Mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the answer to the following question.

______ his poor English, he managed to communicate his problem very clearly. 

A. Because 

B. Even though 

C. Because of 

D. In spite of 

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 22 to 28.

The Internet started out as a limited network called the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). It was a network of computers that allowed communication even if computer became non-functioning. It was the academic and scientific community that adopted Internet, using a protocol called TCP/IP. TCP/IP allows a number of different network computers to be connected together. This is called the Internet. The Internet allows the creation the World Wide Web or the Web for short. The Web consists of Internet sites that allow data to be shared by others. Aside from making the Web possible, the Internet also makes e-mail, chat rom and file-sharing and telephoning possible. It even allows people to watch media and play games.

The Web can be read in a browser. A browser is simply a software program that uses HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) data transmission. This will allow you to view Web pages. HTTP let you browser read the text, graphics, animation, video and music that are on the Web page. It also enables you to click on a link on the page using the mouse. The links on a Web page that guide you to go from one Web page to another are called hyperlinks. A Web page usually contains many hyperlinks so that you can “browse” the Internet. It is much like reading a book. You can go from page to page and get new information. One example of a browser is Internet Explorer. In the address box of your browser, you can type in an address called a URL for “uniform resource locator”.

To be able to use the Internet, you must have a computer with an Internet connection and software that lets you view that Web pages. Internet connection is called a dial-up connection. It needs the use of your telephone to connect your computer to an Internet service. A faster type of connection is called broadband. This requires a cable or some other equipment. If you turn on the computer with a broadband connection, it connects you the Internet at a time.

Adapted from http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

What can be inferred about broadband connections in paragraph 3?

A. They do not require an Internet service provider. 

B. They are the faster type of connection available. 

C. They are more convenient than dial-up connections. 

D. They require more equipment than dial-up connections.

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 40.

Early peoples had no need of engineering works to supply their water. Hunters and nomads camped near natural sources of fresh water, and populations were so sparse that pollution of the water supply was not a serious problem. After community life developed and agricultural villages became urban centers, the problem of supplying water became important for inhabitants of a city, as well as for irrigation of the farms surrounding the city. Irrigation works were known in prehistoric times, and before 2000 BC the rulers of Babylonia and Egypt constructed systems of dams and canals to impound the flood waters of the Euphrates and Nile rivers, controlling floods and providing irrigation water throughout the dry season. Such irrigation canals also supplied water for domestic purposes. The first people to consider the sanitation of their water supply were the ancient Romans, who constructed a vast system of aqueducts to bring the clean waters of the Apennine Mountains into the city and built basins and filters along these mains to ensure the clarity of the water. The construction of such extensive water-supply systems declined when the Roman Empire disintegrated, and for several centuries local springs and wells formed the main source of domestic and industrial water.

The invention of the force pump in England in the middle of the 16th century greatly extended the possibilities of development of water-supply systems. In London, the first pumping waterworks was completed in 1562; it pumped river water to a reservoir about 37 m above the level of the River Thames and from the reservoir the water was distributed by gravity, through lead pipes, to buildings in the vicinity. Increased per-capita demand has coincided with water shortages in many countries. Southeast England, for example, receives only 14 per cent of Britain's rainfall, has30 per cent of its population, and has experienced declining winter rainfall since the 1980s.

In recent years a great deal of interest has been shown in the conversion of seawater to fresh water to provide drinking water for very dry areas, such as the Middle East. Several different processes, including distillation, electrodialysis, reverse osmosis, and direct-freeze evaporation, have been developed for this purpose. Some of these processes have been used in large facilities in the United States. Although these processes are successful, the cost of treating seawater is much higher than that for treating fresh water.

From A. Briggs’ article on culture, Microsoft® Student 2008

The word “that” in the last paragraph refers to ______.

A. the cost

B. treating seawater

C. the United State 

D. this purpose

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.

The popularity of soccer in the United States were increased (A) significantly (B) by the playing (C) of the World Cup in cities throughout the country in 1994.(D)

A. were increased

B. significantly

C. the playing

D. in 1994

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 43 to 47. Fill in the appropriate word in question 45

THE GENERATION GAP

People talk about the generation gap as a kind of division between young people and their parents. It is something which is generally a problem when children enter their teenage years, and results (43)______ complaints on both side. Parents, for example, can often be heard to say that young people are (44)______ and disobedient and in addition tend to be irresponsible when spending because they don’t appreciate the (45)______ of money. Adolescents, on the other hand, complain that their parents don’t understand them.

What has gone wrong? One explanation lies in (46) ______society has changed. In the past, children would typically continue the way of life of their parents. In today’s world, parents are very (47) ______ for their children because they want them to achieve more than they did. The problem is that the children often don’t agree with their parents’ plans. Teenagers also reach maturity at an earlier age than they used to and want their independence sooner. The resulting conflict is painful to

both sides.  

Adapted form Mastering Use of English

A. worth

B. value

C. cost

D. amount

Read the following passage and then choose the best answer for each question by circling the corresponding letter A, B, C or D from 36 to 40.

The modern comic strip started out as ammunition in a newspaper war between giants of the American press in the late nineteenth century. The first full-color comic strip appeared in January 1894 in the New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer. The first regular weekly full-color comic supplement, similar to today’s Sunday funnies, appeared two years later, in William Randolph Hearst’s rival New York paper, the Morning Journal.

Both were immensely popular and publishers realized that supplementing the news with comic relief boosted the sale of papers. The Morning Journal started another feature in 1896, the “Yellow Kid”, the first continuous comic character in the United States, whose creator, Richard Outcault, had been lured away from the World by the ambitious Hearst. The “Yellow Kid” was in many ways a pioneer. Its comic dialogue was the strictly urban farce that came to characterize later strips, and it introduced the speech balloon inside the strip, usually placed above the characters’ heads.

The first strip to incorporate all the elements of later comics was Rudolph Dirks’s “Katzenjammer Kids”, based on Wilhelm Busch’s Max and Moritz, a European satire of the nineteenth century. The “Kids” strip, first published in 1897, served as the prototype for future American strips. It contained not only speech balloons, but a continuous cast of characters, and was divided into small regular panels that did away with the larger panoramic scenes of earlier comics.

Newspaper syndication played a major role in spreading the popularity of comic strips throughout the country. Though weekly colored comics came first, daily black-and-white strips were not far behind. The first appeared in the Chicago American in 1904. It was followed by many imitators, and by 1915 blackand-white comic strips had become a staple of daily newspapers around the country.

According to the passage, the “Yellow Kid” was the first comic strip to do all of the following EXCEPT 

A. feature the same character in each episode 

B. appear in a Chicago newspaper 

C. include dialogue inside a balloon 

D. characterize city life in a humorous way