Bài tập trắc nghiệm 60 phút Đoạn văn đọc hiểu - Tiếng Anh 12 - Đề số 17

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 from 43 to 50:

Smallpox was the first widespread disease to be eliminated by human intervention. Known as a highly contagious viral disease, it broke out in Europe, causing the deaths of millions of people until the vaccination was invented by Edward Jenner around 1800. In many nations, it was a terror, a fatal disease until very recently. Its victims suffer high fever, vomiting and painful, itchy, pustules that left scars. In villages and cities all over the world, people were worried about suffering smallpox.In May, 1966, the World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the United Nations was authorized to initiate a global campaign to eradicate smallpox. The goal was to eliminate the disease in one decade. At the time, the disease posed a serious threat to people in more than thirty nations. Because similar projects for malaria and yellow fever had failed, few believed that smallpox could actually be eradicated but eleven years after the initial organization of the campaign, no cases were reported in the field.The strategy was not only to provide mass vaccinations but also to isolate patients with active smallpox in order to contain the spread of the disease and to break the chain of human transmission. Rewards for reporting smallpox assisted in motivating the public to aid health workers. One by one, each small-pox victim was sought out, removed from contact with others and treated. At the same time, the entire village where the victim had lived was vaccinated.By April of 1978 WHO officials announced that they had isolated the last known case of the disease but health workers continued to search for new cases for additional years to be completely sure. In May, 1980, a formal statement was made to the global community. Today smallpox is no longer a threat to humanity. Routine vaccinations have been stopped worldwide.  

Question 49: Which one of the statements doesn’t refer to smallpox?         

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

We find that bright children are rarely held back by mixed-ability teaching. On the contrary, both their knowledge and experience are enriched. We feel that there are many disadvantages in streaming pupils. It does not take into account the fact that children develop at different rates. It can have a bad effect on both the bright and the not-so-bright child. After all, it can be quite discouraging to be at the bottom of the top grade! Besides, it is rather unreal to grade people just according to their intellectual ability. This is only one aspect of their total personality. We are concerned to develop the abilities of all our pupils to the full, not just their academic ability. We also value personal qualities and social skills, and we find that mixed-ability teaching contributes to all these aspects of learning. In our classroom, we work in various ways. The pupils often work in groups; this gives them the opportunity to learn to co-operate, to share, and to develop leadership skills. They also learn how to cope with the personal problems as well as learning how to think, to make decisions, to analyze and evaluate, to communicate effectively. The pupils learn from each other as well as from the teachers. Sometimes the pupils work in pairs; sometimes the work on individual tasks and assignments, they can do this at their own speed. They also have some formal class teaching when this is appropriate. We encourage our pupils to use the library, and we teach them the skills they need in order to do this effectively. An advanced pupil can do advanced works; it does not matter what age the child is. We expect our pupils to do their best, not their least, and we give them every encouragement to attain this goal.  

Question: In the passage, the author’s attitude towards “mixed-ability teaching” 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 below:

 Choosing a career may be one of the hardest jobs you ever have, and it must be done with care. View a career as an opportunity to do something you love, not simply as a way to earn a living. Investing the time and effort to thoroughly explore your options can mean the difference between finding a stimulating and rewarding career and move from job to unsatisfying job in an attempt to find the right one. Work influences virtually every aspect of your life, from your choice of friends to where you live. Here are just a few of the factors to consider.

 Deciding what matters most to you is essential to making the right decision. You may want to begin by assessing your likes, dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses. Think about the classes, hobbies, and surroundings that you find most appealing. Ask yourself questions, such as "Would you like to travel? Do you want to work with children? Are you more suited to solitary or cooperative work?" There are no right or wrong answers; only you know what is important to you. Determine which job features you require, which ones you would prefer, and which ones you cannot accept. Then rank them in order of importance to you.

 The setting of the job is one factor to take into account. You may not want to sit at a desk all day. If not, there are diversity occupation - building inspector, supervisor, real estate agent - that involve a great deal of time away from the office. Geographical location may be a concern, and employment in some fields is concentrated in certain regions. Advertising job can generally be found only in large cities. On the other hand, many industries such as hospitality, law education, and retail sales are found in all regions of the country.

 If a high salary is important to you, do not judge a career by its starting wages. Many jobs, such as insurance sales, offers relatively low starting salaries; however, pay substantially increases along with your experience, additional training, promotions and commission.

 Don’t rule out any occupation without learning more about it. Some industries evoke positive or negative associations. The traveling life of a flight attendant appears glamorous, while that of a plumber does not. Remember that many jobs are not what they appear to be at first, and may have merits or demerits that are less obvious. Flight attendants must work long, grueling hours without sleeps, whereas plumbers can be as highly paid as some doctors. Another point to consider is that as you get mature, you will likely to develop new interests and skills that may point the way to new opportunities. The choice you make today need not be your final one.

Question 31: According to paragraph 3, which of the following fields is NOT suitable for a person who does not want to live in a big city?  

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer ti each of the questions:

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.

Question: Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage?         

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:

 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.

Question 38: Based on the information in paragraph 3, which of the following best describes the main difference between parks and rooftop gardens?  

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

The advent of the Internet may be one of the most important technological developments in recent years. Never before have so many people had access to so many different sources of information. For all of the Internet’s advantages, however, people are currently becoming aware of some of its drawbacks and are looking for creative solutions. Among the current problems, which include a general lack of reliability and numerous security concerns, the most crucial is speed. First of all, the Internet has grown very quickly. In 1990, only a few academics had ever heard of the Internet. In 1996, over 50 million people used it. Every year, the number of people with access to the Internet doubles. The rapid growth has been a problem. The computer systems which run the Internet have not been able to keep up with the demand. Also, sometimes, a request for information must pass through many routing computers before the information can be obtained. A request for information made in Paris might have to go through computers in New York, Los Angeles and Tokyo in order to obtain the required information. Consequently, the service is often slow and unpredictable. Service also tends to be worse when the Internet is busiest - during the business day of the Western Hemisphere - which is also when companies need its service the most. Some people are trying to harness the power of networked computers in such a way as to avoid this problem. In 1995, a group of American universities banded together to form what has come to be known as Internet II. Internet II is a smaller, more specialized system intended for academic use. Since it is more specialized, fewer users are allowed access. Consequently, the time required to receive information has decreased. Businesses are beginning to explore a possible analogue to the Internet II. Many businesses are creating their own “Intranets”. These are systems that can only be used by the members of the same company. In theory, fewer users should translate into a faster system. Intranets are very useful for large national and international companies whose branches need to share information. Another benefit of an Intranet is an increased amount of security. Since only company employees have access to the information on the Intranet, their information is protected from competitors. While there is little doubt that the Internet will eventually be a fast and reliable service, industry and the academic community have taken their own steps toward making more practical global networks.

Question: All of the following are advantages of business “Intranets” mentioned in the passage EXCEPT__________  

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:

Dodder is an unusual and unwanted plant that attacks other plants. Except for its flowers, the plant looks like spaghetti noodles. Its almost leafless, thread–like stems hang down atop other plants that dodder needs to stay alive. Dodder does not produce its own food. Instead, it steals it from other plants. It feeds by sucking juices from the plant it is wrapped around, often making its host very weak or even killing it. Dodder can find other plants by their smell. When a dodder seedling starts growing, it follows the scent of plants it prefers, like tomato plants, potato plants, or other farm crops. Unlike most plants that usually grow in the direction of light or warmth, a dodder plant will grow in the direction of, for example, tomato odor––if a tomato happens to be growing nearby. However, a young dodder plant must find a host plant quickly. If it cannot catch a whiff of a potential host within a few days, it will dry up and disappear-even if there is plenty of water around. Once it finds a host, the young dodder plant will attach itself to it and start growing faster. At that point, the dodder plant will drop its root. Dodder is thus a difficult weed to manage and a real headache for farmers. When it does get out of hand, dodder can greatly reduce a farmer’s harvest or even destroy crops completely. Before sowing their produce, farmers in warm parts of the world often check to make sure no unwanted dodder seeds have intermingled with their crop seeds. This is a good way to stop dodder plants from sneaking their way into a crop field.  

Question: The expression get out of hand is closest in meaning to ______.         

Read the following pasage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet ti indicate the correct answer to each of the questions:  

 Over the past 600 years, English has grown from a language of few speakers to become the dominant language of international communication. English as we know it today emerged around 1350, after having incorporated many elements of French that were introduced following the Norman invasion off 1066. Until the 1600s, English was, for the most part, spoken only in England and had not expanded even as far as Wales, Scotland, or Ireland. However, during the course of the next two century, English began to spread around the globe as a result of exploration, trade (including slave trade), colonization, and missionary work. Thus, small enclaves of English, speakers became established and grew in various parts of the world. As these communities proliferated, English gradually became the primary language of international business, banking, and diplomacy.

 Currently, about 80 percent of the information stored on computer systems worldwide is in English. Two thirds of the world's science writing is in English, and English is the main language of technology, advertising, media, international airport, and air traffic controllers. Today there are more than 700 million English users in the world, and over half of these are non-native speakers, constituting the largest number of non-native users than any other language in the world.  

Question 36: What is the main topic of the passage?        

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:

Studies about how students use their time might shed light on whether they face increased academic and financial pressures compared with earlier eras. Based on data about how students are spending time, academic or financial pressures don’t seem to be greater now than a generation ago. The data show that full-time students in all types of colleges study much less now than they did a generation ago–a full 10 hours a week less. Students are also receiving significantly higher grades. So it appears that academic pressures are, in fact, considerably lower than they used to be. The time–use data don’t suggest that students feel greater financial pressures, either. When the time savings and lower opportunity costs are factored in, college appears less expensive for most students than it was in the 1960s. and though there are now full-time students working to pay while in college, they study less even when paid work choices are held constantly. In other words, full-time students do not appear to be studying less in order to work more. They appear to be studying less and spending the extra time on leisure activities or fun. It seems hard to imagine that students feeling increased financial pressures would respond by taking more leisure. Based on how students are spending their time then, it doesn’t look as though academic or financial pressures are greater now than a generation ago. The time-use data don’t speak directly to social pressures, and it may well be that these have become more intense lately. In one recent set of data, students reported spending more than 23 hours per week either socializing with friends or playing on the computer for fun. Social activities, in person or on computer would seem to have become the major focus of campus life. It is hard to tell what kinds of pressures would be associated with this change.  

Question: Research studies have shown that pressures put on students nowadays are _________         

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:

Noise is unwanted sound and is among the most pervasive pollutants today. Noise from road traffic, jet planes, jet skis, garbage trucks, construction equipment, manufacturing processes, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and boom boxes, to name a few, are among the unwanted sounds that are routinely broadcast into the air. The problem with noise is not only that it is unwanted, but also that it negatively affects human health and well-being. Problems related to noise include hearing loss, stress, high blood pressure, sleep loss, distraction and lost productivity, and a general reduction in the quality of life and opportunities for tranquility. We experience noise in a number of ways. On some occasions, we can be both the cause and the victim of noise, such as when we are operating noisy appliances or equipment. There are also instances when we experience noise generated by others just as people experience second-hand smoke. While in both instances, noises are equally damaging, second-hand noise is more troubling because it has negative impacts on us but is put into the environment by others, without our consent. The air into which second-hand noise is emitted and on which it travels is a “commons”, a public good. It belongs to no one person or group, but to everyone. People, businesses, and organizations, therefore, do not have unlimited rights to broadcast noise as they please, as if the effects of noise were limited only to their private property. On the contrary, they have an obligation to use the commons in ways that are compatible with or do not detract from other uses. People, businesses, and organizations that disregard the obligation to not interfere with others' use and enjoyment of the commons by producing noise pollution are, in many ways, acting like a bully in a school yard. Although perhaps unknowingly, they nevertheless disregard the rights of others and claim for themselves rights that are not theirs. We have organized to raise awareness of noise pollution and help communities take back the commons from those acting like bullies. Our efforts include building a library of resources and tools concerning noise pollution, establishing links to other groups that have similar collections, establishing networks among local noise activists, assisting communities and activists who are working to reduce noise pollution, and monitoring and advocating for stronger noise controls.

Question: It is mentioned in the passage that when we are operating noisy appliances or we experience noise generated by others ________.             

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

Many of the most damaging and life-threaling types of weather-torrential rains, severe thunderstorms, and tornadoes-begin quickly, strike suddenly, and dissipate rapidly, devastating small regions while leaving neighboring areas untouched. One such event, a tornado, struck the northeastern section of Edmonton, Alberta, in July 1987. Total damages from the tornado exceeded $250 million, the highest ever for any Canadian storm. Conventional computer models of the atmosphere have limited value in predicting short-live local storms like the Edmonton tornado, because the available weather data are generally not detailed enough to allow computers to discern the subtle atmospheric changes that precede these storms. In most nations, for example, weather balloon observations are taken just once every twelve hours at locations typically separated by hundreds of miles. With such limited data, conventional forecasting models do a much better job predicting general weather conditions over large regions than they do forecasting specific local events. Until recently, the observation-intensive approach needed for accurate, very short range forecasts, or “Nowcasts”, was not feasible. The cost of equipping and operating many thousands of conventional weather stations was prohibitively high, and the difficulties involved in rapidly collecting and processing the raw weather data from such a network were insurmountable. Fortunately, scientific and technological advances have overcome most of these problems. Radar systems, automated weather instruments, and satellites are all capable of making detailed, nearly continuous observation over large regions at a relatively low cost. Communications satellites can transmit data around the world cheaply and instantaneously, and modern computers can quickly compile and analyzing this large volume of weather information. Meteorologists and computer scientists now work together to design computer programs and video equipment capable of transforming raw weather data into words, symbols, and vivid graphic displays that forecasters can interpret easily and quickly. As meteorologists have begun using these new technologies in weather forecasting offices, Nowcasting is becoming a reality.  

Question: What does the passage mainly discuss?         

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

A survey is a study, generally in the form of an interview or a questionnaire, which provides information concerning how people think and act. In the United States, the best-known surveys are the Gallup poll and the Harris poll. As anyone who watches the news during presidential campaigns knows, these polls have become an important part of political life in the United States. North Americans are familiar with the many “person on the street” interviews on local television news shows. While such interviews can be highly entertaining, they are not necessarily an accurate indication of public opinion. First, they reflect the opinions of only those people who appear at a certain location. Thus, such samples can be biased in favor of commuters, middle-class shoppers, or factory workers, depending on which area the new people select. Second, television interviews tend to attract outgoing people who are willing to appear on the air, while they frighten away others who may feel intimidated by a camera. A survey must be based on a precise, representative sampling if it is to genuinely reflect a broad range of the population. In preparing to conduct a survey, sociologists must exercise great care in the wording of questions. An effective survey question must be simple and clear enough for people to understand it. It must also be specific enough so that there are no problems in interpreting the results. Even questions that are less structured must be carefully phrased in order to elicit the type of information desired. Surveys can be indispensable sources of information, but only if the sampling is done properly and the questions are worded accurately. There are two main forms of surveys: the interview and the questionnaire. Each of these forms of survey research has its advantages. An interviewer can obtain a high response rate because people find it more difficult to turn down a personal request for an interview than to throw away a written questionnaire. In addition, an interviewer can go beyond written questions and probe for a subject’s underlying feelings and reasons. However, questionnaires have the advantage of being cheaper and more consistent.

Question: Which word is given definition in the text?         

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:

 Political and family values within society have impacted upon the modern family structure. Traditionally, it has been the man's role to be the breadwinner for the family - providing the funds to pay for food and shelter. However, due to the many new and unique responsibilities placed upon families, in numerous cases both men and womenn- fathers and mothersn- have had to enter the workforce. Generally, the reasons for both being involved in the workforce revolve around the need to add to the family's current financial base. To a lesser extent, the need to interact with “adults” in a stimulating work environment is another popular reason. Whatever their reasons, for many families, the decision for father and mother to go out of home and join the labour force has led to a number of side effects within the home which, in turn, impact upon their performance as employees.

 Many researchers agree that attitudes towards work are carried over into family life. This spillover can be positive or negative. Positive spillover refers to the spread of satisfaction and positive stimulation at work resulting in high levels of energy and satisfaction at home. If the amount of research is to be taken as an indication, it would seem that positive spillover is not a dominant occurrence in the workplace with most research focusing on the effects of negative spillover. Often pointing out the incompatible nature of work and family life, the research focuses on problems and conflict at work which has the effect of draining and preoccupying the individual, making it difficult for him or her to participate fully in family life.

 Social scientists have devised a number of theories in an attempt to explain the work - family dynamic. Compensation theory is one which has been widely used. It assumes that the relationship between work and family is negative by pointing out that high involvement in one sphere - invariably the work sphere - leads to low involvement in the other. As an individual advances within a career, demands typically fluctuate from moderate to more demanding and if the advancing worker has younger children, this shift in work responsibilities will usually manifest itself in the form of less time spent with the family. Researchers subscribing to this theory point out that the drain on family time is significantly related to work - family conflict with an escalation in conflict, as the number of families increase. 

Question: The word "it" in the third paragraph refers to __________.         

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

It is commonly believed in the United States that school is where people go to get an education. Nevertheless, it has been said that today children interrupt their education to go to school. The distinction between schooling and education implied by this remark is important. Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling. Education knows no bounds. It can take place anywhere, whether in the shower or on the job, whether in a kitchen or on a tractor. It includes both the formal learning that takes place in schools and the whole universe of informal learning. The agents of education can range from a revered grandparent to the people debating politics on the radio, from a child to a distinguished scientist. Whereas schooling has a certain predictability, education quite often produces surprises. A chance conversation with a stranger may lead a person to discover how little is known of other religions. People are engaged in education from infancy on. Education, then, is a very broad, inclusive term. It is a lifelong process, a process that starts long before the start of school and one that should be an integral part of one’s entire life. Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process, whose general pattern varies little from one setting to the next. Throughout a country, children arrive at school at approximately the same time, take assigned seats, are taught by an adult, use similar textbooks, do homework, take exams, and so on. The slices of reality that are to be learned, whether they are the alphabet or an understanding of the workings of government, have usually been limited by the boundaries of the subject being taught. For example, high school students know that they are not likely to find out in their classes the truth about political problems in their communities or what the newest filmmakers are experimenting with. There are definite conditions surrounding the formalized process of schooling.  

Question: The passage is organized by ________.         

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:

U.N diplomats abandoned efforts to draft a treaty that would outlaw human cloning. They will likely settle for a weaker statement, and won't seek a widespread ban, officials said. The debate began when Italy introduced document into the U.N to stop any attempt at cloning human life. The Belgians objected to the use of term "human life" in the document, because they feared it would put a stop to all forms of human cloning.
There is near universal support among the United Nation's 191 members for a ban on reproductive cloning-creating cloned babies. Many countries have wrested over whether to allow cloning for stem cell and other types of research. Indeed, many researchers beleive that stem cells could be used to repair nerve tissue or cure diseases, including Alzheimer's. Stem cells are taken from embryos and cloned, but extracting these cells kills the embryo. Opponents say that this is equal to murder.

Question: Which of the following can be inferred from his passage?

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:

During the 19th century, women in the U. S organized and participated in a large number of reform movements, including movements to reorganize the prison system, improve education, ban the sale of alcohol, and most importantly to free slaves. Some women saw similarities in the social status of women and slaves. Women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone were feminists and abolitionists who supported the rights of both women and blacks. A number of male abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips also supported the rights of women to speak and participate equally with men in anti-slavery activities. Probably more than any other movement, abolitionism offered women a previously denied entry into politics. They became involved primarily in order to better their living conditions and the conditions of others. When the Civil war ended in 1865, the 14th, and 15th, Amendments to the Constitution adopted in 1868 and 1870 granted citizenship and suffrage to blacks but not to women. Discouraged but resolved, feminists influenced more and more women to demand the right to vote. In 1869, the Wyoming Territory had yielded to demands by feminists, but eastern states resisted more stubbornly than ever before. A woman's suffrage bill had been presented to every Congress since 1878 but it continually failed to pass until 1920, when the 19th Amendment granted women the right to vote.  

Question: The word “ban” in line 2 most nearly means to ...         

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

When you first apply for the job, you might not succeed in getting it. It’s always a good idea to ask them to explain to you what prevented you from beating the other candidates. Don’t complain about the situation, but ask them to advise you on what you can do better next time. Perhaps the interviewers disproved of or disagreed with something you said. Perhaps they just glance at your application and saw something that made it easy to choose between you and another candidate. Don’t regard it as a failure, but recognize it as a chance to learn more. As long as you don’t worry too much about it and continue to believe in yourself, you’ll eventually find the chance you’ve been waiting for. Then your family and friends will be congratulate you on your success!

Question 12: What is the best title for the text ?         

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answers:

The invention of the electric telegraph gave birth to the communications industry. Although Samuel B. Morse succeeded in making the invention useful in 1837, it was not until 1843 that the first telegraph line of consequence was constructed. By 1860 more than 50,000 miles of lines connected people east of the Rockies. The following year, San Francisco was added to the network. The national telegraph network fortified the ties between East and West and contributed to the rapid expansion of the railroads by providing an efficient means to monitor schedules and routes. Furthermore, the extension of the telegraph, combined with the invention of the steam-driven rotary printing press by Richard M. Hoe in 1846, revolutionized the world of journalism. Where the business of news gathering had been dependent upon the mail and on hand-operated presses, the telegraph expanded the amount of information a newspaper could supply and allowed for more timely reporting. The establishment of the Associated Press as a central wire service in 1846 marked the advent of a new era in journalism.

Question: This passage would most likely be found in a         

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:

For more than six million American children, coming home after school means coming back to an empty house. Some deal with the situation by watching TV. Some may hide. But all of them have something in common. They spend part of each day alone. They are called “latchkey children”. They are children who look after themselves while their parents work. And their bad condition has become a subject of concern. Lynette Long was one principal of an elementary school. She said, “We had a school rule against wearing jewelry. A lot of kids had chains around their necks with keys attached. I was constantly telling them to put the keys inside shirts. There were so many keys, it never came to my mind what they meant. Slowly, she learned that they were house keys. She and her husband began talking to the children who had keys. They learned of the effect working couples and single parents were having on their children. Fear was the biggest problem faced by children at home alone. One in three latchkey children the Longs talked to reported being frightened. Many had nightmares and were worried about their own safety. The most common way latchkey children deal with their fears is by hiding. They made hide in a shower stall, under a bed or in a closet. The second is TV. They often turn the volume up. It’s hard to get statistics on latchkey children, the Longs have learned. Most parents are slow to admit that they leave their children alone.

Question 27: The main problem of latchkey children is that they _________         

Question 46: Which of the following does the word “enemies” in line 1 refer to?            

Insect's lives are very short and they have many enemies, but they must survive long enough to breed and perpetuate their kind. The less insect-like they look, the better their chance of survival. To look "inedible" by imitating plants is a way frequently used by insects to survive. Mammals rarely imitate plants, but many fish and invertebrates do. The stick caterpillar is well named. It is hardly distinguishable from a brown or green twig. This caterpillar is quite common and can be found almost anywhere in North America. It is also called "measuring worm" or "inchworm". It walks by arching its body, then stretching out and grasping the branch with its front feet then looping its body again to bring the hind feet forward. When danger threatens, the stick caterpillar stretches its body away from the branch at an angle and remains rigid and still, like a twig, until the danger has passed.  Walking sticks, or stick insects, do not have to assume a rigid, twig-like pose to find protection; they look like inedible twigs in any position. There are many kinds of walking sticks, ranging in size from the few inches of the North American variety to some tropical species that may be over a foot long. When at rest their front legs are stretched out, heightening their camouflage. Some of the tropical species are adorned with spines or ridges, imitating the thorny bushes or trees in which they live.            

Leaves also seem to be a favorite object for insects to imitate. Many butterflies can suddenly disappear from view by folding their wings and sitting quietly among the plants that they resemble. 

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

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 learning 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 arc 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 stimulus 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.  

Question: According to the passage, the study of learning is important in many fields due to ________.         

Since the dawn of time, people have found ways to communicate with one another. Smoke signals and tribal drums were some of the earliest forms of communication. Letters, carried by birds or by humans on foot or on horseback, made it possible for people to communicate larger amounts of information between two places. The telegram and telephone set the stage for more modern means of communication. With the invention of the cellular phone, communication itself has become mobile. For you, a cell phone is probably just a device that you and your friends use to keep in touch with family and friends, take pictures, play games, or send text message. The definition of a cell phone is more specific: it is a hand-held wireless communication device that sends and receives signals by way of small special areas called cells. Walkie - talkies, telephones and cell phones are duplex communication devices: They make it possible for two people to talk to each other. Cell phones and walkie-talkies are different from regular phones because they can be used in many different locations. A walkie-talkie is sometimes called a half-duplex communication device because only one person can talk at a time. A cell phone is a full-duplex device because it uses both frequencies at the same time. A walkie-talkie has only one channel. A cell phone has more than a thousand channels. A walkie- talkie can transmit and receive signals across a distance of about a mile. A cell phone can transmit and receive signals over hundreds of miles. In 1973, an electronic company called Motorola hired Martin Cooper to work on wireless communication. Motorola and Bell Laboratories (now AT& T) were in a race to invent the first portable communication device. Martin Cooper won the race and became the inventor of the cell phone. On April 3,1973, Cooper made the first cell phone call to his opponent at AT&T while walking down the streets of New York city. People on the sidewalks gazed at Cooper in amazement. Cooper's phone was called A Motorola Dyna-Tac. It weighed a whopping 2.5 pounds (as compared to today's cell phones that weigh as little as 3 or 4 ounces) After the invention of his cell phone, Cooper began thinking of ways to make the cell phone available to the general public. After a decade, Motorola introduced the first cell phone for commercial use. The early cell phone and its service were both expensive. The cell phone itself cost about $3, 500. In 1977, AT&T constructed a cell phone system and tried it out in Chicago with over 2,000 customers. In 1981, a second cellular phone system was started in the Washington, D.C and Baltimore area. It took nearly 37 years for cell phones to become available for general public use. Today, there are more than sixty million cell phone customers with cell phones producing over thirty billion dollars per years. What is the main idea of the passage?         

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:

It is hard to think of a world without gas or electricity. Both are commonly used for lighting and heating today. We now can instantly flick a lighter or strike a match to make a flame. But it was not long ago that there were no such things as matches or lighters. To make fire, it was necessary to strike a piece of iron on flint for sparks to ignite some tinder. If the tinder was damp, or the flint old, you had to borrow some fire from a neighbor. We do not know exactly when or how people first used fire. Perhaps, many ages ago, they found that sticks would burn if they were dropped into some hole where melted lava from a volcano lay boiling. They brought the lighted sticks back to make their fire in a cave. Or, they may have seen trees catch fire through being struck by lightning, and used the trees to start their own fires. Gradually people learned they could start a fire without traveling far to find flames. They rubbed two pieces of wood together. This method was used for thousands of years. When people became used to making fires with which to cook food and stay warm at night, they found that certain resins or gums from trees burnt longer and brighter. They melted resins and dipped branches in the liquid to make torches that lit their homes at night. Iron stands in which torches used to be fixed can still be seen in old buildings of Europe. There was no lighting in city streets until gas lamps, and then electric lamps were installed. Boys ran about London at night carrying torches of burning material. They were called torch boys, or link boys, and earned a living by guiding visitors to friends’ houses at night. For centuries homes were lit by candles until oil was found. Even then, oil lamps were no more effective than a cluster of candles. We read about the splendors and marvels of ancient palaces and castles, but we forget that they must have been gloomy and murky places at night.

Question: The word “splendors” in the passage could be best replaced by which of the following?             

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:

Whales are the largest animals in the world, and the gentlest creatures we know. Although the whale is very huge, it is not hindered at all by its size when it is in the water. Whales have tails that end like flippers. With just a gentle flick, it can propel itself forward. The skin of a whale is so smooth that it does not create any friction that can slow the whale down. A whale’s breathing hole is located on the top of its head, so it can breathe without having to completely push its head out of the water. Whales are protected from the cold seawater by body fat that is called blubber. Whales live in the ocean but, in terms of behaviours, they are more similar to humans than fish. They live in family groups and they even travel in groups when they have to migrate from cooler to warmer waters. The young stay with their parents for as long as fifteen years. Whales are known not to desert the ill or injured members; instead, they cradle them. When whales are in danger, there are people who go to great lengths to help them. One such case occurred in 1988, when three young whales were trapped in the sea. It was close to winter and the sea had begun to freeze over. Whales are mammals that require oxygen from the air, so the frozen ice was a great danger to them. All they had then was a tiny hole in the ice for them to breathe through. Volunteers from all over soon turned up to help these creatures. They cut holes in the ice to provide more breathing holes for the whales. These holes would also serve as guides for the whales so that they could swim to warmer waters.

Question 37: Whales can move easily in water thanks to their______.        

Reading 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:       

You can usually tell when your friends are happy or angry by the looks on their faces or by their actions. This is useful because reading their emotional expressions helps you to know how to respond to important situations and to convey our intentions to others. But does raising the eyebrows and rounding the mouth say the same thing in Minneapolis as it does in Madagascar ? Much research on emotional expressions has centered on such questions. According to Paul Ekman, the leading researcher in this area, people speak and understand substantially the same “facial language”. Studies by Ekman’s group have demonstrated that humans share a set of universal emotional expressions that testify to the common biological heritage of the human species. Smiles, for example, signal happiness and frowns indicate sadness on the faces of people in such far-flung places as Argentina, Japan, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Sumatra, the United States, Vietnam, the jungles of New Guinea, and the Eskimo villages north of Artic Circle. Ekman and his colleagues claim that people everywhere can recognize at least seven basic emotions : sadness, fear, anger, disgust, contempt, happiness, and surprise. There are, however, huge differences across cultures in both the context and intensity of emotional displays – the so-called display responses – expecially negative ones – while many American children are encouraged to express their feelings more openly. Regardless of culture, however, emotions usually show themselves, to some degree, in people’s behavior. From their first days in life, babies produce facial expressions that communicate their feelings. The ability to read facial expressions develops early, too. Very young children pay close attention to facial expressions, and by age five, they nearly equal adults in their skill at reading emotions on people’s faces. This evidence all points to a biological underpinning for our abilities to express and interpret a basic set of human emotions. Moreover, as Chales Dawin pointed out over a century ago, some emotional expressions seem to appear across species boundaries. Cross-cultural psychologists tell us that certain emotional responses carry different meanings in diferrent cultures. For example, what emotion do you suppose might be conveyed while sticking out your tounge ? For American, this might indicate disgust, while in China it can signify surprise. Likewise, a grin on an American face may indicate joy, while on a Japanese face it may just as easily mean embarrassment. Clearly, culture influences emotional expressions.  

Question: The best title for the passage 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:

In my experience, freshmen today are different from those I knew when I started as a counselor and professor 25 years ago. College has always been demanding both academically and socially. But students now are less mature and often not ready for the responsibility of being in college. It is really too easy to point the finger at parents who protect their children from life’s obstacles. Parents, who handle every difficulty and every other responsibility for their children from writing admission essays to picking college courses, certainly may contribute to their children's lack of coping strategies. But we can look even more broadly to the social trends of today. How many people do you know who are on medication to prevent anxiety or depression? The number of students who arrive at college already medicated for unwanted emotions has increased dramatically in the past 10 years. We, as a society, don't want to “feel” anything unpleasant and we certainly don't want our children to “suffer”. The resulting problem is that by not experiencing negative emotions, one does not learn the necessary skills to tolerate and negotiate adversity. As a psychologist, I am well aware of the fact that some individuals suffer from depression and anxiety and can benefit from treatment, but I question the growing number of medicated adolescents today. Our world is more stressful in general because of the current economic and political realities, but I don’t believe that the college experience itself is more intense today than that of the past 10 years. What I do think is that many students are often not prepared to be young “adults” with all the responsibilities of life. What does this, mean for college faculty and staff? We are required to assist in the basic parenting of these students - the student who complains that her professor didn't remind her of the due date for an assignment that was dearly listed on the syllabus and the student who cheats on an assignment in spite of careful instructions about plagiarism. As college professors, we have to explain what it means to be an independent college student before we can even begin to teach. As parents and teachers we should expect young people to meet challenges. To encourage them in this direction, we have to step back and let them fail and pick themselves up and move forward. This approach needs to begin at an early age so that college can actually be a passage to independent adulthood.

Question 39: The phrase “on medication” in paragraph 3 is similar in meaning to _______.         

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

Although people drive in all countries, the rules can be quite different between nations and areas. For this reason, you should always learn the laws before you decide to drive in a foreign country. If you are not careful, you can get into trouble since the rules might be very different from what you are used to. For example, you can find some big differences in laws related to the minimum driving age, the appropriate side of the road to drive on, and mobile phone use while driving. In the U.S., people who live in Alaska may obtain a learner’s permit (legal permission to drive while being supervised) at the age of fourteen. This is quite different from the driving laws of Niger, where a person must be at least twenty-three years old to drive. If you are inquisitive to know the minimum driving age in most countries, the answer is eighteen. It may also surprise you to learn that not every country allows its citizens to drive, although most of them do. For example, women are not allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia no matter how old they are. Instead, they must have a male family member or hired male driver to travel by car. Driving on the right or left side of the road also varies. For instance, in Great Britain, Cyprus, Australia, India, and Malaysia people drive on the left. However, in the U.S., Mexico, France, and Canada people are required to drive on the right. As a matter of fact, one country can have different driving rules for different areas. People in Hong Kong drive on the left, while drivers in other parts of China use the right side of the road. Other driving laws that are different between countries include those related to using mobile phones. In Japan, using any kind of mobile phone device is illegal, even if you do not need to hold the phone with your hands. However, in Argentina and Australia, drivers are allowed to talk on their mobile phones as long as they do not use their hands.  You might also find it interesting to learn that some countries have very unusual laws. For example, in the country of Cyprus, it is against the law to eat or drink anything while driving. Even more interesting is that in Germany, there is a famous road called the Autobahn, where certain parts have no speed limit at all!  

Question: Which of the following is NOT mentioned as a main difference in driving laws in this passage?         

Read the following passage and choose the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions:

“Blue Moon” is a term that is used to describe the phenomenon of a second full moon occurring in one month. How could two full moons possibly occur in a single month? It is not nature’s fault; the natural phrases of the moon do not perfectly match up with the Roman calendar. Although still used today, this calendar was devised by Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar over 2000 years ago. While the calendar works well, the method that they used does not match the lunar cycle exactly. Thus, occasionally the moon will go through its “full” phrase twice before the month changes. A “blue moon” is an uncommon event. And it rare occurrence of a eventually led to the usage of the phrase “once in a blue moon”. This phrase was commonly used to indicate an event that could never happen. Over time, the meaning of the phrase changed from something that seldom happens. Today, this phrase is used to indicate extremely rare events, the absurd, or things that never happen.

Question: Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?         

Read the following passage and choose the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions:

Many flowering plants woo insect pollinators and gently direct them to their most fertile blossoms by changing the color of individual flowers from day to day. Through color cues, the plant signals to the insect that it would be better off visiting one flower on its bush than another. The particular hue tells the pollinator that the flower is full of far more pollen than are neighboring blooms. That nectar-rich flower also happens to be fertile and ready to disperse its pollen or to receive pollen the insect has picked up from another flower. Plants do not have to spend precious resources maintaining reservoirs of nectar in all their flowers. Thus, the color-coded communication system benefits both plants and insects. For example, on the lantana plant, a flower starts out on the first day as yellow, when it is rich with pollen and nectar. Influenced by an as-yet-unidentified environmental signal, the flower changes color by triggering the production of the pigment anthromyacin. It turns orange on the second day and red on the third. By the third day, it has no pollen to offer insects and is no longer fertile. On any given lantana bush, only 10 to 15 per cent of the blossoms are likely to be yellow and fertile. But in tests measuring the responsiveness of butterflies, it was discovered that the insects visited the yellow flowers at least 100 times more than would be expected from haphazard visitation. Experiments with paper flowers and painted flowers demonstrated that the butterflies were responding to color cues rather than, say, the scent of the nectar. In other types of plants, blossoms change from white to red, others from yellow to red, and so on. These color changes have been observed in some 74 families of plants.

Question: The first paragraph of the passage implies that insects benefit from the color-coded communication system because_______         

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

There is a strange paradox to the success of the Asian education model. On the one hand, class sizes are huge by Western standards with between 30 and 40 students per class, in countries like Japan and Korea. On the other hand, school children in developed Asian economies rank among the highest in the world for academic achievement in the areas of science and mathematics, especially on standardised tests. Meanwhile, British secondary school students fail to shine in conditions most educational researchers would say are far more likely to help them succeed. Classroom management seems to be easier in places like Korea, and perhaps lessons are more effective as a direct consequence. After all, we are only too aware of the decline in discipline standards in our own school: belligerent and disrespectful students appear to be the norm these days. Teachers in Britain seem powerless to control what happens anymore. Surely this situation cannot create a very effective learning environment, so perhaps the number of students is far less relevant than is the manner in which they conduct themselves. But there are other factors to consider, too. There is the home environment. The traditional family unit still remains relatively intact in Korea. Few children come from broken homes, so there is a sense of security, safety and trust both at home and at school. In Britain meanwhile, one in every two marriages fails and divorce rates are sky high. Perhaps children struggle to cope with unstable family conditions and their only way to express their frustration is by misbehaving at school. But while the Japanese, Korean and Asian models generally do seem to produce excellent results, the statistics don’t tell the whole truth. You see, behind those great maths and science scores, there is a quite remarkable work ethic. Asian students tend to put their education before literally everything else. They do very few extracurricular activities and devote far more time to their studies than their British peers. There has been a lot of attention and praise given to these Asian models and their “impressive” statistics of late. And without question, some of this praise is justified, but it seems to be a case of two extremes in operation here. At one end, there is the discipline and unbelievably hard work ethic of the Asian students – success in education before all else. At the other end, British students at times appear careless and extremely undisciplined by comparison, but at least they do have the free time to enjoy their youth and explore their interests. Is either system better outright? Or is it perhaps about time we stopped comparing and started trying to combine the best bits of both, so that we can finally offer our students a balanced, worthwhile education?   

Question: The traditional family unit_______.         

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 concept of obtaining fresh water from iceberg that are towed to populated areas and arid regions of the world was once treated as a joke more appropriate to cartoons than real life. But now it is being considered quite seriously by many nations, especially since scientists have warned that the human race will outgrow its fresh water supply faster than it runs out of food. Glaciers are a possible source of fresh water that have been overlooked until recently. Three-quarters of the Earth's fresh water supply is still tied up in glacial ice, a reservoir of untapped fresh water so immense that it could sustain all the rivers of the world for 1,000 years. Floating on the oceans every year are 7,659 trillion metric tons of ice encased in 10,000 icebergs that break away from the polar ice caps, more than ninety percent of them from Antarctica. Huge glaciers that stretch over the shallow continental shelf give birth to icebergs throughout the year. Icebergs are not like sea ice, which is formed when the sea itself freezes; rather, they are formed entirely on land, breaking off when glaciers spread over the sea. As they drift away from the polar region, icebergs sometimes move mysteriously in a direction opposite to the wind, pulled by subsurface currents. Because they melt more slowly than smaller pieces of ice, icebergs have been known to drift as far north as 35 degrees south of the equator in the Atlantic Ocean. To corral them and steer them to parts of the world where they are needed would not be too difficult. The difficulty arises in other technical matters, such as tile prevention of rapid melting in warmer climates and the funneling of fresh water to shore in great volume. But even if the icebergs lost half of their volume in towing, the water they could provide would be far cheaper than that produced by desalination, or removing salt from water.

Question 32: The word “currents” in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to_________         

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 below:

 Choosing a career may be one of the hardest jobs you ever have, and it must be done with care. View a career as an opportunity to do something you love, not simply as a way to earn a living. Investing the time and effort to thoroughly explore your options can mean the difference between finding a stimulating and rewarding career and move from job to unsatisfying job in an attempt to find the right one. Work influences virtually every aspect of your life, from your choice of friends to where you live. Here are just a few of the factors to consider.

 Deciding what matters most to you is essential to making the right decision. You may want to begin by assessing your likes, dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses. Think about the classes, hobbies, and surroundings that you find most appealing. Ask yourself questions, such as "Would you like to travel? Do you want to work with children? Are you more suited to solitary or cooperative work?" There are no right or wrong answers; only you know what is important to you. Determine which job features you require, which ones you would prefer, and which ones you cannot accept. Then rank them in order of importance to you.

 The setting of the job is one factor to take into account. You may not want to sit at a desk all day. If not, there are diversity occupation - building inspector, supervisor, real estate agent - that involve a great deal of time away from the office. Geographical location may be a concern, and employment in some fields is concentrated in certain regions. Advertising job can generally be found only in large cities. On the other hand, many industries such as hospitality, law education, and retail sales are found in all regions of the country.

 If a high salary is important to you, do not judge a career by its starting wages. Many jobs, such as insurance sales, offers relatively low starting salaries; however, pay substantially increases along with your experience, additional training, promotions and commission.

 Don’t rule out any occupation without learning more about it. Some industries evoke positive or negative associations. The traveling life of a flight attendant appears glamorous, while that of a plumber does not. Remember that many jobs are not what they appear to be at first, and may have merits or demerits that are less obvious. Flight attendants must work long, grueling hours without sleeps, whereas plumbers can be as highly paid as some doctors. Another point to consider is that as you get mature, you will likely to develop new interests and skills that may point the way to new opportunities. The choice you make today need not be your final one.

Question 31: According to paragraph 3, which of the following fields is NOT suitable for a person who does not want to live in a big city?  

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 below:

 Choosing a career may be one of the hardest jobs you ever have, and it must be done with care. View a career as an opportunity to do something you love, not simply as a way to earn a living. Investing the time and effort to thoroughly explore your options can mean the difference between finding a stimulating and rewarding career and move from job to unsatisfying job in an attempt to find the right one. Work influences virtually every aspect of your life, from your choice of friends to where you live. Here are just a few of the factors to consider.

 Deciding what matters most to you is essential to making the right decision. You may want to begin by assessing your likes, dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses. Think about the classes, hobbies, and surroundings that you find most appealing. Ask yourself questions, such as "Would you like to travel? Do you want to work with children? Are you more suited to solitary or cooperative work?" There are no right or wrong answers; only you know what is important to you. Determine which job features you require, which ones you would prefer, and which ones you cannot accept. Then rank them in order of importance to you.

 The setting of the job is one factor to take into account. You may not want to sit at a desk all day. If not, there are diversity occupation - building inspector, supervisor, real estate agent - that involve a great deal of time away from the office. Geographical location may be a concern, and employment in some fields is concentrated in certain regions. Advertising job can generally be found only in large cities. On the other hand, many industries such as hospitality, law education, and retail sales are found in all regions of the country.

 If a high salary is important to you, do not judge a career by its starting wages. Many jobs, such as insurance sales, offers relatively low starting salaries; however, pay substantially increases along with your experience, additional training, promotions and commission.

 Don’t rule out any occupation without learning more about it. Some industries evoke positive or negative associations. The traveling life of a flight attendant appears glamorous, while that of a plumber does not. Remember that many jobs are not what they appear to be at first, and may have merits or demerits that are less obvious. Flight attendants must work long, grueling hours without sleeps, whereas plumbers can be as highly paid as some doctors. Another point to consider is that as you get mature, you will likely to develop new interests and skills that may point the way to new opportunities. The choice you make today need not be your final one.

Question 32: It can be inferred from the paragraph 3 that _______.         

Reading 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:         

You can usually tell when your friends are happy or angry by the looks on their faces or by their actions. This is useful because reading their emotional expressions helps you to know how to respond to important situations and to convey our intentions to others. But does raising the eyebrows and rounding the mouth say the same thing in Minneapolis as it does in Madagascar ? Much research on emotional expressions has centered on such questions. According to Paul Ekman, the leading researcher in this area, people speak and understand substantially the same “facial language”. Studies by Ekman’s group have demonstrated that humans share a set of universal emotional expressions that testify to the common biological heritage of the human species. Smiles, for example, signal happiness and frowns indicate sadness on the faces of people in such far-flung places as Argentina, Japan, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Sumatra, the United States, Vietnam, the jungles of New Guinea, and the Eskimo villages north of Artic Circle. Ekman and his colleagues claim that people everywhere can recognize at least seven basic emotions : sadness, fear, anger, disgust, contempt, happiness, and surprise. There are, however, huge differences across cultures in both the context and intensity of emotional displays – the so-called display responses – expecially negative ones – while many American children are encouraged to express their feelings more openly. Regardless of culture, however, emotions usually show themselves, to some degree, in people’s behavior. From their first days in life, babies produce facial expressions that communicate their feelings. The ability to read facial expressions develops early, too. Very young children pay close attention to facial expressions, and by age five, they nearly equal adults in their skill at reading emotions on people’s faces. This evidence all points to a biological underpinning for our abilities to express and interpret a basic set of human emotions. Moreover, as Chales Dawin pointed out over a century ago, some emotional expressions seem to appear across species boundaries. Cross-cultural psychologists tell us that certain emotional responses carry different meanings in diferrent cultures. For example, what emotion do you suppose might be conveyed while sticking out your tounge ? For American, this might indicate disgust, while in China it can signify surprise. Likewise, a grin on an American face may indicate joy, while on a Japanese face it may just as easily mean embarrassment. Clearly, culture influences emotional expressions.  

Question: Young children _______         

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answers:

American humor and American popular heroes were born together. The first popular heroes of the new nation were comic heroes, and the first popular humor of the new nation was the antics of its hero-clowns.

The heroic and the comic were combined in novel American proportions in popular literature. The heroic themes are obvious enough and not much different from those in the legends of other times and places: Achilles, Beowulf, Siegfried, Roland, and King Arthur. The American Davy Crockett legends repeat the familiar pattern of the old world heroic story: the pre-eminence of a mighty hero whose fame in myth has a tenuous basis in fact; the remarkable birth and precocious strength of the hero; single combats in which he distinguished himself against antagonists, both man and beast; vows and boasts; pride of the hero in his weapons, his dog, and his woman.

Davy Crockett conquered man and beast with a swaggering nonchalance. He overcame animals by force of body and will. He killed four wolves at the age of six. He hugged a bear to death; he killed a rattlesnake with his teeth. He mastered the forces of nature. Crockett's most famous natural exploit was saving the earth on the coldest day in history. First, he climbed a mountain to determine the trouble. Then he rescued all creation by squeezing bear-grease on the earth's frozen axis and over the sun's icy face. He whistled, "Push along, keep moving!" The earth gave a grunt and began moving.

Neither the fearlessness nor the bold huntsman's prowess was peculiarly American. Far more distinctive was the comic quality, all heroes are heroic; few are also clowns. What made the American popular hero heroic also made him comic. "May be", said Crockett, "you'll laugh at me and not at my book". The ambiguity of American life and the vagueness which laid the continent open to adventure, which made the land a rich storehouse of the unexpected, which kept vocabulary ungoverned and the language fluid----this same ambiguity suffused both the Crockett legends were never quite certain whether to laugh or to applaud, or whether what they saw and heard was wonderful, awful or ridiculous.

Question 46: Davy Crockett is an example of _______.         

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:

It is commonly believed that school is where people go to get an education. Nevertheless, it has been said that today children interrupt their education to go to school. The difference between schooling and education implied by this remark is important. Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling. Education knows no limits. It can take place anywhere, whether in the shower or on the job, whether in the kitchen or on a tractor. It includes both the formal learning that takes place in school and the whole universe of informal learning. The agent (doer) of education can vary from respected grandparents to the people arguing about politics on the radio, from a child to a famous scientist. Whereas schooling has a certain predictability, education quite often produces surprises. A chance conversation with a stranger may lead a person to discover how little is known of other religions. People receive education from infancy on. Education, then, is a very broad, inclusive term; it is a lifelong process, a process that starts long before the start of school, and one that should be a necessary part of one’s entire life. Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process, whose general pattern varies little from one setting to the next. Throughout a country, children arrive at school at about the same time, take the assigned seats, are taught by an adult, use similar textbooks, do homework, take exams, and so on. The pieces of reality that are to be learned, whether they are the alphabet or an understanding of the workings of governments, have been limited by the subjects being taught. For example, high school students know that they are not likely to find out in their classes the truth about political problems in their society or what the newest filmmakers are experimenting with. There are clear and undoubted conditions surrounding the formalized process of schooling.

Question 20: In the passage, the expression "children interrupt their education to go to school" mostly implies that________.         

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 languages have several levels of vocabulary that may be used by the same speakers. In English, at least three have been identified and described. Standard usage includes those words and expressions understood, used, and accepted by a majority of the speakers of a language in any situation regardless of the level of formality. As such, these words and expressions are well defined and listed in standard dictionaries. Colloquialisms, on the other hand, are familiar words and idioms that are understood by almost all speakers of a language and used in informal speech or writing, but not considered acceptable for more formal situations. Almost all idiomatic expressions are colloquial language. Slang, however, refers to words and expressions understood by a large number of speakers but not accepted as appropriate formal usage by the majority. Colloquial expressions and even slang may be found in standard dictionaries but will be so identified. Both colloquial usage and slang are more common in speech than in writing. Colloquial speech often passes into standard speech. Some slang also passes into standard speech, but other slang expressions enjoy momentary popularity followed by obscurity. In some cases, the majority never accepts certain slang phrases but nevertheless retains them in their collective memories. Every generation seems to require its own set of words to describe familiar objects and events. It has been pointed out by a number of linguists that three cultural conditions are necessary for the creation of a large body of slang expressions. First, the introduction and acceptance of new objects and situations in the society; second, a diverse population with a large number of subgroups; third, association among the subgroups and the majority population. Finally, it is worth nothing that the terms “standard”, “colloquial”, and “slang” exist only as abstract levels for scholars who study language. Only a tiny number of the speakers of any language will be aware that they are using colloquial or slang expressions. Most speakers of English will, during appropriate situations, select and use all three types of expressioins. Question 41: Where in the passage does the author explain where colloquial language and slang are most commonly used?         

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 that follow:

Although only a small percentage of the electromagnetic radiation that is emitted by the Sun is ultraviolet (UV) radiation, the amount that is emitted would be enough to cause severe damage to most forms of life on Earth were it all to reach the surface of the Earth. Fortunately, all of the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation does not reach the Earth because of a layer of oxygen, called the ozone layer encircling the Earth in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 15 miles above the Earth. The ozone layer absorbs much of the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation and prevents it from reaching the Earth. Ozone is a form of oxygen in which each molecule consists of three atoms (O3) instead of the two atoms (O2) usually found in an oxygen molecule. Ozone forms in the stratosphere in a process that is initiated by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. UV radiation from the Sun splits oxygen molecules with two atoms into free oxygen atoms, and each of these unattached oxygen atoms then joins up with an oxygen molecule to form ozone. UV radiation is also capable of splitting up ozone molecules; thus, ozone is constantly forming, splitting, and reforming in the stratosphere. When UV radiation is absorbed during the process of ozone formation and reformation, it is unable to reach Earth and cause damage there. Recently, however, the ozone layer over parts of the Earth has been diminishing. Chief among the culprits in the case of the disappearing ozone, those that are really responsible, are the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). CFCs meander up from Earth into the stratosphere, where they break down and release chlorine. The released chlorine reacts with ozone in the stratosphere to form chlorine monoxide (CIO) and oxygen (O2). The chlorine then becomes free to go through the cycle over and over again. One chlorine atom can, in fact, destroy hundreds of thousands of ozone molecules in this repetitious cycle, and the effects of this destructive process are now becoming evident. 

Question: The word “encircling” in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to…………….         

Read the following passage and mark the letters A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions: 

This rapid transcontinental settlement and these new urban industrial circumstances of the last half of the 19th century were accompanied by the development of national literature of great abundance and variety. New themes, new forms, new subjects, new regions, new authors, new audiences all emerged in the literature of this half century.

As a result, at the onset of World War I, the spirit and substance of American literature had evolved remarkably, just as its center of production had shifted from Boston to New York in the late 1880s and the sources of its energy to Chicago and the Midwest. No longer was it produced, at least in its popular forms, in the main by solemn, typically moralistic men from New England and the Old South; no longer were polite, well-dressed, grammatically correct, middle-class young people the only central characters in its narratives; no longer were these narratives to be set in exotic places and remote times; no longer, indeed, were fiction, poetry, drama, and formal history the chief acceptable forms of literary expression; no longer, finally, was literature read primarily by young, middle class women.

In sum, American literature in these years fulfilled in considerable measure the condition Walt Whitman called for in 1867 in describing Leaves of Grass: it treats, he said of his own major work, each state and region as peers "and expands from them, and includes the world ... connecting an American citizen with the citizens of all nations." At the same time, these years saw the emergence of what has been designated "the literature of argument," powerful works in sociology, philosophy, psychology, many of them impelled by the spirit of exposure and reform. Just as America learned to play a role in this half century as an autonomous international political, economic, and military power, so did its literature establish itself as a producer of major works.

Question: It can be inferred from the passage that Walt Whitman________.               

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:

Since water is the basis of life, composing the greater part of the tissues of all living things, the crucial problem of desert animals is to survive in a world where sources of flowing water are rare. And since man’s inexorable necessity is to absorb large quantities of water at frequent intervals, he can scarcely comprehend that many creatures of the desert pass their entire lives without a single drop. Uncompromising as it is, the dessert has not eliminated life but only those forms unable to withstand its desiccating effects. No moist-skinned, water–loving animals can exist there. Few large animals are found: the giants of the North America desert are the deer, the coyote, and the bobcat. Since desert country is open, it holds more swift–footed, running, and leaping creatures than the tangled forest. Its populations are largely nocturnal, silent, filled with reticence, and ruled by stealth. Yet they are not emaciated. Having adapted to their austere environment, they are as healthy as animals anywhere in the world. The secret of their adjustment lies in a combination of behavior and physiology. None could survive if, like mad dogs and Englishmen, they went out in the midday sun; many would die in a matter of minutes. So most of them pass the burning hours asleep in cool, humid burrows underneath the ground, emerging to hunt only by night. The surface of the sun–baked desert averages around 150 degrees, but 18 inches down the temperature is only 60 degrees. (Source:-Reading Challenge 2‖, Casey Malarcher & Andrea Janzen, Compass Publishing).

Question 7: The word “desiccating” means_______