Bài tập trắc nghiệm 60 phút Đoạn văn đọc hiểu - Tiếng Anh 12 - Đề số 6

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The increase in international business and in foreign investment has created a need for executives with knowledge of foreign language and skills in cross-cultural communication. Americans, however, have not been well trained in either area and, consequently, have not enjoyed the same level in negotiation in an international arena as have their foreign counterparts.          

Negotiating is the process of communicating back and forth for the purpose of reaching an agreement. Involves persuasion and compromise, but in order to participate in either one, the negotiators must understand the ways in which people are persuaded and how compromise is reached within the culture of negotiation.          

In many international negotiations business abroad, Americans are perceived as wealthy and impersonal. It often appears to the foreign negotiator that Americans represents a large multimillion–dollar corporation that can afford to pay the price without bargaining further. The American negotiator’s role became that of and impersonal purveyor of information and cash, the image that succeeds only in underming the negotiation.          

In studies of American negotiators abroad, several traits have been identified that may serve to confirm that stereotypical perception, while subverting the negotiator’s position. Two traits in particular that cause cross-cultural misunderstanding are directness and impatience on that part of Amarican negotiator. Furthermore, American negotiators often insist on realizing short-term goals. Foreign negotiators, on the other hand, may value the relationship established between negotiators and may be willing to invest time in it for long-term benefits. In order to solidify the relationship, they may opt for indirect interactions without regard for the time involved in getting to know the other negotiator.         

Clearly, perceptions and differences in values affect the outcomes of negotiation and the success of negotiators. For Americans to play a more effective role in international business negotiations, they must put forth more effort to improve cross-cultural understanding.

Question: What’s the author main point?         

Question 26: According to the passage, early violins were different from modern violins in that early violins____________. 

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

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People used to know more or less how their children would live. Now things are changing so quickly that they don’t even know what their own lives will be like in a few years’ time. What follows is not science fiction. It is how experts see the future. You are daydreaming behind the steering wheel; is it too dangerous? No! That’s no problem because you have it on automatic pilot, and with its hi–tech computers and cameras, your car “know” how to get you home safe and sound. What is for lunch? In the old days you used to stop off to buy a hamburger or a pizza. Now you use your diagnostic machine to find out which foods your body needs. If your body needs more vegetables and less fat, your food–preparation machine makes you a salad. After lunch, you go down the hall to your home office. Here you have everything you need to do your work. Thanks to your information screen and your latest generation computer, you needn’t go to the office anymore. The information screen shows an urgent message from a co-worker in Brazil. You can instantly send back a reply to him and go on to deal with other matters.

Question: The word “urgent” in the last paragraph probably means _____.  

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A little more than a hundred years ago, a number of European scholars began to record stories being told in peasant cottages and compile them into the first great collection of European folk tales. Written evidence exists to prove that the folk tales they recorded existed long before then thought. Collections of sermons from the 12th to the 15th century show that medieval preachers knew of some of the same stories as those recorded by the 19th century folklorists. The collections of folk tales made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries provide a rare opportunity to make contact with the illiterate masses who have disappeared into the pass without leaving a trace. To reject folk tales as historical evidence because they cannot be dated and situation with precision centuries. But to attempt to penetrate that world is to face a daunting set of obstacles, the greatest of which is the impossibility of listening in on the story tellers. No matter how accurate they may be the versions of the tales recorded in writing cannot convey the effects that the storytellers must have used to bring the stories to life: the dramatic pauses, the sly glances, the use of gestures to set scenes, and the use of sounds punctuate action. All of those devices shaped the meaning of the tales, and all of them elude the historian. He cannot be sure that the limp and lifeless text he holds between the covers of a book provides an accurate account of the performance that took place in earlier times.

Question: According to the passage, peasant folklore was recorded by ________.          

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Psychologist have debated a long time about whether a child’s upbringing can give it the ability to do outstandingly well. Some think that it is impossible to develop genius and say that it is simply something a person is born with. Others, however , argue that the potential for great achievement can be develop. The truth lies somewhere between these two extremes. It seems very obvious that being born with the right qualities from gifted parents will increase a child’s ability to do well. However, this ability will be fully realized only with the right upbringing and opportunities. As one psychologist says, “ To have a fast car, you need both a good engine and fuel.’’ Scientists have recently assessed intelligence, achievement, and ability in 50 sets of identical twins that were separated shortly birth and brought up by different parents. They found that achievement was based on intelligence, and later influenced by the child’s environment. One case involving very intelligent twins was quoted. One of the twins received a normal upbringing, and performed well. The other twin, however, was brought up by extremely supportive parents and given every possible opportunity to develop its abilities. That twin, thought starting out with the same degree of intelligence as the other, performed even better. This case reflects the general principle of intelligence and ability. The more favorable the environment, the more a child’s intelligence and ability are developed. However, there is no link between intelligence and socioeconomic level of a child’s family. In other words, it does not matter how poor or how rich a family is , as this does not affect the intelligence. Gifted people can not be created by supportive parents, but they can be developed by them. One professor of music said that outstanding musicians usually started two or three years earlier than ordinary performers, often because their parents had recognized their ability. These musicians then needed at least ten years’ hard work and training in order to reach the level they were capable of attaining. People who want to have very gifted children are given the following advice: Marry an intelligent person. Allow children to follow their own interests rather than the interests of the parents. Start a child’s education early but avoid pushing the child too hard. Encourage children to play; for example, playing with musical instrument is essential for a child who wants to become an outstanding musician.

Question 46: Scientists chose twins for their study because_______.         

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Simply being bilingual doesn’t qualify someone to interpret. Interpreting is not only a mechanical process of converting one sentence in language A into the same sentence in language B. Rather, it’s a complex art in which thoughts and idioms that have no obvious counterparts from tongue to tongue or words that have several meanings must be quickly transformed in such a way that the message is clearly and accurately expressed to the listener.         At one international conference, an American speaker said, “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sows ear”, which meant nothing to the Spanish audience. The interpretation was, “A monkey in a silk dress is still a monkey” -an idiom the Spanish understood and that expressed the same idea. There are 2 kinds of interpreters, simultaneous and consecutive. The former, sitting in a separated booth, usually at a large multilingual conference, speaks to listeners wearing headphones, interpreting what a foreign language speaker says actually a sentence behind. Consecutive interpreters are the ones most international negotiations use. They are employed for smaller meetings without sound booths and headphones. Consecutive interpretation also requires two-person teams. A foreign speaker says his piece while the interpreter, using a special shorthand, takes notes and during a pause, tells the client what was said.

Question 43: What is the purpose of the passage?         

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By the mid-nineteenth century, the term "icebox" had entered the American language, but ice was still only beginning to affect the diet of ordinary citizens in the United States. The ice trade grew with the growth of cities. Ice was used in hotels, taverns, and hospitals, and by some forward-looking city dealers in fresh meat, fresh fish, and butter. After the Civil War (1860-1865), as ice was used to refrigerate freight cars, it also came into household use. Even before 1880, half the ice sold in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and one-third of that sold in Boston and Chicago, went to families for their own use. This had become possible because a new household convenience, the icebox, a precursor of the modern refrigerator, had been invented. Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as we might now suppose. In the early nineteenth century, the knowledge of the physics of heat, which was essential to a science of refrigeration, was rudimentary. The common-sense notion that the best icebox was one that prevented the ice from melting was of course mistaken, for it was the melting of the ice that performed the cooling. Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included wrapping the ice in blankets, which kept the ice from doing its job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventors achieve the nice balance of insulation and circulation needed for an efficient icebox. But as early as 1803, an ingenious Maryland farmer, Thomas Moore, had been on the right track. He owned a farm about twenty miles outside the city of Washington, for which the village of Georgetown was the market center. When he used an icebox of his own design to transport his butter to market, he found that customers would pass up the rapidly melting stuff in the tubs of his competitors to pay a premium price for his butter, still fresh and hard in neat, one-pound bricks. One advantage of his icebox, Moore explained, was that farmers would no longer have to travel to market at night in order to keep their produce cool.

Question: The author mentions “fish” in the first paragraph because ________________.    

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The increase in international business and in foreign investment has created a need for executives with knowledge of foreign language and skills in cross-cultural communication. Americans, however, have not been well trained in either area and, consequently, have not enjoyed the same level in negotiation in an international arena as have their foreign counterparts.          

Negotiating is the process of communicating back and forth for the purpose of reaching an agreement. Involves persuasion and compromise, but in order to participate in either one, the negotiators must understand the ways in which people are persuaded and how compromise is reached within the culture of negotiation.          

In many international negotiations business abroad, Americans are perceived as wealthy and impersonal. It often appears to the foreign negotiator that Americans represents a large multimillion–dollar corporation that can afford to pay the price without bargaining further. The American negotiator’s role became that of and impersonal purveyor of information and cash, the image that succeeds only in underming the negotiation.          

In studies of American negotiators abroad, several traits have been identified that may serve to confirm that stereotypical perception, while subverting the negotiator’s position. Two traits in particular that cause cross-cultural misunderstanding are directness and impatience on that part of Amarican negotiator. Furthermore, American negotiators often insist on realizing short-term goals. Foreign negotiators, on the other hand, may value the relationship established between negotiators and may be willing to invest time in it for long-term benefits. In order to solidify the relationship, they may opt for indirect interactions without regard for the time involved in getting to know the other negotiator.         

Clearly, perceptions and differences in values affect the outcomes of negotiation and the success of negotiators. For Americans to play a more effective role in international business negotiations, they must put forth more effort to improve cross-cultural understanding.

Question: Which of the following is mentioned as a criterion necessary for negotiation?  

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The biologist's role in society as well as his moral and ethical responsibility in the discovery and development of new ideas has led to a reassessment of his social and scientific value systems. A scientist can no longer ignore the consequences of his discoveries; he is as concerned with the possible misuses of his findings as he is with the basic research in which he is involved. This emerging social and political role of the biologist and all other scientists requires a weighing of values that cannot be done with the accuracy or the objectivity of a laboratory balance. As a member of society, it is necessary for a biologist now to redefine his social obligations and his functions, particularly in the realm of making judgments about such ethical problems as man's control of his environment or his manipulation of genes to direct further evolutionary development.

Probably the greatest biological problem of the future, as it is of the present, will be to find ways to curb environmental pollution without interfering with man's constant effort to improve the quality of his life. Many scientists believe that underlying the spectre of pollution is the problem of surplus human population. A rise in population necessitates an increase in the operations of modern industry, the waste products of which increase the pollution of air, water, and soil. The question of how many people the resources of the Earth can support is one of critical importance.

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 In science, a theory is a reasonable explanation of observed events that are related. A theory often involves an imaginary model that helps scientists picture the way an observed event could be produced. A good example of this is found in the kinetic molecular theory, in which gases are pictured as being made up of many small particles that are in constant motion. 

 A useful theory, in addition to explaining past observation, helps to predict events that have not as yet been observed. After a theory has been publicized, scientists design experiments to test the theory. If observations confirm the scientists' predictions, the theory is supported. If observations do not confirm the predictions, the scientists must search further. There may be a fault in the experiment, or the theory may have to be revised or rejected.

 Science involves imagination and creative thinking as well as collecting information and performing experiments. Facts by themselves are not science. As the mathematician Jules Henri Poincare said: "Science is built with facts just as a house is built with bricks, but a collection of facts cannot be called science any more than a pile of bricks can be called a house." 

 Most scientists start an investigation by finding out what other scientists have learned about a particular problem. After known facts have been gathered, the scientist comes to the part of the investigation that requires considerable imagination. Possible solutions to the problem are formulated. These possible solutions are called hypotheses. In a way, any hypothesis is a leap into the unknown. It extends the scientist's thinking beyond the known facts. The scientist plans experiments, performs calculations, and makes observations to test hypotheses. For without hypotheses, further investigation lacks purpose and direction. When hypotheses are confirmed, they are incorporated into theories. 

Question: The word "supported" in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to _______.         

Question 47: What can be inferred about the government? 

Clara Barton became known as “The Angel of the Battlefield” during the American Civil War. Born in Oxford, Massachusetts in 1821, Clara Barton’s interest in helping soldiers on the battlefield began when she was told army stories from her father. Another event that influenced her decision to help soldiers was an accident her brother had. His injuries were cared for by Barton for 2 years. At the time, she was only 11 years old. Barton began teaching school at the age of 15. She taught for 18 years before she moved to Washington, D.C. in 1854. The civil war broke out 6 years later. Immediately, Barton started war service by helping the soldiers with their needs. At the battle of Bull Run, Clara Barton received permission from the government to take care of the sick and hurt. Barton did this with great empathy and kindness. She acknowledged each soldier as a person. Her endurance and courage on the battlefield were admired by many. When the war ended in 1865, she used 4 years of her life to assist the government in searching for soldiers who were missing during the war. The search for missing soldiers and years of hard work made her feeble physically. In 1869, her doctors recommended a trip to Europe for a rest. While she was on vacation, she became involved with the International Red Cross, an organization set up by the Geneva Convention in 1864. Clara Barton realized that the Red Cross would be a big help to the United States. After she returned to the United States, she worked very hard to create an American Red Cross. She talked to government leaders and let American people know about the Red Cross. In 1881, the National Society of the Red Cross was finally established with its headquarters in Washington, D.C. Clara Barton managed its activities for 23 years. Barton never let her age stop her from helping people. At the age of 79, she helped flood victims in Galveston, Texas. Barton finally resigned from the Red Cross in 1904. She was 92 years old and had truly earned her titled “The Angel of the Battlefield”.    

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In the West, cartoons are used chiefly to make people laugh. The important feature of all these cartoons is the joke and the element of surprise which is contained. Even though it is very funny, a good cartoon is always based on close observation of a particular feature of life and usually has a serious purpose. Cartoons in the West have been associated with political and social matters for many years. In wartime, for example, they proved to be an excellent way of spreading propaganda. Nowadays cartoons are often used to make short, sharp comments on politics and governments as well as on a variety of social matters. In this way, the modern cartoon has become a very powerful force in influencing people in Europe and the United States. Unlike most American and European cartoons, however, many Chinese cartoon drawings in the past have also attempted to educate people, especially those who could not read and write. Such cartoons about the lives and sayings of great men in China have proved extremely useful in bringing education to illiterate and semi-literate people throughout China. Confucius, Mencius and Laozi have all appeared in very interesting stories presented in the form of cartoons. The cartoons themselves have thus served to illustrate the teachings of the Chinese sages in a very attractive way. In this sense, many Chinese cartoons are different from Western cartoons in so far as they do not depend chiefly on telling jokes. Often, there is nothing to laugh at when you see Chinese cartoons. This is not their primary aim. In addition to commenting on serious political and social matters, Chinese cartoons have aimed at spreading the traditional Chinese thoughts and culture as widely as possible among the people. Today, however, Chinese cartoons have an added part to play in spreading knowledge. They offer a very attractive and useful way of reaching people throughout the world, regardless of the particular country in which they live. Thus, through cartoons, the thoughts and teachings of the old Chinese philosophers and sages can now reach people who live in such countries as Britain, France, America, Japan, Malaysia or Australia and who are unfamiliar with the Chinese culture. Until recently, the transfer of knowledge and culture has been overwhelmingly from the West to the East and not vice versa. By means of cartoons, however, publishing companies in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are now having success in correcting this imbalance between the East and the West. Cartoons can overcome language barriers in all foreign countries. The vast increase in the popularity of these cartoons serves to illustrate the truth of Confucius’s famous saying “One picture is worth a thousand words.”   Question: Chinese cartoons have been useful as an important means of ________.         

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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: The word “exotic" in paragraph two is closest in meaning to________.    

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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 “gloomy” in the passage is closest in meaning to         

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In 1988, for the first time in British history a National Curriculum was introduced. The National Curriculum tells pupils which subjects they have to study, what they must learn and when they have to take assessment tests. Between the ages of 14 and 16, pupils study for their GCSE ( General Certificate of Secondary Education ) exams. Pupil must take English language, Math and Science for GCSE, as well as a half GCSE in a foreign language and Technology. In addition, they must also be taught Physical Education, Religious Education and Sex Education, although they do not take exams in these subjects. At the age of 16, pupils can leave school. If pupils stay on, they usually, take A (Advanced) levels, AS ( Advanced Supplementary ) level or GNVQs ( Greater national Vocational Qualifications ). It is quite common to combine, for example, 2 A levels with 1 AS level, or 1 A level with 1 GNVQ. Pupils talking A levels study traditional subjects, such as Frech, Physics or History. To go to university, pupils usually need 2 or 3 A levels. AS levels are the same standard as A levels, but only half of the content: AS level German pupils take the A-level Gerrman language exam, but do not take the A-level German Literature exam. GNVQs are vocational qualifications. Pupils usually take on GNVQ in subjects such as Business, Leisure and Tourism, Manufacturing, and Art and Design. One GVNQ (at advanced level) is equal to two A levels.

Question 48: Pupils need______ A levels to continue to study at university         

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Broad-tailed hummingbirds often nest in quaking, slender deciduous trees with smooth, gray-green bark found in the Colorado Rockies of the Western United States. After flying some 2,000 kilometres north from where they have wintered in Mexico, the hummingbirds need six weeks to build a nest, incubate their eggs, and raise the chicks. A second nest is feasible only if the first fails early in the season. Quality, not quantity, is what counts in hummingbird reproduction. A nest on the lowest intact branch of an aspen will give a hummingbird a good view, a clear flight patch, and protection for her young. Male hummingbirds claim feeding territories in open meadows where, from late May through June, they mate with females coming to feed but take no part in nesting. Thus when the hen is away to feed, the nest is unguarded. While the smooth bark of the aspen trunk generally offers a poor grip for the claws of a hungry squirrel or weasel, aerial attacks, from a hawk, owl, or gray jay, are more likely. The choice of where to build a nest is based not only on the branch itself but also on what hangs over it. A crooked deformity in the nest branch, a second, unusually close branch overhead, or proximity to part of a trunk bowed by a past ice storm are features that provide shelter and make for an attractive nest site. Scarcely larger than a halved golf ball, the nest is painstaking constructed of spider webs and plant down, decorated and camouflaged outside with paper-like bits of aspen bark held together with more strands of spider silk. By early June it will hold two pea-sized eggs, which each weigh one-seventh of the mother's weight, and in sixteen to nineteen days, two chicks.

Question: What aspect of broad-tailed hummingbird behaviour does the passage mainly discuss?         

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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 biggest difference lies in ______         

Question 49: Which of the following is true of stick insects?         

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. 

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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 24: “Latchkey children” in the passage means children who ___________         

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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 38: According to the writer, students' difficulties to cope with college life are partly due to _______.         

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A number of factors related to the voice reveal the personality of the speaker. The first is the broad area of communication, which includes imparting information by use of language, communicating with a group or an individual and specialized communication through performance. A person conveys thoughts and ideas through choice of words, by a tone of voice that is pleasant or unpleasant, gentle or harsh, by the rhythm that is inherent within the language itself, and by speech rhythms that are flowing and regular or uneven and hesitant, and finally, by the pitch and melody of the utterance. When speaking before a group, a person’s tone may indicate uncertainty or fright, confidence or calm. At interpersonal levels, the tone may reflect ideas and feelings over and above the words chosen, or may believe them. Here the participant’s tone can consciously or unconsciously reflect intuitive sympathy or antipathy, lack of concern or interest, fatigue, anxiety, enthusiasm or excitement, all of which are usually discernible by the acute listener. Public performance is a manner of communication that is highly specialized with its own techniques for obtaining effects by voice and /or gesture. The motivation derived from the text, and in the case of singing, the music, in combination with the performer’s skills, personality, and ability to create empathy will determine the success of artistic, political, or pedagogic communication. Second, the voice gives psychological clues to a person's self-image, perception of others, and emotional health. Self-image can be indicated by a tone of voice that is confident, pretentious, shy, aggressive, outgoing, or exuberant, to name only a few personality traits. Also the sound may give a clue to the facade or mask of that person, for example, a shy person hiding behind an overconfident front. How a speaker perceives the listener’s receptiveness, interest, or sympathy in any given conversation can drastically alter the tone of presentation, by encouraging or discouraging the speaker. Emotional health is evidenced in the voice by free and melodic sounds of the happy, by constricted and harsh sound of the angry, and by dull and lethargic qualities of the depressed.

Question: According to the passage, an exuberant tone of voice mat be an indication of a person’s ________.         

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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 42: The word “them” refers to .....         

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The biologist's role in society as well as his moral and ethical responsibility in the discovery and development of new ideas has led to a reassessment of his social and scientific value systems. A scientist can no longer ignore the consequences of his discoveries; he is as concerned with the possible misuses of his findings as he is with the basic research in which he is involved. This emerging social and political role of the biologist and all other scientists requires a weighing of values that cannot be done with the accuracy or the objectivity of a laboratory balance. As a member of society, it is necessary for a biologist now to redefine his social obligations and his functions, particularly in the realm of making judgments about such ethical problems as man's control of his environment or his manipulation of genes to direct further evolutionary development.

Probably the greatest biological problem of the future, as it is of the present, will be to find ways to curb environmental pollution without interfering with man's constant effort to improve the quality of his life. Many scientists believe that underlying the spectre of pollution is the problem of surplus human population. A rise in population necessitates an increase in the operations of modern industry, the waste products of which increase the pollution of air, water, and soil. The question of how many people the resources of the Earth can support is one of critical importance.

Question: The pronoun ''they" in paragraph 2 refers to _______.         

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All mammals feed their young. Beluga whale mothers, for example, nurse their calves for some twenty months, until they are about to give birth again and their young are able to find their own food. The behavior of feeding of the young is built into the reproductive system. It is a nonelective part of parental care and the defining feature of a mammal, the most important thing that mammals-- whether marsupials, platypuses, spiny anteaters, or placental mammals -- have in common.

For animals other than mammals, then, feeding is not intrinsic to parental care. Animals add it to their reproductive strategies to give them an edge in their lifelong quest for descendants. The most vulnerable moment in any animal's life is when it first finds itself completely on its own, when it must forage and fend for itself. Feeding postpones that moment until a young animal has grown to such a size that it is better able to cope. Young that are fed by their parents become nutritionally independent at a much greater fraction of their full adult size. And in the meantime those young are shielded against the vagaries of fluctuating of difficult-to-find supplies. Once a species does take the step of feeding its young, the young become totally dependent on the extra effort. If both parents are removed, the young generally do not survive.

Question: The word "tend" in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to _______.         

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The Nobel prizes, awarded annually for distinguished work in chemistry, physic, physiology or medicine, literature, and international peace, were made available by a fund bequeathed for that purpose by Swedish philanthropist, Alfred Bernard Nobel. The prizes, awarded since 1901, are administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm. In 1969, a prize for economics endowed by the Central Bank of Sweden was added. Candidates for the prizes must be nominated in writing by a qualified authority in the field of competition. Candidates are judged by Swedish and Norwegian academies and institutes on the basis of their contribution to mankind. The awards are usually presented in Stockholm ion December 10, with the King of Sweden officiating, an appropriate tribute to Alfred Nobel on the anniversary of his death. Each prize includes a gold medal, a diploma, and a cash award of about one million dollars.  

Question: How often are the Nobel prizes awarded?         

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 Most people can remember a phone number for up to thirty seconds. When this short amount of time elapses, however, the numbers are erased from the memory. How did the information get there in the first place? Information that makes its way to the short term memory (STM) does so via the sensory storage area. The brain has a filter which only allows stimuli that is of immediate interest to pass on to the STM, also known as the working memory.

 There is much debate about the capacity and duration of the short term memory. The most accepted theory comes from George A. Miller, a cognitive psychologist who suggested that humans can remember approximately seven chunks of information. A chunk is defined as a meaningful unit of information, such as a word or name rather than just a letter or number. Modern theorists suggest that one can increase the capacity of the short term memory by chunking, or classifying similar information together. By organizing information, one can optimize the STM, and improve the chances of a memory being passed on to long term storage.

 When making a conscious effort to memorize something, such as information for an exam, many people engage in "rote rehearsal". By repeating something over and over again, one is able to keep a memory alive. Unfortunately, this type of memory maintenance only succeeds if there are no interruptions. As soon as a person stops rehearsing the information, it has the tendency to disappear. When a pen and paper are not handy, people often attempt to remember a phone number by repeating it aloud. If the doorbell rings or the dog barks to come in before a person has the opportunity to make a phone call, he will likely forget the number instantly. Therefore, rote rehearsal is not an efficient way to pass information from the short term to long term memory. A better way is to practice "elaborate rehearsal". This involves assigning semantic meaning to a piece of information so that it can be filed along with other pre-existing long term memories.

 Encoding information semantically also makes it more retrievable. Retrieving information can be done by recognition or recall. Humans can easily recall memories that are stored in the long term memory and used often; however, if a memory seems to be forgotten, it may eventually be retrieved by prompting. The more cues a person is given (such as pictures), the more likely a memory can be retrieved. This is why multiple choice tests are often used for subjects that require a lot of memorization.

 Question 31: The word “cues” in the last paragraph is closest in meaning to _______.         

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Question: All of the following were mentioned in the passage as detriments to women in the business world EXCEPT _________ .    

Until recently, most American entrepreneurs were men. Discrimination against women in business, the demands of caring for families, and lack of business training had kept the number of women entrepreneurs small. Now, however, businesses owned by women account for more than $40 billion in annual revenues, and this figure is likely to continue rising throughout the 1990s. As Carolyn Doppelt Gray, an official of the Small Business Administration, has noted, "The 1970s was the decade of women entering management, and the 1980s turned out to be the decade of the woman entrepreneur". What are some of the factors behind this trend? For one thing, as more women earn advanced degrees in business and enter the corporate world, they are finding obstacles. Women are still excluded from most executive suites. Charlotte Taylor, a management consultant, had noted, "In the 1970s women believed if they got an MBA and worked hard they could become chairman of the board. Now they've found out that isn't going to happen, so they go out on their own". In the past, most women entrepreneurs worked in "women's" fields: cosmetics and clothing, for example. But this is changing. Consider ASK Computer Systems, a $22-million-a-year computer software business. It was founded in 1973 by Sandra Kurtzig, who was then a housewife with degrees in math and engineering. When Kurtzig founded the business, her first product was software that let weekly newspapers keep tabs on their newspaper carriers-and her office was a bedroom at home, with a shoebox under the bed to hold the company's cash. After she succeeded with the newspaper software system, she hired several bright computer-science graduates to develop additional programs. When these were marketed and sold, ASK began to grow. It now has 200 employees, and Sandra Kurtzig owns $66.9 million of stock. Of course, many women who start their own businesses fail, just as men often do. They still face hurdles in the business world, especially problems in raising money; the banking and finance world is still dominated by men, and old attitudes die hard. Most businesses owned by women are still quite small. But the situation is changing; there are likely to be many more Sandra Kurtzigs in the years ahead.       

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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_______.         

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Question: It can be inferred from the passage that the author believes that business operated by women are small because ________ .     

Until recently, most American entrepreneurs were men. Discrimination against women in business, the demands of caring for families, and lack of business training had kept the number of women entrepreneurs small. Now, however, businesses owned by women account for more than $40 billion in annual revenues, and this figure is likely to continue rising throughout the 1990s. As Carolyn Doppelt Gray, an official of the Small Business Administration, has noted, "The 1970s was the decade of women entering management, and the 1980s turned out to be the decade of the woman entrepreneur". What are some of the factors behind this trend? For one thing, as more women earn advanced degrees in business and enter the corporate world, they are finding obstacles. Women are still excluded from most executive suites. Charlotte Taylor, a management consultant, had noted, "In the 1970s women believed if they got an MBA and worked hard they could become chairman of the board. Now they've found out that isn't going to happen, so they go out on their own". In the past, most women entrepreneurs worked in "women's" fields: cosmetics and clothing, for example. But this is changing. Consider ASK Computer Systems, a $22-million-a-year computer software business. It was founded in 1973 by Sandra Kurtzig, who was then a housewife with degrees in math and engineering. When Kurtzig founded the business, her first product was software that let weekly newspapers keep tabs on their newspaper carriers-and her office was a bedroom at home, with a shoebox under the bed to hold the company's cash. After she succeeded with the newspaper software system, she hired several bright computer-science graduates to develop additional programs. When these were marketed and sold, ASK began to grow. It now has 200 employees, and Sandra Kurtzig owns $66.9 million of stock. Of course, many women who start their own businesses fail, just as men often do. They still face hurdles in the business world, especially problems in raising money; the banking and finance world is still dominated by men, and old attitudes die hard. Most businesses owned by women are still quite small. But the situation is changing; there are likely to be many more Sandra Kurtzigs in the years ahead.       

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 get any agreement on the precise meaning of the term "social class". In everyday life, people tend to have a different approach to those they consider their equals from which they assume with people they consider higher or lower than themselves in social scale. The criteria we use to "place" a new acquaintance, however, are a complex mixture of factors. Dress, way of speaking, area of residence in a given city or province, education and manners all play a part. In ancient civilizations, the Sumerian, for example, which flourished in the lower Euphrates valley from 2000 to 5000 B.C. social differences were based on birth, status or rank, rather than on wealth. Four main classes were recognized. These were the rulers, the priestly administrators, the freemen (such as craftsmen, merchants or farmers) and the slaves. In Greece, after the sixth-century B.C., there was a growing conflict between the peasants and the aristocrats, and a gradual decrease in the power of the aristocracy when a kind of "middle class" of traders and skilled workers grew up. The population of Athens, for example, was divided into three main classes which were politically and legally distinct. About one-third of the total population were slaves, who did not count politically at all, a fact often forgotten by those who praise Athens as the nursery of democracy. The next main group consisted of resident foreigners, the, "metics" who were freemen, though they too were allowed no share in political life. The third group was the powerful body of "citizens”, who were themselves divided into sub-classes. The medieval feudal system, which flourished in Europe from the ninth to the thirteenth century, gave rise to a comparatively simple system based on birth. Under the King , there were two main classes–lords and “vassals”, the latter with many subdivisions. In the later Middle Ages, however, the development of a money economy and the growth of cities and trade led to the rise of another class, the "burghers" or city merchants and mayors. These were the  predecessors of the modern middle classes. Gradually high office and occupation assumed importance in determining social position, as it became more and more possible for a person born to one station in life to move to another. This change affected the towns more than the country areas, where remnants  of feudalism lasted much longer.

Question 39: Athens is often praised as the nursery of democracy ________.         

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 A Japanese construction company plans to create a huge independent city-state, akin to the legendary Atlantis, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The city, dubbed “Marinnation”, would have about one million inhabitants, two airports, and possibly even a space port. Marinnation, if built, would be a separate country but could serve as a home for international organisations such as the United Nations and the World Bank.

 Aside from the many political and social problems that would have to be solved, the engineering task envisaged is monumental. The initial stage requires the building of a circular dam eighteen miles in diameter attached to the sea bed in a relatively shallow place in international waters. Then, several hundred powerful pumps, operating for more than a year, would suck out the sea water from within the dam. When empty and dry, the area would have a city constructed on it. The actual land would be about 300 feet below the sea level. According to designers, the hardest task from an engineering point of view would be to ensure that the dam is leak proof and earthquake proof.

 If all goes well, it is hoped that Marinnation could be ready for habitation at the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century. Whether anyone would want to live in such an isolated and artificial community, however, will remain an open question until that time. 

Question 43: According to the text, Marrination, when built, will be a (an)__________ city.    

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“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: The word “phrase” in the passage is closet in meaning to ______        

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Question: According to the passage, all of the following are factors that make people want to touch beads EXCEPT the ________.         

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Sony Pictures released a remarkable and intriguing film entitled The Da Vinci Code, based on the novel of the same name by Dan Brown. In the film, religious leaders and professors are in a race to discover the secrets of an organization called the Priory of Sion. The biggest secret kept by this organization is supposedly that Jesus Christ and a woman whose name is recorded in the Bible as Mary Magdalene had a child, and that their family 55 line continues to this day. In a TV interview, Dan Brown stated that, in his book, "all of the art, architecture, secret rituals, secret societies, all of that is historical fact." However, while the Priory of Sion did exist, it's nothing like the one which is so central to The Da Vinci Code. The Priory of Sion was started in France in 1956 by a skillful liar named Pierre Plantard. Priory means religious house, and Sion was a hill in the town of Annemasse, where the Priory was started by Plantard and four of 60 his friends. At first, their group fought for housing rights for local people, and their offices were at Plantard's apartment. The organization promised to benefit the weak and the oppressed, and to do good in general. However, there was a darker side to the Plantard's Priory. Plantard actually hoped to use the Priory of Sion to claim to be a descendant of French kings. Between the years 1961 and 1984, Plantard created the enigma of a much more powerful Priory than his insignificant organization. First, in order to give the impression that the Priory began in 1099, Plantard and his friend Philippe de Cherisey created documents, called the Secret Dossiers of Henri Lobineau, and illegally put them into the National Library of France. Next, Plantard got author Gerard de Sede to write a book in 1967 using the false documents; the book became very popular in France. This phenomenon is similar to the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, where a book based on false information or speculation becomes popular. 70 Matters were complicated when in 1969, an English actor and science-fiction writer named Henry Lincoln read Gerard de Sede's book. Lincoln did not know of Plantard and his schemes, and may have been a victim of the hoax. He seemed to believe what he read, and jumped to even more wild conclusions, which he published in his 1982 book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. He and his co-authors declared as fact that the Priory started in 1099; that its leaders included Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Victor Hugo; that the Priory protects the descendants of Jesus 75 Christ and Mary Magdalene; and that these descendants ruled France from A.D. 447 to 751. All this was based on reading a novel based on the false facts from documents which were a hoax. Most modern historians do not consider Lincoln's book to be a serious work of history. How can we be so sure that Plantard created this hoax? Well, the best witness to a crime is the criminal himself. Over 100 hundred letters between Plantard, de Cherisey, and de Sede, discovered by researcher Jean-Luc 80 Chaumeil, show clearly that they were trying to pull an elaborate hoax. In fact, in the 1990s, Plantard got in trouble with the law, and his house was searched. Within it were found many false documents, most harmless, some of which said he was the true king of France. As a final embarrassment, Plantard had to swear in a court of law that the enigma of the Priory of Sion was the work of his imagination.

Question: What is true about the real Priory of Sion?         

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 The time when humans crossed the Arctic land bridge from Siberia to Alaska seems remote to us today, but actually represents a late stage in prehistory of humans, an era when polished stone implements and bows and arrows were already being used and dogs had already been domesticated.

 When these early migrants arrived in North America, they found woods and plains dominated by three types of American mammoths. Those elephants were distinguished from today’s elephants mainly by their thick, shaggy coats and their huge, upward-curving tusks. They had arrived on the continent hundreds of thousands of years before their human followers. The wooly mammoth in the North, the Columbian mammoth in middle North America, and the imperial mammoth of the South together with their distant cousins the mastodons, dominated the land. Here, as in the Old World, there is evidence that humans hunted these elephants, as shown by numerous spear points found with mammoth remains.

 Then, at the end of the Ice Age, when the last glaciers had retreated, there was a relatively sudden and widespread extinction of elephants. In the New World, both mammoths and mastodons disappeared. In the Old World, only Indian and African elephants survived.

 Why did the huge, seemingly successful mammoths disappear? Were humans connected with their extinction? Perhaps, but at the time, although they were hunters, humans were still widely scattered and not very numerous. It is difficult to see how they could have prevailed over the mammoth to such an extent.

Question: With which of the following is the passage primarily concerned?         

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Most of us know a little about how babies learn to talk. From the time infants are born, they hear language because their parents talk to them all the time. Between the ages of seven and ten months, most infants begin to make sounds. They repeat the same sounds over and over again. This is called babbling. When babies babble, they are practicing their language. What happens, though, to children who cannot hear? How do deaf children learn to communicate? Recently, doctors have learned that deaf babies babble with their hands. Laura Ann Petitto, a psychologist, observed three hearing infants with English-speaking parents and two deaf infants with deaf parents using American Sign Language (ASL) to communicate. Dr. Petitto studied the babies three times: at 10, 12, and 14 months. During this time, children really begin to develop their language skills. After watching and videotaping the children for several hundred hours, the psychologist and her assistants made many important observations. For example, they saw that the hearing children made varied motions with their hands. However, there appeared to be no pattern to these motions. The deaf babies also made different movements with their hands, but these movements were more consistent and deliberate. The deaf babies seemed to make the same hand movements over and over again. During the four-month period, the deaf babies' hand motions started to resemble some basic hand-shapes used in ASL. The children also seemed to prefer certain hand-shapes. Hearing infants start first with simple syllable babbling, then put more syllables together to sound like real sentences and questions. Apparently, deaf babies follow this same pattern, too. First, they repeat simple hand-shapes, Next, they form some simple hand signs and use these movements together to resemble ASL sentences. Linguists believe that our ability for language is innate. In other words, humans are born with the capacity for language: It does not matter if we are physically able to speak or not. Language can be expressed in different ways-for instance, by speech or by sign. Dr. Petitto believes this theory and wants to prove it. She plans to study hearing children who have one deaf parent and one hearing parent. She wants to see what happens when babies have the opportunity to learn both sign language and speech. Does the human brain prefer speech? Some of these studies of hearing babies who have one deaf parent and one hearing parent show that the babies babble equally with their hands and their voices. They also produce their first words, both spoken and signed, at about the same time. More studies in the future may prove that the sign system of the deaf is the physical equivalent of speech.

Question 32: According to paragraph 4, hearing infants learn to talk first by _______.         

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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 45: The word “antagonists” could be best replaced by _______.         

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

Hummingbirds are small, often brightly colored birds of the family Trochilidae that live exclusively in the Americas. About 12 species are found in North America, but only the ruby-throated hummingbird breeds in eastern North America and is found from Nova Scotia to Florida. The greatest variety and number of species are found in South America. Another hummingbird species is found from southeastern Alaska to northern California.

Many hummingbirds are minute. But even the giant hummingbird found in western South America, which is the largest known hummingbird, is only about 8 inches long and weighs about two-thirds of an ounce. The smallest species, the bee hummingbird of Cuba and the Isle of Pines, measures slightly more than 5.5 centimeters and weighs about two grams.

Hummingbirds' bodies are compact, with strong muscles. They have wings shaped like blades. Unlike the wings of other birds, hummingbird wings connect to the body only at the shoulder joint, which allows them to fly not only forward but also straight up and down, sideways, and backward.

Because of their unusual wings hummingbirds can also hover in front of flowers so they can suck nectar and find insects. The humming- bird's bill, adapted for securing nectar from certain types of flowers, is usually rather long and always slender, and it is curved slightly downward in many species.

The hummingbird’s body feathers are sparse and more like scales than feathers. The unique character of the feathers produces brilliant and iridescent colors, resulting from the refraction of light by the feathers. Pigmentation of other feathers also contributes to the unique color and look. Male and female hummingbirds look alike in some species but different in most species, males of most species are extremely colorful.

The rate at which a hummingbird beats its wings does not vary, regardless of whether it is flying forward, flying in another direction, or merely hovering. But the rate does vary with the size of the bird - the larger the bird, the lower the rate, ranging from 80 beats per second for the smallest species to 10 times per second for larger species. Researchers have not yet been able to record the speed of the wings of the bee humming-bird but imagine that they beat even faster. Most hummingbirds, especially the smaller species, emit scratchy, twittering, or squeaky sounds. The wings, and sometimes the tail feathers, often produce humming, hissing, or popping sounds, which apparently function much as do the songs of other birds.

Question 31: The word “minute” in the second paragraph 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:

 My family consists of four people. There's my father whose name is Jan, my mother whose name is Marie, my brother, Peter and of course, me. I have quite a large extended family as well but, only the four of us live together in our apartment in a block of flats. My father is fifty-two years old. He works as an accountant in an insurance company. He is tall and slim, has got short brown and gray hair and blue eyes. My father likes gardening very much as well as listening to music and reading books about political science. His special hobbies are bird watching and travelling.

 Now I’ll describe my mother and my brother. My mother is forty-seven and she works as a nurse in a hospital. She is small, and slim, has short brown hair and green eyes. She likes bird watching and travelling too, so whenever my parents are able to they go someplace interesting for nature watching. Since we have a cottage with a garden they both spend a lot of time there. My brother is sixteen. He is slim and has short brown hair and blue eyes. He also attends high school. He is interested in computers and sports like football and hockey. He also spends a lot of time with his friends.

 I have only one grandmother left still living. She is in pretty good health even at the age of seventy-eight so she still lives in her own flat. I enjoy spending time with her when I can. Both my grandfathers died from cancer because they were smokers, which was really a great tragedy because I didn't get chance to know them. My other grandmother died just a few years ago. I also have a lot of aunts, uncles, and cousins. The cousin I’m closest to is my uncle’s daughter Pauline. We have a lot in common because we are both eighteen and so we are good friends.

 My parents have assigned me certain duties around the house. I don't mind helping out because everyone in a family should contribute in some way. I help with the washing up, the vacuuming and the shopping. Of course I also have to help keep my room tidy as well. My brother is responsible for the dusting and mopping. He also has to clean his own room. Even though my brother and I sometimes fight about who has to do what job, we are still very close. I am also very close to my parents and I can rely on them to help me. My parents work together to keep our home well maintained and it seem they always have a project or another that they are working on. They respect each other's opinions and even if they disagree they can always come to a compromise. I hope in the future that 1 have a family like ours.

Question 37: What does the writer’s mother look like?

Read the following andmark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 22 to 29:

 Harvard University, today recognized as part of the top echelon of the world's universities, came from very inauspicious and humble beginning.

 This oldest of American universities was founded in 1636, just sixteen years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. Included in the Puritan emigrants to the Massachusetts colony during this period were more than 100 graduates of England's prestigious Oxford and Cambridge universities, and these universities graduates in the New Word were determined that their sons would have the same educational opportunities that they themselves had had. Because of this support in the colony for an institution of higher learning, the General Court of Massachusetts appropriated 400 pounds for a college in October of 1636 and early the following year decided on a parcel of land for the school; this land was in an area called Newetowne, which was later renamed Cambridge after its English cousin and is the site of the present-day university.

 When a young minister named John Harvard, who came from the neighboring town of Charlestowne, died from tuberculosis in 1638, he willed half of his estate of 1,700 pounds to the fledgling college. In spite of the fact that only half of the bequest was actually paid, the General Court named the college after the minister in appreciation for what he had done. The amount of the bequest may not have been large, particularly by today's standard, but it was more than the General Court had found it necessary to appropriate in order to open the college.

 Henry Dunster was appointed the first president of Harvard in 1640, and it should be noted that in addition to serving as president, he was also the entire faculty, with an entering freshmen class of four students. Although the staff did expand somewhat, for the first century of its existence the entire teaching staff consisted of the president and three or four tutors.

Question: The "pounds" in the second paragraph are probably ______________