The New Year is an event that happens when a cuture celebrates the end of one year and the begining of the next year. Cultures that measure yearly calendars all have New Year celebrations.

Tet Nguyen Dan pronunciation, more commonly known by its shortened name Tet, is the most important and popular holiday and festival in Vietnam. It is Vietnamese New Year which is based on the Chinese calendar, a lunisolar calendar. The name Tet Nguyen Dan is Vietnamese for Feast of the First Morning.

Tet is celebrated on the same day as Chinese New Year through exceptions arise due to the one-hour time diference between Hanoi and Beijing. Tet shares many of the same customs of its Chinese counterpart. It is celebrated from the first day of the first month of the Chinese calendar, around late January or early February, until at least the third day. Many Vietnamese prepare for Tet by cooking special holiday foods, decorating and cleaning the house. During Tet holiday, Vietnamsese visit their families, pagodas and temples, forgetting about the troubles of the past year and hoping for a better upcoming year. Tet traditionally marks the coming of Spring, so Spring is sometimes used interchangeably with Tet in Vietnamese. Vietnamese people usually return to their famillies during Tet. Some return to worship at the family altar or visit the graves of their ancestors. Other return to where they grew up. Although Tet is a main holiday among all vietnamese, each region and religion has its own customs.

Which is NOT done to prepare for Tet ?

 Scientists do not yet thoroughly understand just how the body of an individual becomes sensitive to a substance that is harmless or even wholesome for the average person. Milk, wheat, and egg, for example, rank among the most healthful and widely used foods. Yet these foods can cause persons sensitive to them to suffer greatly. At first, the body of the individual is not harmed by coming into contact with the substance. After a varying interval of time, usually longer than a few weeks, the body becomes sensitive to it, and an allergy has begun to develop. Sometimes it's hard to figure out if you have a food allergy, since it can show up so many different ways. Your symptoms could be caused by many other problems. You may have rashes, hives, joint pains mimicking arthritis, headaches, irritability, or depression. The most common food allergies are to milk, eggs, seafood, wheat, nuts, seeds, chocolate, oranges, and tomatoes. Many of these allergies will not develop if these foods are not fed to an infant until her or his intestines mature at around seven months. Breast milk also tends to be protective. Migraines can be set off by foods containing tyramine, phenathylamine, monosodium glutamate, or sodium nitrate. Common foods which contain these are chocolate, aged cheeses, sour cream, red wine, pickled herring, chicken livers, avocados, ripe bananas, cured meats, many Oriental and prepared foods (read the labels!). Some people have been successful in treating their migraines with supplements of B-vitamins, particularly B6 and niacin. Children who are hyperactive may benefit from eliminating food additives, especially colorings, and foods high in salicylates from their diets. A few of these are almonds, green peppers, peaches, tea, grapes. This is the diet made popular by Benjamin Feingold, who has written the book “Why your Child is Hyperactive”. Other researchers have had mixed results when testing whether the diet is effective.

What can be inferred about babies from this passage?

Read the article and answer the questions that follow.

Is There Really a Generation Gap?

According to the results of a survey in USA WEEKEND Magazine, there isn’t really a generation gap. The magazine’s “Teens & Parents” survey shows that today’s generation of young people generally get along well with their parents and appreciate the way they’re being raised. Most feel that their parents understand them, and they believe their parents consider family as the No. 1 priority in their lives. Although more than a third of teens have something in their rooms they would like to keep secret from their parents, it is usually nothing more harmful than a diary or a CD.

Such results may seem surprising in the context of the violent events that people hear about in the media. Maybe because of the things they hear, parents worry that their own kids might get out of control once they reach the teenage years. However, the facts in the survey should make us feel better. The survey shows us that today’s teens are loving and sensible. They are certainly happier than the angry people in the teenage stereotypes we all know about. True, some teenagers are very angry, and we need to recognize their needs, but the great majority of teens are not like that at all.

In contrast to some stereotypes, most teens believe they must be understanding about differences among individuals. Many of them volunteer for community service with disadvantaged people. When they talk about themselves, their friends and their families, they sound positive and proud. Generally, these are very nice kids.

Is this spirit of harmony a change from the past? Only a generation ago, parent-child relations were described as the “generation gap”. Yet even then, things were not so bad. Most kids in the 1960s and 1970s shared their parents’ basic values.

Perhaps, however, it is true that American families are growing closer at the beginning of this new millennium. Perhaps there is less to fight about, and the dangers of drug abuse and other unacceptable behavior are now well known. Perhaps, compared to the impersonal world outside the home, a young person’s family is like a friendly shelter, not a prison. And perhaps parents are acting more like parents than they did 20 or 30 years ago.

What is the main subject of paragraph three?

Read the following passage and choose the correct answer to each of the questions.

Though called by sweet-sounding names like Firinga or Katrina, tropical cyclones are huge rotating storms 200 to 2,000 kilometers wide with winds that blow at speeds of more than 100 kilometers per hour (kph). Weather professionals know them as tropical cyclones, but they are called hurricanes in the Caribbean Sea, typhoons in the Pacific Ocean, and cyclones in the Indian Ocean. They occur in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Large ones have destroyed cities and killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Tropical cyclones begin over water that is warmer than 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) slightly north or south of the earth’s equator. Warm, humid air full of water vapor moves upward. The earth’s rotation causes the growing storm to start to rotate around its center (called the eye). At a certain height, the water vapor condenses, changing to liquid and releasing heat. The heat draws more air and water vapor upward, creating a cycle as air and water vapor rise and liquid water falls. If the cycle speeds up until winds reach 118 kilometers per hour, the storm qualifies as a tropical cyclone.

Most deaths in tropical cyclones are caused by storm surge. This is a rise in sea level, sometimes seven meters or more, caused by the storm pushing against the ocean’s surface. Storm surge was to blame for the flooding of New Orleans in 2005. The storm surge of Cyclone Nargis in 2008 in Myanmar pushed seawater nearly four meters deep some 40 kilometers inland, resulting in many deaths.

It has never been easy to forecast a tropical cyclone accurately. The goal is to know when and where the next tropical cyclone will form. “And we can’t really do that yet,” says David Nolan, a weather researcher from the University of Miami. The direction and strength of tropical cyclones are also difficult to predict, even with computer assistance. In fact, long-term forecasts are poor; small differences in the combination of weather factors lead to very different storms. More accurate forecasting could help people decide to evacuate when a storm is on the way.

As stated in paragraph 1, tropical cyclones are storms with winds blowing at speeds of ______.

The Women's World Cup was originally the brainchild of the FIFA president joão Havelange. The first tournament was hosted in China in 1991, with twelve teams sent to represent their countries. The 1995 FIFA Women's World Cup was held in Sweden with twelve teams. Over 650,000 spectators attended the 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup in the United States and nearly one billion viewers from seventy countries tuned in to watch sixteen countries vie for the title.

In the 1999 edition, one of the most famous moments of the tournament was American defender Brandi Chatain's victory celebration after scoring the Cup-winning penalty shot against Cina. She took off her T-shirt and waved it over her head as men frequently do, showing her muscular torso. The 1999 final in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California had an attendance of 90,185, a world record for a women's sporting event.

The 1999 and 2003 Women's World Cup were both held in the United States; in 2003 China was supposed to host it but the tournament was moved because of SARS. As compensation, China retained its automatic qualification to the 2003 tournament as host nation and was automatically chosen to host the 2007 Women's World Cup. The host country for the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup will be delided by vote.

The 2007 Women's World Cup will be hosted in ______ .

For many people who live in cities, parks are an important part of the landscape. They provide a place for people to relax and play sports, as well as a refuge from the often harsh environment of a city. What people often overlook is that parks also provide considerable environmental benefits. One benefit of parks is that plants absorb carbon dioxide - a key pollutant - and emit oxygen, which humans need to breathe. According to one study, an acre of trees can absorb the same amount of carbon dioxide that a typical car emits in 11,000 miles of driving. Parks also make cities cooler. Scientists have long noted what is called the Urban Heat Island Effect: building materials such as metal, concrete, and asphalt absorb much more of the sun's heat and release it much more quickly than organic surfaces like trees and grass. Because city landscapes contain so much of these building materials, cities are usually warmer than surrounding rural areas. Parks and other green spaces help to mitigate the Urban Heat Island Effect. 
Unfortunately, many cities cannot easily create more parks because most land is already being used for buildings, roads, parking lots, and other essential parts of the urban environment. However, cities could - benefit from many of the positive effects of parks by encouraging citizens to create another type of green space: rooftop gardens. While most people would not think of starting a garden on their roof, human beings have been planting gardens on rooftops for thousands of years. Some rooftop gardens are very complex and require complicated engineering, but others are simple container gardens that anyone can create with the investment of a few hundred dollars and a few hours of work. 
Rooftop gardens provide many of the same benefits as other urban park and garden spaces, but without taking up the much-needed land. Like parks, rooftop gardens help to replace carbon dioxide in the air with nourishing oxygen. They also help to lessen the Urban Heat Island Effect, which can save people money. In the summer, rooftop gardens prevent buildings from absorbing heat from the sun, which can significantly reduce cooling bills. In the winter, gardens help hold in the heat that materials like brick and concrete radiate so quickly, leading to savings on heating bills. Rooftop vegetable and herb gardens can also provide fresh food for city dwellers, saving them money and making their diets healthier. Rooftop gardens are not only something everyone can enjoy, they are also a smart environmental investment.

It can be inferred from the passage that the author would most likely endorse a program at _______.

When the weather is cold, it is not very much fun to (1) ______a bus. People have to stand at a bus-stop for minutes or even hours. They talk about the bus and (2) _______about the weather. Most of them feel cold. Some have to drink coffee to stay warm.

Traveling by buses (3) _______pollution, but people often would rather drive their cars. Many people are not used to the bus schedules, and they do not like to wait.

On the other hand, many people have been (4) ______the bus every day for many years. They are used to it. They say the bus has been coming on time every day, and they have never been late for work. In (5) _______, they do not need a parking place in all that time. Buses are very convenient when you are used to them.

(7)__________

Your mind's ability to bring back experiences you have had is your memory. There are two kinds of remembering, recall and recognition. For instance, you may not be able to recall the poem you read yesterday in class, but if you see it again, you will know it instantly because you recognize it.

Some few people have 'total recall,' often spoken of as photographic memory. A person with total recall can recite a whole page of a book he has read only once, or play a musical composition after hearing it once. This is very unusual, however, and most people have difficulty in remembering even names they heard the day before. This is not because most people lack the ability to remember, but because they had not paid much attention to what they heard. They felt no personal reasons to remember. Having a personal reason for remembering is one of the most important factors in a good memory.

When you have a strong reason for remembering, concentrate as you read or listen, and try to connect the new information to things you I already know. A detail is easy to remember when it fits into a whole that makes sense. If you understand the entire history lesson before you try to remember any particular dates, your memory may surprise you.

 While not directly stated, it may be inferred from the article that ________.

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

 The word those refers to _______.

Write the sentence with the following words 

We/buy/ her/ flowers/ presents/ a birthday cake.

Today the police are able to make use of all kinds of scientific and technological aids in their fight against crime. This was not always the (28)_________, however. 

In the early days of the British police force , during the nineteenth century , the police officer's whistle was his (29) _______ way of calling for help if he got into difficulty. Gradually, in the twentieth century, things began to (30) ______ .Those police officers lucky enough to be given a patrol car rather than a bicycle could also take (31) ________ of radio communications. 

In 1903, a new system for identifying people by their fingerprints was discovered. Although it soon proved to be one of the most significant developments in crime investigation, a (32) ______ of the national fingerprint collection could take days, if not weeks, until computers were introduced in the 1970s.

(29).............................................

It is often said that books are always good friends … (6)… reading is an active mental process. … (7)… TV, books make you use your brain. By reading, you think more and become smarter. Reading improves concentration and focus. Reading books takes brain power. It requires you to focus … (8)… what you are reading for long periods. Unlike magazines, Internet posts or e-Mails that might contain small …(9)… of information. Books tell the whole story". Since you must concentrate in order to read, you will get better at concentration. Many studies show if you do not use your memory; you lose it. Reading helps you …(10)… your memory muscles. Reading requires remembering details, facts and figures and in literature, plot lines, themes and characters.

(7)_________

Herman Melville, an American author best known today for his novel Moby Dick, was actually more popular during his lifetime for some of his other works. He traveled extensively and used the knowledge gained during his travels as the basis for his early novels. In 1837, at the age of eighteen, Melville signed as a cabin boy on a merchant ship that was to sail from his Massachusetts home to Liverpool, England. His experiences on this trip served as a basis for the novel Redburn (1849). In 1841 Melville set out on a whaling ship headed for the South Seas. After jumping ship in Tahiti, he wandered around the islands of Tahiti and Moorea. This South Sea island sojourn was a backdrop to the novel Omoo (1847). After three years away from home, Melville joined up with a U.S. naval frigate that was returning to the eastern United States around Cape Horn. The novel White-Jacket (1850) describes this lengthy voyage as a navy seaman. With the publication of these early adventure novels, Melville developed a strong and loyal following among readers eager for his tales of exotic places and situations. However, in 1851, with the publication of Moby Dick, Melville's popularity started to diminish. Moby Dick, on one level the saga of the hunt for the great white whale, was also a heavily symbolic allegory of the heroic struggle of man against the universe. The public was not ready for Melville's literary metamorphosis from romantic adventure to philosophical symbolism. It is ironic that the novel that served to diminish Melville's popularity during his lifetime is the one for which he is best known today.

How did the publication of Moby Dick affect Melville’s popularity?

Rearrange the sentences to make meaningful sentences

An/ ways/ actress's/ unlike/ that/ life/ of/ is/ other/ in/ many/ women.

Choose the sentence - a, b, c, or d - which is closest in meaning to the sentence above.

It would have been a perfect paper except for some mistakes.

Choose the letter A, B, C or D to complete the sentences with given words

Family/ play/ important/ role/ everyone’s life.

Your mind's ability to bring back experiences you have had is your memory. There are two kinds of remembering, recall and recognition. For instance, you may not be able to recall the poem you read yesterday in class, but if you see it again, you will know it instantly because you recognize it.

Some few people have 'total recall,' often spoken of as photographic memory. A person with total recall can recite a whole page of a book he has read only once, or play a musical composition after hearing it once. This is very unusual, however, and most people have difficulty in remembering even names they heard the day before. This is not because most people lack the ability to remember, but because they had not paid much attention to what they heard. They felt no personal reasons to remember. Having a personal reason for remembering is one of the most important factors in a good memory.

When you have a strong reason for remembering, concentrate as you read or listen, and try to connect the new information to things you I already know. A detail is easy to remember when it fits into a whole that makes sense. If you understand the entire history lesson before you try to remember any particular dates, your memory may surprise you.

Which sentence is not true?

Choose the sentence - a, b, c, or d - which is closest in meaning to the sentence above.

 She gave in her notice. She planned to start her new job in January

Research has shown that over half the children in Britain who take their own lunches to school do not eat (1)______ in the middle of the day. In Britain schools have to (2)_____ meals at lunchtime. Children can choose to bring their own food or have lunch at the school canteen. One shocking finding of this research is that school meals are much healthier than lunches prepared by parents. There are strict (3) ___ for the preparation of school meals, which have to include one (4) ___ of fruit and one of vegetables, as well as meat, a dairy item and starchy food like bread or pasta. Lunchboxes (5) ___ by researchers contained sweet drinks, crisps and chocolate bars. Children consume twice as much sugar as they should at lunchtime.

(5) is ...............................

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 Hindu cultural celebrates marriage as a pure and pristine rite enabling two individuals start their journey of life together. It puts emphasis on the values of happiness, harmony and growth and could be traced back from the Vedic times.

   Months before the wedding ceremony, an engagement is held which is called "mangni". The couple is blessed here with gifts, jewelry and clothes. Another important ritual is the "mehendi" which is a paste made from the leaves of henna plant. It is the traditional art of adorning the hands and the feet of the bride with mehendi and the name of the groom is also hidden in the design.

   On the day of marriage, the couple exchanges garlands as a gesture of acceptance of one another and a pledge to respect one another as partners which is known as "jaimala". This is followed by "kanyadaan", where the father of the bride places her hand in the groom's hand requesting him to accept her as an equal partner.

   Another ritual is the "havan" in which the couple invokes Agni, the god of Fire, to witness their commitment to each other. Crushed sandalwood, herbs, sugar rice and oil are offered to the ceremonial fire. The "gath bandhan" takes place where scarves of the bride and groom are tied together symbolizing their eternal bonThis signifies their pledge before God to love each other and remain loyal. The couple then takes four "mangal pheras" or walk around the ceremonial fire, representing four goals in life: "Dharma", religious and moral duties; "Artha", prosperity; "Kama" earthly pleasures; "Moksha", spiritual salvation.

   The couple also takes seven steps together to begin their journey, called the "saptapardi". Then the ritual of "sindoor" takes place where the groom applies a small dot of vermilion, a red powder to the bride's forehead and welcomes her as his partner for life. This signifies the completion of the marriage. The parents of the bride and the groom then give their blessings, "ashirwad" to the newlywed couple as they touch the feet of their parents.

What can the word adorning be best replaced by?

The White House, the official home of the United States president, was not built in time for George Washington to live in it. It was begun in 1792 and was ready for its first inhabitants. President and Mrs.John Adams, who moved in on November 1, 1800. When the Adamses moved in, the White House was not yet complete, and the Adamses suffered many inconveniences; for example, the main staircase was incomplete, which hindered movement from floor to floor, and the future laundry yard was merely a pool of mud, so wet laundry was hung in the unfinished East Room to dry. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, improved the comfort of the White House in many respects and added new architectural features such as the terraces on the east and west ends.

   When the British forces burned the White House on August 24, 1814, President Madison was forced to leave.All the remained after the fire was the exterior walls, the interior was completely destroyed. It was not until December of 1817 that the following president, James Monroe, was able to move into a rebuilt residence. Since then, the White House has continued to be modified but has been continuously occupied by each succeeding U.S president.

The paragraph following the passage most likely discusses: