Peter and Mary are friends. They have just finished lunch in a restaurant.

Mary: The food is great. I'll get the bill.

Peter: _________.

A. Yes, speak to you soon.

B. No, this is on me.

C. It's nothing.

D. Don't mention it.

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 28 to 34.

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. People first used it as a refrigeration device.

B. It was created many years before Coca-Cola.

C. The man who made it was a pharmacist.

D. It is used for kitchenware nowadays.

Mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word(s) CLOSEST in meaning to the underlined word(s) in each of the following questions.

When I mentioned the party, he was all ears.

A. using both ears

B. listening neglectfully

C. listening attentively

D. partially deaf

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.

It’s less expensive to buy a computer part by part; you can save a few hundred dollars all together. 

A. less

B. part by part

C. a few hundred

D. all

Mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions.
Of all the factors affecting agricultural yields, weather is the one ______ the most.

A. that influences farmers

B. farmers that is influences

C. why farmers influence it

D. it influences farmers

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.

My brother is enough young to get a scholarship from the government. 

A. is

B. enough young

C. from

D. the government

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 45 to 50.

The Atmosphere of Venus

          Venus, also called the Morning Star and Evening Star, is the second-closest planet to the sun and the brightest object in the night sky. The planet orbits the sun every two hundred and twenty four Earth-days and is sometimes referred to as Earth’s sister planet because the two share both a similar size and bulk. What is not similar, however, is Venus’s atmosphere in comparison to Earth’s atmosphere.

          The atmosphere on Venus is much heavier and has a higher density than that of Earth. Venus’s atmosphere also expands significantly higher than Earth’s atmosphere although a thick cloud cover makes the surface of Venus nearly impossible to see unless observed through radar mapping.

          While the pressure and temperature of Venus’s upper atmosphere are comparable to those of Earth, the heat and pressure of the lower atmosphere are not unlike a furnace. Venus’s atmosphere is very thick due to a composition consisting mainly of carbon dioxide, and a small amount of nitrogen. If man could survive the extreme heat of Venus’s surface (400 degrees Celsius), then he would have to contend with a surface pressure that is more than 90 times that of Earth. Venus’s extremely high temperature is thanks to the greenhouse effect caused by such a large amount of carbon dioxide. The greenhouse effect is a process by which the sun’s infrared radiation is more readily absorbed by the atmosphere. Just like in a real greenhouse used to grow plants years round, the proliferation of carbon dioxide traps radiation and warms Venus’s atmosphere. Due to this phenomenon, Venus boasts a higher atmospheric temperature than Mercury, even though Venus is twice the distance from the sun.

          However, scientists postulate that Venus’s atmosphere was not always so hot. Studies show that large bodies of water were once on Venus’s surface but that eventually evaporation of all the water caused the runaway greenhouse effect which regulates the planet today.Thus Venus has become a critical study for today’s scientists, as human being are only beginning to struggle with the early stages of the greenhouse effect. Our problems do not stem from evaporated water supplies but from a propagation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases due to industrial and automobile emissions.

          Another interesting characteristic to note regarding Venus’s atmosphere is that its daytime temperatures and nighttime temperatures are not that far removed from each other. This is due to the thermal inertia, the ability of a substance to store heat despite changing temperatures and the transfer of heat by Venus’s strong winds. Although winds on the surface of Venus move slowly in comparison with Earth’s winds, Venus’s air is so dense that a slow-moving there can move large obstructions and even skip stones along the planet’s surface.

          In 1966, humankind made its first attempt at sending a recording instrument into Venus’s atmosphere. The Venera 3 probe did collide with Venus surface; however, the abrupt impact caused its communication system to fail, and it was unable to send and feedback. In 1967, Venera 4 successfully enter Venus’s atmosphere and was able to take many readings, one of which recorded that Venus’s atmosphere was between ninety and ninety-five percent carbon dioxide. Subsequent Venera probes were sent into Venus’s atmosphere, but most of them succumbed to the crushing air pressure.

According to paragraph 3, the greenhouse effect on Venus is owed to

A. the small amounts of nitrogen

B. the rapid increasing amounts of carbon dioxide

C. growing plants

D. the high atmospheric temperatures

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 36 to 44.

The modem comic strip started out as ammunition in a newspaper was 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 the earliest 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. They first appeared in the Chicago American in 1904. It was followed by many imitators, and by 1915 black-and-white comic strips had become a staple of daily newspaper; 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. include dialogue inside a balloon

C. appear in a Chicago newspaper

D. characterize city life in a humorous way

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.

What picture do you have of the future? Will life in the future be better, worse or the same as now? What do you hope about the future?

Futurologists predict that life will probably be very different in 2050 in all the fields, from entertainment to technology. First of all, it seems that TV channels will have disappeared. Instead, people will choose a program from a 'menu' and a computer will send the program directly to the television. Today, we can use the World Wide Web to read newspaper stories and see pictures on a computer thousands of kilometers away. By 2050, music, films, programs, newspapers and books will come to us by computer.

In what concerns the environment, water will have become one of our most serious problems. In many places, agriculture is changing and farmers are growing fruit and vegetables to export. This uses a lot of water. Demand for water will increase ten times between now and 2050 and there could be serious shortages. Some futurologists predict that water could be the cause of war if we don't act now.

In transport, cars running on new, clean fuels will have computers to control the speed and there won't be any accidents. Today, many cars have computers that tell drivers exactly where they are. By 2050, the computer will control the car and drive it to your destination. On the other hand, space planes will take people halfway around the world in two hours. Nowadays, the United States Shuttle can go into space and land on Earth again. By 2050, space planes will fly all over the world and people will fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo in just two hours.

In the domain of technology, robots will have replaced people in factories. Many factories already use robots. Big companies prefer robots - they do not ask for pay rises or go on strike, and they work 24 hours a day. By 2050, we will see robots everywhere - in factories, schools, offices, hospitals, shops and homes.

Last but not least, medicine technology will have conquered many diseases. Today, there are electronic devices that connect directly to the brain to help people hear. By 2050, we will be able to help blind and deaf people see and hear again. Scientists have discovered how to control genes. They have already produced clones of animals. By 2050, scientists will be able to produce clones of people and decide how they look, how they behave and how much intelligence they have.

What is the author's attitude in paragraph 3? 

A. concerned 

B. explanatory 

C. outraged 

D. emotional