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Anna Gomez is a successful TV sports presenter, but most people still think of her as the famous women’s ice-skating champion who won several important competitions when she was younger. “As a child, my dream was actually to become a ballet dancer – I didn’t own any skates until I was nine, and didn’t become really keen on skating until I was fourteen,” says Anna. She went on to university, where, despite ice-skating almost all the time, she left with an excellent degree. “I felt I owed it to my parents. They supported me through university, and expected me to do well there – I didn’t feel I could disappoint them.” In a sport where most stars become famous as teenagers, Anna was unusual in being in her twenties before she won any major titles. “When I was younger, I got very angry at competitions, shouting at judges if I disagreed with them. That made me unpopular, especially with other skaters. My technique was just as good as theirs and I had a very encouraging coach at the time. The problem was in my head – I just didn’t think I had what it takes to be a champion. That changed as I won more competitions, and I was performing at my best by the age of twenty-five.” Anna retired from professional ice-skating five years later, having accomplished great success during that period. “It was a difficult decision. As you get near the end of your career, people always ask when you’re going to stop. At the time, I wasn’t sure that I was actually ready to give up. But, looking back, I’m glad I stopped when I did. You shouldn’t think too much about the past – just move on to the next thing.”  
3. Why does Anna believe she failed to win competitions as a teenager?

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My children can’t live without media. At age 14, 15 and 18, my daughters Sussy and Anni and my son Bill don’t use media. They inhabit media. And they do so exactly as fish inhabit a pond. Gracefully, and without consciousness and curiosity as to how they got there. They don’t remember a time before email or instant messaging or Google. When my children laugh, they don’t say “Ha, ha”. They say “LOL”. These are children who shrug indifferently when they lose their iPods, with all 5000 tunes plus video clips, feature films, and TV shows (like who watches TV on a television anymore?). “There is plenty more where that came from”, their attitude says. And they seem right. The digital content that powers their world can never truly be destroyed. As a social scientist, journalist, and mother, I’ve always been an enthusiastic user of information technology. But I’d noticed that the more we seemed to communicate as individuals, the less we seemed to function together as a family. And on a broader scale, that the more facts we have at our fingertips, the less we seem to know. That the “convenience” of messaging media (email, SMS, IM) consumes ever larger amounts of our time. That as a culture we are practically swimming in entertainment, yet remain more depressed than any people who have ever lived. Our family’s self-imposed exile from the information age changed our lives infinitely for the better. I watched as my children became more focused. I watched as their attention spans increased, allowing them to read for hours at a time; to hold longer and more complex conversations with adults and among themselves. They probably did no more homework during The Experiment than they had done before, but they all completed it far more efficiently and far more quickly The Experiment also forced us to notice food more. Before, eating had been a side dish. Now it was the main course, or at least one of them. Our approach to cooking changed, too, especially for the girls. They’d started out as reasonably competent cooks, but by the end of The Experiment they were capable of turning out entire meals with ease The Experiment also confirmed my strong suspicion that media has been robbing Sussy of sleep for years. Unplugged, the changes to her sleep patterns were dramatic. The evidence strongly suggests she is no isolated case. One study found that children who spend more time online also drink more caffeinated beverages, with a resulting effect on their prospects of sleeping well  
7. The highlighted word "that" in the passage refers to

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Seeing the glass as half full may mean a longer life, according to research suggesting that optimists not only live longer in general, but have a better chance of reaching 85 or older. People of an upbeat disposition have previously been found to have a lower risk of heart conditions and premature death. Researchers now say it could also play a role in living a long life. “A lot of evidence suggests that exceptional longevity is usually accompanied by a longer span of good health and living without disability, so our findings raise an exciting possibility that we may be able to promote healthy and resilient ageing by cultivating psychosocial assets such as optimism,” said Lewina Lee, the lead author of the study at Boston University School of Medicine. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lee and colleagues report how they analysed data from two previous long-term research projects, one involving female nurses and the other focused on a cohort of men. The former team compared lifespan for the most optimistic with the least, taking into account factors including age, sex, race, education, depression and other health conditions present at the outset. The results show the most optimistic group of women had a lifespan almost 15% longer than the least. As for the other project, when the team compared the fifth of men boasting the highest optimism scores with the least optimistic, they found the most positive men had lifespans almost 11% longer. But being optimistic was not only linked to a longer lifespan. For men and women it was also linked more specifically to living to 85 or older when health behaviours were taken into account, with the most optimistic group of women having 20% better odds of reaching age 85 than the least. Lee said it was not yet clear why optimism is linked to longevity. “In our study, healthier behaviours, fewer depressive symptoms, and more social ties only partially accounted for the association from optimism to exceptional longevity,” Lee said, adding there are likely to be other mechanisms at play, such as optimistic people coping better with stress. Dr Catherine Hurt, an expert in health psychology at City, University of London, said the study highlighted the importance of psychological wellbeing alongside physical wellbeing for living a long and healthy life.
4. According to paragraph 2, what can be concluded from the two investigations?

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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.
5. According to paragraph 3, which of the following is NOT true?

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Just as optical fibers have transformed communication, they are also revolutionizing medicine. These ultra - thin, flxible fiers have opened a window into the living tissues of the body. By inserting optical fibers through natural openings or small incisions and the threading them along the body's established pathways, physicians can look into the lungs, intestines, heart and other areas that were formerly inaccessible to them. The basic fiber-optics system is called fiberscope, which consists of two bundles of fibers. One, the illuminating bundle, carries light to the tissues. It is coupled to a high-intensity light source. Light enters the cores of the high-purity silicon glass and travels along the fibers. A lens at the end of the bundle collects the light and focuses it into the other bundle, the imaging bundle. Each fibers in the bundle transmits only a tiny fraction of the total image. The reconstructed image can be viewed through an eyepiece or displayed on a television screen. During the last five years, improved methods of fabricating optical fibers have led to a reduction in fiberscope diameter and an increase in the number of fibers, which in turn has increased resolution. Optical fibers can also be used to deliver laser light. By use of laser beams, physicians can perform surgery inside the body, sometimes eliminating the need of invasive procedures in which healthy tissue must be cut through to reach the site of disease. Many of these procedures do not require anesthesia and can be performed in a physician's office. These techniques have reduced the risk and the cost of medical care.
5. According to the passage, what is the purpose of the illuminating bundle in a fierscope?

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We’re sure that it was not until fifth year that he could speak Chinese well.

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The word noise is derived from the Latin word nausea, meaning “seasickness”. Noise is among the most pervasive pollutants today. Noise pollution can broadly be defined as unwanted or offensive sounds that unreasonably intrude into our daily activities. Noises from traffic, jet engines, barking dogs, garbage trucks, construction equipment, factories, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, televisions, boom boxes and car radios, to name a few, are among the audible litter that is routinely broadcast into the air. One measure of pollution is the danger it poses to health. Noise negatively affects human health and well-being. Problems related to noise include hearing loss, stress, high blood pressure, sleeplessness, fright, distraction, and lost productivity. Noise pollution also contributes to a general reduction in the quality of life and eliminates opportunities for tranquility. We experience noise in a number of ways. On some occasions, we can be both the cause and the victim of noise, such as when we are operating noisy appliances or equipment. There are also instances when we experience noise generated by others, just as people experience secondhand smoke. In both instances, noise is equally damaging physically. Secondhand noise is generally more troubling, however, because it is put into the environment by others, without our consent. The air into which secondhand noise is emitted and on which it travels is “a commons”. It belongs not to an individual person or a group, but to everyone. Please, businesses and organizations, therefore, do not have unlimited rights to broadcast noise the as they please, as if the effects of noise were limited only to their private property. Those that disregard the obligation to not interfere with other’ use and enjoyment of the commons by producing noise pollution are, in many ways, acting like a bully in a schoolyard. Although they may do so unknowingly, they disregard the rights of others and claim for themselves rights that are not theirs. The actual loudness of a sound is only one component of the negative effect noise pollution has on human beings. Other factors that have to be considered are the time and place, the duration, the source of the sound, and even the mood of the affected person. Most people would not be bothered by the sound of a 21-gun salute on a special occasion. On the other hand, the thump-thump of music coming from the apartment downstairs at 2a.m, even if barely audible, might be a major source of stress. The sound of neighbor’s lawn mower may be unobjectionable on a summer afternoon, but if someone is hoping to sleep late on a Saturday morning, the sound of a lawn mower starting up just after sunrise is an irritant  
8. In the last paragraph, the author mentions a 21-gun salute as an example of _____

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Hung Kings Temple was constructed to ____________ their contribution to found our country.

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Environmentalists often fear that tourists will trample all over sensitive natural resource areas, but tourism may bring the needed and only economic incentives to help drive conservation, said Bynum Boley. Ecotourism and natural resource conservation already have a mutually beneficial relationship that is ideal for creating a sustainable partnership. “Ecotourism destinations benefit in the form of enhanced tourism competitiveness from the protection of quality natural resources,” he said. "Meanwhile, the conservation of these natural resources is increasingly valued since these pristine natural resources are the foundation of the ecotourism industry and the driver of all economic benefits associated with ecotourism." Tourism is a $7.6 trillion global industry, provides 277 million jobs and is a primary income source for 20 of the world’s 48 least-developed countries. It also subsidizes environmental protection and helps protect, conserve and value cultural resources that might otherwise be undervalued by the host community, Boley said. In the newpaper, Boley and coauthor Gary Green said that despite past tension between the tourism industry and environmentalists, the two should team up as allies to fight off increasing conversion of land away from its natural state. Ecotourists not only provide a boost to the economy in such places, they can also motivate landowners into keeping the environment in its natural state instead of converting it into something unsustainable. They could also influence the public perception of conservation, Boley explained, which does not often favor environmental protection. “The public has become increasing less prone to respond to environmental messages,” he said. “Economic messages are needed in order to attract the public’s interest.” Too often, Boley and Green said, unique natural resource areas are converted into urban, suburban and agricultural developments without considering their ecotourism potential. In addition to the lost ecotourism revenue, there are a host of negative environmental consequences such as biodiversity loss, water and food shortages and the land being unable to mitigate the effects of climate change. These areas are not valued for their unique attributes or the valuable natural resources they provide, Green said, “so we lose them.” Tourists have historically been seen as having a negative impact on the environment. Critics complain that they violate fragile and threatened natural environments while contributing to greenhouse gases from the increased number of flights to these exotic and often remote locales. While these criticisms are justified, Boley and Green said responsible programs promote education of ecological conservation and environmental sustainability, fostering a greater understanding and appreciation of these exotic areas  
6. According to the passage, negative environmental outcomes _______________?

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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.  
2. According to paragraph 1, what is the most conspicuous fact about world  population growth?

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 biological community changes again as one moves from the city to the suburbs. Around all cities is a biome called the "suburban forest". The trees of this forest are species that are favored by man, and most of them have been deliberately planted. Mammals such as rabbits, skunks, and opossums have moved in from the surrounding countryside. Raccoons have become experts at opening garbage cans, and in some places even deer wander suburban thoroughfares. Several species of squirrel get along nicely in suburbia, but usually only one species is predominant in any given suburb -fox squirrels in one place, red squirrels in another, gray squirrels in a third - for reasons that are little understood. The diversity of birds in the suburbs is great, and in the South, lizards thrive in gardens and even houses. Of course, insects are always present. There is an odd biological sameness in these suburban communities. True, the palms of Los Angeles are missing from the suburbs of Boston, and there are species of insects in Miami not found in Seattle. But over wide stretches of the United States, ecological conditions in suburban biomes vary much less than do those of natural biome. And unlike the natural biomes, the urban and suburban communities exist in spite of, not because of, the climate.

The word “thoroughfares” is closet in meaning to

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The United States has had approximately a thousand lights as well as light towers,  range lights, and pier head lights. Michigan has the most lights of any state with over 150 past and present lights. Most of the lights in the United States have been built and maintained by the Coast Guard. As navigation has declined and as public interest in them has increased, the Coast Guard has been handing over ownership to other parties. The first navigational lights in the New World were probably lanterns hung at harbor entrances. The first lighthouse was put up by the Massachusetts Bay Colony In 1766 on Little Brewster Island at the entrance to Boston Harbor. Paid for and maintained by light dues levied on ships, the original beacon was blown up in 1776. By then there were only a dozen or so true lighthouses in the colonies. Little over a century later, there were 700 lighthouses.  The first eight erected on the West Coast in the 1850’s featured the same basic New England design: a Cape Cod dwelling with the tower rising from the center or standing close by. In New England and elsewhere, though, lighthouses reflected a variety of architectural styles. Since most stations in the Northeast were built on rocky eminences, enormous towers were not the rule. Some were made of stone and brick, others of wood or metal. Some stood on pilings or stilts: some were fastened to rock with iron rods. Farther south, from Maryland through the Florida Keys, the coast was low and sandy. It was often necessary to build tall towers there - massive structures like the majestic Cape Hatteras, North Carolina lighthouse, which was lit in 1870. At 190 feet, it is the tallest brick lighthouse in the country. Notwithstanding differences in appearance and construction, most American lighthouses shared several features: a light, living quarters, and sometimes a bell (or, later, a foghorn). They also had something else in common: a keeper and, usually, the keeper’s family. The keeper’s essential task was trimming the lantern Nick in order to maintain a steady bright flame. The earliest keepers came from every walk of life-they were seamen. Farmers, mechanics, rough mill hands-and appointments were often handed out by local customs commissioners as political plums. After the administration of lighthouses was taken over in 1852 by the United States Lighthouse 803rd, an agency of the Treasury Department, the keeper corps gradually became highly professional.  
6. It can be inferred from the passage that the Treasury Department, after assuming control of the lighthouses, improved which of the following?

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In Africa, people celebrate with joy the birth of a new baby. The Pygmies would sing a birth-song to the child. In Kenya, the mother takes the baby strapped to her back into the thorn enclosure where the cattle is kept. There, her husband and the village elders wait to give the child his or her name. In West Africa, after the baby is eight days old, the mother takes the baby for it’s first walk in the big, wide world, and friends and family are invited to meet the new baby. In various African nations, they hold initiation ceremonies for groups of children instead of birthdays. When children reach a certain designated age, they learn the laws, beliefs, customs, songs and dances of their tribes. Some African tribes consider that children from nine to twelve are ready to be initiated into the grown up world. They may have to carry out several tests. Masai boys around thirteen years old to seventeen undergo a two stage initiation. The first stage lasts about three months. The boys leave their parents’ homes, paint their bodies white, and are taught how to become young warriors. At the end of this stage, they have their heads shaved and they are also circumcised. The second stage, the young warriors grow their hair long and live in a camp called a manyatta where they practice hunting the wild animals that might attack the Masai herds. This stage may last a few years. When they are ready, they will marry and become owners of large cattle herds like their fathers. The girls are initiated when they are fourteen or fifteen. They are taught by the older women about the duties of marriage and how to care for babies. Soon after that they are married and lead a life similar to that of their mothers  
5. The word “shaved” in paragraph 3 mostly means __________

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Some U.S. schools, however, have tried to limit or remove technology to improve learning. One of them is in Silicon Valley, the centre of the American tech industry. The Waldorf School of the Peninsula does not use any computers or (1) ____ technology in its education programs up to the seventh grade. The school’s website says while Waldorf teachers recognize the role technology can (2) ____ in the classroom, it must wait until the student reaches the right developmental age. “We observe that a child’s natural, instinctive, creative and curious way of (3) ____ to the world may be repressed when technology is introduced into learning environments at an early age,” the website says. When students reach high school, they are allowed to use computers and digital tools in the classroom. There are many independent Waldorf Schools throughout North America. The schools centre heavily on (4) ____ learning and aim to teach skills in “creativity and innovative thinking.” They also (5) ______ importance on students developing “social and emotional intelligence” as part of the educational experience

Application for admission to the Graduate School at this university must be made on forms provided by the Director of Admission. An applicant whose undergraduate work was done at another institution should request that two copies of undergraduate transcripts and degrees be sent directly to the Dean of the Graduate School. Both the application and the transcripts must be on file at least one month prior to the registration date, and must be accompanied by a non-refundable ten-dollar check or money order to cover the cost of processing the application. Students who have already been admitted to the Graduate School but were not enrolled during the previous semester should reapply for admission using a special short form available in the office of the Graduate School. It is not necessary for students who have previously been denied admission to resubmit transcripts; however, new application forms must accompany all requests for reconsideration. Applications should be submitted at least eight weeks in advance of the session in which the student wishes to enroll. Students whose applications are received after the deadline may be considered for admission as non-degree students, and may enroll for six credit hours. Non-degree status must be changed prior to the completion of the first semester of study, however. An undergraduate student of this university who has senior status and is within ten credit hours of completing all requirements for graduation may register for graduate work with the recommendation of the chairperson of the department and the approval of the Dean of the Graduate School.

Which of the following documents must be on file thirty days before the registration date?

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

In the early twentieth century, there was considerable interesting among sociologists in the fact that in the United States the family was losing its traditional roles

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Diseases are a natural part of life on earth. If there were no diseases, the population would grow too quickly, and there would not be enough food or other resources, so in a way, diseases are natural ways of keeping the Earth in balance. But sometimes they spread very quickly and kill large numbers of people. For example, in 1918, an outbreak of the flu across the world, killing over 25 million people only in six months. Such terrible outbreaks of a diseases are called pandemics. Pandemics happen when a disease changes in a way that our bodies are not prepared to fiht. In 1918, a new type of fl virus appeared. Our bodies had no way to fiht this new flu virus, and so it spread very quickly and killed large numbers of people. While there have been many different pandemic diseases throughout history, all of them have a new thing in common. First, all pandemic diseases spread from one person to another very easily. Second, while they may kill many people, they generally do not kill people very quickly. A good example of this would be the Marburg virus. The Marburg virus is an extremely infectious disease. In addition, it is deadly. About 70%-80% of all people who get the Marburg virus died from the disease. However, the Marburg virus has not become a pandemics because most people die within three days of getting the disease. This means that the virus does not have enough time to spread a large number of people. The flu virus of 1918, on the other hand, generally took about a week to ten days to kill its victims, so it had more time to spread. While we may never be able to completely stop pandemics, we can make them less common. Doctors carefully monitor new disease that they fear could become pandemics. For example, in 2002, and 2003, doctors carefully watched SARS. Their health warming may have prevented SARS from becoming a pandemic.
4. According to the passage, what causes pandemics?

Books which give instructions on how to do things are very popular in the United States today. Thousands of these How-to books are useful. In fact, there are about four thousand books with titles that begin with the words “How to”. One book may tell you how to earn more money. Another may tell you how to save or spend it and another may explain how to give your money away.

Many How-to books give advice on careers. They tell you how to choose a career and ‘now to succeed in it. If you fail, however, you can buy the book ” How to Turn Failure into Success”. If you would like to become very rich, you can buy the book “How to Make a Millionaire”. If you never make any money at all, you may need a book called “How to Live on Nothing”.

One of the most popular types of books is one that helps you with personal problems. If you want to have a better love of life, you can read “How to Succeed in Love every Minute of Your Life”. If you are tired of books on happiness, you may prefer books which give step-by-step instructions on how to redecorate or enlarge a house.

Why have How-to books become so popular? Probably because life has become so complex. Today people have far more free time to use, more choices to make, and more problems to solve. How-to books help people deal with modern life.

The word “step-by-step” in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to

Read and complete the  following passage.

"Nowadays people are more aware that wildlife all over the world is in (1)________. Many species of animals are threatened, and could easily become (2)________ if we do not make an effort to protect them. In some cases, animals are hunted for their fur or for other valuable parts of their bodies. Some birds, such as parrots, are caught (3)________and sold as pets. For many animals and birds the problem is that their habitat - the place where they live - is disappearing. More land is used for farms, for houses or industry, and there are fewer open spaces than there once were. Farmers use powerful chemicals to help them to grow better crops, but these chemicals pollute the environment and (4)________ wildlife. The most successful animals on earth - human beings - will soon be the only ones (5)________, unless we can solve this problem."

4. Farmers use powerful chemicals to help them to grow better crops, but these chemicals pollute the environment and (4)________ wildlife.

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Mai and Hung were ill, so …went to school today.

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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.”
3. It can be inferred from paragraph 3 that ______