_____, the people who come to this club are in their twenties and thirties.

(108)_____

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
Space Tourism
If you are like most people, you probably dream of spending your next vacation sightseeing or relaxing in a tropical spot. But pretty soon, you may have the option of blasting into space and exploring the universe. It appears that space tourism may start to experience a boom that is sure to be out of this world. Since ancient times, humans have surely dreamed about visiting space. However, it was just a fantasy until 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly into space. Yet in the years following, only a few highly-trained Soviet and American astronauts managed to leave the Earth’s atmosphere. In the mid-1980s, the US began to relax some of its restrictions. In 1986, an engineer named Charles Walker became the first non-government employee to fly into space. A year later, an American teacher named Christa McAuliffe was chosen to be the first teacher in space. Unfortunately, the Space Shuttle she was on, The Challenger, crashed during takeoff, killing everyone on board. Space tourism got an unexpected boost from the collapse of the Soviet Union. With Russia’s space programme in dire need of money, it became open to offers for space tourism. In 1990, a Japanese reporter was allowed to fly with a Russian crew into space, but the trip would cost his employer $28 million. In the late 1990s, a private company, MirCorp, started organizing trips to space for wealthy individuals. Now, many other companies are trying to do the same. Still, most people who want to become space tourists face a major barrier: the price. Early space tourists have paid dozens of millions of dollars for a seven-to- ten-day stay outside the Earth. However, there are some indications that the price will come down in the near future. Some corporations are gearing up for this with big plans to make space a more hospitable place. The luxurious hotel chain Hilton has expressed interest in opening a space hotel in the next 15 to 20 years. Meanwhile, some experts believe that flights to and from the moon could become a common occurrence within a few decades. Hopefully someday soon we will all have the chance to get to know our solar system a little bit better.
3.  What effect did the end of the Soviet Union have on space tourism?

Choose the best answer:
Henry often visits his grandpa ..................... the weekends.

Choose the best answer:
_____ is a running race of over 26 miles.

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
World Wide Web (WWW), computer-based (1) _______ of information resources that combines text and multimedia. The information on the World Wide Web can be accessed and searched through the (2) _______, a global computer network. The World Wide Web is often (3) _______ to simply as “the Web.” The Web started to become a (4) _______ resource after 1993 when the first widely distributed browser provided a convenient way to (5) _______ a variety of information on the Internet

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Joanne Rowling became famous almost overnight. She is the (1)_____of a highly successful series of books for young people. Joanne has dreamt of being a writer for as long as she can remember. In fact, she has been(2)_____ stories and characters ever since she was a schoolgirl. When she was still quite young, the family moved to a town called Chepstow. A family who lived (3) ____were called Potter, and she used their name for the hero of her books. She and her sister, Di, (4)_____a state school in town. At school, she was hard-­‐working and rather reserved. She was (5)_____good at English and languages. Her talent for telling stories made her popular figure in the school. During breaks between (6) _____she was often surrounded by a crowd of friends, excited to hear the (7) _____story she had written. She often included her classmates in her stories though they were not always aware of this! When she left school, Joanne succeeded in getting a place at university. After graduating, she got a(8) _____in French. Then Joanne started to work as a teacher in a school in Portugal. She married a journalist but, sadly, the couple soon (9)_____and she moved to Edinburgh. She had (10) _____and couldn’t even afford a plastic folder to send her new book to potential publishers. However, one wonderful day a publisher said “yes”. It was the greatest day of her life

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Cities develop as a result of functions that they can perform. Some functions result directly from the a great city regardless of the disadvantageous ingenuity of the citizenry, but most functions activity. result from the needs of the local area and of the surrounding hinterland (the region that supplies goods to the city and to which the city furnishes services and other goods). Geographers often make a distinction between the situation and the site of a city. Situation refers to the general position in relation to the surrounding region, whereas site involves in physical characteristics of the specific location. Situation is normally much more important to the continuing prosperity of a city. If a city is well situated in regard to its hinterland, its development is much more likely to continue. Chicago, for example, possesses an almost unparalleled situation: it is located at the southern end of a huge lake that forces East-West transportation lines to be compressed into its vicinity, and at a meeting of significant land and water transport routes. It also overlooks what is one of the world's fiest large farming regions. These factors ensured that Chicago would become characteristics of the available site, such as being prone to floding during thunderstorm Similarly, it can be argued that much of New York City's importance stems from its early and continuing advantage of situation. Philadelphia and Boston both originated at about the same time as New York and shared New York's location at the Western end of one of the world's most important oceanic trade routes, but only New York possesses an easy-access functional connection (the Hudson-Mohawk lowland) to the vast Midwestern hinterland. This account does not alone explain New York's primacy, but it does include several important factors. Among the many aspects of situation that help to explain why some cities grow and others do not, original location on a navigable waterway seems particularly applicable. Of course, such characteristics as slope, drainage, power resources, river crossings, coastal shapes, and other physical characteristics help to determine city location, but such factors are normally more signifiant in early stages of city development than later.
10. The word "it" in paragraph 2 refers to: 

Rewrite sentences without changing the meaning
Africa is large. Asia is larger.

Football, game played on a rectangular (1) _______ by two opposing teams with an inflated leather ball that is roughly (2) _______ in shape. The object of the game is to score points by carrying the ball (3) _______ the opponent’s goal line or by (4) _______ the ball through the opponent’s goalposts. Football is (5) _______ a full-contact sport, meaning that play involves bodily contact by means of checking, blocking, grabbing, and tackling.

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
The Great Debate over GM Foods
One of the hottest topic in agriculture today is genetically modified (GM) foods. GM foods are foods that come from plants that have had their DNA altered using biotechnology. GM foods have been on the market since 1994, when a company called Calgene started selling GM tomatoes. Since then, other GM foods including papaya, corn, and plums to name a few have been developed. The main benefit of GM foods is that they can be a more economical solution than non GM foods. Scientists found a way to modify many plants to make them more resistant to weeds, diseases, and pests. This allows the plants to grow in tougher climates and conditions, which should lead to lower food prices and increase the overall food supply. However, many consumers still have their doubts about GM foods. For one they feel that by eating GM foods people are messing with nature. Until now humans have survived on food that was produced without any interference from science. Even though many lab studies show that GM foods are safe in the short term, opponents feel that not enough long-term testing has been done yet. Another major issue in the GM foods debate is its labelling. Current US laws do not require producers to label their foods as GM. This has upset many consumers who feel they have the right to clearly know how the food they are buying is produced. On the other hand, producers are afraid to label their foods as GM because they feel it will result in less product sales, as people may assume that there is something wrong with GM foods. This controversy is not just on the level of consumers and producers. The issue of non GM foods has also become a block to a major free trade agreement between the US and Europe. GM foods are banned throughout most of Europe, while they are quite common throughout the US. Since many American GM food producers would like to sell their foods overseas in Europe, the US is requesting that European nations eliminate laws banning GM foods. However, many European nations are not fully convinced that these products are safe.
7. Why don’t corporations want to label their foods as GM?

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
Some Amazing Apps for Your Smartphone
It is hard to imagine life in modern society without smartphones. These handy little devices keep us entertained and enable us to manage important tasks on the go. Although smartphones feature powerful hardware, they wouldn’t be so useful without thousands of handy applications. Here are a few free and helpful apps that you can download to help you throughout the day. If you have a habit of forgetting things and want to organize your life, give Evernote a try. It promises to help users remember everything. With a few clicks, you can send all of your photos, documents, and audio notes to Evernote. Then, your digital information can be stored in folders or tagged with useful keywords. When you need to access this data, you can perform a simple search and it will appear in seconds. Evernote is available on smartphones, tablets, and computers, so you can access your data from everywhere. Imagine this scenario. You are watching a TV show and you hear a cool song in the background. You want to buy it but there is one problem. You don’t know the name of the song. SoundHound is an app that will make this problem a thing of the past. It enables users to quickly identify songs by launching the app and holding their phone in the air. The app takes the song playing and compares it to thousands of other songs until it finds a match. Within seconds, it can tell you the name, artist, and album of the song you just heard. Another spectacular app is Lookout. Hopefully, you won’t have to use it often, but when you do need it. Lookout can be a lifesaver. Its main function is to help you find your phone if it goes missing. Lookout does this by using your smartphone’s data connection to locate your lost device. To see where your phone is on a map, simply log into Lookout from any web browser. In the worst-case situation, if someone steals your phone and you fear it has gone for good, you can wipe out all of its data with a few clicks. This will ensure no one will see any private information on your phone. These helpful apps are just the tip of the iceberg. If you do some searching online, you are certain to find many other apps that will make your life more convenient.
6. What does the author imply in the last paragraph?

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 American type of football was developed in the 19th century from soccer and rugby football. Played by professionals, amateurs, college and high school students, or young children, football in American is one of the most popular sports besides basketball and baseball. It attracts millions of fans each fall and people are very supportive of their favourite teams. The football playing field of today is rectangular in shape and measures 100 yards long and 53.5 yards wide. White lines are painted on the playing field to mark off the distances to the end zone. The games is divided into four quarters, each fifteen minutes long. The first two quarters are known as the first half. There is a rest period between two halves which usually last about fifteen minutes. Each team has eleven players. Each team has offensive players who play when the team has possession of the ball and defensive players who play when the other team has the possession of the ball. Because of the body contact players have during the game, helmets are worn to protect their head and face area, whereas pads are worn to protect the shoulders, arms, and legs. Also, there are officials carrying whistles and flags to make certain that the rules of the game are followed during the game. The football is made of leather and is brown in colour. It is shaped much like an oval and has white rings near each end of the football. These rings help the players see the ball when it is thrown or someone is running with it. The eight stitches on the top of the football help the players to grip the ball when throwing or passing. The most famous game of the year is Super Bowl that is played in January or February. It is televised around the world and is watched by millions of people each year.

What do officials do during the game of football?

Choose the best answer:
He is smartly ........................ when he comes to an interview.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks
                                                HOME LIFE
"Parents  today  want  their  kids  spending  time  on  things  that  can  bring  them  success,  but (1)......... , we've stopped doing one thing that's actually been a proven predictor of success-and that's household chores," says Richard Rende, a (2)........ psychologist in Paradise Valley, Ariz, and co- author of forthcoming book “Raising Can-Do Kids." Decades of studies show the benefits of chores- academically, emotionally and even professionally. Giving children household chores at an early age (3).................. to build a lasting sense of mastery, responsibility and self-reliance, according to research by Marty Rossmann, professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota. In 2002, Dr. Rossmann analyzed data  from  a  longitudinal study (4)............. followed 84 children across four periods in their lives-in preschool, around ages 10 and 15, and in their mid-20s. She found that young adults who began chores at ages 3 and 4 were more likely to have good relationships with family and friends, to achieve academic and early career success and to be self-sufficient, as (5)........ with those who didn't have chores or who started them as teens. Chores also teach children how to be empathetic and responsive to others' needs, notes psychologist Richard Weissbourd of the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
It is often the case with folktales that they develop from actual happenings but in their development lose much of their factual base; the story of Pocahontas quite possibly fits into this category of folktale. This princess of the Powhatan tribe was firmly established in the lore of early America and has been made even more famous by the Disney film based on the folktale that arose from her life. She was a real- life person, but the actual story of her life most probably differed considerably from the folktale and the movie based on the folktale. Powhatan, the chief of a confederacy of tribes in Virginia, had several daughters, none of whom was actually named Pocahontas. The nickname means "playful one" and several of Powhatan's daughters were called Pocahontas. The daughter of Powhatan who became the subject of the folktale was named Matoaka. What has been verified about Matoaka, or Pocahontas as she has come to be known, is that she did marry an Englishman and that she did spend time in England before she died there at a young age. In the spring of 1613, a young Pocahontas was captured by the English and taken to Jamestown. There she was treated with courtesy as the daughter of chief Powhatan, While Pocahontas, was at Jamestown, English gentleman John Rolfe fell in love with her and asked her to marry. Both the governor of the Jamestown colony and Pocahontas's father Powhatan approved the marriage as a means of securing peace between Powhatan's tribe and the English at Jamestown. In 1616, Pocahontas accompanied her new husband to England, where she was royally received. Shortly before her planned return to Virginia in 1617, she contracted an illness and died rather suddenly. A major part of the folktale of Pocahontas that is unverifiedconcerns her love for English Captain John Smith in the period of time before her capture by the British and her rescue of him from almost certain death. Captain John Smith was indeed at the colony of Jamestown and was acquainted with Powhatan and his daughters; he even described meeting them in a 1612 journal. However, the story of his rescue by the young maiden did not appear in his writings until 1624, well after Pocahontas had aroused widespread interest in England by her marriage to an English gentleman and her visit to England. It is this discrepancy in dates that has caused some historians to doubt the veracity of the tale. However, other historians do argue quite persuasively that this incident did truly take place.
5. It can be inferred from the passage that Pocahontas........

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
The principal difference between urban growth in Europe and in the North American colonies was the slow evolution of cities in the former and their rapid growth in the latter. In Europe they grew over a period of centuries from town economies to their present urban structure. In North America, they started as wilderness communities and developed to mature urbanism in little more than a century. In the early colonial days in North America, small cities sprang up along the Atlantic Coastline, mostly in what are now New England and the Middle Atlantic states in the United States and in the lower Saint Lawrence valley in Canada. This was natural because these areas were nearest England and France, particularly England, from which most capital goods were imported. Merchandising establishments were, accordingly, advantageously located in port cities from which goods could be readily distributed to interior settlements. Here, too, were the favored locations for processing raw materials prior to export. Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Montreal, and other cities flurished, and as the colonies grew, these cities increased in importance. This was less true in the colonial South, where life centered around large farms, known as plantations, rather than around towns, as was the case in the areas further north along the Atlantic coastline. The local isolation and the economic self-sufticiency of the plantations were antagonistic to the development of the towns. The plantations maintained their independence because they were located on navigable streams and each had a wharf accessible to the small shipping of that day. In fact, one of the strongest factors in the selection of plantation land was the desire to have it front on a water highway. When the United States became an independent nation in 1776, it did not have a single city as large as 50,000 inhabitants, but by 1820 it had a city of more than 100,000 people, and by 1880 it had recorded a city of over one million. It was not until after 1823, after the mechanization of the spinning and weaving industries, that cities started drawing young people away from farms. Such migration was particularly rapid following the Civil War (1861 -1865)
2. The word "they" in paragraph 1 refers to .

I would like to extend my gratitude to all the staff for their ______ support, without which our company couldn't have overcome the crisis.
(151)__________

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
The Prime Minister's comments yesterday on education spending miss the point, as the secondary education system also needs a major overhaul. Firstly, the system only views the weakest learners as having special (1)...... .The brightest and most (2)....... students are not encouraged to develop to their full potential. Secondly, there's too much testing and not enough learning. My fifteen-year-old daughter, for example, has just spent the last month or so (3)_____ for exams. These aren't even real, important exams, as her GCSEs will be next year. They're just (4)....  exams. Is the work she's been doing really going to make her more (5)..... about her subjects, or will she forget it all tomorrow? I suspect the latter. Thirdly, the standard (6)_____ doesn't give students any (7)....... in developing practical work-related, living and social skills, or in skills necessary for higher education. How many students entering university have the first idea what the difference is between (8)....... someone else's work and making good use of someone else's ideas? Shouldn't they have been taught this at school? How many of them are really able to go about (9).......a  skill that's essential at university because there are no teachers to tell you what to do - in an efficient way? Indeed, hoe many students (10)....... from university totally unable to spell even simple English words correctly? The system is letting our children down

She asked _____.

(227)_____

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:
At 7pm on a dark, cold November evening, thousands of people are making their way across a vast car park. They’re not here to see a film, or the ballet, or even the circus. They are all here for what is, bizarrely, a global phenomenon: they are here to see Holiday on Ice. Given that most people don’t seem to be acquainted with anyone who’s ever been, the show’s statistics are extraordinary: nearly 300 million people have seen Holiday on Ice since it began in 1943; it is the most popular live entertainment in the world.
But what does the production involve? And why are so many people prepared to spend their lives travelling round Europe in caravans in order to appear in it? It can't be glamorous, and it's undoubtedly hard work. The backstage atmosphere is an odd mix of gym class and workplace. A curtained-off section at the back of the arena is laughably referred to as the girls' dressing room, but is more accurately described as a corridor, with beige, cracked walls and cheap temporary tables set up along the length of it. Each girl has a small area littered with pots of orange make-up, tubes of mascara and long false eyelashes.
As a place to work, it must rank pretty low down the scale: the area round the ice-rink is grey and mucky with rows of dirty blue and brown plastic seating and red carpet tiles. It's an unimpressive picture, but the show itself is an unquestionably vast, polished global enterprise: the lights come from a firm in Texas, the people who make the audio system are in California, but Montreal supplies the smoke effects; former British Olympic skater Robin Cousins is now creative director for the company and conducts a vast master class to make sure they're ready for the show's next performance.
The next day, as the music blares out from the sound system, the cast start to go through their routines under Cousins’ direction. Cousins says, The aim is to make sure they're all still getting to exactly the right place on the ice at the right time - largely because the banks of lights in the ceiling are set to those places, and if the skaters are all half a metre out they'll be illuminating empty ice. Our challenge, ‘he continues, ‘is to produce something they can sell in a number of countries at the same time. My theory is that you take those things that people want to see and you give it to them, but not in the way they expect to see it. You try to twist it. And you have to find music that is challenging to the skaters, because they have to do it every night.’
It may be a job which he took to pay the rent, but you can't doubt his enthusiasm. “The only place you'll see certain skating moves is an ice show,” he says, “because you're not allowed to do them in competition. It's not in the rules. So the ice show world has things to offer which the competitive world just doesn't.” Cousin knows what he's talking about because he skated for the show himself when he stopped competing - he was financially unable to retire. He learnt the hard way that you can't put on an Olympic performance every night. “I'd be thinking, these people have paid their money, now do your stuff, and I suddenly thought”, “I really can't cope. I'm not enjoying it”. The solution, he realised, was to give 75 per cent every night, rather than striving for the sort of twice-a-year excellence which won him medals.
To be honest, for those of us whose only experience of ice-skating is watching top-class Olympic skaters, some of the movements can look a bit amateurish, but then, who are we to judge? Equally, it's impossible not to be swept up in the whole thing; well, you'd have to try pretty hard not to enjoy it.

It is mentioned in paragraph 3 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 
Are Human Beings Getting Smarter?
Do you think you are smarter than your parents or grandparents? According to James Flynn, a professor at a New Zealand university, you might be. Over the course of the last century, IQ test scores of people in some countries have got increasingly better - on average, three points better for every decade that has passed. This trend of improving scores is known as “the Flynn effect,” and scientists want to know what is behind it. IQ tests and other similar tests are designed to measure general intelligence rather than knowledge. Flynn knew that intelligence is partly inherited from our parents and partly the result of our environment and experiences, but the improvement in test scores was happening too quickly to be explained by heredity. So what happened in the 20th century that led to higher test scores? Scientists have proposed several explanations for the Flynn effect. Some suggest that the improved test scores simply reflect an increased exposure to tests in general. Because we take so many tests, we learn test-taking techniques that help us perform better. Others have pointed to better nutrition, which results in babies being born larger, healthier, and with more brain development than in the past. Another possible explanation is a change in educational styles - children are encouraged to discover things for themselves rather than just memorizing information. This could prepare people to do the kind of problem-solving that intelligence tests require. Flynn himself suggested that learning new technologies may have improved people’s problem-solving skills. This may be true for the first decade of his tests, when IQ scores in many countries increased. However, in recent years, IQ test scores in some countries have begun to decline. Data from Norway, the Netherlands, Australia, and Great Britain have shown that as these countries become more and more modern, IQ scores have begun to drop. While scientists aren’t sure what is causing this decline, they think technology is dramatically changing the way that we learn and get information. For example, people are now able to access all kinds of information easily using online resources like Google or Wikipedia. The danger is when they start to rely too much on these sources of information, and not do any thinking for themselves. Lifestyle changes that come with modem technology may also have a negative effect on intelligence, such as video games and television making people less social.  So while the world may have got smarter over the 20th century, improving technology and changing lifestyles may soon reverse that trend.

The writer uses video games as an example of how ____