As viewed from space, Earth’s distinguishing characteristics are its blue waters and white clouds. Enveloped by an ocean of air consisting of 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, the planet is the only one in our solar system known to harbor life. Circling the Sun at an average distance of 149 million kilometers (93 million miles), Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the fifth largest planet in the solar system.

Approximately how much of the Earth’s atmosphere is nitrogen?

Most of us are interested in one kind of sport or another, even if we don't go in for it actively. Lots of people take up a particular sport at an early age, for example tennis, skiing, or ice-skating. If they get up to a suitably high standard, they may go in for local competitions or even championships. But special training is hard work and most young people don't keep it up. Many of them opt out when they come up against tough competition.

To become a professional in any sport, you have to go through with a strict training schedule. And it's not easy! It means doing without some of life's little pleasures, too. For example, to build up your physical strength you may have to stick to a special diet and give up some of your favorite foods. Smoking and alcohol are out, and to keep fit you have to work out regularly every day.

Sometimes it all pays off, but the road to success is long and there are no guarantees. No wonder that countless young talents decide to settle for a regular job instead, and, as far as professional sport is concerned, for looking on as spectators.

The term of “go in for” in the passage means _______

Thanksgiving is associated with the time when Europeans first came to North America. In 1620 the ship the Mayflowers arrived, bringing about 150 people who today are usually called Pilgrims. They arrived at the beginning of a very hard winter and could not find enough to eat, so many of them died. But in the following summer Native Americans showed them what foods were safe to eat, so that they could save food for the next winter. They held a big celebration to thank God and the Native Americans for the fact that they had survived.

   Today people celebrate Thanksgiving to remember these early days. The most important part of the celebration is a traditional dinner with foods that come from North America. The meal includes turkey, sweet potatoes (also called yams) and cranberries, which are made into a kind of sauce or jelly. The turkey is filled with stuffing or dressing, and many families have their own special recipe. Dessert is pumpkin made into a pie.

   On Thanksgiving there are special television programs and sports events. In New York there is the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, when a long line of people wearing fancy costumes march through the streets with large balloons in the shape of imaginary characters. Thanksgiving is considered the beginning of the Christmas period, and the next day many people go out to shop for Christmas presents.

In the second paragraph, the pronoun "them" refers to which of the following?

Are you looking to get more involved with your local community?

Do you enjoy working with young people and children?

Are you passionate about big issues affecting society today and building children’s awareness and self-confidence to cope with the challenges of tomorrow?

If this sounds like you Woodcraft Folk needs you!

Woodcraft Folk is a registered charity offering you the opportunity to help build a fairer, more peaceful world for all. We run weekly groups for children aged 4-16yrs old and are looking for Volunteers to get involved for a few hours a month, whenever it suits YOU!

Perhaps you’d like to contribute a couple of hours as a one-off workshop? Or maybe you’d like to take part in a group discussion or games night once a fortnight?

We know that your time is precious so we will work with you to make sure you to get the most out of your experience with us. From working directly with the groups and running your own sessions, to representing groups at the national level there are many aspects of the organization you can choose to get involved with!

If you are a good communicator who shares our values of peace, co-operation and equality, Glasgow Woodcraft Folk invites you to get in touch. We are running induction events week starting Monday 22nd April and would love to see you there!

Does Woodcraft Folk aim at young children?

 Choose the best sentence that can be made from the words given

 I / hope / hear / you

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

Using the information in paragraph 2 as a guide, it can be inferred that _______.

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

We think he was in London last year.

 London was strange and disappointing. There was no gold on the pavements, as the stories in Jaimaica had indicated. The roads were busy, the buildings were grey and dull, with many tall, high-rise blocks. It was totally unlike Jamaica, the houses all small and packed close together. In my grandmother's house I had a big bedroom, here I had to share.

   Then came the biggest shock: snow. While flakes came out of the sky and Dad smiled, pointed and said: "That's snow!" I rushed outside, looked up and opened my mouth to let the flakes drop in. The snow settled on my tongue and it was so cold that I cried. My toes lost all feeling. As my shoes and socks got wet and frozen, there came an excruciating pain and I cried with the intensity of it. I didn't know what was happening to me.

The word "excruciating" in the last paragraph means ________

In the 1960s, The Beatles were probably the most famous pop group in the whole world. Since then, there have been a great many groups that have achieved enormous fame, so it is perhaps difficult now to imagine how sensational The Beatles were at that time. They were four boys from the north of England and none of them had any training in music. They started by performing and recording songs by black Americans and they had some success with these songs. Then they started writing their own songs and that was when they became really popular. The Beatles changed pop music. They were the first pop group to achieve great success from songs they had written themselves. After that it became common for groups and singers to write their own songs. The Beatles did not have a long career. Their first hit record was in 1963 and they split up in 1970. They stopped doing live performances in 1966 because it had become too dangerous for them - their fans were so excited that they surrounded them and tried to take their clothes as souvenirs! However, today some of their songs remain as famous as they were when they first came out. Throughout the world, many people can sing part of a Beatles song if you ask them.

What is NOT true about the Beatles?

Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling. Education knows no bounds. It can take place anywhere, whether in the shower or on the job, whether in a kitchen or on a tractor. It includes both the formal learning that takes place in schools and the whole universe of informal learning. The agents of education can range from a revered grandparent to the people debating politics on the radio, from a child to a distinguished scientist. Whereas schooling has a certain predictability, education quite often produces surprises. A chance conversation with a stranger may lead a person to discover how little is known of other religions. People are engaged in education from infancy on. Education, then, is a very broad, inclusive term. It is a lifelong process, a process that starts long before the start of school, and one that should be an integral part of one's entire life.

   Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process, whose general pattern varies little from one setting to the next. Throughout a country, children arrive at school at approximately the same time, take assigned seats, are taught by an adult, use similar textbooks, do homework, take exams, and so on. The slices of reality that are to be learned, whether they are the alphabet or an understanding of the workings of government, have usually been limited by the boundaries of the subject being taught.

The phrase “For example,” line 19, introduces a sentence that gives examples of

Read the passage carefully and choose the correct answer

A birthday party is a celebration that occurs to celebrate the birth of the person being honored. Birthday parties are celebrated in many cultures. While a child’s party is usually at home and consists of soft drinks and sweet food as well as some main courses, adults’ birthday parties in Western countries often take place in bars or nightclubs where a range of alcoholic beverages are consumed. 

In Western cultures, particularly in the United States, birthday parties are often accompanied by colorful decorations such as streamers and balloons. A birthday cake is often served with candles that are to be blown out after a “birthday wish” has been made. While the birthday cake is brought to the table, the song Happy Birthday to You is sung. Wealthy people or celebrities may hire an event management agency or a party service to organize a birthday party. 

The birthday cake has been an integral part of the birthday tradition in Western cultures since the middle of the 19th century.

The cake, or sometimes a pastry or dessert, is served to a person on his or her birthday, and is often decorated with small novelty candles, with the person’s name and a message of congratulations inscribed with icing. The phrase “Happy Birthday” did not appear on birthday cakes until the song Happy Birthday to You was popularized in the early 1900s.

Tradition holds that the person with the birthday may make a wish, which will come true if all the candles can be blown out in one breath.

On a birthday cake, there is not ____.

Read the passage and do the tasks below.

A new hearing device is now available for some hearing-impaired people. This device uses a magnet to hold a detachable sound-processing portion in place. Like other aids, it converts sound into vibrations. But it is unique in that it can transmit the vibrations directly to the magnet and then to the inner ear. This produces a clearer sound. The new device will not help all hearing-impaired people only those with a hearing loss caused by infection or some other problems in the middle ear. It will probably help no more than 20 percent of all people with hearing problems. Those people who have persistent ear infections, however, should find relief and restored hearing with the new device.

According to the passage, what does the device not do?

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

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

 The five men, however, were not the first people to have seen these creatures called Bigfoot. Long before their experience, local Native Americans were certain that a race of apelike animals had been living in the neighboring mountain for centuries. They called these creatures Sasquatch.

   In 1958, workmen, who were building a road through the jungles of Northern California often found huge footprints in the earth around their camp.

   Then in 1967, Roger Patterson, a man who was interested in finding Bigfoot went into the Northern California jungles with a friend. While riding, they were suddenly thrown off from their horses. Patterson saw a tall apelike animal standing not far away. He managed to shoot seven rolls of film of the hairy creature before the animal disappeared in the hushes. when Patterson's film was shown to the public, not many people believed his story.

   In another incident, Richard Brown, a music teacher and also an experienced hunter spotted a similar creature. He saw the animal clearly through the telescopic lens of his rifle. He said the creature looked more like a human than an animal.

What did the five campers do when they saw a group of apelike creatures?

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

(10)__________

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

The word "symptoms" is closest in meaning to ___________

Home is place where I feel heaven and my parents are the reason __________ (11) it. We, as a family have spent the best times of life. Only when we are at home, we feel happy. Both my father __________ (12) mother are working. __________ (13), we find time to share our daily experiences. My mother __________ (14) extra care to prepare the most delicious food I like and she is my best friend. My father has always been my best companion and I would say he is my mentor. Without my parents, I __________ (15) what I am today. I love my parents very much and we always wish to be the lovable family as we are now, ever.

(14)________

Write the sentence with the following words 

Peter/ sincere/ easy-going/ man/ a sense of humour

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

Like any other universities, the Open University can give you a degree. However, you don’t have to ___(26)___ working to study. It can also open up a whole variety of interest. If you have ___(27)___ studied before, you will enjoy the special, new pleasure of increasing your knowledge. You will make friends of all kinds. You may also find that your qualification provides new career opportunities.

You don’t actually ___(28)___ to the Open University for lectures, but study at home, using television, radio and computer software. You can ___(29)___ one class a month if you wish at an Open University center. Of course, there are exams to take, as in any universities. If you ___(30)___ like to know more, all you have to do is complete the form below. It could be the start of a wonderful new period in your life.

Question 29......................

Communication in general is process of sending and receiving messages that enables humans to share knowledge, attitudes, and skills. Although we usually identify communication with speech, communication is composed of two dimensions - verbal and nonverbal.

Nonverbal communication has been defined as communication without words. It includes apparent behaviors such as facial expressions, eyes, touching, tone of voice, as well as less obvious messages such as dress, posture and spatial distance between two or more people.

Activity or inactivity, words or silence all have message value: they influence others and these others, in turn, respond to these communications and thus they are communicating.

Commonly, nonverbal communication is learned shortly after birth and practiced and refined throughout a person's lifetime. Children first learn nonverbal expressions by watching and imitating, much as they learn verbal skills.

Young children know far more than they can verbalize and are generally more adept at reading nonverbal cues than adults are because of their limited verbal skills and their recent reliance on the nonverbal to communicate. As children develop verbal skills, nonverbal channels of communication donot cease to exist although become entwined in the total communication process.

The word reading has a close meaning to …………..

University Entrance Examination is very important in Vietnamese students. High school graduates have to take it and get high results to be admitted to universities. The pressure on the candidates remains very high despite the measures that have been taken to reduce the heat around these exams, since securing a place in a state university is considered a major step towards a successful career for young people, especially those from rural areas or disadvantaged families. In the year 2004, it was estimated that nearly 1 million Vietnamese students took the University Entrance Examination, but on average only 1 out of 5 candidates succeeded. Normally, candidates take 3 exam subjects, and each lasts; 180 minutes for the fixed group of subjects they choose. There are 4 fixed groups of subjects: Group A: Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry; Group B: Mathematics, Biology, and Chemistry; Group C: Literature, History, and Geography; Group D: Literature, Foreign Language, and Mathematics.

In addition to universities, there are community colleges, art and technology institutes; professional secondary schools, and vocational schools which offer degrees or certificates from a-few-month to 2-year courses.

According to Vietnam's Ministry of Education and Training, there are currently 23 non-public universities, accounting for 11% of the total number of universities. These non-public universities are currently training 119,464 students, or 11.7% of the total number of students. The government is planning to increase the number of non-public universities to 30% by 2007

 The word those refers to _______.