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During the sixth century, the inhabitants of Gujarat (India) have developed a method of gaining access to clean water

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Thailand's most celebrated festival is the Songkran Festival. It starts on April 13 and lasts between three to ten days, depending on where you are in Thailand. The word Songkran is from Sanskrit, meaning the beginning of a new solar year.  The festival begins on April 13 and everyone is awakened at dawn to the sound of firecrackers used to drive away evil spirits. This is the day when everything is scrupulously cleaned from the self, clothes, Buddha images, to houses, shops and streets in preparation for the New Year.  April 14 is the day between the old year and the new year. It is customary not to quarrel or use harsh words on one another. The morning is spent shopping and preparing food for the following day, while the afternoon is reserved for visiting a temple in the neighborhood. It is imperative that they carry a fistful of sand with them to compensate for the dirt that they have carried away from the temple during their visits throughout the year. The sand is then sculpted into stupa-shaped piles.  April 15 marks the New Year's Day called Wan Phya Wan. It is a day of great importance. It is customary to visit the temple early in the morning to take food to the monks, as a form of merit making and later in the afternoon to return to place small banners, known as Thung, on the top of the stupas built the day before.  After that, visits to family and relatives are carried out. The gifts during the visit include areca nuts, clove leaves, turmeric water and acacia oil. Family members ask for forgiveness from their respected elders for any wrong doings they may have committed throughout the year and to receive their blessings for the year to come. At the end of this ceremony, a little water is sprinkled onto the hands and heads of the old people as a blessing and then quite a lot is thrown at the rest of the family in anticipation of the water wars that are to follow.  Traditionally water should be thrown on April 16 but nowadays it is not unusual for water to be thrown throughout the whole of the Songkran festival. Armed with high-powered water pistols, bowls, buckets or anything that will hold water revelers gather on the streets to throw water at one another. Even the policemen directing traffic are not spared. Each and every participant is expected to receive the 'blessing' with good humor.  If you want to stay dry and still do not want to miss the fun, you can always view the scene from inside an air-conditioned tourist bus - just remember not to open the windows.  To attract tourists, other activities are held in big cities. These include the sand-stupa building contests, local cultural performances and Miss Songkran Beauty Queen Contests. Demonstrations of Thai cooking and handicraft making are also held at well-known hotels in cities like Bangkok
2. The word "scrupulously" in the passage is closest in meaning to ____

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
When you are in Hong Kong, you can go about taxi, by tram, by bus or (1)______underground. I mysetf prefer the underground (2)___ it is fast easy and cheap. There are(3)_______ tram and bus in Hong Kong, and one cannot drive along the road (4)_________ and without many stops. The underground is therefore usually quicker (5)___ taxis or buses. If you do not know Hong Kong very well, it is very difficult (6)_____________the bus you want. You can take a taxi, but it is (7)_______expensive than the underground or a bus. On the underground you find good maps that tell you the names of the stations and show you (8)____________to get to them, so that it is easy to find your way

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Scientists agree that the earth's rising temperatures are fueling longer and hotter heat waves, more frequent droughts, heavier rainfall, and more powerful hurricanes. In 2015, for example, scientists said that an ongoing drought in California - the state's worst water shortage in 1,200 years - had been intensified by 15 percent to 20 percent by global warming. They also said the odds of similar droughts happening in the future had roughly doubled over the past century. And in 2016, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine announced that it's now possible to confidently attribute certain weather events, like some heat waves, directly to climate change.  The earth's ocean temperatures are getting warmer, too - which means that tropical storms can pick up more energy. So global warming could turn, say, a category 3 storm into a more dangerous category 4 storm. In fact, scientists have found that the frequency of North Atlantic hurricanes has increased since the early 1980s, as well as the number of storms that reach categories 4 and 5. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina - the costliest hurricane in U.S. history struck New Orleans; the second - costliest, Hurricane Sandy, hit the East Coast in 2012.  The impacts of global warming are being felt across the globe. Extreme heat waves have caused tens of thousands of deaths around the world in recent years. And in an alarming sign of events to come, Antarctica has been losing about 134 billion metric tons of ice per year since 2002. This rate could speed up if we keep burning fossil fuels at our current pace, some experts say, causing sea levels to rise several meters over the next 50 to 150 years.   
4. The word "which" in the passage refers to ____

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The word ‘grandparents’ is descriptive of the unique dual parenting role that this generation assumes. It emphasises the vital part they play in family life. With a (26) _______ of old world experience behind them, and with the unique ability to metamorphose from advisers or mediators into listeners or friends, they can offer support and stability in an ever-changing world. The underlying sense of responsibility (27) _______ goes with this is tremendous. Grandparents perform a balancing act between the needs of their adult children and those of their grandchildren. This role is varied. It is imperial at times, muted at (28) _______. It goes underground whenever required, but it is solid and absolutely dependable. Grandparents often (29) _______ the gap between parents and children. Rebellious, independent children who are trying to find their feet are almost always at loggerheads with their parents. The role of grandparents can be very important provided that they act as impartial judges and are able to convey this feeling to both parties. One important thing, which seems to be missing in the lives of children today, is a sense of family, values, beliefs and principles. This is where the grandparents step in. (30) _______, instilling beliefs and values is not as easy as it was fifty or sixty years ago

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Fossil fuels are used to generate the majority of the world’s energy, and they come in different forms. For example, coal may be burned in a power (31) _________ to generate electricity, but gasoline is burned in a car’s engine to make it run. Neither of these two sources is considered green energy because they produce a lot of pollution when they are burned. In addition, they come from a source that is inevitably going to (32) _________. Green energy can be defined as any energy source that is to some degree nonpolluting. When it is called (33) _________, this means that a person can replace the same amount of energy that was consumed by that person (34) _________ that person's lifetime. Since it took millions and millions of years to create the fossil fuels that we now burn, we know that they cannot be replaced by us. Wind power and solar power, (35) _________ harnessed properly, are two excellent sources of green energy. Once the necessary parts such as wind turbines to generate wind power and solar panels to create solar power have been produced, only the pollution from the production is left

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Until fairly recently, explaining the presence of human beings in Australia was not such a problem. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was thought that Aborigines had been on the continent for no more than 400 years. As recently as the 1960s, the time-frame was estimated to be perhaps 8,000 years. Then in 1969 a geologist from the Australian National University in Canberra was poking around on the shores of a long-dried lake bed called Mungo in a dry and lonely corner of New South Wales when something caught his eye. It was the skeleton of a woman sticking out slightly from a sandbank. The bones were collected and sent off for carbon dating. When the report came back, it showed that the woman had died 23,000 years ago. Since then, other finds have pushed the date back further. Today the evidence points to an arrival date of at least 45,000 years ago but probably more like 60,000. The first occupants of Australia could not have walked there because at no point in human times has Australia not been an island. They could not have arisen independently because Australia has no apelike creatures from which humans could have descended. The first arrivals could only have come by sea, presumably from Timor or the Indonesian archipelago, and here is where the problems arise. In order to put Homo sapiens in Australia you must accept that at a point in time so remote that it precedes the known rise of behaviourally modern humans, there lived in southern Asia a people so advanced that they were fishing inshore waters from boats of some sort. Never mind that they the archaeological record shows no one else on earth doing this for another 30,000 years. Next, we have to explain what led them to cross at least sixty miles of open sea to reach a land they could hardly have known was there. The scenario that is usually described is of a simple fishing craft probably little more than a floating platform - accidentally carried out to sea probably in one of the sudden storms that are characteristic of this area. This craft then drifted helplessly for some days before washing up on a beach in northern Australia. So far, so good. The question that naturally arises - but is seldom asked - is how you get a new population out of this. If it's a lone fisherman who is carried off to Australia, then clearly he must find his way back to his homeland to report his discovery and persuade enough people to come with him to start a colony. This suggests, of course, the possession of considerable sailing skills. By any measure this is a staggeringly momentous achievement. And how much notice is paid to it? Well, ask yourself the last time when you read anything about it. When was the last time in any context concerning human movements and the rise of civilisations that you saw even a passing mention of the role of aborigines? They are the planet's invisible people. A big part of the problem is that for most of us it is nearly impossible to grasp what an extraordinary span of time we are considering here. Assume for the sake of argument that the Aborigines arrived 60,000 years ago (that is the figure used by Roger Lewin of Havard in Principles of Evolution, a standard text). On that scale, the total period of European occupation of Australia represents about 0.3 percent of the total. In other words, for the first 99.7 per cent of its inhabited history, the Aborigines had Australia to themselves. They have been there an unimaginably long time.
1. What did the discovery of the skeleton show?

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It is estimated that about three billion people use the internet computer network around the world. Most people use the Internet to (25) _______information or for entertainment. A new study, however, shows US that almost 10% of Internet users are using it SO often that it is seriously harming their lives. The study says that these people may find it difficult to stop using the Internet because they have become addicted. Someone who is addicted finds it extremely difficult to stop (26) _______activity. According to a psychologist in the field. 30% of Internet users claim that they use the Internet to escape from (27) _______or emotions. The study also shows that having a chat or discussion with strangers on the Internet is one of the most (28) _______activities.

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People in the UK enjoy fewer years of good health before they die than the citizens of most comparable European countries as well as Australia and Canada, a major report shows. While life expectancy has improved by 4.2 years in the UK over the two decades, other countries have improved faster. In 2010, Spain topped the league. Its people could expect 70.9 years of healthy life - before disease and disability began to take a toll. Second came Italy, with 70.2 years and third was Australia, on 70.1 years. In the UK, we can expect 68.6 healthy years of life. Hunt said the UK was a long way behind its global counterparts and called for action by local health commissioners to tackle the five big killers - cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory and liver diseases. Drinking and drug use have been the main issues behind the worsening of the UK’s ranking in early deaths among adults aged 20-54. In 2010, drugs were the sixth leading cause of death in this age group and alcohol was 18,h - up from 32nd and 43rd place respectively 20 years earlier. Hunt will on Tuesday announce a strategy to tackle cardiovascular disease, which he says could save 30,000 lives a year. “Despite real progress in cutting deaths, we remain a poor relative to our global cousins on many measures of health, something I want to change,” he said. “For too long we have been lagging behind and I want the reformed health system to take up this challenge and turn this shocking underperformance around.” However, the problem is only in part to do with hospital care - much of it is about the way we live. Our diet, our drinking and continuing smoking habits all play a part, which assumes its responsibilities on 1 April
1. The best title for this passage could be _______

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There are many types of family systems around the world. In North America and northern Europe, the nuclear family (with two generations - a father, a mother and one or more children) is often seen as the most typical. In contrast, in most other parts of the world, extended families, which include other family members such as grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, are seen as the norm.  The common view is that the nuclear family has become the norm in many Western societies as a result of industrialization and urbanization. This trend began in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when people were forced to move to cities to find work in the factories that sprang up during the Industrial Revolution. In the twentieth century, greater industrialization resulted in even more people leaving their large extended families. Urbanization also meant that people lived in much smaller houses, which were not big enough for an extended family.  The trend towards nuclear families meant that many of the duties and responsibilities of a family, such as providing food and shelter, cleaning the home, preparing the food, caring for children and their education, and caring for the sick and elderly are no longer shared among the members of the extended family. The parents (or parent) now have to do this, with some help from the state. However, this is the price that people pay for the higher standard of living that may come from living in a city.  We may think we know what we mean by a ‘nuclear' family and an extended family, but reality is more complicated than most people believe. Most nuclear families are part of extended families: children have grandparents and, in many cases, aunts, uncles and cousins as well. Part of what makes them ‘nuclear' is that they live in their own separate household, but it is not the whole story. In Greece or Italy, for example, a nuclear family may live in its own flat, but the extended family may live in the same apartment block or in the same street and family members see each other and even eat together every day.  There is at least one more factor to consider. Family members may be separated from each other by geographical distance, but they may have close emotional ties. Even in North America and northern Europe, grandparents usually have close bonds with their grandchildren, and families often travel long distances so that they can see each other. Grandparents often help their adult children, for example, by cooking and looking after their children in emergencies. In the same way, when their parents become too old to live on their own, adult children may take them into their own homes. As a result, they turn their nuclear family into an extended family.  The structure of families changes over time. The effects of urbanization and industrialization are enormous, but they are not the only reasons for the changes. People marry, have children, become widowed, divorce and die. Children grow up and adults grow old. Nuclear families become extended families and extended families become nuclear families. Family ties stay strong or become weak. One thing is certain: in a changing world, the family will continue to change, but ultimately, it is likely to continue to be the basic unit of society.  
5. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true about nuclear families?

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Library is a collection of books and other informational materials made available to people for reading, study, or reference. The word library comes (1)_________ liber, the Latin word for ― book‖ . (2) _____ , library collections have almost always contained a variety of materials. Contemporary libraries maintain collections that include not only printed materials such as manuscripts, books , newspapers, and magazines, (3)_______ audio-visual and online databases. In addition (4) _____ maintaining collections within library buildings, modern libraries often feature telecommunications links that provide users with access to information at remote sites. The central mission of a library (5) _______ to collect , organize, preserve, and provide access to knowledge and information. In fulfilling this mission, libraries preserve a valuable record of culture that can be passed down to (6)_______ generations. Libraries are an essential link in this communication between the past , present, and future. Whether the cultural record is contained in books or in electronic formats, libraries ensure (7) ____ the record is preserved and made available for later use. People use library resources to gain information about personal (8)__ or to obtain recreational materials such as films and novels. Students use libraries to supplement and enhance their classroom experiences, to learn (9)_____ in locating sources of information, and to develop good reading and study habits. Public officials use libraries to research legislation and public policy issues. One of the most valued of all cultural institutions, the library (10) ___ information and services that are essential to learning and progress. From ― Library ( institution)‖ by Richard S.Halsey et al

Fill the  A, B, C, D to complete statement:

Dear Peter,     

Thank you for your letter. It’s very interesting to know about schools in the USA.      

I think schools in Vietnam are a little different. Vietnamese students usually wear school uniform when they are at school. Classes start at 7.00 each morning and end at 11.15. Students have a 30-minute break after three periods. At break, many students play games. Some go to the canteen and buy something to eat or drink. Others talk together. Our school year lasts for nine months, from September to May. Then we have a three-month summer vacation.     

Please write soon and tell me about your summer vacation. 

Your friend, (Hoa)  

 Classes last from .... to a quarter past eleven a.m.

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Some years ago, my daughter was studying English at a university on the south coast. One evening, she  phoned to (1)_____ me that what she really wanted to do was a travel round the world, (2)___she was looking into the possibility of working in another country. She had seen several advertisements in the paper for student teachers of English abroad, and she was interested in one in Italy, (3)____she was desperate to visit. She decided that this would be a good way to achieve her ambition, so she was writing to apply for the job. The reply (4)_______a long time to arrive, but eventually she received a letter asking if she would go for an interview in London the following week. She was so excited that she immediately got in touch with the school owner and agree to attend the interview . She was determined that nothing would prevent her (5) ______ doing what she had set out to do

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Princess Eugenie (1)______a member of the British Royal Family. She’s (2)_____ youngest daughter of Princess Andrew and Sara Ferguson. Her parents (3)_______ married any more. They are divorced. Her older siser’s name is Beatrice. Beatrice and Eugenie are Prince William and Harry’s cousins. Her grandmother is the Queen and her uncle is Prince Charles. Her full name is Princess Eugenie Victoria Helena of York, so she (4)_______three first names but no surname. She studies Art, English, and Politics at university in Newcastle. (5)_______ the holidays she sometimes  stays with her mother and sometimes with her father. She often travels abroad with her parents. Although she’s a member of the royal family, she is a normal 20-year-old. She likes going out with her friends, she goes to lots of weddings and parties, and enjoys dancing. She’s also really (6)______ fashion. But because she’s a princess, she never has to (7)______the housework or cook dinner. She hardly ever has to do any official royal duties but she always (8)_____ for the charities her mother supports.

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Books are normally thought of in terms of the pages that are looked at. They are simple, two-dimensional objects that we read. There are words on the page and occasionally (1)_________ that help us see more clearly what the words are being used to describe. They are sources of knowledge, but more often than not they aren’t considered very special. Some books take it another steps further, though, and their pages jump (2)_________ and form three-dimensional objects. These books can make adults smile and cause children to be wide-eyed with (3)__________. Called pop-up books in our times, they have been around longer than most people think they have. Pop-up books were originally called mechanical books, and these paper (4)________ took a lot of work to make. They were not for children at all, although centuries ago there were practically no books made for children. The mechanical books helped illustrate (5)__________ things as the phases of the moon or were used to teach complex theories.

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
The gap in male-female earning has great significance because more than 16  percent of U.S. households are (1) ______ by women. Low-paying jobs keep many  of these households in poverty. Women’s groups such as National Organization  for Women have demanded that equal opportunities and equal pay (2) ______ to  women. According to women’s (3) ______ Maggie McAnany, “It is imperative that  the government help to change the situation (of employment for women). We  cannot wait for the companies to (4) ______ themselves. Change must come (5)  ______ the law.”

Read the following dialogue and then choose the best answer A, B, C, D:

"Teacher: Good morning. Minh. Do you (1).....................      in town?
Minh : Yes, I live in (2).....................        apartment.
Teacher: Is (3)...................... a supermarket near the apartmenr?
Minh : Yes, there’s also a bank, a clinic (4)       ........... a hotel.
Teacher: Are there any (5).............. near it?
Minh Yes, there (6)............... a toy store, a bakery, a drugstore and two bookstores.                   
Teacher: Is it (7) ....... there? 
Minh No, it’s very (8) ................"

2. I live in (2).....................        apartment.

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Time management: two words that have me breaking out in a cold sweat. Why should I suddenly have to learn how to manage my time? Surely time had got on perfectly well for several millennia without requiring management, let alone by me. But my university tutor was adamant: time needed some managing and apparently it was up to me to do it.  First of all, let's be clear. I do have plenty of time to manage. As an arts student, I generally have 23 hours in the day that aren't given over to going to lectures. But I generally need somebody to tell me what I should be writing, so I go to lectures.  Perhaps I had "taken on too much"? I'd been elected to four committees, produced a play, applied for a part time job, hung around the college bar with my friends, and written the odd essay. But I thought I was coping well. Sure, there was the day when I did the research for an essay on the morning of deadline day and wrote it that afternoon, but that was a one off.  On second thoughts, maybe my tutor is right. It's difficult to give up what you're involved in but perhaps it's a good idea to sit back and have a breather once in a while. Even an arts student has to get down to some real work!
5. The writer slowly begins to realize that he should ____

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Air pollutant emission factors are (1) ___________ representative values that attempt to relate the quantity of a pollutant released to the ambient air with an activity associated (2) ___________ the release of that pollutant. These factors are usually expressed as the weight of (3) ___________ divided by a unit weight, volume, distance, or duration of the activity emitting the pollutant. Such factors facilitate estimation of emissions from (4) ___________ sources of air pollution. In most cases, these factors are simply averages of all available data acceptable quality, and are generally assumed to be representative of (5) ___________ averages. (6) ___________ are 12 compounds in the list of persistent organic pollutants. Dioxins and furans are two of them and (7) ___________ created by combustion of organics, like open burning of plastics. These compounds are also endocrine disruptors and can mutate the human genes. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (8) ___________ published a complication of air pollutant emission factors for a wide range of industrial sources. (9) ___________ United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and many other countries have published similar compilations, (10) ___________ well as the European Environmental Agency.

Choose the best answer:
Vietnam is a (1) ____, developing country that in the last 34 years has had to recuperate from the ravages of war. Substantial progress was (2) ____ from 1986 to 1997 in moving forward from an extremely low level of development and significantly reducing poverty.  Since 2001, Vietnamese authorities have reaffirmed their (3) ____ to economic liberalization and international (4) ____. They have moved to implement the structural reforms needed to modernize the economy and to produce more competitive, (5) ____ industries.  Vietnam's membership in the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) and entry (6) ____ force of the US-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement in December 2001 have (7) ____ to even more rapid changes in Vietnam's trade and economic regime. Vietnam's exports to the US doubled in 2002 and again in 2003. Vietnam joined the WTO (World Trade Organization) in January 2007, following over a decade long (8) ____. This should provide an important boost to the economy and should help to ensure the continuation of liberalizing reforms.  Vietnam is working to create jobs to meet the challenge of a (9) ____ that is growing by more than one million people every year. Vietnamese authorities have tightened monetary and fiscal (10) ____ to stem high inflation.

Choose the best answer:
Urban development is having a direct impact on the weather in (26) ______ cities worldwide. It has been noticed that the difference in temperature is usually greater at night and the phenomenon occurs in both winter and summer. Experts agree that this is due to urban development, when open green spaces are replaced with asphalt roads and tall brick or concrete buildings. These materials retain heat generated by the Sun and release it through the night. In Atlanta, in the US, this has even led to thunderstorms (27) ______ occur in the morning rather than, as is more common, in the afternoon. Large cities around the world are adopting strategies to combat this issue, (28) ______ it is not uncommon to find plants growing on top of roofs or down the walls of large buildings. In Singapore, the government has (29) ______ to transform it into a "city within a garden" and, in 2006, they held an international competition calling for entries to develop a master plan to help bring this about. One outcome was the creation of 18 "Supertrees" – metal constructions resembling very tall trees. Each one is a vertical freestanding garden and is (30) ______ to exotic plants and ferns. They also contain solar panels used to light the trees at night and also containers to collect rainwater, making them truly self-sufficient.