Choose the best answer:
Nam: What do you personally do to keep fit? - Lan: ____

 

Choose the best answer:
It’s/ fantastic/ spend/ a day/ New York.

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The year was 1810, the place was southern Germany, Bavaria, and life was hard. It was the month of October and all of the countryside had been working day and night to finish their fall harvest and prepare for the onset of winter. While the plow horses were working and the farmers’ days were filled from sun up to sun down, there were some other preparations being made as well. Prince Ludwig I and his entire court were preparing for his upcoming marriage to Princess Therese of Sachsen-Hildurghausen. The grand wedding was to take place on the 12th, right in the middle of the harvest. As you know any wedding can be difficult to plan, but when you’re a prince it can be even more stressful. The invitations had gone out, the garments had been made and the location had been selected. The big event was to be held in a magnificent “Weise” (meadow) just outside the gates of Munich. As the big day approached, the countryside and town, in fact all of Bavaria was a buzz with talk of the big day. Everyone was planning on attending as they were all exhausted from the harvest and it was really the last chance before the long, cold days of winter to get out and blow off some steam. On the 12th, the ceremony went off without a hitch. The weather was perfect, the bride looked beautiful and about 40,000 guests were in attendance. The reception, as you can imagine, was one of the biggest parties history had ever seen with copious amounts of beer and massive quantities of food being devoured. It was a reception fit for a prince. And this prince was absolutely ecstatic. Ludwig I was so taken with all of his guests that he planned a special treat for them. The prince knew that all of his subjects were huge fans of horseracing so he planned to conclude the event with a somewhat impromptu horse race across the great meadow. When the townspeople heard of this they erupted in a jubilant cry Zicke Zacka, Zicke Zacka, Hoy, Hoy, Hoy. This is still chanted in the beer tents of today’s Oktoberfest celebrations. It was then and there that they decided unanimously to rename the wiese Theresiewiese (Therese Meadow) in honor of the Prince’s new bride. This was their humble way of welcoming her to town. To this day that very meadow still bears her name. After a spectacular day and night — and probably more than a couple of hangovers — the great event came to an end. It was the following fall as the townspeople began to reminisce about the great time they had had the previous year (as do many of our Oktoberfest guests tend to do around the fall) that they decided to honor their prince and celebrate his wedding anniversary in much the same way. King Maximillian agreed, but this party was to be even bigger, better and longer than the first. The event became an annual celebration. And that my friends is how the Oktoberfest tradition began and continues today. As a side note, the beer that was poured all those years ago and that has been continually served at every Oktoberfest in Munich since will now be served at the Big Bear Lake Oktoberfest. The very same beer flowing from the taps in Munich, Germany will be the beer flowing from our taps in humble Big Bear Lake. And like the beer, our Burgermeister just happens to be a true German original as well. 
5. According to paragraph 3, what is the reason for an impromptu horse race across the great meadow?

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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.
8. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

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

Socially has to be prepared to support its elderly people

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Advertising helps people recognize a particular brand, persuades them to try it, and tries to keep them loyal to it. Brand loyalty is perhaps the most important goal of consumer advertising. Whether they produce cars, canned foods or cosmetics, manufacturers want their customers to make repeated purchases. [2] The quality of the product will encourage this, of course, but so, too, will affect advertising. Advertising relies on the techniques of market research to identify potential users of a product. [3] Are they homemakers or professional people? Are they young or old? Are they city dwellers or country dwellers? Such questions have a bearing on where and when ads should be placed. By studying readership breakdowns for newspapers and magazines as well as television ratings and other statistics, an advertising agency can decide on the best way of reaching potential buyers. Detailed research and marketing expertise are essential today when advertising budgets can run into thousands of millions of dollars. [4] Advertising is a fast-paced, high-pressure industry. There is a constant need for creative ideas that will establish a personality for a product in the public’s mind. Current developments in advertising increase the need for talented workers. In the past, the majority of advertising was aimed at the traditional white family - breadwinner father, non-working mother, and two children. Research now reveals that only about 6 percent of American households fit this stereotype. Instead, society is fragmented into many groups, with working mothers, single people and older people on the rise. To be most successful, advertising must identify a particular segment and aim its message toward that group. Advertising is also making use of new technologies. Computer graphics are used to grab the attention of consumers and to help them see products in a new light. The use of computer graphics in a commercial for canned goods, for instance, gave a new image to the tin can  
4. According to paragraph 2, market research includes __________

Choose the best answer:
Television/ a tool/ gain/ education/ information.

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Pick any day in the Piazza del Duomo in the Italian city of Pisa, and you will  undoubtedly spot a bunch of tourists posing for the same photo: hands outstretched towards the cathedral’s conspicuously tilting bell tower, as if they are supporting it with their sheer strength. The so-called Leaning Tower of Pisa is one of the most famous buildings in the world, although maybe not for the reasons its original architects would have wanted.  In 1173, construction began on a white marble bell tower for the cathedral complex in Pisa, located between the Arno and Serchio rivers in Tuscany, central Italy. By the time builders had finished the third of eight planned stories about five years later, the tower’s foundation had begun to settle unevenly on the ground beneath it, a dense mixture of clay, sand and shells. As a result, the structure had begun to tilt visibly toward the south. Shortly after that, war broke out between Pisa and Genoa, another Italian city-state, halting construction for nearly a century. This delay allowed the foundation to settle further, likely prevented the bell tower’s premature collapse.  When construction resumed, chief engineer Giovanni di Simone tried to compensate for the lean by adding extra masonry to the short side, but the additional weight caused the structure to tilt even further. The tower was officially completed around 1370, but its lean only increased over the next six centuries, becoming an integral part of the monument’s quirky appeal. Despite various attempts to reinforce it, Pisa’s tower continued to subside at a rate of some 0.05 inches per year, placing it in increasing danger of collapse. By 1990, it was leaning 5.5 degrees (or some 15 feet) from the perpendicular–the most extreme angle yet. That year, the monument was closed to visitors and the bells removed as engineers started extensive reparations to stabilize it. By siphoning earth from beneath and adding counterweights to the tower’s north end, they were able to reduce the lean to 13.5 feet, or 4.0 degrees from perpendicular. The straightening continued after the tower reopened in 2001, and in 2008 sensors showed the subsiding motion had stopped, after a total improvement of some 19 inches. Engineers now believe the Leaning Tower of Pisa will remain stable for some 200 years, barring an earthquake or other unpredictable disaster. 
1. Which best serves as the title for the passage?

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Each year about fifty hundred_________ of plants and animals are already being eliminated.

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More than a decade ago the UK investigative journalist Nick Davies published Flat Earth News, an exposé of how the mass media had abdicated its responsibility to the truth. Newsroom pressure to publish more stories, faster than their competitors had, Davies argued, led to journalists becoming mere “churnalists”. Shocking as Davies’ revelations seemed in 2008, they seem pretty tame by today’s standards, writes Ben Lorica, Chief Data Scientist at O’Reilly. We now live in a post-truth world of Fake News and “alternative facts”; where activists don’t just seek to manipulate the news agenda with PR but now use advanced technology to fake images and footage. A particularly troubling aspect of these ‘”deepfake” videos is their use of artificial intelligence to fabricate people saying or doing things with almost undetectable accuracy. The result is that publishers risk running completely erroneous stories – as inaccurate as stating that the world is flat – with little or any ability to check their source material and confirm whether it is genuine. The rise of unchecked fakery has serious implications for our liberal democracy and our ability to understand what’s truly going on in the world. The technology to manipulate imagery has come a long way since Stalin had people airbrushed out of history. Creating convincing yet fake digital content no longer requires advanced skills or a well-resourced (mis)information bureau. Anyone with a degree of technical proficiency can create content that will fool even the experts. Take the faked footage of Nancy Pelosi earlier this year, which was doctored to make her look incoherent and was viewed two and a half million times before Facebook took it down. This story shows how social media is giving new life to the old aphorism that “a lie can go halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its boots on”. The propagation of lies and misinformation is immeasurably enhanced by platforms like Twitter and Facebook that enable virality. What’s more, the incentives for creating fake content now favour malicious actors, with clear economic and political advantages for disseminating false footage. Put simply, the more shocking or extreme the content, the more people will share it and the longer they will stay on the platform. Meanwhile, counterfeiters can manipulate the very tools being developed to detect and mitigate deepfak content, just as the security industry inadvertently supplies software that can be misused for cybercrime.
7. The word “inadvertently” in paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to _______.

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D)
Gender inequality remains an everyday reality for the world’s women and girls. It can begin right at the moment of birth and continue throughout the course of a woman’s life. Despite critical advances over the course of recent history, women in all countries and across all socioeconomic levels in society can face various forms of unfair treatment, including discrimination, harassment, domestic violence and sexual abuse. Other forms of abuse that are particularly prevalent in certain countries or cultural contexts include forced marriage, honor killings, deprivation of education, denial of land and property rights, and lack of access to work and to health care. Women may experience human rights abuses at different points in their working lives, including during recruitment, hiring, promotion and termination processes, as well as in daily interactions with colleagues and supervisors. Outside of the workplace, women are often particularly vulnerable to the social and environmental impacts of business activities. For example, in many developing countries, women and girls are primarily responsible for fetching and hauling water. When company operations contaminate local sources, it is they  who carry the burden of walking, often for hours, to the nearest substitute, which can prevent them from working or going to school. According to the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, gender “refers to the social attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female and the relationships between women and men and girls and boys, as well as the relations between women and those between men. These attributes, opportunities and relationships are socially constructed and are learned through socialization processes.” Furthermore, gender equality “refers to the equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities of women and men and girls and boys. Equality does not mean that women and men will become the same but that women’s and men’s rights, responsibilities and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female.” Women and girls comprise half of the planet’s population; their empowerment is essential in expanding economic growth and promoting social development in a sustainable way. Evidence from around the world shows that gender equality advancements have a ripple effect on all areas of sustainable development, from reducing poverty, hunger and even carbon emissions to enhancing the health, well-being and education of entire families, communities and countries. In fact, “Equality between women and men is seen both as a human rights issue and as a precondition for, and indicator of, sustainable people-centered development.”  
6. The word “those” in paragraph 4 refers to ______

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:
"Did you see that?" Joe said to his friend Bill. "You're a great shooter!"
Bill caught the basketball and bounced it before throwing it again. The ball flew into the net. "Bill, you never miss!" Joe said admiringly.
"Unless I'm in a real game," Bill complained. "Then I miss all the time."
Joe knew that Bill was right. Bill performed much better when he was having fun with Joe in the school yard than he did when he was playing for the school team in front of a large crowd.
"Maybe you just need to practice more," Joe suggested.
"But I practice all the time with you!" Bill objected. He shook his head. "I just can't play well when people are watching me."
"You play well when I'm watching," Joe pointed out.
"That's because I've known you since we were five years old," Bill said with a smile. "I'm just not comfortable playing when other people are around."
Joe nodded and understood, but he also had an idea.
The next day Joe and Bill met in the school yard again to practice. After a few minutes, Joe excused himself.
"Practice without me," Joe said to his friend. "I'll be back in a minute."
Joe hurried through the school building, gathering together whomever he could find - two students, a math teacher, two secretaries, and a janitor. When Joe explained why he needed them, everyone was happy to help.
Joe reminded the group to stay quiet as they all went toward the school's basketball court. As Joe had hoped, Bill was still practicing basketball. He made five baskets in a row without noticing the silent people standing behind him.
"Hey, Bill!" Joe called out finally.
Bill turned. A look of surprise came over his face.
I just wanted to show you that you could play well with people watching you," Joe said. "Now you'll have nothing to worry about for the next game!"

Bill is upset because

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Stabilisation work means the Leaning Tower of Pisa is leaning slightly less than it used to, experts have said. The tower, which has leaned to one side ever since it began to take shape in 1173, has lost 4cm of its tilt over the past two decades, according to a report from the surveillance group that meets every three months to give updates on the monument’s condition “Since restorative work began, the tower is leaning about half a degree less,” said Nunziante Squeglia, a geotechnics professor at the University of Pisa who works with the group. “But what counts is the stability of the tower, which is better than initially predicted.” The structure, which was badly damaged during the second world war, was closed to the public in 1990 over safety fears and did not reopen for 11 years. The surveillance group was set up in 2001 ago after Michele Jamiolkowski, an engineer of Polish origin, coordinated an international committee to save the landmark. The bell tower, a symbol of the power of the maritime republic of Pisa in the Middle Ages, was defective from the beginning due to the porous clay soil beneath its foundations. After three floors were completed, construction stopped and did not resume until 90 years later when workers started building additional floors on a diagonal to offset the lean. But work was again disrupted before finally being completed in 1372. The tower, located behind Pisa’s cathedral, attracts more than 5 million visitors a year. Reaching the top requires climbing 269 steps. The surveillance group’s work, which is funded by the non-profit Opera della Primaziale Pisana, includes improving the quality of the structure’s conservation and promoting research.
2. The word “it” in paragraph 3 refers to ______

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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?

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In the 1930s, a lot of people in the USA were out of work. Among these people was a man named Alfred Butts. He always had an interest in word games and so, to fill his time, he planned a game which he called “Lexico”. However, he was not completely satisfied with the game, so he made a number of changes to it and, in time, changed its name from “Lexico” to “Alph” and then to “Criss Cross”. He wanted to make some money from his new game but he didn’t have any real commercial success. In 1939, Butts happened to meet a man called Jim Brunot who showed an interest in the new game. The two men worked together on developing the game and in 1948 it was offered for sale in the United States under its new name - “Scrabble”. At first, it didn’t sell very well. In the first year it sold just 2,250 sets and by 1951 it had only reached 8,500 sets a year. Then, in 1952 the manager of Macy’s department store in New York, Jack Strauss, happened to play “Scrabble” while he was on holiday. He thought it was a wonderful game and, when he went back to work after his holiday, he insisted that Macy’s should stock the game and make an effort to call the public’s attention to it. As a result, “Scrabble” became a big success in the United States and it soon spread to Australia and then to other English-speaking countries
5. From the passage we can learn that ____

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War: very bad for humanity, good for heavy metal. And cult Swedish rockers Sabaton are the best of the best when it comes to militaristic concept albums Iron Maiden’s ‘The Trooper’. Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’. ‘One’ by Metallica. ‘Angel Of Death’ by Slayer. It’s quite the playlist. And yet it’s unlikely that anyone will ever rival Swedish power metallers Sabaton for their commitment to writing songs about humans shooting each other and blowing stuff up. Sabaton, it should be made clear, are a band who are named after a piece of armour worn on a medieval knight’s foot. The Swedes’ fourth album, 2008’s seminal ‘The Art Of War’, was a concept album based on the writings of the ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu. And, on stage, they normally perform in front of a tank. This time round the theme is the First World War. It arrives 20 years since the band formed. If you’re a fan of this stuff – powerful, bruising, operatic, performed with absolutely no sense of irony whatsoever – then there’s no question that Sabaton are amongst the best of the best. ‘Fields Of Verdun’ gallops into a colossal hook that’s only superseded by the song’s killer chorus. Opener ‘The Future Of Warfare’ sees singer Joakim Brodén’s vocals building a path skyward, “while” Devil Dogs rampages like Iron Maiden did when punk was still part of their repertoire. This is the album that could take Sabaton upwards. The subject matter might be heavy, but Sabaton deserve credit for managing to deliver often difficult themes in a way that still manage to be fun – a quality the genre they exist within has lost sight of in recent times – while also maintaining some respect for the fallen 
4. The word “their” in paragraph 3 refers to _______

Choose the best answer:
We'll have lunch outside in the garden, _____ it's too cold.

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:
A recent study shows that an unequal share of household chores is still the norm in many households, despite the fact that many more women now have jobs. In a survey of 1,256 people ages between 18 and 65, men said they contributed an average of 37% of the total housework, while the women estimated their share to be nearly double that, at 70%. This ratio was not affected by whether the woman was working or not.
When they were asked what they thought was a fair division of labour, women with jobs felt that housework should be shared equally between male and female partners. Women who did not work outside the home were satisfied to perform 80% - the majority of the household work - if their husbands did remainder. Research has shown that, if levels increase beyond these percentages, women become unhappy and anxious, and feel they are unimportant.
After marriage, a woman is reported to increase her household workload by 14 hours per week, but for men the amount is just 90 minutes. So the division of labour becomes unbalanced, as a man's share increases much less than the woman's. It is the inequality and loss of respect, not the actual number of hours, which leads to anxiety and depression. The research describes housework as thankless and unfulfilling. Activities included in the study were cooking, cleaning, shopping, doing laundry, washing up and childcare. Women who have jobs report that they feel overworked by these chores in addition to their professional duties. In contrast, full-time homemakers frequently anticipate going back to work when the children grow up. Distress for this group is caused by losing the teamwork in the marriage.

Although women think men should share the housework, those who don't have paid job agree to share of the chores.

Choose the best answer:
The plants which ................ in the living room need a lot of water.

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Belgium is a very old country, with a fascinating mixture of old customs and modern  laws. Belgium weddings may be performed as a civil ceremony or as a religious ceremony. Traditionally, when a couple in Belgium wishes to announce their marriage, the  wedding invitations are printed on two sheets of paper, one from the bride’s family and one sheet from the groom’s family. These wedding invitations symbolize the union of the two families and the partnership of the new union.  An ancient Belgium custom that is designed to unite the two families calls for the bride to stop as she walks up the aisle and to hand her mother a single flower. The two then embrace. Then, during the recessional, the bride and groom walk to the groom’s mother and the new bride hands her new mother-in-law a single flower and the two of them embrace, symbolizing the bride’s acceptance of her new mother.  One of the most important and enduring traditions of the Belgium wedding is for the bride to carry a specially embroidered handkerchief that has her name embroidered on it. After the wedding this handkerchief is framed and hung on the wall in a place of honor.  When the next female member of the bride’s family is to be wed, the handkerchief is removed from its frame, the new bride’s name is embroidered onto it, and it is passed down. The wedding handkerchief is passed from generation to generation, and is considered an important family heirloom. During the wedding mass, the bride and the groom are enthroned in two large chairs placed near the altar, symbolizing that on this day and in this place they are the king and the queen. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the groom slips the wedding ring onto the third finger of his bride’s left hand. The ring, being an endless circle, symbolizes never-ending love, and the third finger of the left hand is believed to hold the vein that travels to the heart, symbolizing love. At the conclusion of the ceremony, the bride and groom share their first kiss as husband and wife. The kiss is considered a symbolic act of sharing each other’s spirit as the couple each breathes in a portion of their new mate’s soul.  The bridesmaids traditionally take up a collection of coins and as the bride and groom exit the church, the bridesmaids toss the coins to the poor outside the church. Giving gifts of money to the poor helps to insure prosperity for the new bride and groom.  Following the wedding the bride and groom are off on their honeymoon. In ancient times the honeymoon, which was celebrated by the drinking of mead, or honey wine, would last 28 days, one complete cycle of the moon. This was to make sure that the bride’s family did not try to steal their daughter back from her new husband. 
7. The word “insure” in paragraph 6 could be best replaced by ___________

Find synonym:
Children often get vaccinated in order to be immune to fatal diseases