outside the classroom, and people continue to learn throughout their lives.
Even before they enter school, young children learn to walk, to talk, and to use their hands to manipulate toys, food, and other objects. They use all of their senses to learn about the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells in their environments. They learn how to interact with their parents, siblings, friends, and other people important to their world. When they enter school, children learn basic academic subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics. They also continue to learn a great deal outside the classroom. They learn which behaviors are likely to be rewarded and which are likely to be punished. They learn social skills for interacting with other children. After they finish school, people must learn to adapt to the many major changes that affect their lives, such as getting married, raising children, and finding and keeping a job.
Because learning continues throughout our lives and affects almost everything we do, the study of learning is important in many different fields. Teachers need to understand the best ways to educate children. Psychologists, social workers, criminologists, and other human- service workers need to understand how certain experiences change people's behaviors.
Employers, politicians, and advertisers make use of the principles of teaming to influence the behavior of workers, voters, and consumers.
Learning is closely related to memory, which is the storage of information in the brain. Psychologists who study memory are interested in how the brain stores knowledge, where this storage takes place, and how the brain later retrieves knowledge when we need it. In contrast, psychologists who study learning are more interested in behavior and how behavior changes as a result of a person's experiences.
There are many forms of learning, ranging from simple to complex. Simple forms of learning involve a single stimulus. A stimulus is anything perceptible to the senses, such as a sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste. In a form of learning known as classical conditioning, people learn to associate two stimuli that occur in sequence, such as lightning followed by thunder. In operant conditioning, people learn by forming an association between a behavior and its consequences (reward or punishment). People and animals can also learn by observation - that is, by watching others perform behaviors. More complex forms of learning include learning languages, concepts, and motor skills

The word "retrieves" in paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to ______

PANDEMIC DISEASES
Diseases are a natural part of life on earth. If there were  no diseases,  the population would grow too quickly, and there would not be enough food or other resources, so in a way, diseases are natural ways of keeping the Earth in balance. But sometimes  they  spread  very  quickly and kill large numbers of people. For example, in 1918, an outbreak of the flu spread  across the world, killing over 25 million people in only six months. Such terrible outbreaks of a disease are called pandemics.
Pandemics happen when a disease changes in a way that our bodies are not prepared to fight.  In 1918, a new type of flu virus appeared. Our bodies had no way to fight this new flu virus, and    so it spread very quickly and killed large numbers of people. While there have  been  many  different pandemic diseases throughout history, all of them have a new thing in    common.
First, all pandemic diseases spread from one person to another very   easily.
Second, while they may kill many people, they generally do not kill people very quickly. A good example of this would be the Marburg virus. The Marburg virus is an extremely infectious disease. In addition, it is deadly. About 70 -80% of all people who  get the Marburg virus  died  from the disease. However, the Marburg virus has not become  a pandemic  because most people die within three days of getting the disease. This means that the virus does not have enough time    to spread a large number of people. The flu virus of 1918, on the other hand, generally took about   a week to ten days to kill its victims, so it had more time to   spread.
While we may never be able to completely stop pandemics, we  can  make  them  less  common. Doctors carefully monitor new diseases that they fear could become pandemics. For example, in 2002, and 2003, doctors carefully watched SARS. Their health warnings may have prevented SARS from becoming a  pandemic.

The word 'monitor' in the passage is closest in  meaning to  ................

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, almost nothing was written about    the contributions of women during the colonial period and the early history of the newly formed United States. Lacking the right to vote and absent from the seats of power, women were not considered an important force in history. Anne Bradstreet wrote some significant poetry in the seventeenth century, Mercy Otis Warren produced the host contemporary    history of the American Revolution, and Abigail Adams penned Important letters showing    she exercised great political Influence over her husband, John, tiie second President of the United States. But little or no notice was taken of these contributions. During those centuries, women remained Invisible In history  books.
Throughout the nineteenth century, this lack of visibility  continued,  despite  the  efforts of female authors writing about women, These writers, like most of their male counterparts, were amateur historians. Their writings were celebratory in  nature,  and  they were uncritical in their selection and use of  sources.
During the nineteenth century, however, certain feminists showed a keen sense of history by keeping records of activities in which women were engaged. National, regional,    and local women's organizations compiled accounts of  their  doings.  Personal  correspondence, newspaper clippings, and souvenirs were saved and stored. These sources  from the core of the two greatest collections of women’s history In the United States one at   the Elizabeth and Arthur Schleslnger Library at Radcliffe College, and the other the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College. Such sources have provided valuable materials for later Generations of historians.
Despite the gathering of more information about ordinary women during  the  nineteenth Century, most of the writing about women conformed to  the  "great  women"  theory of History, just as much of mainstream American  history  concentrated  on  "great  men," To demonstrate that women were making significant contributions to American life, female authors singled out women leaders and wrote biographies, or else important women produced their autobiographies. Most of these leaders were Involved in public life  as  reformers, activists working for women's right to vote, or authors,  and  were  not  representative at all of the great of ordinary woman. The lives of ordinary people continued, generally, to be untold in the American histories being   published.

The word "representative" in the last paragraph is closest in meaning to .................

Some animal behaviorists argue that certain animals can remember past events, anticipate future ones, make plans and choices, and coordinate activities within a group. These scientists, however, are cautious about the extent to which animals can be credited with conscious   processing.

Explanations of animal behavior that leave out any sort of consciousness at all and ascribe actions entirely to instinct leave many questions unanswered. One example of such unexplained behavior: Honeybees communicate the sources of nectar to one another by doing a dance in a figure-eight pattern. The orientation of the dance conveys the position of the food relative to the sun's position in the sky, and the speed of the dance tells how  far  the food source is from  the  hive. Most researchers assume that the ability to perform and  encode the dance is innate and  shows no special intelligence. But in one study, when experimenters kept changing the site of     the food source, each time moving the food 25 percent father from the previous site, foraging honeybees began to anticipate where the food source would appear next. When the researchers arrived at the new location, they would find the bees circling the spot, waiting for their food. No one has yet explained how bees, whose brains weigh four ten-thousandths of an  ounce,  could  have inferred the location of the new  site.

Other behaviors that may indicate some cognition include tool use. Many animals, like the otter who uses a stone to crack mussel shells, are capable of using objects in the natural environment as rudimentary tools. One researcher has found that mother  chimpanzees  occasionally show their young how to use tools to open hard nuts. In one study, chimpanzees compared two pairs of food wells containing chocolate chips. One pair might contain, say, five chips and three chips, the other four chips and three chips. Allowed to choose which pair they wanted, the  chimpanzees  almost always chose the  one with the higher total, showing some sort  of summing ability. Other chimpanzees have learned to use numerals to label quantities of items and do simple sums.

What does the passage mainly  discuss?

Choose the best answer to complete the sentence.

ASEAN economic cooperation _______ many areas, such as agriculture, industry, services, transportations, and tourism.

Brown bears are found in Alaska and western Canada. They are first cousins of the grizzly, each belonging to the species Ursus arctos. The chief difference in them is size, as brown bears on the average are slightly larger. A full-grown male may weigh 1,500 pounds and stand 9 to 10 feet tall. Like bears everywhere they are creatures of habit that tread the same trails year after year. Brown bears have three gaits: an even, deliberate one that takes them over rough or boggy ground at a steady clip, a quick shuffle, and a fast gallop. They are not only surprisingly fast, but also, for such huge beasts, amazingly inclines. Fishing the streams in summer, they pounce on swift-moving salmon and snatch them with almost simultaneous movements of their paws and mouths. Brown bears are excellent swimmers and love to loll and wallow in the water on warm days. They are also curious and playful. Most manifest a fear of humans, but Alaskans prefer not to test these creatures and usually carry noisemakers of some kind to warn the bears of their presence.

Which of the following can be implied from the passage?

Shyness may not seem to be a serious complaint, but for some who suffer from it, it can become unbearable. Even talking to a small group of people you know can seem like an ordeal- it can feel as if you’ve been asked to give a speech on a topic you know very little about to a number of experts. You start to feel hot and shaky, your heart beats faster, your knees feel weak, you begin to stutter and the whole experience seems to last forever.
The fact of the matter is that shyness is something we often recognize in others: “blushing” is one of the more visible signs, for example. Yet we don’t judge someone harshly because of this. But shyness does mean that you are harder to approach, so you become more  isolated. As one shy person put it, “It’s like being in a prison, and it’s very hard to break out.”
Experts on the subject have come up with various possible solutions, and one has been singled out as being the key to success- namely, finding an interest in common with the other people. Spending a lot of time on the sidelines watching other people and envying them because they are much more outgoing doesn’t help; remembering that some of those people you most envy are probably shy themselves, does. The secret is how you deal with it. And experts have come up with four things you can do today to help. Firstly, you can start by listening to other people. You will find yourself getting interested in what they’re talking about and asking questions- and before you know it, you’ll be having a conversation.
Secondly, you could try asking neighbors if you can walk their dog. Like children, pets can be excellent icebreakers for conversations with passers-by. Thirdly, try joining a class to learn something like tap-dancing or flamenco, where people are likely to laugh a lot. You’ll feel relaxed, and also you’ll be much too busy concentrating on what you are doing to feel shy. Lastly, try telling yourself that it doesn’t matter if you say or do something silly. Most people make a fool of themselves every so often- and it’s not the end of the world if you do!

Shy people should realize that everybody_________

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.

   Traditional methods of teaching no longer suffice in this technological world. Currently there are more than 100,000 computers in schoolrooms in the United States. Students mediocre and bright alike, from the first stage through high school not only are not intimidated by my computers, but have become avid participants in the computer epoch.

   Kids operating computer implement their curriculum with great versatility. A music student can program musical notes so that the computer will play Beethoven or the Beatles. For a biology class, the computer can produce a picture of the intricate envisage human biology in a profound way. A nuclear reactor is no longer an enigma to students who can see its workings in minute detail on a computer. In Wisconsi, the Chippewa Indians are studying their ancient and almost forgotten language with the aid of a computer. More commonly, the computer is used for drilling math and language concepts so that youngsters may learn at their own speed without trying the patience of their human teachers. The simplest computers aid the handicapped, who learn more rapidly from the computer than from humans. Once irksome, remedial drills and exercises now on computer are conducive to learning because the machine responds to correct answers with praise and to incorrect answers with frowns and even an occasional tear.

   Adolescents have become so exhilarated by computers that they have developed their own jargon, easily understood by their peers but leaving their disconcerted parents in the dark. They have shown so much fervor for computer that they have formed computer clubs, beguile their leisure hours in computer stores, and even attend computer camps. A Boy Scout can get a computer merit badge. One ingenious young student devised a computer game for Atari will earn him $100,000 in royalties This is definitely the computer age. Manufacturers of computers are presently getting tax write – offs for donating equipment to colleges and universities and are pushing for legislation to obtain further deductions for contributions to elementary and high school. Furthermore, the price of computer for home or office is being sold for less than $100. At that price every class in the country will soon have computer kids.

When the author says parents are “left in the dark”, he means that they ____________

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.

   Experts in climatology and other scientists are becoming extremely concerned about the changes to our climate which are taking place. Admittedly, climate changes have occurred on our planet before. For example, there have been several ice ages or glacial periods. These climatic changes, however, were different from the modern ones in that they occurred gradually and, as far as we know, naturally. The changes currently being monitored are said to be the result not of natural causes, but of human activity. Furthermore, the rate of change is becoming alarmingly rapid.

   The major problem is that the planet appears to be warming up. According to some experts, this warming process, known as global warming, is occurring at a rate unprecedented in the last 10,000 years. The implications for the planet are very serious. Rising global temperatures could give rise to such ecological disasters as extremely high increases in the incidence of flooding and of droughts. These in turn could have a harmful effect on agriculture.

   It is thought that this unusual warming of the Earth has been caused by so-called greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, being emitted into the atmosphere by car engines and modern industrial processes, for example. Such gases not only add to the pollution of the atmosphere, but also create a greenhouse effect, by which the heat of the sun is trapped. This leads to the warming up of the planet.

   Politicians are also concerned about climate change and there are now regular summits on the subject, attended by representatives from around 180 of the world’s industrialized countries. Of these summits, the most important took place in Kyotoin Japanin 1997. There it was agreed that the most industrialized countries would try to reduce the volume of greenhouse gas emissions and were given targets for this reduction of emissions.

   It was also suggested that more forests should be planted to create so-called sinks to absorb greenhouse gases. At least part of the problem of rapid climate change has been caused by too drastic deforestation. Sadly, the targets are not being met. Even more sadly, global warnings about climate changes are often still being regarded as scaremongering.

According to the passage, agriculture could ____.

Fill in each numbered blank with one suitable word or phrase.

ASEAN Handicraft Promotion and Development Association (AHPADA) was established as a result of a Workshop on Handicraft for Export which was (1) _____ by the Royal Thai Government in February 1981 in Bangkok. AHPADA was formed as a forum for both the government and private sectors that are concerned with meeting and complementing each other in the promotion and development of handicrafts (2) _____. AHPADA is affiliated to the ASEAN and the World Craft Council. The (3) _____ members were Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia. Singapore and Brunei join in a little (4) _____. Cambodia, Lao, Myanmar and Vietnam joined in September 1999.AHPADA's objectives are: To take common approach to develop and promote the marketing of crafts (5) _____ and outside the ASEAN Region. To operate as a main point of promotion of ASEAN handicrafts and raw (6) _____ required-for production, trade fairs and exhibitions. To strengthen and improve the status of craftspeople. To create employment opportunities especially in the rural areas. To (7) _____ traditional craft skills within the context of conservation of cultural heritage. To educate and create awareness and appreciation of the authentic handicrafts of ASEAN Countries. And to build up an archive of ASEAN CRAFT information.

With the recent economic downturn in (8) _____ ASEAN Countries, AHPADA's objectives are more relevant than they have ever been before. Most producers are among the rural areas and (9) _____ majority of them are very small entrepreneurs. AHPADA works at both national level through the national focal points and at the international level through the Board of AHPADA and the Regional Secretariat which is permanently based in Bangkok, Thailand. (10) _____ 1981 AHPADA has been able to act as a catalyst and initiators in the promotion and development of ASEAN CRAFTS through seminars, workshops and exhibitions, often in partnership with several multinational and international organizations.

(7) _____

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions.

Born on June 30, 1985 in Baltimore, Maryland, to Fred and Debbie Phelps, the youngest of three children, Michael Phelps and his sisters grew up in the neighbourhood of Rodger Forge. His father, Fred, a former all-rounded athlete, was a state trooper and his mother Debbie was a middle-school principal. When Phelps's parents divorced in 1994, he and his siblings lived with their mother, with whom Michael grew very close. Even at the age of 7, Phelps was still a little scared to put his head under water, so his instructors allowed him to float around on his back. Not surprisingly, despite the fact that later he is very good at butterfly swimming, the first stroke he mastered was not the easily-practised breaststroke but the backstroke.

At the age of 15, Phelps became the youngest American male swimmer to compete at an Olympic Games in 68 years. While he didn't win any medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, he would soon become a major force in competitive swimming.

In the spring of 2001, Phelps set the world record in the 200-meter butterfly, becoming the youngest male swimmer in history at the age of 15 years and 9 months. At the 2001 World Championships in Japan, he then broke his own record with a time of 1:54:58, earning his first international medal. In 2002, Phelps continued to establish several records including the 100-meter butterfly and the 200-meter individual medley. The following year, at the same event, he broke his own world record in the 400-meter individual medley with a time of 4:09.09.

After the London Olympics in 2012, Phelps announced he was retiring from his sport. However, at the 2016 Olympic Games, he came out of retirement and returned to professional competition. This was also the event in which he won one silver and five gold medals, becoming the oldest individual gold medalist in Olympic swimming history, as well as the first swimmer to win four consecutive golds in the same event, the 200 meter individual medley.

At the 2001 World Championships in Japan, he broke the record of ____.

Birds that feed in flocks commonly retire together into roosts. The reasons for roosting communally are not always obvious, but there are some likely benefits, In winter especially, it is important for birds to keep warm at night and conserve precious food reserves. One way to do this is to find a sheltered roost. Solitary roosters shelter in dense vegetation or enter a cavity- horned, larks dig holes In the ground and ptarmigan burrow into snow banks- but the effect of sheltering is magnified by several birds huddling together in the roost, as wrens, swifts, brown creepers, bluebirds, and anis do. Body contact reduces the surface area exposed to the cold air, so the birds keep each other warm. Two kinglets huddling together were found to reduce their heat losses by a quarter and three together saved a third of their heat.

The second possible benefit of communal roosts is that they act as "information centers". During the day, parties of birds will have spread out to forage over a very large area. When they return in the evening some will have fed well, but others may have found little to eat. Some investigators have observed that when the birds set out again next morning, those birds that did not feed well on the previous day appear to follow those that did. The behavior of common and lesser kestrels may illustrate different feeding behaviors of similar birds with different roosting habits. The common kestrel hunts vertebrate animals in a small, familiar hunting ground, whereas the very similar lesser kestrel feeds on insects over a large area. The common kestrel roost and hunts alone, but the lesser kestrel roosts and hunts in flocks, possibly so one bird can learn from others where to find insect swarms. Finally, there is safety in numbers at communal roosts since there will always be a few birds awake at any given moment to give the alarm. But this increased protection is partially counteracted by the fact that mass roosts attract predators and are especially vulnerable if they are on the ground. Even those in trees can be attacked by birds of prey. The birds on the edge are at greatest risk since predators find it easier to catch small birds perching at the margins of the roost

The word "forage" is closest in meaning to....................