Choose the best answer:
Would you mind _______ more clearly, please?
Suy nghĩ và trả lời câu hỏi trước khi xem đáp án
Lời giải:
Báo saiGiải thích
: sau mind + Ving: phiền, ngại làm gì
Dịch: Phiền bạn nói rõ hơn được không.
Câu hỏi liên quan
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Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
The world is losing languages at an alarming rate. Michael Krauss suggested that of the approximately 6,000 human languages alive today, only 350 to 500 are safe from extinction. Some linguists estimate that a language dies every two weeks or so. At the current rate, by 2100, about 2,500 native languages could disappear. Languages become extinct for many reasons. Through imperialism, colonizers impose their languages on colonies. Some politicians believe multilingualism will fragment national interests. Thus they prohibit education in all but the national language. Another reason for language death is the spread of more powerful languages. In the world today, several languages, including English, are so dominant in commerce, science, and education, that languages with fewer speakers have trouble competing. Although in the past, governments have been one of the primary causes of language death, many have now become champions of preserving endangered languages and have had some significant successes. Two outstanding examples are the revival of Hebrew and Irish. Hebrew was considered a dead language, like Latin, but is now the national language of Israel. Irish was not dead, but severely threatened by English when the government of Ireland began its rescue immediately after the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922. All students in public schools must now take some classes in Irish and there are Irish programs in major media, such as television and radio. According to the Irish government, approximately 37% of the population of Ireland now speaks Irish. One of the largest programs to revive languages, Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL), is being conducted by three U.S. government agencies: the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Museum of Natural History. Researchers funded by these agencies are recording interviews with the mostly elderly people who still speak the languages. Analyses of these interviews will help linguists publish dictionaries and grammars of the languages. Eventually, linguists hope to establish language-training programs where younger people can learn the languages, carrying them on into the future. The linguists participating in DEL defend spending millions of dollars to preserve dying languages. They point out that when a language dies, humanity loses all of the knowledge of the world that that culture held. Traditional healers in rural areas have given scientists important leads in finding new medicines; aspirin is an example of these. But one of the most common reasons given by these researchers is that studying languages gives us insight into the radically different way humans organize their world. David Lightfoot, an official at the National Science foundation, gives the example of Guguyimadjir, and Australian aboriginal language, in which there are no words for “right” or left,” only for “north,” “south,” “east,” and “west.” Many researchers are optimistic that the efforts to save dying languages will succeed, at least in part. Bruce L. Cole, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, said, “Not only is this a time of great potential loss, it is also a moment for enormous potential gain. In this modern age of computers and our growing technological capabilities, we can preserve, assemble, analyze, and understand unprecedented riches of linguistic and cultural information.”
4. The word “revive” in paragraph 4 mostly means _______ -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
The knock–on effect of volunteering on the lives of individuals can be profound. Voluntary work helps foster independence and imparts the ability to deal with different situations, often simultaneously, thus teaching people how to (1) _______ their way through different systems. It therefore brings people into touch with the real world, and hence, equips them for the future. Initially, young adults in their late teens might not seem to have the expertise or knowledge to impart to athare that attencher or an ariculturalist or a nurse would have, (2) ________ they do have many skills can help others. And in the absence of any particular talent, their energy and enthusiasm can be harmes the benefit (3) _______ their fellow human beings, and ultimately themselves. From all this, the gain to any community no matter how many volunteers are involved is (4)_______ . Employers will generally look favorably on people (5) _______have shown an ability to work as part of team. It demonstrates a willingness to learn and an independent spirit, which would be desirable qualities in any employee. -
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The aviation industry, especially the commercial aviation sector, is constantly striving to improve both the way it works and its customer satisfaction. It has begun using artificial intelligence. Though AI in the aviation industry is still in the nascent stage, some progress has been made already as certain leading carriers invest in AI. To make a long story short, AI can redefine how the aviation industry goes about its work. In 2017, American Airlines conducted an app development competition with the goal of having an app developed for making baggage screening easier for passengers. The competition, named HackWars, was themed upon artificial intelligence, drones and augmented and virtual reality. The winner, known as “Team Avatar,” developed an app that would not only allow passengers determine their baggage size before arriving at the airport, but also prepay any potential baggage-related expenses. United Airlines is using Amazon’s Alexa to have certain common customer queries answered. In September 2017, United announced a collaboration with Alexa. The feature is known as the United skill. To get started, all passengers need to do is to add the United skill to their Alexa app and then start asking questions. Alexa answers common queries correctly, such as the status of a flight by number, check-in requests and availability of Wi-Fi on a flight. The reviews so far have been mixed, which points to the fact that there is a learning curve, and it is still a long way to go before AI can fully handle customer assistance. Tracking progress is an enormous challenge that airlines will face. The first thing they need to do is to develop analytics that will help them develop and process accurate data. However, that in itself is a challenge. What kind of analytics will help? For example, customer satisfaction is going to be one of the most important factors in success. What kind of analytics will determine that airlines have been improving on customer satisfaction parameters? AI needs huge investments, and probably the biggest risk in this is smaller, especially budget airlines are going to miss out on reaping the benefits of AI fully. Does that mean that the performance of the smaller carriers will be impacted? That might not be the case, because we might be moving toward more acquisitions and mergers. Bigger airlines will have a massive appetite for acquiring smaller airlines with an eye on the market. It is not all gloom and doom though, because smaller airlines like Southwest have already shown some initiatives toward embracing AI. It is surprising that a sector as important as aviation has woken up to AI so late. As AI in aviation picks up its pace, there could probably be a few mergers, acquisitions or even closure of small airlines which will not be able to afford the investments. Now, AI seems the best option to take aviation to the next level.
4. The word “queries” in paragraph 3 can best be replaced by _____ -
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:
Four West Indian geckos, with human assistance, have recently entered the United States. The yellowheaded gecko, the ashy gecko, the reef gecko, and the ocellated gecko are presently inhabiting the tropical areas of the Keys and the tip of southern Florida. The Mediterranean gecko also arrived along the Gulf coast some time ago, via the West Indies. The only other geckos in the United States live in the Southwest. In extreme southern California, the leaf-gingered gecko livesin dry, rocky country and scampers over boulders at night, hiding by day in crevices. It has a slender, tapered tail and stalks insects by raising itself high on its legs, cocking its head, and twitching its tail nervously before leaping on its prey. In courtship, the tail is also waved by the male as he approaches the female.
Although most lizards are excellent climbers, the geckos are able to walk on smooth surfaces with the help of unique clinging devices under the toes. Also, the undersides of most geckos have pads of large scales, each of which bear microscopic hairs with hundreds of branches having minute, blunt ends that press against the surface that the gecko is on, enabling the gecko to cling to almost any surface. Like other lizards, geckos have the ability to shed their tails if attacked by an enemy. They stump heels and a new tail is grown in approximately the same shape as the original. Unlike most lizards, most geckos have no moveable eyelids. The nocturnal geckos have vertical pupils, which contract in bright light. All geckos, except several New Zealand species, lay eggs. The eggs have a tough, white shell and are laid under stones, behind window shutters or under bark.Which of the following is closest in meaning to the word “nocturnal”?
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By the end of the third millennium, people will all have access to basic utilities like electricity and the internet. As a type of civilization, the overall energy consumption of everyone in the 30th century will be at a level of around 4×10²⁶ watts. In other words, the energy utilization in a world full of working class consumers will be comparable to the luminosity of our parent star. So, the people of the future will inevitably need to fully harness the output of the Sun through the use of a vast array of satellite mega-structures that encircle the celestial body and capture the radiation it emits. In requiring everyone to work together, the inclusive attitude of the future will cause everyone to grow much closer to one another, improving interpersonal relationships in neighborhoods the world over. By the year 3000, the whole of humanity will become a sort of poly-amorous society of mono-ethnic global citizens, living in a complex egalitarian intercontinental cooperative. Everyone will be part of multicultural communities within communities. Companies and credit unions will even be owned by their employees. People will all be very conscientious. Everyone will support the global economy, as well as ecology, of the world. Humans will inhabit artificial urban jungles filled with buildings and sidewalks, while the other animals will inhabit natural rural jungles filled with wilderness and trails. Friends will walk through the crowded streets of the mega-cities of the future holding hands with one another. Public displays of affection will be customary among everyone. Casual bisexual encounters will be the norm. Everyone will care about everyone else. People will all accept each other, and help each other out, more and more as time goes on. The point is that eventually, everyone will finally get along. Humanity will progress to a point of collective compatibility as everyone sufficiently integrates and assimilates. From now until the year 3000, the several thousand languages currently spoken will reduce down to only about a hundred. More importantly, the nation-state members of the UN will all use the same form of electronic currency. As the countries of the world unify more and more, the metric system will become the universal standard of measurement. Things will become increasingly more common among everyone. This will bring everyone closer and closer together, each step of the way. In the end, cultural memes will all eventually just blend together in the great melting pot that is the world. People will also change physically, along with mentally, too though. For instance, there will be an increase in both height and longevity, among people in general. In the year 3000 people will be about six feet tall, and live to be 120 years old, on average. They will experience a slight reduction in the size of their mouths, too. Improvements in nutritional science will revolutionize the world of medicine and alter the course of human evolution. Everyone will be genetically screened as an embryo to weed out defects and correct mistakes in their personal genome. 8th scale transhuman cyborgs will even go so far as to have 7 th scale robotic integrations, with microscopic machines making them better. This will be terribly important because there will be very little diversity in the gene pool of the superhumans of the future, who are all bred to be what is considered ideal.
8. What can be the main idea of the last passage? -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
The World Health Organization on Wednesday declared the rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that “We expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths, and the number of affected countries climb even higher.” WHO officials had said earlier they were hesitant to call the outbreak a pandemic in case it led governments and individuals to give up the fight. On Wednesday, they stressed that fundamental public health interventions can still limit the spread of the virus and drive down cases even where it was transmitting widely, as the work of authorities and communities in China, Singapore, and South Korea has shown. The virus, which probably originated in bats but passed to people via an as yet unrecognized intermediary animal species, is believed to have started infecting people in Wuhan, China, in late November or early December. Since then the virus has raced around the globe. South Korea, which has reported nearly 8,000 cases, also appears poised to bring its outbreak under control with aggressive measures and widespread testing. But other countries have struggled to follow the leads of China and South Korea — a reality that has frustrated WHO officials who have exhorted the world to do everything possible to end transmission of the virus. Tedros used the fact that 90% of the cumulative cases have been reported in just four countries as evidence that the rest of the world still had time to prevent an explosion of cases with action. WHO officials also stressed that countries should be implementing a strategic combination two types of measures. One involves trying to detect and stop known chains of transmission by isolating cases and following and potentially quarantining their contacts. The other involves community-level steps like social distancing and comes into play when the virus is spreading more broadly and transmission chains can’t be tracked. Mike Ryan, the head of the WHO’s emergency program, said that the public health interventions might not have straightforward effect, but to slow the spread of the virus. People with severe cases can require long periods of critical care and strain the resources of hospitals. He said he was worried about “the case load, the demand on the health workers, the dangers that come with fatigue, and potentially shortages of personal protective equipment.”
1. Which best serves as the title for the passage? -
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Last week, China declared “mission accomplished” after landing a spacecraft, Chang’e-4, on the far side of the Moon. It was a remarkable endeavour. As the far side of the Moon never faces the Earth, mission control cannot communicate directly with the spacecraft, but only via an orbiting satellite. The terrain is more broken and cratered than the near side, so landing a craft is that much more difficult. Even Nasa was impressed: “a first for humanity and an impressive accomplishment!”. Yet mixed with admiration was trepidation. China, a latecomer to the space race, is now beginning to threaten the supremacy of America and Russia. But then Russia and America have long played their space exploration programmes for propaganda purposes. From the beginning, the space race was intimately bound up with the needs of the cold war. In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first human craft to orbit the Earth. Four years later, Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Eight years later, on 21 July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to tread on the Moon. Their journey may have been fuelled in part by cold war desperation, but it was also an extraordinary triumph of knowledge and will, an act of the technological sublime. Once America was satisfied that the Soviet Union had been put in its place, space exploration became politically less important. As America downgraded its space ambitions, Chinese aspirations took flight. In 1992, the Chinese government approved the Shenzhou manned spaceflight programme. Eleven years later, Yang Liwei became the first Chinese astronaut in space. Fears about Chinese ambitions have been heightened by the changing context of the space race. During the cold war, America feared the Soviet Union, but was determined to thwart Moscow’s aims. Today, American apprehension stems from the worry that China’s emergence as the dominant global force cannot be checked, nor Beijing’s brutal despotism challenged. As liberal democracy frays in the west and authoritarian capitalism becomes entrenched in the east, self-doubt shapes US attitudes to China. Space exploration has long been fuelled by a mixture of humanistic dreams, technological leaps and tawdry politics. The Chang’e-4 mission is no different. How the space race will play out over the next decade, and what role China will adopt in global politics, remains uncertain. In the meantime, let us celebrate our new perspective of the dark side of the Moon.
8. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage? -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
It’s probably the most painstaking, heart wrenching, and stress inducing test of dedication a marriage can face. But the reward at the end is pretty sweet. At the annual Wife Carrying World Championships in Sonkajärvi, Finland, male competitors race around a track hauling their female partners on their backs. Winner takes home his wife’s weight in beer. It’s no ordinary racetrack, either. Competitors must wade through a neck-deep pool of water, climb over hurdles, and run through pits of sand before crossing the finish line. While some participants don crazy costumes for the pre-race, the actual event is pretty straightlaced. Wives must weigh at least 49 kilograms (108 pounds). Any woman lighter than that is required to carry a heavy rucksack until she reaches this minimum. A participant who drops his wife will be penalized 15 seconds. But there is one catch: contestants don’t have to carry their own wives. A friend’s wife, stranger’s wife, or even a random grandmother will do – as long as she’s over 17. Contestants flock from 47 countries across the globe to show their stuff in this epic display of brute strength. This year, Finnish couple Taisto Miettinen and Kristiina Haapanen captured the title for the fourth consecutive year. The 46-year-old lawyer and his wife completed the 235-meter course in one minute and four seconds. Like any dedicated athlete, Miettinen reported that he’d been training for a while. “In last autumn, I started running in the track, one hundred, two hundred and four hundred meters,” Miettinen said in a post-race interview. He also practiced the course in ski boots to build leg strength. The competition, which began in 1992, is supposedly rooted in the legend of Ronkainen the Robber — a hardnosed gang leader who hazed potential members by making them lug sacks of grain or live pigs over a similar course. He and his comrades also made a habit of stealing women from neighboring villages as a nod to this practice, many men “steal” friends’ wives for the competition. If you want to compete but can’t make it to Finland, there’s a North American version of the contest held in October at Sunday River Resort in Maine. With 100-plus pounds of brewski on the line, you might want to tell your significant other to start shaping up.
3. The phrase “straight-laced” in paragraph 2 probably means ______ -
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Generation gap refers to a vast difference in cultural norms between a younger generation and their elders. It’s a distressing thing for the phenomenon (1) ____ occurs around the world. The (2) ____ of communication, different views on certain problems and different attitudes towards life may cause the generation gap or even widen it. First, one of the major factors for this misunderstanding between two generations is that parents and children lack communication. Young people (3) ____ reveal their feelings to their parents, and often complain that their parents are out of (4) ____ with modern days, that they are dominant, that they do not trust their children to deal with crises, and that they talk too much about certain problems. So when young people meet some problems, they would rather (5) ____ to their classmates or their friends for help. The lack of communication widens the generation gap Another factor is that parents and their children see almost everything from different (6) ____. Take choosing career as an example. Parents generally believe it is their responsibility to plan the career for their children. Some hope their children will (7) ____ professions that will bring them greatest prestige and economic benefits. Some hope children will have a stable job with a regular income. But the youth may think they should be free to (8) ____ their own decisions as to their future career. Young people explain that true success is not a matter of money or position, instead, it is a matter of self-fulfillment. Finally, with the change of the world over decades, the attitude of the young has altered too. There are differences in (9) ____ matters as musical tastes, fashions, drug use, sex and politics between the young people and their elders. Nowadays long hair on young males is viewed as fashion by the young, but it is frequently considered a shocking act of rebellion against (10) ____ norms by parents -
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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.
4. The word “it” in paragraph 3 refers to _____ -
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In 1988, a year before the Soviet Union collapsed, the 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam adopted a resolution to have “more friends and fewer enemies”. So it was not surprising when Vietnam expressed interest in joining ASEAN as early as 1992, or when it did in fact join in July 1995. Vietnam’s membership of the grouping integrated its security with the whole of Southeast Asia and created a favourable environment for economic development. This, in turn, raised Vietnam’s global image, leading to increased cooperation with multiple players in the region and greater bargaining clout with super powers like the United States and China. As an ASEAN member, Vietnam has worked hard to secure peace and reconciliation among Southeast Asian nations, which were once deeply divided by war. Vietnam was the first Indochinese country to join ASEAN, and its move helped end confrontation between the Indochinese bloc and ASEAN. Vietnam has also helped ASEAN partner with non-regional players. Vietnam also led efforts within ASEAN to ensure regional security. Soon after becoming a member, Vietnam signed the Treaty on the Southeast Asian Nuclear-WeaponFree Zone and was one of the founding members of the ASEAN Regional Forum. But the most proactive steps by Hanoi towards regional stability have revolved around disputes in the South China Sea. A direct claimant in the dispute, Vietnam, along with the Philippines, has made constant efforts to put the South China Sea on ASEAN’s agenda, ensuring conflict is dealt with in a constructive way. Vietnam has shown constant support for the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, ASEAN’s Six-Point Principles on the East Sea, and the soon-to-be-concluded Code of Conduct of Parties in the East Sea. Vietnam calls for the settlement of disputes by peaceful means on the basis of international law and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea — including through regulations on respecting exclusive economic zones and the continental shelf of coastal countries. Vietnam has remained committed to ASEAN since it joined in 1995 and Vietnam is beginning to integrate further with the global community, and cooperation with ASEAN will always be an important pillar in its foreign policy. But Vietnam’s interest in ASEAN is not
limited to security issues. Its leadership also drives efforts toward an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC).
5. According to paragraph 3, what is correct about the activities of ASEAN? -
Choose the best answer:
It is no use ____ a girl that she doesn't need to lose any weight. -
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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.
6. According to paragraph 5, what is CORRECT about the wedding ring? -
Choose the best answer:
People believed that Jane retired because of her poor health. -
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Deforestation has important global consequences. Forests sequester carbon in the form of wood and other biomass as the trees grow, taking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When forests are burned, their carbon is returned to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that has the potential to alter global climate, and the trees are no longer present to sequester more carbon. In addition, most of the planet’s valuable biodiversity is within forests, particularly tropical ones. Moist tropical forests such as the Amazon have the greatest concentrations of animal and plant species of any terrestrial ecosystem; perhaps two-thirds of Earth’s species live only in these forests. As deforestation proceeds, it has the potential to cause the extinction of increasing numbers of these species. On a more local scale, the effects of forest clearing, selective logging, and fires interact. Selective logging increases the flammability of the forest because it converts a closed, wetter forest into a more open, drier one. This leaves the forest vulnerable to the accidental movement of fires from cleared adjacent agricultural lands and to the killing effects of natural droughts. As wildfires, logging, and droughts continue, the forest can become progressively more open until all the trees are lost. Additionally, the burning of tropical forests is generally a seasonal phenomenon and can severely impact air quality. Record-breaking levels of air pollution have occurred in Southeast Asia as the result of burning for oil palm plantations. In the tropics, much of the deforested land exists in the form of steep mountain hillsides. The combination of steep slopes, high rainfall, and the lack of tree roots to bind the soil can lead to disastrous landslides that destroy fields, homes, and human lives. With the significant exception of the forests destroyed for the oil palm industry, many of the humid forests that have been cleared are soon abandoned as croplands or only used for lowdensity grazing because the soils are extremely poor in nutrients. The vegetation that contains most of the nutrients is often burned, and the nutrients literally “go up in smoke” or are washed away in the next rain. Although forests may regrow after being cleared and then abandoned, this is not always the case, especially if the remaining forests are highly fragmented. Such habitat fragmentation isolates populations of plant and animal species from each other, making it difficult to reproduce without genetic bottlenecks, and the fragments may be too small to support large or territorial animals. Furthermore, deforested lands that are planted with commercially important trees lack biodiversity and do not serve as habitats for native plants
and animals, many of which are endangered species.
5. The word “significant” in paragraph 4 can be best replaced by ______ -
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Love covers a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection to the simplest pleasure. An example of this range of (1) ____________________ is that the love of a mother differs from the love of a wife, which also differs from the love of food. Most commonly, it (2) ______________ to a feeling of strong attraction and deep emotional attachment. Love is considered to be both positive and negative; with its virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection, as “the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another”; and its vice representing human moral flaw, (3) ______________ to vanity, selfishness, amour-propre, and egotism, as it potentially leads people into a type of mania, obsessiveness or codependency. It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions (4) _____________________ other humans, one’s self or animals. In its various forms, love acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in creative arts. Love has, supposedly, a function to keep human beings (5) ___________________ against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the human species -
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Urbanization programmes are being carried out in many parts of the world, especially in densely (1) ________ regions with limited land and resources. It is the natural outcome of economic development and industrialization. It has brought a lot of benefits to our society. However, it also (2) ________ various problems for local authorities and town planners in the process of maintaining sustainable urbanization, especially in developing countries. When too many people cram into a small area, urban infrastructure can’t be effective. There will be a (3) ________ of livable housing, energy and water supply. This will create overcrowded urban districts with no proper facilities. Currently, fast urbanization is taking place predominantly in developing countries where sustainable urbanization has little relevance to people’s lives. Their houses are just shabby slums with poor sanitation. Their children only manage to get basic education. Hence, the struggle for (4) ________ is their first priority rather than anything else. Only when the quality of their existence is improved, can they seek (5) ________ other high values in their life -
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200 years ago there were less than one billion humans living on earth. Today, according to UN calculations there are over 7 billion of us. Recent estimates suggest that today’s population size is roughly equivalent to 6.9% of the total number of people ever born. This is the most conspicuous fact about world population growth: for thousands of years, the population grew only slowly but in recent centuries, it has jumped dramatically. Between 1900 and 2000, the increase in world population was three times greater than during the entire previous history of humanity—an increase from 1.5 to 6.1 billion in just 100 years. How the world population is changing is of great importance for humanity’s impact on the Earth’s natural environment, but it also gives reasons to hope for a good future. This is because we have a bigger team of better educated people who can contribute to the solutions that improve global well-being. A picture of the world population in the very long-run shows extremely rapid growth. Indeed, for a long time the world population grew at an increasing rate. However, if we focus on the last couple of decades, we see that this pattern no longer holds, as the annual rate of population growth has been recently going down. 1962 saw the growth rate peak at 2.1%, and it has since fallen to almost half. A long historical period of accelerated growth has thus come to an end. Based on these observations, world history can be divided into three periods marked by distinct trends in population growth. The first period, pre-modernity, was a very long age of very slow population growth. The second period, beginning with the onset of modernity— which was characterized by rising standards of living and improving health—had an increasing growth rate that continued to rise through 1962. Today, the second period is over, and the third period is unfolding; the population growth rate is falling and will likely continue to fall, leading to an end of population growth towards the end of this century.
5. What does the word “it” in paragraph 3 refer to? -
Rewrite the sentence:
Planting trees can contribute to reducing global warming. -
Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Simmons Research conducted a survey of American adults in order to learn how much Americans at large trust the media, and we are pleased to present the results in this first Simmons News Media Trust Index. We asked respondents to let us know how trustworthy or untrustworthy they found 38 of the largest and most well-known news sources commonly available in the US. News sources included represented a wide variety of mediums, including print, online, radio, and television with many of them operating across platforms. The average percentage of respondents who rated news sources as trustworthy or very trustworthy was just 40.1% - not a ringing endorsement for journalism in general. Topping the list across all news sources, and the only newspaper in the top five, was the Wall Street Journal with 57.7% of Americans trusting them. The major television network news organizations also fared quite well in our survey, taking the second (ABC 55.9%), third (CBS 55.4%), and sixth (NBC 54.1%) most trusted positions. Among cable news, the most trusted network in the US was ironically not American. BBC News was trusted by 55.2% of Americans and was the fourth most trusted news source. CNN, which touts itself as the “most trusted name in news,” trailed the list at number 14 with the trust of 46.1% of Americans. Forbes was the most trusted magazine and rounded out the top five, trusted by 54.2% of Americans. The New York Times and the Washington Post were both among the most trusted news organizations in our survey. The New York Times came in at the seventh position trusted by 53.8% of Americans, and the Washington Post in eighth trusted by 53.6%. USA Today (51.1%) and the Washington Times (50.0%) were the final two sources trusted by at least a majority of Americans. The least trusted news sources were all Internet-first and hyper-partisan in nature representing brands that have been consistently rated as misleading and inaccurate by factcheckers. The six organizations trusted least were split evenly between far-left and far-right news sources, and on average were trusted by only about one in four Americans. Daily Caller was the bottom of our list, with just 22.5% trusting them. They were followed by another extremely conservative platform, InfoWars, at 24.3% which was recently banned or had content deleted from Facebook, YouTube, iTunes, and Spotify for violating terms of service around hate speech, harassment, and bullying
6. According to paragraph 4, what made the worst rankers evaluated as “misleading and inaccurate”?