Choose the word or phrase among A, B, C or D that best fits the blank space in the following passage:
"Like any other universities, the Open University can give you a degree. However, you don’t have to (1)…. working to study. It can also open up a whole variety (2)….. interest. If you have (3)….. studied before, you will enjoy the special, new pleasure of (4)….. your knowledge. You will make friends of (5)….. kinds. You may also (6)…. that your qualification provides new career opportunities.
You don’t actually (7)…. to the Open University for lectures, but study at home, using television, radio and Computer software. You can (8)….. one class a month if you wish at an Open University centre. Of course, there are exams to take, as in (9)….. university. If you (10)….like to know more, all you have to do is to complete the form below. It could be the start of a wonderful new period in your life."
1. However, you don’t have to (1)…. working to study.
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Lời giải:
Báo saiA. ngừng
B. cuối
C. gian đoạn
D.rời đi
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Choose the item among A, B, C or D that best answers the question about the passage:
"“Where is the university?” is a question many visitors to Cambridge ask, but no one can give them a clear answer, for there is no wall to be found around the university. The university is the City. You can find the classroom buildings, libraries, museums and offices of the university all over the city. And most of its members are the students and teachers or professors of the thirty-one colleges.
Cambridge was an already developing town long before the first students and teachers arrived 800 years ago. It grew up by the river Granta, as the Cam was once calied. A bridge was built over the river as early as 875.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries more and more land was used for college buildings. The town grew much faster in the nineteenth century after the opening of the railway in 1845. Cambridge became a City in 1951 and now it has the population of over 100,000. Many young students want to study at Cambridge. Thousands of people from all over the world come to visit the university town. It has become a famous place all around the world."5. From what we read we know that now Cambridge is …..
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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:
Recreational diving or sport diving is a type of diving that uses scuba equipment for the purpose of leisure and enjoyment. In some diving circles, the term "recreational diving" is used in contradistinction to "technical diving", a more demanding aspect of the sport which requires greater levels of training, experience and equipment.
Recreational scuba diving grew out of related activities such as snorkeling and underwater hunting. For a long time, recreational underwater excursions were limited by the amount of breath that could be held. However, the invention of the aqualung in 1943 by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and its development over subsequent years led to a revolution in recreational diving. However, for much of the 1950s and early1960s, recreational scuba diving was a sport limited to those who were able to afford or make their own kit, and prepared to undergo intensive training to use it. As the sport became more popular, manufacturers became aware of the potential market, and equipment began to appear that was easy to use, affordable and reliable. Continued advances in' SCUBA technology, such as buoyancy compensators, modern diving regulators, wet or dry suits, and dive computers, increased the safety, comfort and convenience of the gear encouraging more people to train and use it.
Until the early 1950s, navies and other organizations performing professional diving were the only providers of diver training, but only for their own personnel and only using their own types of equipment. There were no training courses available to civilians who bought the first scuba equipment. Professional instruction started in 1959 when the non-profit National Association of Underwater Instructors was formed.
Further developments in technology have reduced the cost of training and diving. Scuba- diving has become a popular leisure activity, and many diving locations have some form of dive shop presence that can offer air fills, equipment and training. In tropical and sub-tropical parts of the world, there is a large market in holiday divers, who train and dive while on holiday, but rarely dive close to home. Generally, recreational diving depths are limited to a maximum of between 30 and 40 meters (100 and 130 feet), beyond which a variety of safety issues make it unsafe to dive using recreation diving equipment and practices, and specialized training and equipment for technical diving are needed.Holiday divers _.
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Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the question.
Nowadays, most people realize that it’s risky to use credit card numbers online. However, from time to time, we all use passwords and government ID numbers on the Internet. We think we are safe, but that may not be true! A new kind of attack is being used by dishonest people to steal IDs and credit card numbers from innocent websurfers. This new kind of attack is called “phishing.”
Phishing sounds the same as the word “fishing,” and it implies that a thief is trying to lure people into giving away valuable information. Like real fishermen, phishers use bait in the form of great online deals or services. For example, phishers might use fake emails and false websites to con people into revealing credit card numbers, account usernames, and passwords. They imitate well-known banks, online sellers, and credit card companies. Successful phishers may convince as many as five percent of the people they contact to respond and give away their personal financial information.
Is this really a big problem? Actually, tricking five percent of the online population is huge! Currently, more than 350 million people have access to the Internet, and seventy-five percent of those Internet users live in the wealthiest countries on Earth. It has been estimated that phishers send more than three billion scam messages each year. Even by tricking only five percent of the people, phishers can make a lot of money.
Since there is so much money to make through this kind of scam, it has caught the interest of more than just small-time crooks. Recently, police tracked down members of an organized phishing group in Eastern Europe, who had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from people online. The group created official-looking email messages requesting people to update their personal information at an international bank’s website. However, the link to the bank in the message actually sent people to the phishers’ fake website. To make matters worse, further investigation revealed that this group had connections to a major crime gang in Russia.
How can innocent people protect themselves? Above all, they have to learn to recognize email that has been sent by a phisher. Always be wary of any email with urgent requests for personal financial information. Phishers typically write upsetting or exciting, but fake, statements in their emails so that people will reply right away. Also, messages from phishers will not address recipients by name because they really don’t know who the recipients are yet. On the other hand, valid messages from your bank or other companies you normally deal with will typically include your name.The word “lure” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to ____________.
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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:
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law in 1990. This law extends civil rights protection to persons with disabilities in private sector employment, all public services, and in public accommodations, transportation and telecommunications. A person with a disability is defined as someone with a mental or physical impairment that substantially limits him or her in a major life activity, such as walking, talking, working, or self-care. A person with a disability may also be someone with a past record of such impairment, for example, someone who no longer has heart disease but is discriminated against because of that history.
The ADA states that employers with fifteen or more employees may not refuse to hire or promote a person because of a disability if that person is qualified to perform the job. Also, the employer must make reasonable accommodations that will allow a person with a disability to perform essential functions of the job.
All new vehicles purchased by public transit authorities must be accessible to people with disabilities. All rail stations must be made accessible, and at least one car per train in existing rail systems must be made accessible.
It is illegal for public accommodations to exclude or refuse persons with disabilities. Public accommodations are businesses and services such as restaurants, hotels, grocery stores and parks. All new buildings must be made accessible, and existing facilities must remove barriers if the removal can be accomplished without much difficulty or expense.
The ADA also stipulates that companies offering telephone service to the general public must offer relay services to individuals who use telecommunications devices for the deaf, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.It can be inferred from the passage that .
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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:
Birds have evolved many physical attributes that contribute to their flying ability. Wings are important, but adjustable tails, large hearts and light bones play critical roles.
To fly, birds, like airplanes, move air across their wings. Wings are designed so that air above the wings is forced to move faster than air below the wing. This creates higher pressure under the wings, called lift, which pushes the bird up. Different wing types evolved for different ways of flying. Prolonged flight requires long wings and an ability to soar. Other birds need superior maneuverability. Finches and sparrows
have short, broad wings. Faster birds, like hawks, have built-in spoilers that reduce turbulence while flying. This allows a steeper angle of attack without stalling.
Tails have evolved for specialized use. The tail acts like a rudder helping birds steer. Birds brake by spreading out their tails as they land. This adaptation allows them to make sudden, controlled stops-an essential skill, since most birds need to land on individual branches or on prey.
Flight takes muscle strength. If body builders has wings, they still could not flap hard enough to leave the ground. Birds have large, specialized hearts that beat much faster than the human heart and
provide the necessary oxygen to the muscles. The breast muscle accounts for 15 percent of the bird’s body weight. On pigeons, it accounts for a third of their total body weight.
Birds carry no excess baggage; they have hollow feathers and hollow bones with struts inside to maintain strength, like cross beams in a bridge. Birds fly to find prey, escape predators, and attract mates- in other words, to survive.What is the main idea of the passage?
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Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.
All living things require energy to do the work necessary for survival and reproduction. But what is energy? Energy is simply the ability to do work, (1) _______ work is done when a force moves an object. Let's consider your own needs for a moment. You need energy to turn on and turn off your computer. You need energy to (2) _______ of bed in the morning. And, yes, you need energy to reproduce. So where does energy come from and how do we use it? On Earth, energy ultimately comes from the sun. Plants use the sun's energy to make sugar. Organisms, in turn, use sugar as a (3) _______ of energy to do work.
Plants use energy from sunlight to make sugar and oxygen from carbon dioxide and water. The process by which carbon dioxide and water are (4) _______ to sugar and oxygen using sunlight is referred to as photosynthesis. This is an endergonic reaction, meaning energy is required by the reaction. Specifically, energy is required to put the carbon dioxide and the water molecules together to form sugar. Sun (5) _______ the energy needed to drive photosynthesis, and some of the energy used to make the sugar is stored in the sugar molecule.
(25).............
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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:
The Roman alphabet took thousands of years to develop, from the picture writing of the ancient Egyptians through modifications by Phoenicians, Greek, Romans, and others. Yet in just a dozen years, one man, Sequoyah, invented an alphabet for the Cherokee people. Bom in eastern Tennessee, Sequoyah was a hunter and a silversmith in his youth, as well as an able interpreter who knew Spanish, French and English.
Sequoyah wanted his people to have the secret of the “talking leaves” as he called his books of white people, and so he set out to design a written form of Cherokee. His chief aim was to record his people’s ancient tribal customs. He began by designing pictographs for every word in the Cherokee vocabulary. Reputedly his wife, angry with him for his neglect of garden and house, burned his notes, and he had to start over. This time, having concluded that picture-writing was cumbersome, he made symbols for the sounds of Cherokee language. Eventually he refined his system to eighty-five characters, which he borrowed from the Roman, Greek, and Hebrew alphabets. He presented this system to the Cherokee General Council in 1821, and it was wholeheartedly approved. The response was phenomenal. Cherokees who had stmggled for months to leam English lettering school picked up the new system in days. Several books were printed in Cherokee, and in 1828, a newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, was first published in the new alphabet. Sequoyah was acclaimed by his people.
In his later life, Sequoyah dedicated himself to the general advancement of his people. He went to Washington, D.C, as a representative of the Western tribes. He helped settled bitter differences among Cherokee after their forced movement by the federal government to the Oklahoma territory in the 1930s.
He died in Mexico in 1843 while searching for groups of lost Cherokee. A statue of Sequoyah represents Oklahoma in the Statuary Hall in the Capitol building of Washington, DC. However, he is probably chiefly remembered today because Sequoias, the giant redwood trees of California, are named of him.According to the passage, how long did it take to develop the Cherokee’s alphabet?
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Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or II to indicate the answer to each of the question.
Having a hobby that you enjoy—whether that’s crocheting a sweater for your beastie’s new baby, hitting the slopes to enjoy some fresh powder, or practicing pirouettes in ballet class—has all sorts of well-documented benefits, from lower levels of stress to an increased sense of belonging and purpose. Clearly, hobbies can make a serious impact on your quality of life. But they can also improve your work performance. According to licensed professional counselor Rebecca Weiler, when you’re engaged and fulfilled in your life outside of work like you are when you’re pursuing meaningful hobbies, that happiness spills over. It can make you more focused and enthusiastic when you’re on the job.
And depending on the hobby, the skills you gain as a result of your leisurely pursuits can also make you better at your job and make you a more appealing candidate for potential employers. “For example, someone who performs in an improvisational group as a hobby could be attractive to an employer because they can think quickly on their feet and may also be more comfortable presenting in front of a group of people,” Weiler says.
So, having a hobby that you love can do good things for your life and your job. But what if you don’t actually have a hobby you enjoy? You’re not alone. According to Weiler, trying to find meaningful hobbies is one of the primary reasons her clients—especially young people—seek counseling. Clearly, there are plenty of people out there who don’t have, or don’t know how to find, a hobby. But that doesn’t mean they can’t find one. It doesn’t matter if you’re 25 or 85 years old—it’s not too late to hop on board the hobby train!Which best serves as the title for the passage?
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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:
Scientists have uncovered a new threat to the world's endangered coral reefs. They have found that most are incapable of growing quickly enough to compensate for rising sea levels triggered by global warming. The study suggests that reefs - which are already suffering serious degradation because the world's seas are warming and becoming more acidic - could also become overwhelmed by rising oceans.
The research - led by scientists at Exeter University and published in Nature this week - involved studying growth rates for more than 200 tropical western Atlantic and Indian Ocean reefs. It was found only 9% of these reefs had the ability to keep up with even the most optimistic rates of sea-level rises forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "For many reefs across the Caribbean and Indian Ocean regions, where the study focused, rates of growth are slowing due to coral reef degradation," said Professor Chris Perry, of Exeter University. “Meanwhile, rates of sea-level rise are increasing - and our results suggest reefs will be unable to keep up. As a result, water depths above most reefs will increase rapidly through this century.”
Sea levels rose by several inches over the past century and measurements indicate the speed of this increase is now rising significantly. Two key factors are involved: climate change is making ocean water warmer and so it expands. And as ice sheets and glaciers melt, they increase amounts of water in the oceans.
At the same time, reefs are being weakened by ocean warming and also by ocean acidification, triggered as the seas absorb more and more carbon dioxide. These effects lead to bleaching events that kill off vast stretches of coral and limits their ability to grow.
“Our predictions, even under the best case scenarios, suggest that by 2100, the inundation of reefs will expose coastal communities to significant threats of shoreline change,” said co-author Prof Peter Mumby of Queensland University. This point was backed by US marine scientist Ilsa Ruffner writing in a separate comment piece for Nature. “The implications of the study are dire. Many island nations and territories are set to quickly lose crucial natural resources.”What does the word "compensate" in the first paragraph probably mean?
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Choose the item among A, B, C or D that best answers the question about the passage:
"Ann Whitney, a student at Colorado University, first had a problem taking tests when she began college. “I was always well prepared for my tests. Sometimes I studied for weeks before a test. Yet I would go into taking the test, only to find I couldn’t answer the questions correctly. I would blank out because of nervousness and fear. I couldn’t think of the answer. My low grades on the tests did not show what I know to the teacher.” Another student in microbiology had similar experience.
These two young students were experiencing something called anxiety. Because a student worries and is uneasy about a test, his or her mind does not work as well as it usually does. The student cannot write or think clearly because of the extreme tension and nervousness. Although poor grades are often a result of poor study habits, sometimes test anxiety causes the low grades. Recently, test anxiety has been recognized as a real problem, not just an excuse or a false explanation of lazy students.
Special university counseling courses try to help students. In these courses, counselors try to help students by teaching them how to manage test anxiety.
An expert at the University of California explains, “With almost all students, relaxation and less stress are left after our program. Most of them experience better control during their tests. Almost all have some improvement.""4. A University of California counselor said…..
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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:
Newspapers and television news programs always seem to report about the bad things happening in society. However, there is a place where readers can find some good news. That place is the website called HappyNews. The man behind HappyNews is Byron Reese. Reese set up HappyNews because he thought other news sources were giving people an unbalanced view of the world. Reese said about HappyNews, “The news media gives you a distorted view of the world by exaggerating bad news, misery, and despair. We’re trying to balance out the scale.”
Not everyone agrees with Reese’s view, though. Many people think that news sources have a responsibility to provide news that is helpful to people. People need to know about issues or problems in today’s society. Then they are better able to make informed decisions about things that affect their daily lives. Reese said that HappyNews is not trying to stop people from learning about issues or problems. HappyNews is just trying to provide a balanced picture of today’s world.
By the end of its first month online, HappyNews had more than 70,000 unique readers. About 60 percent of those readers were women. Something else unique makes HappyNews different from any of the other news or information websites that are on the Internet. Unlike many other websites, HappyNews gets fan mail from its readers on a daily basis.Which of the following is the best title for this passage?
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Read the passage carefully and choose the correct answer.
University Entrance Examination is very important in Vietnamese students. High school graduates have to take it and get high results to be admitted to universities. The pressure on the candidates remains very high despite the measures that have been taken to reduce the heat around these exams, since securing a place in a state university is considered a major step towards a successful career for young people, especially those from rural areas or disadvantaged families. In the year 2004, it was estimated that nearly 1 million Vietnamese students took the University Entrance Examination, but on average only 1 out of 5 candidates succeeded. Normally, candidates take 3 exam subjects, and each lasts; 180 minutes for the fixed group of subjects they choose. There are 4 fixed groups of subjects: Group A: Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry; Group B: Mathematics, Biology, and Chemistry; Group C: Literature, History, and Geography; Group D: Literature, Foreign Language, and Mathematics.
In addition to universities, there are community colleges, art and technology institutes; professional secondary schools, and vocational schools which offer degrees or certificates from a-few-month to 2-year courses. According to Vietnam's Ministry of Education and Training, there are currently 23 non-public universities, accounting for 11% of the total number of universities. These non-public universities are currently training 119,464 students, or 11.7% of the total number of students. The government is planning to increase the number of non-public universities to 30% by 2007.
University Entrance Examination in Vietnamese is very _______.
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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:
If you could travel back in time five centuries, you'd encounter a thriving Aztec empire in Central Mexico, a freshly painted "Mona Lisa" in Renaissance Europe and cooler temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere. This was a world in the midst of the Little Ice Age (A.D. 1300 to 1850) and a period of vast European exploration now known as the Age of Discovery. But what if we could look 500 years into the future and glimpse the Earth of the 26th century? Would the world seem as different to us as the 21st century would have seemed to residents of the 16th century? For starters, what will the weather be like?
Depending on whom you ask, the 26th century will either be a little chilly or infernally hot.
Some solar output models suggest that by the 2500s, Earth's climate will have cooled back down to near Little Ice Age conditions. Other studies predict that ongoing climate change and fossil fuel use will render much of the planet too hot for human life by 2300.
Some experts date the beginning of human climate change back to the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, others to slash-and-burn agricultural practices in prehistoric times. Either way, tool- wielding humans alter their environment -- and our 26th century tools might be quite impressive indeed.
Theoretical physicist and futurist Michio Kaku predicts that in a mere 100 years, humanity will make the leap from a type zero civilization to a type I civilization on the Kardashev Scale. In other words, we'll become a species that can harness the entire sum of a planet's energy. Wielding such power, 26th-century humans will be masters of clean energy technologies such as fusion and solar power. Furthermore, they'll be able to manipulate planetary energy in order to control global climate. Physicist Freeman Dyson, on the other hand, estimates the leap to a type I civilization would occur within roughly 200 years.
Technology has improved exponentially since the 1500s, and this pace will likely continue in the centuries to come. Physicist Stephen Hawking proposes that by the year 2600, this growth would see 10 new theoretical physics papers published every 10 seconds. If Moore's Law holds true and both computer speed and complexity double every 18 months, then some of these studies may be the work of highly intelligent machines.
What other technologies will shape the world of the 26th century? Futurist and author Adrian Berry believes the average human life span will reach 140 years and that the digital storage of human personalities will enable a kind of computerized immortality. Humans will farm the oceans, travel in starships and reside in both lunar and Martian colonies while robots explore the outer cosmos.The word "harness" in paragraph 4 could best be replaced by _.
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Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions:
In the explosion of the linguistic life cycle, it is apparent that it is much more difficult to learn a second language in adulthood than a first language in childhood. Most adults never completely master a foreign language, especially in Phonology – hence the ubiquitous foreign accent. Their development often “fossilizes” into permanent error patterns that no teaching or correction can undo. Of course, there are great individual differences, which depend on effort, attitudes, amount of exposure, quality of teaching and plain talent, but there seems to be a cap for the best adults in the best circumstances
Many explanations have been advanced for children’s superiority; they exploit Motherese (the simplified, repetitive conversation between parents and children), make errors unself- consciously, are more motivated to communicate, like to conform, are not set in their ways, and have not first language to interfere. But some of these accounts are unlikely, based on what is known about how language acquisition works. Recent evidence is calling these social and motivation explanations into doubt. Holding every other factor constant, a key factor stands out: sheer age
Systematic evidence comes from the psychologist Elissa Newport and her colleagues. They tested Korean and Chinese – born students at the University of Illinois who had spent a least ten years in the United States. The immigrants were give a list of 276 simple English sentences, half of them containing some grammatical error. The immigrants who came to the United States between the age of 3 and 7 performed identically to American – born students. Those who arrived between ages 8 and 15 did worse the latter they arrived, and those who arrived between 17 and 39 did the worst of all, and showed huge variability unrelated to their age of arrival.The word “cap” in paragraph 1 is closet in meaning to
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Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the answer to each of the question.
Covering more than 70 percent of our planet, oceans are among the earth’s most valuable natural resources. They govern the weather, clean the air, help feed the world, and provide a living for millions. They also are home to most of the life on earth, from microscopic algae to the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet. Yet we’re bombarding them with pollution. By their very nature—with all streams flowing to rivers, all rivers leading to the sea—the oceans are the end point for so much of the pollution we produce on land, however far from the coasts we may be. And from dangerous carbon emissions to choking plastic to leaking oil to constant noise, the types of ocean pollution humans generate are vast. As a result, collectively, our impact on the seas is degrading their health at an alarming rate. Here are some ocean pollution facts that everyone on our blue planet ought to know.
When we burn fossil fuels, we don’t pollute just the air but the oceans, too. Indeed, today’s seas absorb as much as a quarter of all man-made carbon emissions, which changes the pH of surface waters and leads to acidification. This problem is rapidly worsening—oceans are now acidifying faster than they have in some 300 million years. It’s estimated that by the end of this century, if we keep pace with our current emissions practices, the surface waters of the ocean could be nearly 150 percent more acidic than they are now.
The majority of the garbage that enters the ocean each year is plastic—and here to stay. That’s because unlike other trash, the single-use grocery bags, water bottles, drinking straws, and yogurt containers, among eight million metric tons of the plastic items we toss (instead of recycle), won’t biodegrade. Instead, they can persist in the environment for a millennium, polluting our beaches, entangling marine life, and getting ingested by fish and seabirds.
Where does all this debris originate? While some is dumped directly into the seas, an estimated 80 percent of marine litter makes its way there gradually from land-based sources―including those far inland―via storm drains, sewers, and other routes. Oil from boats, airplanes, cars, trucks, and even lawn mowers is also swimming in ocean waters. Chemical discharges from factories, raw sewage overflow from water treatment systems, and storm water and agricultural runoff add other forms of marine-poisoning pollutants to the toxic brew.
The ocean is far from a “silent world.” Sound waves travel farther and faster in the sea’s dark depths than they do in the air, and many marine mammals like whales and dolphins, in addition to fish and other sea creatures, rely on communication by sound to find food, mate, and navigate. But an increasing barrage of human-generated ocean noise pollution is altering the underwater acoustic landscape, harming—and even killing—marine species worldwide.As mentioned in paragraph 2, acidification ______________.
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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:
Advertising helps people recognize a particular brand, persuades them tro 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. 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. 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 played. 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.
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.Where in the passage does the author give an example of a new development in advertising?
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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:
At 7 pm on a dark, cold November evening, thousands of people are making their way across a vast car park. They're not here to see a film, or the ballet, or even the circus. They are all here for what is, bizarrely, a global phenomenon: they are here to see Holiday on Ice. Given that most people don’t seem to be acquainted with anyone who's ever been, the show's statistics are extraordinary: nearly 300 million people have seen Holiday on Ice since it began in 1943; it is the most popular live entertainment in the world.
But what does the production involve? And why are so many people prepared to spend their lives travelling round Europe in caravans in order to appear in it? It can't be glamorous, and it's undoubtedly hard work. The backstage atmosphere is an odd mix of gym class and workplace. A curtained-off section at the back of the arena is laughably referred to as the girls' dressing room, but is more accurately described as a corridor, with beige, cracked walls and cheap temporary tables set up along the length of it. Each girl has a small area littered with pots of orange make-up, tubes of mascara and long false eyelashes.
As a place to work, it must rank pretty low down the scale: the area round the ice-rink is grey and mucky with rows of dirty blue and brown plastic seating and red carpet tiles. It's an unimpressive picture, but the show itself is an unquestionably vast, polished global enterprise: the lights come from a firm in Texas, the people who make the audio system are in California, but Montreal supplies the smoke effects; former British Olympic skater Robin Cousins is now creative director for the company and conducts a vast master class to make sure they're ready for the show's next performance.
The next day, as the music blares out from the sound system, the case start to go through their routines under Cousins' direction. Cousins says, 'The aim is to make sure they're all still getting to exactly the right place on the ice at the right time - largely because the banks of lights in the ceiling are set to those places, and if the skaters are all half a metre out they'll be illuminating empty ice. Our challenge, ' he continues, 'is to produce something they can sell in a number of countries at the same time. My theory is that you take those things that people want to see and you give it to them, but not in the way they expect to see it. You try to twist it. And you have to find music that is challenging to the skaters, because they have to do it every night.'
It may be a job which he took to pay the rent, but you can’t doubt his enthusiasm. 'They only place you'll see certain skating moves is an ice show,' he says, 'because you're not allowed to do them in competition. It's not in the rules. So the ice show word has things to offer which the competitive world just doesn't. Cousins knows what he's talking about because he skated for the show himself when he stopped competing - he was financially unable to retire. He learnt the hard way that you can't put on an Olympic performance every night. I'd be thinking, these people have paid their money, now do your stuff, and I suddenly thought, "I really can't cope. I'm not enjoying it".' The solution, he realized, was to give 75 per cent every night, rather than striving for the sort of twice-a-year excellence which won him medals.
To be honest, for those of us whose only experience of ice-skating is watching top-class Olympic skaters, some of the movements can look a bit amateurish, but then, who are we to judge? Equally, it's impossible not to be swept up in the whole thing; well, you'd have to try pretty hard not to enjoy it.For Robin Cousins, the key point when rehearsing skating routines is
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The resort was full of people. I wish it _________less crowded.
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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:
The blue whale is the largest animal ever known to have existed. During the 20th century, the species was almost exterminated due to commercial whaling. The species has slowly recovered following the global whaling ban but it remains endangered and faces a number of serious threats including ship strikes and the impact of climate change.
Blue whales are simply enormous with most ranging in length from 24-30 m. The largest ever recorded was a gargantuan 33.5 m long. Females are up to 10 m longer than males. And they can weigh up to 200 tonnes. Just to put that in perspective: an adult male African elephant weighs 6 tonnes. The blue whale's heart is the size of a small car and its beat can be detected two miles away. But that's nothing compared to their calls. Blue whales are the loudest animals on earth and their calls are louder than a jet engine: reaching 188 decibels, while a jet's engine hit 'just' 140 decibels. Apart from their gigantic size, blue whales can be identified by their relatively small dorsal fin, a fairly rounded rostrum (anterior part of the skull), and approximately 90 ventral grooves, which reach the navel. They also have row of 300-400 baleen plates on each side of the mouth, which are black in color and range in length from 50 cm in front to 100 cm in back.
Blue whales mostly travel alone or in groups of 2-3. Larger groups of up to 60 whales have been reported and are probably associated with feeding grounds. However, the blue whale has the most powerful voice in the animal kingdom and its low-frequency sounds can travel in deep water over hundreds, or even thousands, of miles. Under these circumstances, animals which may appear to us to be traveling alone may actually be in constant contact with one another.
At birth, a blue whale calf is the largest baby on earth: approximately 8m long and weighing about 4 tonnes. They grow at a rate of 90 kg per day and wean after 7-8 months, once they have reached about 15 m in length, and are able to follow the normal migration pattern alone. They reach sexual maturity at 5-10 years. This growth rate is astonishing and is probably the fastest in the animal kingdom. From conception to weaning, it represents a several billion-fold increase in tissue in just over a year and a half. Like other baleen whales, the blue whale has no teeth so it is hard to tell its age but scientists believe they live until at least 50.
Like other large whales, blue whales are threatened by chemical and sound pollution, habitat loss, overfishing of krill, ship strikes and becoming entangled in fishing gear. Climate change could also have a major impact on its food supply, since global warming and associated ocean acidification may impact krill populations. In addition, frontal zones - critical whale habitats - are projected to move further south due to climate change. Frontal zones are boundaries between different water masses, where water can rise from the depths, bringing with it large amounts of nutrients that stimulate the growth of phytoplankton and support substantial populations of prey species for whales. Blue whales would have to migrate further (perhaps 200-500 km more) to reach and feed at these food-rich areas where they build up reserves to sustain themselves for the rest of the year. These longer migration paths could increase the energy costs of migration and reduce the duration of the main feeding season. As frontal zones move southward, they also move closer together, reducing the overall area of foraging habitat available.Which of the following is NOT correct about the blue whale's physical description?
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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:
All living cells in an animal's body require energy to power the various chemical processes going in inside them. This energy is ultimately supplied by the food that animals eat. These chemical processes are collectively referred to as metabolism, and one of the byproducts of metabolism is heat. Metabolic rates vary significantly between species. Warm-blooded animals (birds and mammals) have metabolic rates about five to ten times higher than those of similarly sized cold-blooded ones (reptiles, amphibians, and fishes). And it is precisely because birds and mammals have such high metabolic rates that they are able to keep their bodies warm.
The terms warm-blooded and cold-blooded are still in everyday use, but they are not entirely precise. Anyone who has handled a snake knows this because a snake’s body actually feels quite warm. But very little of the snake’s body heat originates internally, from its cells, most of it having been supplied from the outside, either by the sun or by a heat lamp. Instead of referring to reptiles as cold- blooded, they are best described as ectothermic, meaning “outside heat”. Similarly, birds and mammals are said to be endothermic, meaning “inside heat”.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each thermal strategy. Reptiles are usually sluggish first thing in the morning, their body temperatures having dropped during the cool of the night. Accordingly, they have to bask in the sun to raise their body temperatures, but once they have warmed up sufficiently, they can go about their business. By altering between the sun when they are too cool, and the shade when they are too warm, many reptiles are able to maintain their body temperatures at optimum levels of about 95°F or more. Endotherms, on the other hand, maintain temperatures of about 98°F all the time, so they are always ready for action.
I used to keep a crocodile. He had very sharp teeth, and I had to be careful how I handled him during the daytime, when he was warm. But I could do whatever I wanted at night, when he was cold, without any fear of being bitten. The obvious disadvantage of being ectothermic is that the animal’s activity levels are dependent upon the environment. But its low metabolic rates mean that it requires far less food, which is an advantage. I used to feed the crocodile a tiny piece of liver once a week, while the family cat demanded three meals every day. We should therefore not think that reptiles are inferior to mammals and birds; they are just different.Why does the author mention his pet in the last paragraph?