The room ______ once a day.

(396)______

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In 1971, Sue Coppard worked as a secretary in London. While she enjoyed city life, Sue also missed the countryside where she spent most of her time as a child. So she offered to help out on a farm, or more specifically, an organic farming programme organized by a nearby college. She got a few people to volunteer as well, and they spent the weekend doing “housework,” which involved clearing bushes and cleaning drains. Afterwards, the farm managers said they could come back anytime to help out. Sue put a small ad in a magazine, offering people the chance to volunteer at the organic farm. The volunteer programme grew quickly, and soon other organic farmers joined in, asking for people to help out. With so many people and farms involved, someone needed to organize the different groups. A few of the original volunteers started WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) to help volunteers and farmers find one another. Today, at least 50 different countries have WWOOF organizations, and many other countries have individual farms that participate in the movement. While WWOOF is still a weekend activity for some, it now welcomes travellers and people who visit to live and work on farms for longer periods of time. WWOOF volunteers can stay on a farm for weeks or even months at a time in exchange for hands-on farming and gardening experience. The work can be exhausting, but volunteers think it’s worth it. By working on farms, the volunteers interact with farmers and develop a love for the outdoors and organic farming. Many travellers now use WWOOFing as a way to visit new countries and experience new cultures. As travellers will discover, every WWOOF opportunity is a bit different. In Serbia, you can find Misa and Olja, a couple whose farm is known for its hard cheeses and for its bread made from homegrown grains. Finca Amiruca, a farm in Ecuador, teaches volunteers how to grow peanuts, plantains, and yucca. When volunteering in Japan, you may get to learn about growing rice. WWOOF is only one of the many unique volunteer opportunities available. Volunteering is something that anyone can do, and a wide variety of organizations accept or even welcome volunteers. So the next time you get the itch to be active on the weekend or on vacation, why not look for a good cause to spend your energy on?

3. When living on a WWOOF farm, volunteers _________.
 

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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.
4. What is said about failure in the third paragraph?

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_________it was so cold, he went out without an overcoat.

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The Great Energy Debate
Modern civilization is heavily dependent on energy. Without reliable power sources, we couldn’t operate machines, use transportation, communicate via Internet, or do many other things. Although everyone recognizes the importance of energy, deciding what kind of energy the world should use in the future is not a simple task. The two leading candidates for this role are green energy and nuclear energy. Currently, most of the energy we use is derived from fossil fuels. Although this energy source has got us this far, there are several problems with it. For starters, it is a finite resource which is quickly running out. Some analysts have even estimated that the Earth could run out of coal and oil within the next 50 years. Burning fossil fuels also creates large amount of pollution, which is harmful to the environment. Although fossil fuels still provide the majority of our power, governments are seeking better energy sources to use going forward. Green energy is one option that is becoming increasingly attractive. It includes technologies such as solar, wind, and hydro power. These are seen as clean sources of energy because they cause very little pollution. In addition, they are completely renewable, so there is no danger that it will run out. The major disadvantage with green energy sources is that they are not cheap. The other alternative is nuclear power. Like green energy, it is also a renewable source of power that will not run out, and it also doesn’t produce air pollution. In addition, nuclear power is more reliable than green energy, as it doesn’t depend on sunshine, rain, or wind to operate. The major issues with nuclear power are safety concerns and nuclear waste. Nuclear power plants create a considerable amount of nuclear waste which is extremely hazardous to people’s health. If they happen to have a meltdown, this could destroy the surrounding area for years to come. The recent nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan brought this reality into the spotlight once again. In response, Germany announced it would close down eight of its nuclear plants immediately, and close the rest by 2022. Meanwhile, other nations refuse to give up on nuclear power, stating that these disasters are rare. The debate of whether to use green or nuclear power will likely continue for some time. In the end, it is quite possible that both energy sources will be used to fuel our planet.
5. Which of the following is a benefit of nuclear energy?

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"Are you ready ,Ann?" "Yes,I..........................."

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Do you need to be that stressed______?

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Egypt is famous ____ ancient pyramids.

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Is/ Nile/ longest/ river/ world?

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People believe that neither side wanted war.

Read the reading below carefully, and then complete it with the best option A, B, C or D given below:
Only a small percentage of information on the (1) _______ is restricted to subscribers or other authorized users. The majority of Web pages are available to (2) _______ who can access a computer that connects to the Internet. The Web has become a (3) _______ for many companies selling products or services, (4)_________ a forum for people to exchange opinions and information. Museums, libraries, government agencies, and schools post information on the Web to make it (5) _______ to others.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions:
    Who talks more - men or women? Most people believe that women talk more. However, linguist Deborah Tannen, who has the studied the communication style of men and women, says that this is a stereotype. According to Tannen, women are more verbal - talk more - in private situations, where they use conversation as the “glue’ to hold relationships together. But, she says, men talk more in public situations, where they use conversation to exchange information and gain status. Tannen points out that we can see these difference even in children. Little girls often play with one ‘best friend’ and their play includes a lot of conversation. Little boys often play games in groups, their play usually involves more doing than talking. In school, girls are often better at verbal skills, while boys are often better at mathematics.
    A recent study at Emory University helps to shed light on the roots of this difference. Researchers studied conversation between children aged 3-6 and their parents. They found evidence that parents talk very differently to their sons than they do to their daughters. The startling conclusion was that parents use more language with their girls. Specifically, when parents talk with their daughters, they use more descriptive language and more details. There is also far more talk about emotions, especially with daughters than with sons.

Which sentence best expresses the main idea of the first paragraph?

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Fighting Back against Bullying
It is often said that childhood is the most joyful period in a person’s life. This is supposed to be a time when children can focus on their studies and enjoy their free time with friends. However, these days more and more children are experiencing a stressful and miserable adolescence due to bullying. Bullying occurs when one student, or a group of students, uses aggression to harm another child and try to make them feel bad. This abuse can either be physical, such as pushing or beating another student, or it could take the form of mental abuse, such as taunting and teasing the student. Although it may seem harmless to some, studies show that bullying can greatly impact a child’s life and have long-lasting negative effects. People who have been bullied may experience self-esteem issues and start to lack confidence in almost everything they do. These traits can make it difficult to manage relationships and even cause them to have trouble holding down a steady job. One of the most harmful types of bullying that is on the rise is cyberbullying. The bullied student is targeted in cruel or threatening e-mails, instant messages, or hateful public posts about them. In many cases, bullies will post embarrassing pictures of the victim or spread nasty rumors about them through social media. In some tragic cases, children have even turned to suicide, feeling that they can’t deal with the humiliation. If you are being bullied by another student, you don’t have to accept it or suffer. There are some steps you can take to deal with the problem. At first, you may try to ignore the bully, as they will often lose interest in bothering you if you don’t react. If the bullying persists, however, you should tell a trusted adult as soon as possible. This could be a parent, a family friend, a teacher, a school guidance counselor, or even the school principal. Until recently, many teachers and school officials turned a blind eye to bullying, believing that the students would eventually sort it out by themselves. But this mindset has changed in recent years in light of some of the tragedies that have occurred. If for any reason you feel that your complaints are not being taken seriously, there are other groups available online who will help you deal with bullying. By dealing with bullying at an early stage, you can stop it before it gets much worse.
3. What does the author suggest that students should do if someone starts to bully them?

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Future Cures for a Better Future
We all wish we could stay forever young, maintaining perfect health throughout our lives. Unfortunately, this is just a pipe dream. In reality, our bodies start to fall apart as we age. Due to genetic weaknesses, neglecting our bodies, and reckless actions, people often find themselves facing a host of issues. Currently, many of these problems can’t be cured by modern medicine. Yet there is hope in the future that remedies will be developed to eliminate these conditions once and for all. One disease which prevents people from enjoying their golden years is Alzheimer’s. It is a brain condition which causes sufferers to slowly lose their memory and intellectual capabilities, and nearly 25 million people are affected by it. Although most of its victims get sick when they are senior citizens, about 5 percent start to show some effects when they are in their 40s or 50s. Within the next five to seven years, medicines should hit the market which greatly reduce the effects of Alzheimer’s, and may even cure it completely. In addition, researchers are working on a vaccine that could prevent people from getting it in the first place. Cancer is one of the deadliest diseases on the Earth. It can strike any organ or quickly spread throughout the body. Despite pumping millions of dollars into cancer research, it has proved to be a difficult disease to defeat. However, scientists are optimistic that they can turn it into a manageable condition within the next decade using a new approach. Doctors envision working with individuals’ DNA to develop more personalized treatments. Although this may not provide a complete cure, it should allow them to extend patients’ lives for many years. Although it is not a disease, baldness is something that many men dread. Although whether we lose hair is based primarily on genetics, many men feel that they did something wrong to cause it. As a result, men have been tricked with pills and routines that promise to cure baldness but actually do nothing at all. As it looks, there may be some effective treatments on the horizon. One involves cloning healthy hair follicles to ensure that men maintain a healthy head of hair. Another involves reawakening old hair follicles that have stop functioning. In the meantime, shaved heads are in style, so men should realize that they have other options.
3. How do doctors plan to treat cancer in the future?

The concept of urban agriculture may conjure up images of rooftop, backyard or community gardens scattered among downtown city streets and surrounding neighborhoods. But in the Seattle area, and within and beyond the Puget Sound region, it means a great deal more. "Urban agriculture doesn't necessarily equate to production that occurs only in a metropolitan urban area, "says Jason Niebler, who directs the Sustainable Agriculture Education (SAgE) initiative at Seattle Central Community College. "It means we are providing for growing population food needs from surrounding rural landscapes, as well as from the core urban landscape."

Picture a series of concentric circles, with an urban core that produces some food at varying capacities, surrounded by a series of outlying rings of small farms that become increasingly more rural with distance. The hope is that such land use planning, from the inner core to the outer rings, will encourage local ecologically sound sustainable food production. This, in turn, will create local jobs and decrease reliance on distant food products that originate from petroleum-intensive large scale farms.

That's the idea behind SAgE, believed to be the nation's first metropolitan-based community college sustainable agriculture program that emphasizes farming practices across diverse landscape types from urban centers to surrounding rural environs. "It's small scale agriculture with an urban focus" Niebler says. "Any urban population, large or small, can practice sustainable agriculture, improve food security and protect the environment, which ultimately results in resilient food systems and communities."

SAgE is a part of National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education (ATE) Program, which is providing the project with $157,375 over two years. ATE's goal is to support projects that strengthen the skills of technicians who work in industries regarded as vital to the national's prosperity and security. The support largely goes to community colleges that work in partnership with universities, secondary schools, businesses and industries, as well as government agencies, which design and implement model workforce initiatives.

The SAgE project focuses on the environmental, socioeconomic, political and cultural issues related to sustainable food systems, within Puget Sound watersheds through student and community education and research, and technological innovation. The curriculum offers courses that cover such issues as agricultural ecology, urban food systems, food politics and ethics, soil science, sustainable food production and technology, the integration of food and forests, and career opportunities.

"We've created a curriculum that is fundamental in nature, addressing the principles of sustainable agriculture and what a food system is - how it functions both locally and globally," Niebler says. "These courses are challenging, robust and inspirational. One of the really wonderful things about them is that we offer service learning opportunities, where students volunteer a portion of their time to working with local partner organizations. They can do a research project, or a service learning option. The ideal would be to prompt students into careers that involve sustainable practices in an urban agriculture setting."

Adapted from "Promoting Sustainable Agriculture" by Mariene Cimons

Which of the following is supposed to be an outcome of the SAgE's new land use planning?

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The Most Powerful Force in Space
A black hole is a spot in space that has incredibly powerful gravity. A hole’s gravity is so strong that it pulls everything nearby into it. It can pull stars, planets, and other things. Nothing can escape a black hole. In fact, they are so powerful that even light cannot escape them. Scientists first started talking about black holes in the year 1783. That year, one scientist said that in the universe, there might be places with gravity strong enough to trap light. However, that scientist didn’t use the term “black hole”. The term “black hole” was invented in 1967. Black holes are formed when a star dies. When a star dies, it collapses. When that happens, a huge amount of matter crowds into a very small space. The matter becomes very, very dense. How much matter are we talking about? Imagine a star that is the size of ten suns. Imagine fitting that amount of matter into New York City. That is what a black hole is like. Its gravity is so powerful because it has so much matter. However, not all black holes are huge. Scientists believe that some black holes are the size of atoms. Although these black holes are tiny, they might have the same amount of matter that a mountain has. We can’t see black holes because they don’t have any light. They are completely invisible. Scientists can guess where black holes are by studying nearby stars and planets. If gravity seems to be pulling the stars and planets to one spot, then scientists believe that the spot is a black hole. Some people wonder if a black hole could ever destroy the Earth. We do not need to worry about that. There is no black hole that is close enough to destroy the Earth. The closest black hole is about 7,800 light years away. In addition, the sun is not big enough to create a black hole.
2. How do scientists study black holes?

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Have you_________________any news about Lan since her accident?

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Linda is thanking Daniel for his birthday present. - Linda: "Thanks for the book. I've been looking for it for months."- Daniel: "______."

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:
One of the major problems in the art world is how to distinguish and promote an artist. In effect, a market must be created for an artist to be successful. The practice of signing and numbering individual prints was introduced by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, the nineteenth- century artist best known for the painting of his mother, called “Arrangement in Grey and Black”, but known to most of us as “Whistler’s Mother”. Whistler’s brother-in-law, Sir Francis Seymour Haden, a less well-known artist, had speculated that collectors might find prints more attractive if they knew that there were only a limited number of copies produced. By signing the work in pencil, an artist could guarantee and personalize each print.
As soon as Whistler and Haden began the practice of signing and numbering their prints, their work began to increase in value. When other artists noticed that the signed prints commanded higher prices, they began copying the procedure.
Although most prints are signed on the right-hand side in the margin below the image, the placement of the signature is a matter of personal choice. Indeed, prints have been signed within image, in any of the margins, or even on the reverse side of the’print. Wherever the artist elects to sign it, a signed print is still valued above an unsigned one, even in the same edition.

What was true about the painting of Whistler’s mother?

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Fish that live on the sea bottom benefit by being flat and hugging the contours. There are two very differcent types of flatfish and they have evolved in very separate ways. The skates ad rays, relatives of the rharks, have become flat in what might be called the obivious way. Their bodies have grown out sideways to form grat “wings”. They look as though they have been flattened but have remained symmetrical and “the right way up”. Conversely, fish such sas plaice, sole, and halibut have become flat in a different way. There are bony fish which have a marked tendency to be flattened in a vertical direction; they are much “taller” than they are wide. They use their whole, vertically flattened bodies as swimming surfaces, which undulat through the water as they move. Therefore, when their ancestors migrate to the seabed, they lay on one side than on their bellies. However, this raises the problem that one eye was always looking down into the sand and was effectively useless – In evolution this problem was soleved by the lower eye “moving” around the other side. We see this process off moving around enacted in the development of every young bony flatfish. It starts life swimming near the surface, and is symmetrical and vertically flattened, but then the skull starts to grow in a strange asymmetrical twisted fashion,, so that one eye, for instance the left, moves over the top of the head upwards, an old Picasso – like vision. Incidentally, some species of 20 flatfish settle on the right side, others on left, and others on either side.

According to the passage, the ability of a bony flatfish to move its eyes around is

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 lack of printing regulations and the unenforceability of British copyright law in the American colonies made it possible for colonial printers occasionally to act as publishers. Although they rarely undertook major publishing project because it was difficult to sell books as cheaply as they could be imported from Europe, printers in Philadelphia did publish work that required only small amounts of capital, paper, and type. Broadsides could be published with minimal financial risk. Consisting of only one sheet of paper and requiring small amounts of type, broadsides involved lower investments of capital than longer works. Furthermore, the broadside format lent itself to subjects of high, if temporary, interest, enabling them to meet with ready sale. If the broadside printer would know this immediately, there would be no agonizing wait with large amounts of capital tied up, books gathering dust on the shelves, and creditors impatient for payment.
In addition to broadsides, book and pamphlets, consisting mainly of political tracts, catechisms, primers, and chapbooks were relatively inexpensive to print and to buy. Chapbook were pamphlet-sized books, usually containing popular tales, ballads, poems, short plays, and jokes, small, both in formal and number of pages, they were generally bound simply, in boards (a form of cardboard) or merely stitched in paper wrappers (a sewn antecedent of modern-day paperbacks). Pamphlets and chapbooks did not require fine paper or a great deal of type to produce they could thus be printed in large, cost-effective editions and sold cheaply.
By far, the most appealing publishing investments were to be found in small books that had proven to be steady sellers, providing a reasonably reliable source of income for the publisher. They would not, by nature, be highly topical or political, as such publications would prove of fleeting interest. Almanacs, annual publication that contained information on astronomy and weather patterns arranged according to the days, week, and months of a given year, provided the perfect steady seller because their information pertained to the locale in which they would be used.

All of the following are defined in the passage EXCEPT     .