Choose the best answer:
By Christmas, I.............for you for 6 months.

 

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions:
    Who talks more - men or women? Most people believe that women talk more. However, linguist Deborah Tannen, who has the studied the communication style of men and women, says that this is a stereotype. According to Tannen, women are more verbal - talk more - in private situations, where they use conversation as the “glue’ to hold relationships together. But, she says, men talk more in public situations, where they use conversation to exchange information and gain status. Tannen points out that we can see these difference even in children. Little girls often play with one ‘best friend’ and their play includes a lot of conversation. Little boys often play games in groups, their play usually involves more doing than talking. In school, girls are often better at verbal skills, while boys are often better at mathematics.
    A recent study at Emory University helps to shed light on the roots of this difference. Researchers studied conversation between children aged 3-6 and their parents. They found evidence that parents talk very differently to their sons than they do to their daughters. The startling conclusion was that parents use more language with their girls. Specifically, when parents talk with their daughters, they use more descriptive language and more details. There is also far more talk about emotions, especially with daughters than with sons.

Which sentence best expresses the main idea of the second paragraph?

A ____ is an area of knowledge or study, especially one that you study at school, college, or university.

(239)_____

Don’t make up your mind at once; ________it over with your lawyer first.    
(136)__________

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions:
In ancient times, some of the first celebrities were Roman gladiators. Rather like today’s TV talent-show contestants, these men fought each other for the audience’s entertainment. Fast forward to the 18th century, it was politicians and preachers who were able to become celebrities through public (1)__________. George Whitefield, for example, a preacher from England, (2)___________ a crowd of 30,000 when he visited the US city of Boston. It’s no wonder he was called ‘Anglo-America’s first modern celebrity’. In the 19th century, the arrival of cheap newspapers created a sudden (3)___________ for exciting stories. All kinds of people began to get their 15 minutes of fame, including the legendary American outlaw and bank robber, Jesse James, and one of the world’s first media celebrities, Sam Patch. Patch became famous for jumping into rivers from high places, and he became a (4)___________ name by leaping into Niagara Falls. He survived every jump, except the last one into the Genesee River in New York. In the same way that the media is held (5)___________ for celebrity problems today, people blamed the pressure of the media for Patch’s sudden end

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Glenbrook South (GBS) High School is in a suburb of Chicago, lllinois, in the United States. It is an award-winning school with a highly competent teaching staff. It has over 400 Asian Pacific American students-over 17 percent of the students in the school. Of these, the majority are Korean American. This is very unusual in a state where Korean Americans are less than 1 percent of the population. The interactions of the Korean American students at GBS were the subject of an article in Asian Week magazine. Different Korean American students react differently to being in a high school where most students are white. Professor Pyong Gap Min, an expert on Korean life in America, believes that Korean Americans in this situation can sometimes feel inhibited or ashamed of their Korean identity. Asian Week interviewed a number of GBS students, and each had a different attitude. Eighteen-year-old Alice said that she used to spend time only with Korean American friends. Although she felt secure with those friends, she found herself motivated to form closer relationships with non-Koreans, too. She said that she felt she was missing out on new experiences and challenges. Seventeen-year-old John moved in the opposite direction. In junior high school, most of John's friends were white. After coming to GBS, his sense of his Korean American identity was restored, and he decided to have mainly Korean American friends. He feels that he and his Korean American friends understand each other better. For example, they understand about severe parental pressures to succeed at school; John felt his white friends couldn't really understand. Sixteen-year-old Paul has some Korean American friends, but he says he spends most of his time with his white friends. He is often the only Asian American in the group, but he doesn't mind. What Paul likes about the white culture is that he can be more radical - he can be as loud and funny as he wants to be. He says he doesn't see as much of that among the Asian students. Without belittling the importance of what these students had to say, it's important to remember that their opinions at this phase of their lives are bound to change as they grow into adulthood. But these honest opinions can help US better understand issues of cultural relations, and their honesty might help Americans from different cultural groups to get along better in the future. 
1. What does the author probably mean by using the expression "children interrupt their education to go to school"?

 Most ____ are at senior level, requiring appropriate qualifications.

(240)__________

Choose the best answer:
Students ought to do homework after class.

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
Getting Focused and Flexible with Yoga
In a small room, men and women are getting a great workout. However, there are no weights in this gym. The only piece of equipment is a small rubber mat. On it, they strike unusual poses which are held for minutes at a time. An instructor goes from student to student urging them to relax and breathe deeply, while inspecting their posture. In the end, through the art of yoga they hope to balance their body, mind, and spirit. Yoga originated in India over 2,000 over years ago. The first yogis weren’t looking to lose weight or get themselves in great shape. Instead, they practise yoga to help them achieve liberation. Yoga became an important part of Hindu culture, and it is mentioned in nearly all of the religion’s ancient scriptures. It wasn’t until the 19th century, however, that Westerners took notice of yoga. In the 1890s, Swami Vievekananda became the first yoga teacher to take on Western students when he toured the US and Europe. His lessons focused primarily on the spiritual aspects, and his speeches intrigued many intellectuals, but it would take some time before yoga would catch on with the masses. That didn’t happen until the 1980s when many Americans and Europeans embraced yoga during a worldwide exercise boom. Yet once it took hold, yoga has increased popularity year by year. It is estimated that over 20 million Americans now practice yoga regularly. A main reason why contemporary people are hooked on yoga is that it helps to relieve work-related stress. Students are taught to breathe slowly and deeply while concentrating on the present moment and letting go of the past. The challenging postures help to balance the negative effects people experience from sitting in chairs all day. The poses also help people to regain flexibility and improve circulation, which is particularly useful to the elderly. As yoga became commercialized in the West, many new branches were formed. Ashtanga yoga moves at a fairly quick pace, flowing from pose to pose, power yoga, on the other hand, offers workouts that are designed to increase strength. Another popular style, hot yoga, has students practise in hot environments to help them burn more calories. If you are thinking of studying yoga, try them all and let your heart decide which one is best for you.
8. Who would be most interested in practising yoga?

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
The Most Powerful Force in Space
A black hole is a spot in space that has incredibly powerful gravity. A hole’s gravity is so strong that it pulls everything nearby into it. It can pull stars, planets, and other things. Nothing can escape a black hole. In fact, they are so powerful that even light cannot escape them. Scientists first started talking about black holes in the year 1783. That year, one scientist said that in the universe, there might be places with gravity strong enough to trap light. However, that scientist didn’t use the term “black hole”. The term “black hole” was invented in 1967. Black holes are formed when a star dies. When a star dies, it collapses. When that happens, a huge amount of matter crowds into a very small space. The matter becomes very, very dense. How much matter are we talking about? Imagine a star that is the size of ten suns. Imagine fitting that amount of matter into New York City. That is what a black hole is like. Its gravity is so powerful because it has so much matter. However, not all black holes are huge. Scientists believe that some black holes are the size of atoms. Although these black holes are tiny, they might have the same amount of matter that a mountain has. We can’t see black holes because they don’t have any light. They are completely invisible. Scientists can guess where black holes are by studying nearby stars and planets. If gravity seems to be pulling the stars and planets to one spot, then scientists believe that the spot is a black hole. Some people wonder if a black hole could ever destroy the Earth. We do not need to worry about that. There is no black hole that is close enough to destroy the Earth. The closest black hole is about 7,800 light years away. In addition, the sun is not big enough to create a black hole.
7. What would be another good title for the passage?

Choose the best answer

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s was the only surviving son of Leopold and Maria Pertl Mozart. Leopold was a successful composer, violinist, and assistant concertmaster at the Salzburg court. Wolfgang's mother, a constantly ill housewife, was born to a middle-class family of local community leaders. His only sister was Maria Anna. With their father’s encouragement and guidance, they both were introduced to music at an early age. Leopold started Anna on the keyboard when she was seven, as three-year-old Wolfgang looked on. Mimicking her playing, Wolfgang quickly began to show a strong understanding of chords, tonality, and tempo. Soon, he too was being tutored by his father.

Leopold was a devoted and task-oriented teacher to both his children. He made the lessons fun, but also insisted on a strong work ethic and perfection. Fortunately, both children excelled well in these areas. Recognizing their special talents, Leopold contributed much of his time to their education in music as well as other subjects. Wolfgang soon showed signs of excelling beyond his father's teachings with an early composition at age five and demonstrating outstanding ability on harpsichord and the violin. He would soon go onto play the piano, organ and viola.

The word outstanding is closest in meaning to ______.

Choose the best answer:
I’m ______ in teaching profession because I love working with children.

Choose the item among A, B, C or D that the best answers the question about the passage:

"The nuclear family, consisting of a mother, father, and their children, may be more an American ideal than an American reality. Of course, the so-called traditional American family was always more varied than we had been led to believe, reflecting the very different racial, ethnic, class, and religious customs among American groups.
 The most recent government statistics reveal that only about one third of all current American families fit the traditional mold and another third consists of married couples who either have no children or have none still living at home. Of the final one, about 20 percent of the total number of American households are single people, usually women over sixty-five years old. A small percentage, about 3 percent of the total, consists of unmarried people who choose to live together, and the rest, about 7 percent, are single, usually divorced parents, with at least one child. Today, these varied family types are typical, and therefore, normal. Apparently, many Americans are achieving supportive relationships in family forms other than the traditional one."

3. The word “current” in the second sentence of paragraph 2 could be best replaced by which of the following?

Choose the best answer:
I want to buy him a T–shirt on his birthday but I haven’t got any money.

→ I’d buy him a T–shirt on his birthday …………….

Julie failed the exam _____ of working very hard.

(301)_______

Read the passage, and choose the correct answer A, B, C or D for each question.

A Tale of Two Cities: Seoul and Dhaka

The city of Seoul, with a population of 10.3 million on 1998, forms part of South Korea’s capital region. As the capital city, Seoul has been at the center of South Korea’s remarkable economic transformation over the last four decades.

In the 1960s, much of South Korea’s industrial growth was focused on greater Seoul, which by 1970 had 52 percent of the country’s industrial workers. The major contributor to this growth was rural-urban migration, which accounted for 50 percent of the country’s urban increase in the 1960s. This very rapid growth of Seoul’s population placed pressure on the city’s infrastructure, leading to marked growth in new settlements, increasing  traffic congestion, and growing air pollution. This led the government to adopt a national decentralization strategy in the 1970s that attempted to divert industry to other areas of the country. In the 1980s, continuing efforts were made to decentralize economic activity.

Dhaka’s population of 6.5 million is crowded into 360 square kilometers, creating one of the highest urban densities in the world. Unlike South Korea, Bangladesh has not experienced rapid economic change, and agriculture remains the major component of GDP and the main resource of employment. While general economic conditions have improved somewhat over the last twenty years, Bangladesh is still a very poor country.

Dhaka’s rate of population growth has declined slightly over the past three decades, but it still remains among the highest in Asia (4.2 percent annually). The continuing growth reflects ongoing migration from rural areas to the Dhaka urban region. Recently, the city’s population has also grown as a result of the expansion of its administrative boundaries, a process that added 1 million people to the city in the 1980s. Dhaka’s growth has not been associated with an expansion of productive employment opportunities in relatively high wage areas. Instead, there has been growing employment in the low productivity, low-income sector, such as petty retailing or rickshaw driving.

All of the following are the problems that the authorities of Seoul had to deal with

EXCEPT____________.

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
The Greatest Light Show on the Earth
If you are a fan of amazing visual displays, planetariums around the world offer some entertaining laser-light shows that are often accompanied by popular music. Yet if you want to see the world’s greatest light show, you won’t be able to catch it indoors. Instead, you will have to head to one of the Poles. In certain spots, you will be treated to colourful streaks of light dancing across the sky. This incredible display is the aurora borealis, and every year people from all corners of the globe flock to witness its wonders firsthand. The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, got its official name in 1621. The name combines the name of the Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora, and the Roman god of the north wind, Boreas. In ancient times, the aurora completely baffled people’s minds, as science was far more primitive than it is today. Nevertheless, they created many myths to explain them. The Vikings believed the lights were the reflection of dead maidens. The Scots thought they were supernatural beings battling in heaven. Meanwhile, Eskimos thought that the lights were dead souls, and when the colours changed, it was their attempt to contact living friends and relatives. It was not until 2008 that a team of scientists from ULCA finally concluded with certainty what the true cause of these dancing light is. The process begins when solar winds carry charged particles from the Sun through space and into the Earth’s atmosphere. When these charged particles enter the Earth’s atmosphere, they are magnetically attracted to the Earth’s poles. During their journey to these points, they come in contact with nitrogen and oxygen atoms in the sky. These collisions are what cause the aurora. The heights at which the collisions occur determine the colours of the individual lights. For example, when the solar winds collide with nitrogen at least than 96 kilometres above the Earth’s surface, the lights will be blue. If the same collision occurs above 96 kilometres, however, the light will be purple. Or, if the solar wind particles collide with oxygen, the colours produced will be either red or green. However, merely understanding how the aurora works does not do this phenomena justice. To truly appreciate the full splendor of the aurora, you will have to see this Natural Wonder of the World in person.
8. What does the last sentence of the passage suggest?

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the word or phrase that is CLOSEST in meaning to the underlined part in each of the following questions.
James holds ambivalent views on whether or not computer is a lucrative invention

Read the passage below carefully, and then choose the best answer:
The Rise of E-books
Over the past decade, e-books have revolutionized the way people consume written formation. It will probably come as no surprise the total global sales number continues to rise each year. There are several reasons why readers are buying more e-books. For starters, reading a lengths e-book in front of your computer isn't the most comfortable thing to do. But since tablet sales have exploded, readers can now relax and read their favourite e-books in bed from the beach. Many e-books are often sold at lower prices than traditional books. Since there is almost zero cost for producing e-books, some authors are offering their novels at lower prices. Another factor is convenience. In the past, keeping a large book collection meant setting aside a lot of extra space in one's home. With e-books, it is now possible for readers to carry a portable library, which contains thousands of books. To really understand e-book market though, it is important to keep up with national trends. Recent data suggests that the e-book market in the US and the UK have matured. In both of these countries, e-book sales account for roughly 20 percent of overall book sales. Although that percentage continues to increase, it is going up at a slower rate than in the past. The popularity of e-books has exploded in Russia. In one poll, 70 percent of Russians claim to have read at least one e-book. However, publishers are not too pleased with this new because approximately 92 percent of e-books in Russia are acquired illegally. In France, consumers don't appear to be loo keen on e-books at this time. Although in 2012, e-book sales comprised about 3 percent of the market, it is predicted that this number will increase at a very slow pace. Some French people believe that reading e-books on small screens is uncomfortable. Others say that the French are a cultural exception, as they like the feeling of holding a dusty old physical book. This demonstrates that no matter how popular e- books get, it is unlikely that traditional books will disappear any time soon.
4. Why are publishers unhappy about the popularity of e-books in Russia?

Choose the best answer:
Let’s/ hang/ clock/ the wall/ left/ the picture.

Read the passage carefully and choose the correct answer.

I was born to dance. I've been dancing all my life, ever since my mother, who gave up a dancing career on the stage when she married my father, picked me up and twirled me around as an infant. As much as I loved dancing with her, her greatest gift to me was her "unconditional love" during her lifetime.

My parents divorced after only 5 years of marriage, but my father remarried a lovely lady who also loved to dance. They used to take me to a dancing club where I would listen to the music and watch them dance-occasionally my stepmother, Mary, invited me to dance.

I also met my wife, Charlotte, in a dancing party. I danced with her for about 15 minutes, and during that brief span, I realized that I fell in love with her. We kept dancing throughout our marriage. My earliest memories of dancing with my daughters started when I came home from work to our small home in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and my daughter Laura was about 3 years old. It was very relaxing for me. to turn on the record player, pick up Laura in my arms, and dance her around the room!

Our family danced a lot. My daughters, Laura and Anne, and I continued to dance on every occasion. One favorite memory I have of dancing with Laura and Anne was when I took each of them when they were seniors in high school to the Daddy-Daughter dance. We won both dance competitions!

As their father, I have tried to provide my daughters with unconditional love, as my Mother provided to me, endless emotional and loving support, and good educations and life experiences which have helped prepare them for happy and successful adult lives. Being a father who is worthy of their love and respect, I consider fatherhood a privilege, not an entitlement.

In 1994, my oldest daughter Laura gave me a lovely book, which I still have, entitled "Fathers and Daughters." My Father's Day suggestion to every father is to dance with your daughters at every opportunity. It will not only bring you closer, it will give them memories of you “to hang onto" long after we are gone.

Which sentence is not true?