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Normally a student must attend a certain number of courses in order to graduate, and each course which he attends gives him a credit which he may count towards a degree. In many American universities the total work for a degree consists of thirty-six courses each lasting for one semester. A typical course consists of three classes per week for fifteen weeks; while attending a university a student will probably attend four or five courses during each semester. Normally a student would expect to take four years attending two semesters each year. It is possible to spread the period of work for the degree over a longer period. It is also possible for a student to move between one university and another during his degree course, though this is not in fact done as a regular practice. For every course that he follows a student is given a grade, which is recorded, and the record is available for the student to show to prospective employers. All this imposes a constant pressure and strain of work, but in spite of this some students still find time for great activity in student affairs. Elections to positions in student organizations arouse much enthusiasm. The effective work of maintaining discipline is usually performed by students who advise the academic authorities. Any student who is thought to have broken the rules, for example, by cheating has to appear before a student court. With the enormous numbers of students, the operation of the system does involve a certain amount of activity. A student who has held one of these positions of authority is much respected and it will be of benefit to him later in his career.
Normally a student would at least attend ____ classes each week.
2. According to the first paragraph an American student is allowed ____

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In the 1960s, it took pop and rock groups one or two days to record other their songs. Nowadays, it can take months and months. Many rock groups begin by recording only one instrument, for example, the voice. Then they record (1)________ instruments – electric piano, synthesizer, guitars, drums and so on. Next, they might use a computer to add special effects. Finally, they ‘mix’ all the instruments until they get the sound that they want. This means that a CD or cassette will always sound very different from a (2) ______ concert. Music engineers have developed a new computer programme that will change the future of music. A computer can analyze a singer’s voice. Then if you give the computer the (3)_________ and music of a song, the computer can ‘sing’ it in that voice. This means that a singer only needs to record one song and the computer can then sing other songs in the singer’s own voice. Singers can sing new songs many years after they have died. Most of us listen to music for pleasure, but for the record companies, music is a product, the same as soap powder. (4)___________ a record company finds a new group (or ‘band’), they first try to develop the band’s ‘profile’. They will try to create an ‘image’ for the band that they think will attract young people. Instead of allowing the band’s full artistic freedom, they will often (5)_______ the band what they should wear, what they should say and how they should sing and play. In recent year, many rock groups have started their own record companies because they say that the big companies are too commercial

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There’s a direct link between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction.  Employees are the driving factor behind customer satisfaction. Employee interactions set the tone for a positive or negative customer experience. When employees aren’t happy at work, their interactions with customers can, and almost always will, suffer. Over the course of time, this can have serious repercussions for a business. The place where this becomes the most critical is any business where employees are directly interacting with customers, such as retail or food service. Historically underpaid and overworked, employees in these jobs are tasked with spending their entire shifts serving customers.  This is where employee experience comes in. If even a fraction of a customer experience budget was spent on employee experience, there would be a huge return on investment. One of the easiest ways to enhance employee experience is to ask for and welcome employees’ feedback. They have great insight into customer needs. After all, they’re the ones who are directly interacting with customers and hearing their criticisms and compliments firsthand. Employees can be your biggest asset when it comes to customer satisfaction.  A large part of employee experience revolves around understanding what employees need and want and gaining insight into their work preferences. Another critical piece of the employee experience is training and development. Employees should be equipped with the skills they need to excel at their jobs and have opportunities to continue to learn and develop. They should be able to check in and touch base with their managers to keep track of their progress and discuss any questions or concerns as they arise. Showing employees that you value the work they’re doing is one of the easiest ways to boost their motivation. It can be as simple as saying thank you, to publicly acknowledging and celebrating their contributions. It’s not just the younger generations who crave recognition - no one likes to feel like the work they’re doing is going unnoticed.  It’s time to shift the mindset from employees working just to work, to acknowledging that they’re valuable contributors to a company’s success. Employees need to understand how important their role is and how their work fits into the bigger picture. They need to feel like their voices are being heard and they have respect from their managers. Most importantly, they need to be able to come to work and know that the next eight hours won’t be pure torture. 
2. The word “repercussions” in paragraph 1 can be replaced by _______

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Every summer, when the results of university entrance exam come out, many newspaper stories are published about students who are top-scorers across the country. Most portray students as hard-working, studious, smart and, generally, from low-income families. They are often considered heroes or heroines by their families, communes, villages and communities. And they symbolise the efforts made to lift them, and their relatives, out of poverty. The students are often too poor to attend any extra-classes, which make their achievements more illustrious and more newsworthy. While everyone should applaud the students for their admirable efforts, putting too much emphasis on success generates some difficult questions. If other students look up to them as models, of course it’s great. However, in a way, it contributes to society’s attitude that getting into university is the only way to succeed. For those who fail, their lives are over. It should be noted that about 1.3 million high school students take part in the annual university entrance exams and only about 300,000 of them pass. What’s about the hundreds of thousands who fail? Should we demand more stories about those who fail the exam but succeed in life or about those who quit university education at some level and do something else unconventional? “I personally think that it’s not about you scoring top in an entrance exam or get even into Harvard. It’s about what you do for the rest of your life,” said Tran Nguyen Le Van, 29. He is the founder of a website, vexere.com, that passengers can use to book bus tickets online and receive tickets via SMS. His business also arranges online tickets via mobile phones and email. Van dropped out of his MBA at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona in the United States. His story has caught the attention of many newspapers and he believes more coverage should be given to the youngsters who can be role-models in the start-up community. Getting into university, even with honours, is just the beginning. "We applaud them and their efforts and obviously that can give them motivation to do better in life. However, success requires more than just scores," Van said. Van once told a newspaper that his inspiration also came from among the world’s most famous drop-outs, such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook or Bill Gates who also dropped out of Harvard University. Alarming statistics about unemployment continues to plague us. As many as 162,000 people with some kind of degree cannot find work, according to Labour Ministry’s statistics this month. An emphasis on getting into university does not inspire students who want to try alternative options. At the same time, the Ministry of Education and Training is still pondering on how to reform our exam system, which emphasises theories, but offers little to develop critical thinking or practice. Vu Thi Phuong Anh, former head of the Centre for Education Testing and Quality Assessment at Viet Nam National University in HCM City said the media should also monitor student successes after graduation. She agreed there were many success stories about young people, but added that it was imbalanced if students taking unconventional paths were not also encouraged. Viet Nam is, more than ever, in desperate need of those who think outside the box. Time for us to recognise talent, no matter where it comes from or how.
1. Which of the following best describes the main idea of this passage?

Stop Pollution Now!

Pollution is a really big problem on our planet and it must (1) …. immediately. It must be stopped before our planet goes extinct. There are three main reasons, in my opinion, why pollution should be stopped.

The first reason why we should stop pollution is that pollution is destroying the environment we live in. Carbon dioxide is a big (2) ……….. to pollution. Carbon dioxide affects our climate in many different ways. The way it works is that certain ‘greenhouse gases’ can't escape (3) …….. our atmosphere because they get trapped. The second reason why we should stop pollution is that it also has an influence on us – (4) ……….. Pollution also influences human life and that is a big problem. According to the World Health Organization, indoor air pollution from the burning of coal or biomass fuels like wood risks lives of millions of people. Air pollution causes two million deaths per year, mostly from heart disease and respiratory disorders (5) …….. infections and lung cancer.

The third reason why we should stop pollution is that (6) …………. we do, we can live longer on this planet. If we don’t stop pollution and global warming, something really bad will happen (7) ….. us. Humans have destroyed the planet so quickly. We can live longer and extent our existence on this planet so that our children’s children can live in a planet without worries. In short, pollution must be stopped immediately. The earth is our only home and we must protect it and take care of it as much as we can. Pollution must be stopped before we (8) ………. our planet.

et.

(2) …......

Choose the best answer:
The Braille alphabet has been one of the greatest ____ in human history

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

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There are three main periods in Beethoven’s music career: early, middle and late. The beginning of his early period was in 1792 when he moved to Vienna, Austria. Beethoven quickly (1) ________ a name for himself as a talented pianist. His compositions during this period consisted mainly of works for his main instrument, the piano, and were classical in nature. (2)___________, Beethoven’s hearing was beginning to deteriorate during this period, and he tried to hide this fact from those around him. In 1800, Beethoven turned from the classical forms of the previous century to a more expressive or romantic music. His musical imagination began to grow (3)______ that of the piano. The middle period was believed to be Beethoven’s greatest and most productive stage. In less than a decade, he produced countless masterpieces in every genre. In 1809, however, his musical (4)_________ began to decline, possibly due to his health problems and mental state. Beethoven stopped conducting and performing in public, but continued to compose – many of his most admired works were created during this period. By 1815, he was almost completely deaf and his manners became increasingly rude. In 1827, he died after a long illness. Nearly 20,000 people lined the streets of Vienna to (5)_________ their last respect to the composer who had changed the music scene of Western Europe

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When I tell people about the idea of moving out, many people’s reaction is like, “what do your parents say?” because they assume the parents would not like their children to leave them. Well I don’t know if my parents like it but I can tell you my parents support and respect my decision. They think it is good for me to try and live on my own and then I would know it is the best to stay with my family. The most important reason for independent living is to save the travelling time to work. It used to take me one hour fifteen minutes to travel to work from my previous living place. From my new apartment, it just takes me thirty minutes so I saved forty-five minutes’ traveling time. I don’t have to get up so early and I save two-third of my traveling cost. It does not only save my time to travel for work but also from most of the places in Hong Kong. In addition, I gain my personal space and freedom by independent living. I make my own decision all the time, I do not have to say whether I would go home for dinner, I can invite my friends to come up and stay late. Of course, there are some trade-offs in living on your own. If you want to rent an apartment, there are lots of preparatory work to do. You have to keep visiting the apartments to search for your ideal one. You have to negotiate with the landlord about the price, furniture inclusion, who is responsible for the maintenance of the furniture and equipment. My experience was that after we moved into the apartment, it was not until the kitchen cupboard was soaked with water that we found out there was water leakage in the kitchen sink. Money is the main issue in living on your own. You have to be responsible for all the expenses, for example, the rent, electricity, gas, water, telephone, internet bills, etc.  Therefore, you’ve got to be well prepared and save up for your bills. Although I find my transportation time much shorter, the saved time is spent on other things, such as cooking and some other household chores. I think preparing and cooking the food do occupy a significant portion of my time, therefore I always try to make simple meals. On the other hand, I have to regularly tidy up my apartment and wash my clothes, so it doesn’t really save much of my time after all. Now everything is settled down, I’m getting used to my new life and I am enjoying it. I feel that moving out makes it easier for me to strike a balance between my work, my social life, my study and my family. It may be troublesome but it may worth  
2. All of the following are mentioned as the benefits of living in the new place EXCEPT ____

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People have been donating blood since the early twentieth century to help accident victims and patients undergoing surgical procedures. Usually a pint of whole blood is donated, and it is then divided into platelets, white blood cells, and red blood cells. People can donate blood (for red blood cells) about once every two months. Transfusing the blood from the donor to the recipient is straightforward. It involves taking the blood from a donor’s arm vein by means of a hypodermic syringe. The blood flows through a plastic tube to a collection bag or bottle that contains sodium citrate, which prevents the blood from clotting. When the blood is given to a patient, a plastic tube and hypodermic needle are connected to the recipient’s arm. The blood flows down from the container by gravity. This is a slow process and may last as long as 2 hours to complete the infusion of blood into the recipient. The patient is protected from being infected during the transfusion. Only sterile containers, tubing and needles are used, and this helps ensure that transfused or stored blood is not exposed to disease- causing bacteria. Negative reactions to transfusions are not unusual. The recipient may suffer an allergic reaction or be sensitive to donor leukocytes. Some may suffer from an undetected red-cell incompatibility. Unexplained reactions are also fairly common. Although they are rare, other causes of such negative reactions include contaminated blood, air bubbles in the blood, overloading of the circulatory system through administration of excess blood, or sensitivity to donor plasma or platelets. Today, hospitals and blood banks go to great lengths to screen all blood donors and their blood. All donated blood is routinely and rigorously tested for diseases, such as RIV (which causes AIDS), hepatitis B, and syphilis. When the recipient is a new born or an infant, the blood is usually irradiated to eliminate harmful elements. Donated blood is washed, and the white blood cells and platelets are removed. Storing the blood sometimes requires a freezing process. To freeze the red blood cells, a glycerol solution is added. To unfreeze, the glycerol is removed. The ability to store blood for long periods has been a boon to human health
1. All of the following are mentioned as potential negative reactions to transfusion EXCEPT: 

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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.
10. Where in the passage does the author provide a basic description of a fiberscope?

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

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The history of American newspapers begins in the early 18th century with the publication of the first colonial newspapers. American newspapers began as modest affairs-a sideline for printers. They became a political force in the campaign for American independence. After independence, the first article of U.S. Constitution guaranteed freedom of the press. The U.S. Postal Service Act of 1792 provided substantial subsidies: Newspapers were delivered up to 100 miles for a penny and beyond for 1.5 cents, when first class postage ranged from six cents to a quarter. The American press grew rapidly during the First Party System (1790s-1810s) when both parties sponsored papers to reach their loyal partisans. From the 1830s onward, the Penny press began to play a major role in American journalism and its interests seemed to remarkably surprised the management board in the journal industry. Technological advancements such as the telegraph and faster printing presses in the 1840s also helped to expand the press of the nation as it experienced rapid economic and demographic growth. Editors typically became the local party spokesman, and hard-hitting editorials were widely reprinted. By 1900 major newspapers had become profitable powerhouses of advocacy, muckraking and sensationalism, along with serious, and objective news-gathering. During the early 20th century, prior to rise of television, the average American read several newspapers per-day. Starting in the 1920s, changes in technology again morphed the nature of American journalism as radio and later, television, began to play increasingly important competitive roles. In the late 20th century, much of American journalism became housed in big media chains. With the coming of digital journalism in the 21st century, all newspapers faced a business crisis as readers turned to the Internet for sources and advertisers followed them  
3. What does the word “its” in paragraph 2 refer to?

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the undelined part that needs correction in each of the following questions:
Over the past 600 years, English has grown from a language of few speakers to become the dominant language of international communication. English as we know it today emerged around 1350, after having incorporated many elements of French that were introduced following the Norman invasion of 1066. Until the 1600s, English was, for the most part, spoken only in England and had not extended even as far as Wales, Scotland or Ireland. However, during the course of the next two centuries, English began to spread around the globe as a result of exploration, trade (including slave trade), colonization, and missionary work. Thus, small enclaves of English speakers became established and grew in various parts of the world. As these communities proliferated, English gradually became the primary language of international business, banking and diplomacy.
Currently, about 80 percent of the information stored on computer systems worldwide is in English. Two-thirds of the world’s science writing is in English, and English is the main language of technology, advertising, media, international airports, and air traffic controllers. Today there are more than 700 million English users in the world, and over half of these are non-native speakers, constituting the largest number of non-native users than any other language in the world.

The word “elements” is most similar to    .

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 White House, the official home of the United States president, was not built in time for George Washington to live in it. It was begun in 1792 and was ready for its first inhabitants. President and Mrs.John Adams, who moved in on November 1, 1800. When the Adamses moved in, the White House was not yet complete, and the Adamses suffered many inconveniences; for example, the main staircase was incomplete, which hindered movement from floor to floor, and the future laundry yard was merely a pool of mud, so wet laundry was hung in the unfinished East Room to dry. Thomas Jefferson, the third president, improved the comfort of the White House in many respects and added new architectural features such as the terraces on the east and west ends.

   When the British forces burned the White House on August 24, 1814, President Madison was forced to leave.All the remained after the fire was the exterior walls, the interior was completely destroyed. It was not until December of 1817 that the following president, James Monroe, was able to move into a rebuilt residence. Since then, the White House has continued to be modified but has been continuously occupied by each succeeding U.S president.

It can be inferred from the passage that John Adams was:

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There are many strange superstitions in the world. The most common one is related to black cats, (1) ____ are the source of hundreds of unlucky superstitions. It’s a sign of bad luck if they walk in front of you or you step on their tails. They even bring bad luck into a house if they sneeze inside! This superstition dates (2) ____ to the Middle Ages when they became associated with witches and evil spirits. Another common superstition is about walking under a ladder. A more (3) ____ explanation can be traced back to ancient Egypt. The early Egyptians believed that the shape of the Pyramids had a special power. It was considered very bad luck to break the “power” of this shape and that’s exactly what walking under a ladder would do! In addition, in Roman times, people (4) ____ the habit of looking at themselves in pools of water. Some believed that these reflections were in fact “glimpses of the soul”. Any disruption to the water in the pool would bring bad luck to the person looking in it. This superstition lives (5)_________the fear of bad luck from breaking a mirror

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It’s often said that we team things at the wrong time. University students frequently do the minimum of work because they’re crazy about a good social life instead. Children often scream before their piano practice 5 because it’s so boring. They have to be given gold stars and medals to be persuaded to swim, or have to be bribed to take exams. But the story is different when you’re older.
Over the years, I’ve done my share of adult learning. At 30, I went to a college and did courses in History and English. It was an amazing experience. For starters, I was paying, so there was no reason to be late - I was the one frowning and drumming my fingers if the tutor was late, not the other way round. Indeed, if I could persuade him to linger for an extra five minutes, it was a bonus, not a nuisance. I wasn’t frightened to ask questions, and homework was a pleasure not a pain. When I passed an exam, I had a big meal, not for my parents or my teachers. The satisfaction I got was entirely personal.
Some people fear going back to school because they worry that their brains have got rusty. But the joy is that, although some parts have rusted up, your brain has learnt all kinds of other things since you were young. It has learnt to think independently and flexibly and is much better at relating one thing to another. What you lose in the rust department, you gain in the maturity department.
In some ways, age is a positive plus. For instance, when you’re older, you get less frustrated. Experience has told you that, if you’re calm and simply do something carefully again and again, eventually you’ll get the hang of it. The confidence you have in other areas - from being able to drive a car, perhaps - means that if you can’t, say, build a chair instantly, you don’t, like a child, want to destroy your first pathetic attempts. Maturity tells you that you will, with application, eventually get there.
I hated piano lessons at school, but I was good at music. And coming back to it, with a teacher who could explain why certain exercises were useful and with musical concepts that, at the age of ten. I could never grasp, was magical. Initially, I did feel a bit strange, thumping out a piece that I’d played for my school exams, with just as little comprehension of what the composer intended as I’d had all those years before. But soon, complex emotions that I never knew poured out from my fingers, and suddenly I could understand why practice makes perfect.

In paragraph 3, the word “rusty” means     .

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All the different plants and animals in a natural community are in a state of balance. This balance is achieved by the plants and animals interacting (1) _______ each other and with their non-living surroundings. An example of a natural community is a woodland, and a woodland is usually dominated by a particular species of plant, such as the oak tree in an oak wood. The oak tree in this example is therefore called the dominant species but there are also many other types of plants, from brambles, bushes, and small trees to mosses, lichens and algae (2) __________ on tree trunks and rocks. The plants of a community are the producers: they use carbon dioxide, oxygen, nitrogen to build up their tissues using energy in the form of sunlight. The plant tissues form food for the plant-eating animals (herbivores) (3) _______ are in turn eaten by flesh-eating animals (carnivores). Thus, plants produce the basic food supply for all the animals of a community. The animals themselves are the consumers, and are either herbivores or carnivores. Examples of herbivores in a woodland community are rabbits, deer, mice and snails, and insects such as aphids and caterpillars. The herbivores are sometimes eaten by the carnivores. Woodland carnivores are of all sizes, from insects such as beetles and lacewings to animals such as owls, shrews and foxes. Some carnivores feed on herbivores, some feed on the smaller carnivores, (4) _______ some feed on both: a tawny owl will eat beetles and shrews as well as voles and mice. These food relationships between the different members of the community are known as food chains or food (5) ______. All food chains start with plants. The links of the chain are formed by the herbivores that eat the plants and the carnivores that feed on the herbivores. There are more organisms at the base of the food chain than at the top; for example, there are many more green plants than carnivores in a community

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:
Under certain circumstances, the human body must cope with gases at greater-than-normal atmospheric pressure. For example, gas pressures increase rapidly during a drive made with scuba gear because the breathing equipment allows divers to stay underwater longer and dive deeper. The pressure exerted on the human body increases by 1 atmosphere for every 10 meters of depth in seawater, so that at 39 meters in seawater a diver is exposed to pressure of about 4 atmospheres. The pressure of the gases being breathed must equal the external pressure applied to the body,

otherwise breathing is very difficult. Therefore all of the gases in the air breathed by a scuba diver at 40 meter are present at five times their usual pressure. Nitrogen, which composes 80 percent of the air we breathe, usually causes a balmy feeling of well-being at this pressure. At a depth of 5 atmospheres, nitrogen causes symptoms resembling alcohol intoxication, known as nitrogen narcosis. Nitrogen narcosis apparently results from a direct effect on the brain of the large amounts of nitrogen dissolved in the blood. Deep dives are less dangerous if helium is substituted for nitrogen, because under these pressures helium does not exert a similar narcotic effect.
As a scuba diver descends, the pressure of nitrogen on the lungs increases. Nitrogen then diffuses from the lungs to the blood, and from the blood to body tissues. Nitrogen then diffuses from the lungs to the blood, and from the blood to body tissues The reverse occurs when the diver surfaces, the nitrogen pressure in the lungs falls and the nitrogen diffuses from the tissues into the blood, and from the blood into the lungs. If the return to the surface is too rapid, nitrogen in the tissues and blood cannot diffuse out rapidly enough and nitrogen bubbles are formed. They can cause severe pains, particularly around the joints.
Another complication may result if the breath is held during ascent. During ascent from a depth of 10 meters, the volume of air in the lungs will double because the air pressure at the surface is only half of what it was at 10 meters. This change in volume may cause the lungs to distend and even rupture. This condition is called air embolism.
To avoid this event, a diver must ascend slowly, never at a rate exceeding the rise of the exhaled air bubbles, and must exhale during ascent.

What happens to nitrogen in body tissues if a diver ascends too quickly?

Read the following passage and choose the best answer (A, B, C, D):
Global sea level has been rising over the past century, and the rate has increased in recent decades. In 2014, global sea level was 2.6 inches above the 1993 average-the highest annual average in the satellite record (1993-present). Sea level continues to rise at a rate of about one-eighth of an inch per year. Higher sea levels mean that deadly and destructive storm surges push farther inland than they once did, which also means more frequent nuisance flooding. Disruptive and expensive, nuisance flooding is estimated to be from 300 percent to 900 percent more frequent within U.S. coastal communities than it was just 50 years ago. The two major causes of global sea level rise are thermal expansion caused by warming of the ocean since water expands as it warms, and increased melting of land-based ice, such as glaciers and ice sheets. The oceans are absorbing more than 90 percent of the increased atmospheric heat associated with emissions from human activity. With continued ocean and atmospheric warming, sea levels will likely rise for many centuries at rates higher than that of the current century. In the United States, almost 40 percent of the population lives in relatively high-population-density coastal areas, where sea level plays a role in flooding, shoreline erosion, and hazards from storms. Globally, eight of the world’s 10 largest cities are near a coast, according to the U.N. Atlas of the Oceans. Sea level rise at specific locations may be more or less than the global average due to local factors such as land subsidence from natural processes and withdrawal of groundwater and fossil fuels, changes in regional ocean currents, and whether the land is still rebounding from the compressive weight of Ice Age glaciers. In urban settings, rising seas threaten infrastructure necessary for local jobs and regional industries. Roads, bridges, subways, water supplies, oil and gas wells, power plants, sewage treatment plants, landfills-virtually all human infrastructure-is at risk from sea level rise. 
8. Which of the following is the passage likely extracted from?

Choose the best answer:
This road is so muddy when it rains that it needs __________.