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.
The philosopher Aristotle said, “In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. They keep the young out of mischief; they comfort and aid the old in their weakness, and they incite those in the prime of life to noble deeds. “Growing up”, my mother always used to tell me “your friends are a reflection of you”. I did not quite understand this (1).................. I started meeting individuals who kept, not so healthy friends in their lives and suddenly, as a young teenager, I learned to understand that the friends I keep in my life (2)............... who I am and desire to be as a person and therefore I have learned to choose my friends wisely over the years. I do not care about the superficial (3)................such as looks, money, success or status but rather I emulate those (4)................ bring laughter, joy, honesty and  who can be there for me and also give me a firm kick in the butt when I need it. I always find it intriguing to meet friends of people I know because I can really get a sense of that person by the company they choose to (5)................... in their life.

(5).......................

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Although only a small percentage of the electromagnetic radiation that is emitted by the Sun is ultraviolet (UV) radiation, the amount that is emitted would be enough to cause severe damage to most forms of life on Earth were it all to reach the surface of the Earth. Fortunately, all of the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation does not reach the Earth because of a layer of oxygen, called the ozone layer encircling the Earth in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 15 miles above the Earth. The ozone layer absorbs much of the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation and prevents it from reaching the Earth. Ozone is a form of oxygen in which each molecule consists of three atoms (O3) instead of the two atoms (O2) usually found in an oxygen molecule. Ozone forms in the stratosphere in a process that is initiated by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. UV radiation from the Sun splits oxygen molecules with two atoms into free oxygen atoms, and each of these unattached oxygen atoms then joins up with an oxygen molecule to form ozone. UV radiation is also capable of splitting up ozone molecules; thus, ozone is constantly forming, splitting, and reforming in the stratosphere. When UV radiation is absorbed during the process of ozone formation and reformation, it is unable to reach Earth and cause damage there. Recently, however, the ozone layer over parts of the Earth has been diminishing. Chief among the culprits in the case of the disappearing ozone, those that are really responsible, are the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). CFCs meander up from Earth into the stratosphere, where they break down and release chlorine. The released chlorine reacts with ozone in the stratosphere to form chlorine monoxide (ClO) and oxygen (O2). The chlorine then becomes free to go through the cycle over and over again. One chlorine atom can, in fact, destroy hundreds of thousands of ozone molecules in this repetitious cycle, and the effects of this destructive process are now becoming evident.
3. It is stated in the passage that the ozone layer: 

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In 1778, he ……………… to London to study with Benjamin West for four years.

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The Greatest Light Show on the Earth
If you are a fan of amazing visual displays, planetariums around the world offer some entertaining laser-light shows that are often accompanied by popular music. Yet if you want to see the world’s greatest light show, you won’t be able to catch it indoors. Instead, you will have to head to one of the Poles. In certain spots, you will be treated to colourful streaks of light dancing across the sky. This incredible display is the aurora borealis, and every year people from all corners of the globe flock to witness its wonders firsthand. The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, got its official name in 1621. The name combines the name of the Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora, and the Roman god of the north wind, Boreas. In ancient times, the aurora completely baffled people’s minds, as science was far more primitive than it is today. Nevertheless, they created many myths to explain them. The Vikings believed the lights were the reflection of dead maidens. The Scots thought they were supernatural beings battling in heaven. Meanwhile, Eskimos thought that the lights were dead souls, and when the colours changed, it was their attempt to contact living friends and relatives. It was not until 2008 that a team of scientists from ULCA finally concluded with certainty what the true cause of these dancing light is. The process begins when solar winds carry charged particles from the Sun through space and into the Earth’s atmosphere. When these charged particles enter the Earth’s atmosphere, they are magnetically attracted to the Earth’s poles. During their journey to these points, they come in contact with nitrogen and oxygen atoms in the sky. These collisions are what cause the aurora. The heights at which the collisions occur determine the colours of the individual lights. For example, when the solar winds collide with nitrogen at least than 96 kilometres above the Earth’s surface, the lights will be blue. If the same collision occurs above 96 kilometres, however, the light will be purple. Or, if the solar wind particles collide with oxygen, the colours produced will be either red or green. However, merely understanding how the aurora works does not do this phenomena justice. To truly appreciate the full splendor of the aurora, you will have to see this Natural Wonder of the World in person.
8. What does the last sentence of the passage suggest?

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People in Tokyo are very polite ……….. friendly.

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Raising a Child Athlete
In many countries, children with sporting potential are identified early and encouraged to achieve athletic greatness by training for hours every day. While some people see this as a great opportunity for kids to be healthy, others argue that too much focus on training can hurt young people. How parents should raise child athletes has become a big topic of their debate. People who are against such serious commitment to sport say that there are many negatives to training so intensively. Here are some of their arguments: The long hours spent training can distant the child from his or her family. thletes who spend too much time training miss out on education. The child may not be prepared for other real world activities, such as going to college and having a non-athletic job. Pressure from parents and coaches to win can be psychologically damaging for the child. Parents may also become too pushy and end up caring more about athletic achievements than the child. Dr. Christine Carr, a psychologist, suggests that parents take some important steps to make sure that their kids are getting the most out of sports. Carr says that the focus should be on the child’s happiness and about learning life lessons. Self-discipline, determination, and learning to deal with failure are some of the important life skills and lessons kids can learn from sports. Other experts point to the importance of letting children make their own decisions. Top athletes Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps have said that they appreciated their parents letting them decide how much or how little they wanted to train. In fact, according to Phelps’ mother, he had trouble focusing in the classroom until he found a sport that he was passionate about. By allowing Michael to focus on his sport, his mother also saw him improve as a student. Another thing that many parents and doctors agree on is the importance of developing a close relationship with the family. Dr. Carr suggests eating dinner together and says it is a simple way to remind children that family is important, and that support can always be found at home. Woods and Phelps both had supportive families and made it public, with parents attending their many competitions. Raising an athlete is not easy. By balancing life and training, parents can set their children up for success and help them become winners in sports and in life.
3. What best describes Dr. Carr’s opinion of children in sports?

Why is it that flying to New York from London will leave you feeling less tired than flying to London from New York? The answer may be a clear case of biology not being able to keep up with technology. Deep inside the brain there is a "clock" that governs every aspect of the body's functioning: sleep and wake cycles, levels of alertness, performance, mood, hormone levels, digestion, body temperature and so on. It regulates all of these functions on a 24-hour basis and is called the circadian clock (from the Latin, circa "about" + dies "day").

This body clock programmes us to be sleepy twice a day, between 3-5 a.m and again between 3-5 p.m. Afternoon tea and siesta times are all cultural responses to our natural biological sleepiness in the afternoon. One of the major causes of the travelers' malady known as jet lag is the non-alignment of a person's internal body clock with clocks in the external world. Crossing different time zones confuses the circadian clock, which then has to adjust to the new time and patterns of light and activity. To make matters more complex, not all internal body functions adjust at the same rate. So your sleep/wake may adjust to a new time zone at one rate, while your temperature adjusts at a different pace. Your digestion may be on a different schedule altogether.

Though we live in a 24-hour day, the natural tendency of the body clock is to extend our day beyond 24 hours. It is contrary to our biological programming to shrink our day. That is why travelling in a westward direction is more body-clock friendly than flying east. NASA studies of long haul pilots showed that westward travel was associated with significantly better sleep quantity and quality than eastward flights. When flying west, you are "extending" your day, thus travelling in the natural direction of your internal clock. Flying eastward will involve "shrinking" or reducing your day and is in direct opposition to your internal clock's natural tendency.

One of the more common complaints of travelers is that their sleep becomes disrupted. There are many reasons for this: Changing time zones and schedules, changing light and activity levels, trying to sleep when your body clock is programmed to be awake, disruption of the internal circadian clock and working longer hours. Sleep loss, jet lag and fatigue can seriously affect our ability to function well. Judgment and decision-making can be reduced by 50%, attention by 75 percent, memory by 20 percent and communication by 30 percent. It is often suggested that you adjust your watch as soon as you board a plane, supposedly to try to help you adjust to your destination's schedule as soon as you arrive. But it can take the body clock several days to several weeks to fully adjust to a new time zone.

The word "malady" is closest in meaning to

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Microtrends: It’s a Small World After All
In today’s world, it seems like everyone is focused on “the big picture”. However, coming up with large-scale solutions is not always what is needed. Sometimes it pays to think small – and that is exactly what many people are doing these days. By thinking small, lots of big minds have created some pretty amazing things. One example of this is microloans. Microloans are tiny loans, in some cases just a few dollars, which are available to people in developing countries. Although this may not seem like a lot of money, microloans can help workers to escape poverty and start their own businesses. The person behind the modern microloan movement is a Bangladeshi man named Muhammad Yunus. He started the project in the 1970s by offering villagers low-interest loans using his own money. Yunus wanted to offer poor people access to small loans so they wouldn’t be forced to turn to gangsters if they needed funds. In 1983, he founded the Grameen Bank and soon after, similar organizations started popping up around the globe. Although there are still some issues with microloans, at the very least they offer everyone the potential of becoming an entrepreneur. For most of the 20th century, companies required large sums of money and plenty of manpower to compete at the highest levels. In the late 1990s, the Internet changed this and many microenterprises came about. Microenterprises are smaller companies that employ less than 10 people and only require small sums of money to start. Being small offers lots of flexibility to these companies as they can react more quickly than corporate giants when a business opportunity arises. Many technology companies that produce mobile apps and websites fall into this category. Keep in mind that having a small staff doesn’t mean small profits, as microenterprises can earn hundreds of millions of dollars per year. Thinking small can also lead to a tremendous improvement in quality. One example of this is microbreweries, which are smaller-sized breweries that produce far less beer than traditional breweries. Since microbreweries don’t have to target large markets and make millions of sales to stay open, they can monitor the brewing process carefully to make sure everything is perfect. In addition, microbreweries can experiment with unique flavours that many traditional brewers would shy away from. So the next time you are asked to “think big”, remember that good things may also come in small packages.
4. What could best replace the phrase “popping up” in paragraph 2?

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Cholera, a highly infectious disease, has resulted in millions of deaths time after time over centuries. It is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholera, first isolated by Robert Koch in 1883. The organism enters the body through the digestive tract when contaminated food or water is ingested.The bacteria multiply in the digestive tract and establish infection. As they die, they release a potent toxin that leads to severe diarrhea and vomiting. This results in extreme dehydration, muscle cramps, kidney failure, collapse, and sometimes death. If the disease is treated promptly, death is less likely. In many countries, a common source of the organism is raw or poorly cooked seafood taken from contaminated waters. The disease is especially prevalent after a natural disaster or other destruction that results in a lack of fresh water. Sewer systems fail, and waste travels into rivers or streams; piped water is not available so people must take their drinking and cooking water from rivers or streams. Because people frequently develop communities along waterways, the disease can be spread easily from one community to the next community downstream, resulting in serious epidemics
5. According to the passage, what is a symptom of the infection?

To improve its athletes’ ____ Viet Nam has regularly exchanged delegation of sport officials, coaches, referees and athletes with other countries.

(443)______

Neil Armstrong (1) _______ into his microphone. And in less than two seconds the message that will live in the annals of exploration flew with the (2) _______ of radio to the huge telescope dish at Honeysuckle Creek, near Canberra, Australia, thence to the Comsat (3) _______ over the Pacific, then to the switching center at the Goddard Space Flight Center outside WashinGiải thíchon, D.C., and finally to Houston and the (4) _______ of the world: “That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

(21)___________

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John.............tennis once or twice a week.

Many nations have laws offering protection to these species, such as forbidding hunting, restricting land development or creating ______.

(362)_______

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"________" Henry complimented.

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Earl was one of the first American artists ___________ landscapes.

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I find cooking in my free time relaxing.

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They must gather the crop before it rains ________September.

Kentron's own Groovato Gelato was founded in 2010 when Luciano Algieri, an Italian immigrant to the United States, bought a ---143--- on Coverby Avenue. The building had previously housed the Hopscotch Ice Cream Company, and Algieri was able to hire many former Hopscotch employees. Teaching ---144--- ice-cream crafters to make gelato proved to be an easy task.---145--- his product, Algieri started with an old family recipe. He then enhanced the flavor with secret ingredients plus unusual combinations of fruits and nuts. ---146---.

143.................

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 following questions from 35 to 42. 
What is commonly called pepper in reality comes from two very different families of plants. Black and white pepper both come from the fruit of the Piper nigrum, a vine with fruits called peppercorns. The peppercorns turn from green to red as they ripen and finally blacken as they dry out. The dried-out peppercorns are ground to obtain black pepper. White pepper, which has a more subtle flavour than black pepper, comes from the same peppercorns as black pepper. To obtain white pepper, the outer hull of the peppercorn, the pericarp, is removed before the peppercorn is ground. Red and green pepper, on the other hand, come from a completely different family from black and white pepper. Red and green peppers are from the genus Capsicum. Plants of this type generally have tiny white flowers and fruit which can be any of a number of colours, shapes and sizes. These peppers range in flavour from very mild and sweet to the most incredibly burning taste imaginable. Bell peppers are the most mild, while habanros are the most burning. 
Christopher Columbus is responsible for the present-day confusion over what pepper is. The Piper nigrum variety of pepper was highly valued for centuries, and high demand for pepper by Europeans was a major cause of the fifteen-century push to locate ocean routes to the spice-growing regions of Asia. When Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, he was particularly interested in finding black pepper because of the high price it would command in Europe. Columbus came across plants from the Capsicum family in use among people of the New World, and he incorrectly identified them as relatives of black pepper. Columbus introduced the spicy Capsicum chili peppers to Europeans on his return from the 1492 voyage, and traders later spread them to Asia and Africa. These Capsicum peppers have continued to be called peppers in spite of the fact that they are not related to the black and white pepper of the Piper nigrum family. 

It can be inferred from the passage that chili peppers originally came from ______.

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Will Shortz: Puzzle Maker
When you ask a child what they would like to be when they grow up, common responses might include firefighter, pilot, doctor, or athlete. But those jobs don’t capture the attention of all kids. Take Will Shortz, for example. In eighth grade, at the age of 14, Shortz had to write an essay about what he wanted to do with his life. He wrote about his desire to become a puzzle maker – someone who creates games and puzzles, such as sudoku or crossword puzzles. That same year, he sold his first puzzle to the magazine Venture. By the age of 16, Shortz was regularly contributing puzzles to magazines. In college, Shortz found that there was no traditional way to study puzzles or become a puzzle maker. There were no classes offered on puzzles. Fortunately, after becoming bored with his economics studies, Shortz learned that his university offered a special programme that allowed students to suggest and create unique fields of study. After creating and completing two courses on word and math puzzles, Shortz switched his major to enigmatology – the study of puzzles. Shortz and his professors then created new classes that explored all aspects of puzzle-making. He studied the history, construction, and psychology of puzzles, mostly on his own. Because there were no professors of enigmatology, Shortz realized that he probably was the only student at his university to know more about his field than any of his professors. He did well in school, but upon graduating, Shortz did not know how to get a job creating puzzles. For summer work, he joined the magazine Penny Press, where he realized that he could find work as a puzzle editor. Shortz then found a job creating and editing puzzles for Games magazine. This seemed like a dream job because he could create new kinds of puzzles and be surrounded by great puzzle makers. After 15 years at Games, Shortz accepted a position as the editor of The New York Times’ crossword puzzle. When he first joined, the newspaper’s crossword puzzle was seen as very difficult, and few readers could complete it. Shortz made fundamental changes, such as including everyday language in the clues and answers so that many more people could enjoy it. Today, he credited with making the crossword appealing to a wider audience. Some of Shortz’s most famous puzzles have related to the news for that day, such as the name of the winning president on Election Day, and a love-themed puzzle on Valentine’s Day.
8. The word “it” in the last paragraph refers to ________

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Glenbrook South (GBS) High School is in a suburb of Chicago, lllinois, in the United States. It is an award-winning school with a highly competent teaching staff. It has over 400 Asian Pacific American students-over 17 percent of the students in the school. Of these, the majority are Korean American. This is very unusual in a state where Korean Americans are less than 1 percent of the population. The interactions of the Korean American students at GBS were the subject of an article in Asian Week magazine. Different Korean American students react differently to being in a high school where most students are white. Professor Pyong Gap Min, an expert on Korean life in America, believes that Korean Americans in this situation can sometimes feel inhibited or ashamed of their Korean identity. Asian Week interviewed a number of GBS students, and each had a different attitude. Eighteen-year-old Alice said that she used to spend time only with Korean American friends. Although she felt secure with those friends, she found herself motivated to form closer relationships with non-Koreans, too. She said that she felt she was missing out on new experiences and challenges. Seventeen-year-old John moved in the opposite direction. In junior high school, most of John's friends were white. After coming to GBS, his sense of his Korean American identity was restored, and he decided to have mainly Korean American friends. He feels that he and his Korean American friends understand each other better. For example, they understand about severe parental pressures to succeed at school; John felt his white friends couldn't really understand. Sixteen-year-old Paul has some Korean American friends, but he says he spends most of his time with his white friends. He is often the only Asian American in the group, but he doesn't mind. What Paul likes about the white culture is that he can be more radical - he can be as loud and funny as he wants to be. He says he doesn't see as much of that among the Asian students. Without belittling the importance of what these students had to say, it's important to remember that their opinions at this phase of their lives are bound to change as they grow into adulthood. But these honest opinions can help US better understand issues of cultural relations, and their honesty might help Americans from different cultural groups to get along better in the future. 
8. Which of the following is the closest in meaning to the word "interactions" in paragraph 1?