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 from 39 to 45.

Long before they can actually speak, babies pay special attention to the speech they hear around them. Within the first month of their lives, babies' responses to the sound of the human voice will be different from their responses to other sorts of auditory stimuli. They will stop crying when they hear a person talking, but not if they hear a bell or the sound of a rattle. At first, the sounds that an infant notices might be only those words that receive the heaviest emphasis and that often occur at the ends of utterances. By the time they are six or seven weeks old, babies can detect the difference between syllables pronounced with rising and falling inflections. Very soon, these differences in adult stress and intonation can influence babies' emotional states and behavior. Long before they develop actual language comprehension, babies can sense when an adult is playful or angry, attempting to initiate or terminate new behavior, and so on, merely on the basis of cues such as the rate, volume, and melody of adult speech.

Adults make it as easy as they can for babies to pick up a language by exaggerating such cues. One researcher observed babies and their mothers in six diverse cultures and found that, in all six languages, the mothers used simplified syntax, short utterances and nonsense sounds, and transformed certain sounds into baby talk. Other investigators have noted that when mothers talk to babies who are only a few months old, they exaggerate the pitch, loudness, and intensity of their words. They also exaggerate their facial expressions, hold vowels longer, and emphasize certain words.

More significant for language development than their response to general intonation is observation that tiny babies can make relatively fine distinctions between speech sounds. In other words, babies enter the world with the ability to make precisely those perceptual discriminations that are necessary if they are to acquire aural language.

Babies obviously derive pleasure from sound input, too: even as young as nine months they will listen to songs or stories, although the words themselves are beyond their understanding. For babies, language is a sensory-motor delight rather than the route to prosaic meaning that it often is for adults.

What point does the author make to illustrate that babies are born with the ability to acquire language? 

A. Babies begin to understand words in songs

B. Babies exaggerate their own sounds and expressions

C. Babies are more sensitive to sounds than are adults

D. Babies notice even minor differences between speech sounds

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.

How is the news different from entertainment? Most people would answer that news is real but entertainment is fiction. However, if we think more carefully about the news, it becomes clear that the news is not always real. The news does not show us all the events of the day, but stories from a small number of chosen events. The creation of news stories is subject to specific constraints, much like the creation of works of fiction. There are many constraints, but three of the most important ones are. commercialism, story formulas, and sources. Newspapers, radio, and TV stations are businesses, all of which are rivals for audiences and advertising revenue. The amount of time that the average TV station spends on news broadcasts has grown steadily over the last fifty years - largely because news is relatively cheap to produce, yet sells plenty of advertising. Some news broadcasts are themselves becoming advertisements. For example, during one week in 1996 when the American CBS network was airing a movie about the sinking of the Titanic, CBS news ran nine stories about that event (which had happened 84 years before). The ABC network is owned by Disney Studios, and frequently runs news stories about Mickey Mouse. Furthermore, the profit motive drives news organizations to pay more attention to stories likely to generate a large audience, and to shy away from stories that may be important but dull. This pressure to be entertaining has produced shorter, simpler stories. more focus on celebrities than people of substance, more focus on gossip than on news, and more focus on dramatic events than on nuanced issues.

As busy people under relentless pressure to produce, journalists cannot spend days agonizing over the best way to present stories. Instead, they depend upon certain story formulas, which they can reuse again and again. One example is known as the inverted pyramid. In this formula, the journalist puts the most important information at the beginning of the story, than adds the next most important, and so on. The inverted pyramid originates from the age of the telegraph, the idea being that if the line went dead halfway through the story, the journalist would know that the most crucial information had at least been relayed. Modern journalists still value the formula for a similar reason. Their editors will cut stories if they are too long. Another formula involves reducing a complicated story into a simple conflict. The best example is "horse race" election coverage. Thorough explication of the issues and the candidates' views is forbiddingly complex. Journalists therefore concentrate more on who is winning in the opinion polls, and whether the underdog can catch up in the numbers than on politicians' campaign goals.

Sources are another constraint on what journalists cover and how they cover it. The dominant sources for news are public information officers in businesses and government offices. The majority of such officers try to establish themselves as experts who are qualified to feed information to journalists. How do journalists know who is an expert? In general, they don't. They use sources not on the basis of actual expertise, but on the appearance of expertise and the willingness to share it. All the major news organizations use some of the same sources (many of them anonymous), so the same types of stories always receive attention. Over time, the journalists may even become close friends with their sources, and they stop searching for alternative points of view. The result tends to be narrow, homogenized coverage of the same kind.

Why does the author mention Mickey Mouse in paragraph 2?

A. To indicate that ABC shows entertaining news stories

B. To give an example of news stories that are also advertisements

C. To contrast ABC's style with that of CBS

D. To give an example of news content that is not serious

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 from 33 to 38.

Sylvia Earle, a marine botanist and one of the foremost deep-sea explorers, has spent over 6,000 hours, more than seven months, underwater. From her earliest years, Earle had an affinity for marine life, and she took her first plunge into the open sea as a teenager. In the years since then she has taken part in a number of landmark underwater projects, from exploratory expeditions around the world to her celebrated “Jim dive” in 1978, which was the deepest solo dive ever made without cable connecting the diver to a support vessel at the surface of the sea.

Clothed in a Jim suit, a futuristic suit of plastic and metal armor, which was secured to a manned submarine, Sylvia Earle plunged vertically into the Pacific Ocean, at times at the speed of 100 feet per minute. On reaching the ocean floor, she was released from the submarine and from that point her only connection to the sub was an 18-foot tether. For the next 2½ hours, Earle roamed the seabed taking notes, collecting 15 specimens, and planting a U.S. flag. Consumed by a desire to descend deeper still, in 1981 she became involved in the design and manufacture of 20 deep-sea submersibles, one of which took her to a depth of 3,000 feet. This did not end Sylvia Earle’s accomplishments.

It can be inferred from the passage that Sylvia Earle _______. 

A. is not interested in the scientific aspects of marine research 

B. is uncomfortable in tight spaces 

C. does not have technical expertise 

D. has devoted her life to ocean exploration 

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.

A large number of inventions require years of arduous research and development before they are perfected. For instance, Thomas Edison had to make more than 1,000 attempts to invent the incandescent light bulb before he finally succeeded. History is replete with numerous other examples of people trying, yet failing to make inventions before they eventually succeeded. Yet some inventions have come about not through hard work but simply by accident.

In most cases, when someone unintentionally invented something, the inventor was attempting to create something else. For example, in the 1930s, chemist Roy Plunkett was attempting to make a new substance that could be used to refrigerate items. He mixed some chemicals together. Then, he put them into a pressurized container and cooled the mixture. By the time his experiment was complete, he had a new invention. It was not a new substance that could be used for refrigeration though. Instead, he had invented Teflon, which is today most commonly used to make nonstick pots and pans. Similarly, decades earlier, John Pemberton was a pharmacist in Atlanta, Georgia. He was attempting to create a tonic that people could use whenever they had headaches. While he was not successful in that endeavor, he managed to invent Coca -Cola, the world - famous carbonated soft drink.

Scientists have also made crucial discoveries by accident when they were conducting experiments. In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, an antibiotic, in this manner. He discovered some mold growing in a dish with some bacteria. He noticed that the bacteria seemed to be avoiding the mold. When he investigated further, he determined some of the many useful properties of penicillin, which has saved millions of lives over the past few decades. Likewise, in 1946, scientist Percy Spencer was conducting an experiment with microwaves. He had a candy bar in his pocket, and he noticed that it suddenly melted. He investigated and learned the reason why that had happened. Soon afterward, he built a device that could utilize microwaves to heat food. the microwave oven.

What does the author say about Teflon?

A. It is used for kitchenware nowadays

B. It was created many years before Coca-Cola

C. The man who made it was a pharmacist

D. People first used it as a refrigeration device

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the sentence that is closest in meaning to each of the following questions.

She asked if I had passed the English test the week before. 

A. “Had you passed the English test the week before?” she asked

B. “Had you passed the English test the week before?” she asked.

C. “Did you pass the English test last week?” she asked.

D. “If you passed the English test last week?” she asked. 

Mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the sentence that best combines each pair of sentence in the following questions.

The film was not interesting. However, he tried to watch the whole film.

A. In spite of the film uninteresting, he tried to watch the whole film.

B. Uninteresting as the film was, he tried to watch the whole film.

C. Despite of uninteresting film, he tried to watch the whole film.

D. Uninteresting as was the film, he tried to watch the whole film.

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 from 33 to 38.

Sylvia Earle, a marine botanist and one of the foremost deep-sea explorers, has spent over 6,000 hours, more than seven months, underwater. From her earliest years, Earle had an affinity for marine life, and she took her first plunge into the open sea as a teenager. In the years since then she has taken part in a number of landmark underwater projects, from exploratory expeditions around the world to her celebrated “Jim dive” in 1978, which was the deepest solo dive ever made without cable connecting the diver to a support vessel at the surface of the sea.

Clothed in a Jim suit, a futuristic suit of plastic and metal armor, which was secured to a manned submarine, Sylvia Earle plunged vertically into the Pacific Ocean, at times at the speed of 100 feet per minute. On reaching the ocean floor, she was released from the submarine and from that point her only connection to the sub was an 18-foot tether. For the next 2½ hours, Earle roamed the seabed taking notes, collecting 15 specimens, and planting a U.S. flag. Consumed by a desire to descend deeper still, in 1981 she became involved in the design and manufacture of 20 deep-sea submersibles, one of which took her to a depth of 3,000 feet. This did not end Sylvia Earle’s accomplishments.

What will the paragraph following this passage probably be about?

A. Sylvia Earle’s childhood.

B. More information on the Jim suit

C. Earle’s achievements after 1981

D. How deep-sea submersibles are manufactured. 

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the underlined part that needs correction in each of the following questions

Safari is an organized trip to hunting or photograph wild animals, usually in Africa. 

A. organized 

B. hunting 

C. wild animals 

D. usually in