Choose the best answer:
I love learning about _________ life under the sea.

 

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
We’re not surprised if you haven’t been following the recent developments in AI all  that closely because, for the most part, it’s seemed like nothing exciting has happened for quite a long time. Sci-fi dreams about computer powered best friends aside, AI for the general public has come to mean reasonably responsive and well-programmed computer assistance rather than independent thinking machines. Concepts like ‘smart’ chatbots somehow seem to pull us further from the Star Trek or Heinlinian dream of fully sentient and intuitive computers while many products and services that claim to integrate AI seem to be nothing more than a fast way to analyze large amounts of data.  In fact, the last time most of us heard something hopeful about AI was when Deep Blue beat the world Chess champion, but what ever came of that AI? Surely it hasn’t used that incredible logical power to take over the world or begin making friends, so what do we even care?  While practical applications for specifically built AI are growing, the tradition of training your AI programming skills on classic strategy games has existed since the 1950s when a computer was programmed to play and was able to win a game of tic-tac-toe. Since then a large variety of games and custom-built AIs have been tested against each other to the great entertainment of experts in the field and curious nerds like us who care about that sort of thing. The real difference is not what they’re programmed for but how they are programmed to start with and, in fact, this is also what most profoundly distinguishes AlphaGo from its older-generation relative, the Chess champion DeepBlue. 
5. According to paragraph 3, what artificial intelligence stands out among the other present systems?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh said over the past 50 years of co- operation and development, besides security, political, cultural and social cooperation, ASEAN has been focusing on economic co-operation through the establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community.  ASEAN member states have carried out such activities as one-stop-shop custom procedure, mutual recognition arrangements (MRAs) on electricity, rubber, processed food, pharmaceuticals, etc. Statistics by the Ministry of Industry and Trade reveals when Vietnam joined AFTA in 1996, the country’s two-way trade turnover with other countries in the bloc was only some 5.9 billion USD. In 2018, this number increased by more than 9.5 times and reached about 56.3 billion USD. In the first six months of 2019, Vietnam’s exports to ASEAN reached 13.067 billion USD, up 6.7 percent year-on-year.  Notably, the introduction of the AEC marked a new integration step of ASEAN economies with a goal of building a competitive, dynamic and innovative ASEAN. Tran Thanh Hai, deputy head of the Import-Export Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said that entering the ASEAN market, many Vietnamese products have had positive changes and become more competitive. For example, Vietnam used to acquire shrimp cultivation methods from other countries, such as Thailand in the past. However, it has made it to the list of biggest shrimp exporters in the world. On the other hand, having joined the AEC, enterprises now pay more attention to product quality, including technical standards.  Even when Vietnam enters a new era of integration with global-scale free trade agreements already put on the table for negotiation, the role of ASEAN Economic Community is still significant. AEC lays a firm foundation for Vietnam to continue its journey of global integration, insiders said. 
2. What is the tone of the paragraph 2?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
A generation gap in the workplace can make workers both young and old feel inferior, as well as hamper productivity and teamwork. Differences between generations can be seen in work ethics, habits and communication styles. Younger workers might fear not being taken seriously by their older colleagues, while older workers might fear that their experience is not valued but replaced by workers with knowledge of more current technology. However, members of each generation can close the gap between them if they’re willing to meet one another halfway. Older workers can show respect to the younger set by asking for their opinions and recognizing their contributions to the workplace as valid, or complimenting them on a job well done. Younger workers can show their elders respect by asking for advice on how to manage a situation with work, based on the older worker’s many years of experience. It’s important for both entry- and senior-level workers to see each other as equals, regardless of the type of position in which they work. No one wants to feel inferior or irrelevant just because of their age. Rather, a generation gap at work can be a learning opportunity. Workers can also put themselves in their colleagues’ shoes to determine what might be bothering them about their generational age difference. If a person is much older than another, perhaps it is bitterness about fewer job opportunities, or fear that a younger worker might seem more relevant and edge him out of his job. If workers open their minds to understand where co-workers are coming from, it can help ease any tension between them and appreciate each other’s work contributions.  If age seems to be a problem for someone at the workplace, it can be helpful to do the very opposite of what a co-worker might expect from someone of a different age set due to stereotypes. For example, if a worker is considerably younger such as right out of college, she can share researched information to indicate that she knows what she’s doing, or show curiosity instead of upset to indicate emotional maturity if the person makes a disparaging remark about her youth. Older workers can maintain an enthusiastic attitude about work instead of showing boredom or bitterness from past experiences. Workers can, moreover, directly address the concern of age differences at work with the colleague at odds with them by asking the person for constructive advice on how to handle the issue. For example, older workers who are unfamiliar with new software that younger colleagues understand might acknowledge to them that they did the same tasks differently in years past but show interest in learning the program to keep up with modern technology. Learning to speak their technological language can make them feel more connected. Likewise, a younger worker can admit to being green on the work scene, but eager to gain experience by learning from senior colleagues.  
2. Each generation should respect the other generation at work to _____________

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Vocational training in the UK is intended to give people the skills and knowledge they  need to perform a particular job, and involves practical instruction as well as theory. Most vocational training takes place not in universities but in colleges of further education and in colleges specializing in art, accountancy, etc. some secondary schools now also offer an introduction to vocational training.  NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications) are qualifications that can be obtained by people already working in a particular industry. Colleges of further education run courses to provide a theoretical background. NVQs are awarded on the basis of practical work, spoken and written test, and coursework. There are five levels, from Foundation to Management. Since 1992 many students in schools and colleges have been working for GNVQs (General National Vocational Qualifications), as an alternative to GCSEs and A levels. GNVQs cover similar areas to NVQs and are intended as introductions to a particular field of work and the skills required. Students can choose from over 500 subjects. At the lowest of its three levels foundation, a GNVQ is equivalent to a GCSE and from 2002 they are being replaced by new vocational GCSEs.  In the US there are no national qualifications like NVQs, though some professional organizations decide on their own qualifications and some of these have become widely accepted. Much vocational training is done by private institutions which are sometimes called proprietary schools. Although many of these are good, in general they have a bad reputation. This is partly because there are no controls over who can operate such a school. Some proprietary schools try to get as many students as possible, including some who will probably not be able to complete their training.  Most US secondary schools programs do not provide a choice between an academic and a practical track (a program of study), but most do give students an opportunity to take some practical or vocational classes. Large school districts may have magnet schools, schools that attract students with certain interests, and some of these may have a large choice of vocational courses.  
5.  It can be inferred from the reading about the vocational training in the US that _______

Each sentence has a mistake. Find it bychosing A B C or D

 Faults in the Earth’s crust are most evidently in sedimentary formations, where they interrupt previously continuous layers

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:
Because writing has become so important in our culture, we sometimes think of it as more real than speech. A little thought, however, will show why speech is primary and writing secondary to language. Human beings have been writing at least 5,000 years, but they have been talking for much longer, doubtless ever since there have been human beings. When writing developed, it was derived from and represented speech, although imperfectly. Even today, there are spoken languages that have no written form. Furthermore, we all learn to talk well before we learn to write; any child who is not severely handicapped physically or mentally will learn to talk: a normal man cannot be prevented from doing so. On the other hand, it takes a special effort to learn to write; in the past, many intelligent and useful members of society did not acquire the skill, and even today many who speak languages with writing systems never learn to read or write while some who learn the rudiments of those skills do so imperfectly.
To affirm the primacy of speech over writing is not to disparage the later. One advantage writing has over speech is that it is more permanent and makes possible the records that any civilization must have. Thus, if speaking makes us human, writing makes us civilized.

According to the passage, writing _     .

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 following questions:
We have all had bad experiences with restaurants, stores, or hotels. Maybe you have gone to a restaurant that served terrible food. Perhaps you have gone to a store that had high prices or bad service. Or maybe you have booked a hotel and found out later that the room was nothing like the advertisement.
These days, we have a better chance of preventing these unpleasant surprises. We can do this by using apps. “App” is short for “application”. An app is a computer programme on a smartphone. You can use apps to do almost anything. Apps can help you play games, get directions, talk to friends, and so on.
If f you want to find information about a store or a hotel, you can use a review app. Review apps help us evaluate services and products before we hand over our money. The idea is very simple. After you go to a restaurant or stay in a hotel, you can post a review with one of your apps. You can say anything you want. If you like a hotel you stayed in, you can tell people that it was wonderful. If you think that the food in a certain restaurant was bad, then you tell people not to eat there. Other people can use their apps to read your reviews.
Plenty of people prefer not to use these review apps. Many of these people prefer to go out and decide for themselves whether or not a service is good. However, review apps are getting more and more popular every day. Some apps are for specific services. For example, Tripadvisor focuses on travel, and Goodreads focuses on books. There are also other, larger apps that provide information for just about every service that you can think of. 5

The word “it” in paragraph 3 refers to     .

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
According to the report, we can expect some pretty remarkable changes to our homes  and our personal spaces, overlooked things that make up so much of our daily routine. As human populations soar, our cities and homes will have to adapt; interior living spaces will change as a cloud changes, easily reconfigured and rearranged to suit our fickle tastes, or accommodate different purposes.  Imagine walls and floors made of a malleable “skin,” and embedded with tiny sensors and actuators so that the shape and size of living spaces can quickly change, or even be divided into smaller rooms; imagine fully programmable “smart homes” that can be controlled remotely, and provide feedback to their owners - yes, there’ll even be an app for that.  Virtual decorations will alter with changing tastes, moods and whims; and the entire interior surface of the home will be implanted with LED technology - television screens and computer displays will form and unform in any room, as needed. Even our furniture will be adaptable, molding to custom fit our bodies, responding to changes in posture, or disappearing altogether when not needed.  It will be the ultimate evolution of the “Internet of Things.” Misplaced something? Can’t find your keys? No problem. Just use an online search function to find it. Hate the color of that accent wall? Delete it. Need more storage space? Watch new shelves appear, as if by magic. And the amenities are fantastic. Every home will come standard with a 3D printer; they’ll be able to churn out just about anything you could wish, using downloadable patterns, probably including even complex electronic devices. They may even print out your meals, designed and programmed by the world’s master chefs.  Walk-in “medical pods,” meanwhile, will contribute to the decentralization of healthcare - their imaging sensors will diagnose your ills and, for the more easily treatable maladies, dispense drugs, inject antibiotics, and recommend health regimens. It may even be possible to undergo remote, robot-mediated surgery, in the comfort of your own home.  This barely scratches the surface. Imagine homes whose very building material is salted with dormant limestone-producing bacteria, which awaken upon contact with moisture and repair any cracks or structural damage.  There will be “digestion tanks” full of anaerobic bacteria, to dispose of our waste; and our homes will produce, store, and reuse their own energy, using “microbial fuel cell stacks” and more efficient solar panels to generate electricity, and power-banks like the Tesla power wall to store it against future use. Personal homes will be almost fully independent of a dangerously overtaxed energy grid.  One hundred years in the future, our houses will be, in almost all respects, semiliving, artificial organisms - closed systems with a metabolism, sensory apparatus, immune response, and an approximation to a nervous system. We’ll be living in homes that are practically alive.
1. Which of the following does the passage mainly discuss?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Rachel Carson was born in 1907 in Springdale, Pennsylvania. She studied biology in college and zoology at Johns Hopkins University, where she received her master's degree in 1933. In 1936, she was hired by the US Fish and wildlife service, where she worked most of her life. Carson's first book, Under the Sea Wind, was published in 1941. It received excellent reviews, but sales were poor until it was reissued in 1952. In that year, she published The Sea Around Us, which provided a fascinating look beneath the ocean's surface, emphasizing human history as well as geology and marine biology. Her language had a poetic quality. Carson consulted no less than 1,000 printed sources. She had voluminous correspondence and frequent discussions with experts in the field. However, she always realized the limitations of her non-technical readers. In 1962, Carson published Silence Spring, a book that sparked considerable controversy. It proved how much harm was done by the uncontrolled, reckless use of insecticides. She detailed how they poison the food supply of animals, kill birds, and contaminate human food. At that time, spokes men for the chemical industry mounted personal attacks against Carson and issued propaganda to indicate that her findings were flawed. However, her work was vindicated by a 1963 report of the President's Science Advisory Committee.
2. According to the passage, what did Carson primarily study at Johns Hopkins University?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Because the low latitudes of the Earth, the areas near the equator, receive more heat than the latitudes near the poles, and because the nature of heat is to expand and move, heat is transported from the tropics to the middle and high latitudes. Some of this heat is moved by winds and some by ocean currents, and some gets stored in the atmosphere in the form of latent heat. The term “latent heat” refers to the energy that has to be used to convert liquid water to water vapor. We know that if we warm a pan of water on a stove, it will evaporate, or turn into vapor, faster than if it is allowed to sit at room temperature. We also know that if we hang wet clothes outside in the summertime they will dry faster than in winter, when temperatures are colder. The energy used in both cases to change liquid water to water vapor is supplied by heat – supplied by the stove in the first case and by the Sun in the latter case. This energy is not lost. It is stored in water vapor in the atmosphere as latent heat. Eventually, the water stored as vapor in the atmosphere will condense to liquid again, and the energy will be released to the atmosphere. In the atmosphere, a large portion of the Sun’s incoming energy is used to evaporate water, primarily in the tropical oceans. Scientists have tried to quantify this proportion of the Sun’s energy. By analyzing temperature, water vapor, and wind data around the globe, they have estimated the quantity to be about 90 watts per square meter, or nearly 30 percent of the Sun’s energy. Once this latent heat is stored within the atmosphere, it can be transported, primarily to higher latitudes, by prevailing, large-scale winds. Or it can be transported vertically to higher levels in the atmosphere, where it forms clouds and subsequent storms, which then release the energy back to the atmosphere
7. The underlined word “prevailing” in the second paragraph is closet in meaning to _______

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
In Viet Nam festivals often take place during the three months in spring and in autumn when people have a lot of leisure time. In addition, the climate in spring and autumn is especially suitable for holding festivals and for festivals goers to enjoy. Traditional festivals constitute a form of cultural activities, a spiritual product which the people have created and developed during the course of history. From generation to generation, the Vietnamese people preserve the fine tradition of “remembering the source while drinking water.” Festivals are events which represent this tradition of the community as well as honor the holy figures named as “gods” – the real persons in national history or legendary persons. The images of gods converge the noble characteristics of mankind. They are national heroes who fought against foreign invaders, reclaimed new lands, treated people, fought against natural calamities, or those legendary characters who affect the earthly life. Accordingly, first and foremost, festivals are events when people pay tribute to divinities that rendered merits to the community and the nation. These are occasions when people come back to either their natural or national roots, which form a sacred part in their mind. Furthermore, festivals represent the strength of the commune or village, the local region or even the whole nation. Worshipping the same god, the people unite in solidarity to overcome difficulties, striving for a happy and wealthy life. Moreover, festivals display the demand for creativity and enjoyment of spiritual and material cultural values of all social strata. Festivals become a form of education under which fine traditional moral values can be handed from one generation to the next in a unique way of combining spiritual characters with competition and entertainment games. Festivals are also the time people can express their sadness and worries in a wish that gods might bestow favor on them to help them strive for a better life.  
1. What affects the time to hold festivals in Viet Nam?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Language preservation is the effort to prevent languages from becoming unknown. A language is at (1)______ of being lost when it no longer is taught to younger generations, while fluent speakers of the language (usually the elderly) die. Language is an important part of any society, because it enables people to communicate and express themselves. When a language dies (2)_______, future generations lose a vital part of the culture that is necessary to completely understand it. This makes language a vulnerable aspect of cultural heritage, and it becomes especially important to (3) __________ it. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), from facts published in their “Atlas of Languages in Danger of Disappearing,” there are an estimated 6,000 languages spoken worldwide today, and half of the world’s population speaks the eight most common. More than 3,000 languages are reportedly spoken by fewer than 10,000 people each. Ethnologue, a reference work published by SIL International, has cataloged the world’s known (4)_______ languages, and it estimates that 417 languages are on the verge of extinction. There are different factors that can (5)________ a language in danger of becoming extinct. One is when a language is no longer being taught to the children of the community, or at least to a large number of the children. In these cases, the remaining fluent speakers of the language are generally the older members of the community, and when they pass away, the language dies out with them

Choose the best answer:
Each year about fifty hundred_________ of plants and animals are already being eliminated.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Long life expectancy can be attributed to a person’s diet - a healthy, balanced diet has been proven to improve longevity. Experts recommend eating at least five portions of a variety of fruit and vegetables every day, basing meals on higher starchy foods like potatoes, bread and rice, having some dairy or dairy alternatives, eating some protein, choosing unsaturated oils and spreads, and drinking plenty of fluids. But new research, published this week, has found the times of day a person eats holds the most benefits. Dr Mark Mattson, a professor of neuroscience at John Hopkins University School of Medicine, in the US, has said “intermittent fasting could be part of a healthy lifestyle.” Intermittent fasting diets usually involve daily time-restricted feeding, which narrows eating times to six to eight hours per day and so-called 5:2 intermittent fasting, in which people limit themselves to one moderate-sized meal two days each week. A range of human and animal studies have shown that alternating between times of fasting and eating supports cellular health, probably by triggering an age-old adaptation to periods of food scarcity called metabolic switching. Such a switch occurs when cells use up their stores of rapidly accessible, sugar-based fuel, and begin converting fat into energy in a slower metabolic process. Dr Mattson says studies have shown that this switch improves blood sugar regulation, increases resistance to stress and suppresses inflammation. Because most Americans eat three meals plus snacks each day, they do not experience the switch, or the suggested benefits. In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr Mattson said four studies in both animals and people found intermittent fasting also decreased blood pressure, blood lipid levels and resting heart rates.  
3. According to paragraph 2, what does intermittent fasting involve?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Bagpipe music played, wreaths were sent and Amazing Grace was sung. A  black shroud was laid upon a makeshift urn. It was a funeral, of course, for which such displays of respect are common. But in this case, the people living in a small Nova Scotia community had gathered to pay their respects not to a person who had died, but to a post office.  The grief might have been hard for outsiders to understand, but not for those living in Head of St. Margaret’s Bay, N.S., where the post office run by Verna Dunlop was a big part of their small, tight-knit community. The post office, which had been located in the back of Dunlop’s home, was not just a utilitarian service kiosk where residents had to go to pick up their mail. According to locals, it was also a community hub where people gathered to catch up on the town gossip, or to enjoy a cup of the coffee the postmaster had been brewing for them. “It’s really the centre of the village,” said one woman, explaining what the post office meant to the people living there.  There had been a post office located in Head of St. Margaret’s Bay since before Confederation. And local residents spent months fighting to keep the one they had. But Canada Post made the decision to close it, as it was losing money. It was replacing the post office with sets of newly installed super mailboxes.  Many people in town weren’t convinced the coming changes were for the better. “We do not want those super mailboxes. We want to have a community life,” he said. At the mock funeral, Dunlop choked up as she said she hoped “this is going to stop,” alluding to the fact that it wasn’t just Head of St. Margaret’s Bay that was losing its post office. “We hope that the way of life that we’re used to we can keep,” she added. Canada Post had closed 40 such rural post offices that year and had long-term plans to close more than 5,000 of them across the country. “Just as Verna Dunlop’s post office came to symbolize for these people the best qualities of rural life, so does its passing remind them of the steady erosion of that way of life,” said Evans.
6. According to paragraph 4, how did the residents feel about the closure of the building?

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the undelined part that needs correction in each of the following questions:
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded annually and the first woman to win this prize was Baroness Bertha Felicie Sophie von Suttner in 1905. In fact, her work inspired creation of the Prize. The first American woman to win the prize was Jane Addams, in 1931. However, Addams is best known as the founder of Hull House.
Jane Addams was born in 1860, into a wealthy family. She was one of a small number of women in her generation to graduate from college. Her commitment to improving the lives of those around her led her to work for social reform and world peace. In the 1880s Jane Addams travelled to Europe. While she was in London, she visited a “settlement house” called Toynbee Hall. Inspired by Toynbee Hall, Addams and her friends, Ellen Gates Starr, opened Hull House in a neighborhood of slums in Chicago in 1899. Hull House provided a day care center for children of working mothers, a community kitchen, and visiting nurses. Addams and her staff gave classes in English literacy, art and other subjects. Hull House also became a meeting place for clubs and labor unions. Most of the people who worked with Addams in Hull House were well educated, middle-class women. Hull House gave them an opportunity to use their education and it provided a training ground for careers in social work.
Before World War I, Addams was probably the most beloved woman in America. In a newspaper poll that asked, “Who among our contemporaries are of the most value to the community?” Jane Addams was rated second, after Thomas Edison. When she opposed America’s involvement in World War I, however, newspaper editors called her a traitor and a fool, but she never changed her mind. Jane Addams was a strong champion of several other causes. Until 1920, American women could not vote. Addams joined in the movement for women’s suffrage and was a 7 vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and was president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Her reputation was gradually restored during the last years of her life. She died of cancer in 1935.

The word “commitment” in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to     .

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Light, litter and noise from boating and water sports are all major stressors on marine  life, a new study aims to enhance our knowledge of the effects of these stressors. Researchers will be gathering data from sporting events, leisure boating, tourism and beach activities. The project will assess the impact that these activities have on the environment and marine life in order to offer further guidance to organisers and water sports enthusiasts.  Mike Laflin said: “I’ve worked in the sports industry for 30 years, providing market intelligence and information services and a few years ago I started to measure the impact of sporting events on host cities and nations. I’m excited to support this new research so that we can understand more about how our activities impact the environment and how we can mitigate against any negative effects.” Theresa Laflin said: “We are very excited to be able to support all the wonderful work that the university is doing in the area of marine research, and for increasing our awareness of the detrimental impact we have on our environment.”  The PhD project will be supervised by Tamara Galloway, Professor of Ecotoxicology at Exeter, who conducts research into the human health effects of pollutants, particularly micro-plastics in water; and Steve Simpson, Associate Professor in Marine Biology and Global Change at the University of Exeter, who has shown that man-made noise is having a detrimental effect on the marine world. Simpson said: “Noise from offshore construction, shipping and motorboats all change the ocean soundscape, disrupting acoustic communication, robbing animals of fundamental sensory information and causing stress. However, working with industry we have found that by managing when and where noise is made, and developing new technology to reduce the noise, we can mitigate the impacts of noise. Finding solutions to reduce the impacts of sporting activities will further help to protect the marine environment.” Galloway said: “We’ll be looking at all forms of pollution both from everyday leisure activities and major sporting events. Investigating specific events gives us the opportunity to measure environmental quality before and after the event, and to return after a period of time to assess recovery. Such an event could be seen as an ‘acute stressor’. Then we’ll also assess ongoing sporting activities, akin to a ‘chronic stressor’ and will try to compare and contrast different types of impact.” 
3. According to paragraph 2, what was the look of the Laflin on the study conducted by the university?

Each sentence has a mistake. Findit by chosing A B C or D

Several developed countries have had a rapid decline in fertility  because many women there have delayed to have children

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 following questions:
There is substantial evidence that students going off to college have changed over the years. For one thing, studies show that they are emotionally closer to their parents and their parents to them. One thing that means is that they depend on each other more for happiness. It puts a burden on children for parents to use their children as vehicles for their own happiness - although today’s young people seem complicit in this arrangement, perhaps because they have known no other way even if it creates anxiety in the children. That’s one reason parents like to be involved in their children’s college experiences, and colleges have had to devise novel ways of getting parents off campus when they transport their kids to school.
There’s also evidence that students today seem to be choosing schools with reference to proximity to home. The closer a student is to home, the easier it is to bring the laundry home and to land in your old bed with tea and sympathy when you have the sniffles. And the easier it is for parents to visit you at university whenever the mood strikes. The amount of visiting parents do is far more than in generations past.
But in a real sense, students don’t really leave their parents behind. Their parents go to college right along with them - in their front pockets. That is, the parents are a speed dial away by cellphone. This, of course, significantly reduces independence. A student doesn’t get the chance to solve minor problems on his own
- he just calls Mom or Dad. A student has initial problems getting along with a roommate? A roommate doesn’t do laundry as often as the other roommate wishes? A student gets a C grade on her first paper? Instead of absorbing the negative information and figuring out how to resolve the problem or how to do better, the call gets made to home, where Mom or Dad solves the problem, often by calling the school administration. This kind of behavior is, sadly, commonplace today and is a mark of the lack of coping skills among students because all the lumps and bumps have been taken out of life for them until now.
In addition to being tethered to parents, incoming freshmen are now very heavily connected by cellphone to classmates from high school, who are presumably at other colleges. So there isn’t the great impetus to mix and venture forth to meet new people, to get out of one’s comfort/one, to get drawn into new experiences, that has traditionally marked the beginning of freshman year. The laws of physics still apply, 6 and it is difficult to be meeting new people and seeking novel experiences while you are talking to your old pals.

“Cutting the Apron Strings”, the title of the passage, can be interpreted as     .

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Some cities are located by chance. A wagon breaks down, the driver spends some  time in repairs, finds that he is in a congenial spot, and settles down. Later another person builds a house near his, and later someone adds an inn. Someone else starts selling farm produce there. Soon there is a little market, which grows to a town, and later to a city.  Other places were destined by nature to become cities. London, for example, is on what is called the head of navigation - the point where it becomes too difficult for oceangoing ships to continue upriver, and must transfer their cargoes. As with London, the head of navigation is also the point where the river can be conveniently bridged. In fact, the location of a bridge is often the reason for the birth of a town - as Cambridge or Weybridge in England show. Again, a good harbour will generally lead to a city growing up about it. New York and San Francisco began life as ports, as did Cape Town in South Africa. Some places were created mainly for military purposes, such as Milan, and the host of English cities finishing with - cester, which is derived from castra which means camp in Latin. Chester itself, created to guard the Welsh border, is a very good example. Other such military bases are Manchester, Doncaster, and of course, Newcastle.  A few cites are not created by accident, but by intention. This was the case with Milton Keynes in England, but the most famous examples of such cities are capitals. Brasilia, Canberra and Washington are capitals created in modern times, but even their greatest admirers will admit that they lack a certain character. It is no co-incidence that there are famous pop songs about New York, (“New York, New York”) Chicago (“My kind of Town”) San Francisco (“Going to San Francisco”) and many other US cities, but none about the nation’s capital. On the other hand any Londoner can give you at least three songs about the place.
7. Which of the following is NOT given as a reason for a new city?