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.

New surveys suggest that the technological tools we use to make our lives easier are killing our leisure time. We are working longer hours, taking fewer and shorter vacations (and when we do go away, we take our cell phones, PDAs, and laptops along). And, we are more stressed than ever as increased use of e-mail, voice mail, cell phones, and the Internet is destroying any idea of privacy and leisure.

          Since the Industrial Revolution, people have assumed that new labor-saving devices would free them from the burdens of the workplace and give them more time to grow intellectually, creatively, and socially exploring the arts, keeping up with current events, spending more time with friends and family, and even just 'goofing off'.

          But here we are at the start of the 21^st century, enjoying one of the greatest technological boom times in human history, and nothing could be further from the truth. The very tools that were supposed to liberate us have bound us to our work and study in ways that were inconceivable just a few years ago. It would seem that technology almost never does what we expect.

          In 'the old days', the lines between work and leisure time were markedly clearer. People left their offices at a predictable time, were often completely disconnected from and out of touch with their jobs as they traveled to and from work, and were off-duty once they were home. That is no longer true. In today's highly competitive job market, employers demand increased productivity, expecting workers to put in longer hours and to keep in touch almost constantly via fax, cell phones, e-mail, or other communications devices. As a result, employees feel the need to check in on what is going on at the office, even on days off. They feel pressured to work after hours just to catch up on everything they have to do. Workers work harder and longer, change their work tasks more frequently, and have more and more reasons to worry about job security.

          Bosses, colleagues, family members, lovers, and friends expect instant responses to voice mail and e-mail messages. Even college students have become bound to their desks by an environment in which faculty, friends, and other members of the college community increasingly do their work online. Studies of time spent on instant messaging services would probably show staggering use.

          This is not what technology was supposed to be doing for us. New technologies, from genetic research to the Internet, offer all sorts of benefits and opportunities. But, when new tools make life more difficult and stressful rather than easier and more meaningful - and we are, as a society, barely conscious of it - then something has gone seriously awry, both with our expectations for technology and our understanding of how it should benefit us.

From “Summit 1” by Joan Saslow & Allen Ascher

Which of the following could best serve as the title of the passage?

A. Expectations and Plain Reality

B. Research on the Roles  of Computers 

C. Benefits of Technology 

D. Changes at the Workplace

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

Basic to any understanding of Canada in the 20 years after the Second World War is the country's impressive population growth. For every three Canadians in 1945, there were over five in 1966. In September 1966, Canada's population passed the 20 million mark. Most of this surging growth came  from natural increase. The depression of the 1930s and the war had held back marriages, and the catching-up process began after 1945. The baby boom continued through the decade of the1950s, producing a population increase of nearly fifteen percent in the five years from 1951 to 1956. This rate of increase had been exceeded only once before in Canada's history, in the decade before 1911 when the prairies were being settled. Undoubtedly, the good economic conditions of the 1950s supported a growth in the population, but the expansion also derived from a trend toward earlier marriages and an increase in the average size of families. In 1957 the Canadian birth rate stood at 28 per thousand, one of the highest  in the world.

After the peak year of 1957, the birth rate in Canada began to decline. It continued falling until in 1966 it stood at the lowest level in 25 years. Partly this decline reflected the low level of births during the depression and the war, but it was also caused by changes in Canadian society. Young people were staying at school longer; more women were working; young married couples were buying automobiles or houses before starting families; rising living standards were cutting down the size of families.

It appeared that Canada was once more falling in step with the trend toward smaller families that had occurred all through the Western world since the time of the Industrial Revolution. Although the growth in Canada's population had slowed down by 1966 (the increase in the first half of the 1960's was only nine percent), another large population wave was coming over the horizon. It would be composed of the children who were born during the period of the high birth rate prior to 1957.

The author mentions all of the following as causes of declines in population growth after 1957 EXCEPT……….

A. better standards of living

B. couples buying houses

C. people getting married earlier

D. people being better educated

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 question.

          Life expectancy is the period of time that a person can expect to live. Life expectancy varies greatly between genders and cultures. It used to be that women had a lower life expectancy than men (1 in every 4 women died in childbirth), but now they live an average of four to five years longer than men. Life expectancy has been increasing rapidly over the last centuries. With the advent of such modern miracles as sewers, medicine and a greater understanding of how diseases are spread, our life expectancy has increased by 25 – 30 years.

          In developing countries like Swaziland, where there is a high HIV/AIDS rate, life expectancy is as low as 32,6 years. In developed countries like Australia, life expectancy rates as high as 81 years. There are an increasing number of factors which can cancel out the disadvantages you have. The one that we are looking at now is how your career can affect your life expectancy. Choosing the wrong career can result in a shorter life!

          If you want your career to positively influence your life expectancy, you have to be made of money. That’s right. Rich people in wealthy areas of England and France live 10 years longer than the people in poorer areas. Having a successful career has its drawbacks, too if the result of hard work its stress.

          Stress can lead to a number of psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety, fatigue, tension and aggression. These conditions may result in a lack of concentration and an increase in serious injuries at work. They can also lead to high blood pressure and heart attacks which seriously affect life expectancy.

          If you are worried that your job might decrease your  life expectancy, you probably need to avoid careers on “dangerous jobs” list such as timber cutters, pilots, construction workers, roofer, truck drivers.

          So if you don’t want to kick the bucket at an early age, choose a career in something other than timber cutting, but above all, remember to relax.

From Pre-Essence Reading by Rachel Lee, Longman

The average life expectancy is 32,6 years in _______.

A. Swaziland

B. France

C. Australia

D. England

Books and magazines ______ around made his room very untidy.  

A. that lie            

B. laying                        

C. which lied                  

D. lying  

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.

This rapid transcontinental settlement and these new urban industrial circumstances of the last half of the 19th century were accompanied by the development of a national literature of great abundance and variety. New themes, new forms, new subjects, new regions, new authors, new audiences all emerged in the literature of this half century.

As a result, at the onset of World War I, the spirit and substance of American literature had evolved remarkably, just as its center of production had shifted from Boston to New York in the late 1880s and the sources of its energy to Chicago and the Midwest. No longer was it produced, at least in its popular forms, in the main by solemn, typically moralistic men from New England and the Old South; no longer were polite, well-dressed, grammatically correct, middle-class young people the only central characters in its narratives; no longer were these narratives to be set in exotic places and remote times; no longer, indeed, were fiction, poetry, drama, and formal history the chief acceptable forms of literary expression; no longer, finally, was literature read primarily by young, middle class women.

In sum, American literature in these years fulfilled in considerable measure the condition Walt Whitman called for in 1867 in describing Leaves of Grass: it treats, he said of his own major work, each state and region as peers "and expands from them, and includes the world ... connecting an American citizen with the citizens of all nations." At the same time, these years saw the emergence of what has been designated "the literature of argument," powerful works in sociology, philosophy, psychology, many of them impelled by the spirit of exposure and reform. Just as America learned to play a role in this half century as an autonomous international political, economic, and military power, so did its literature establish itself as a producer of major works.

The author uses the word “indeed” in the second paragraph for what purpose?

A. To show a favorable attitude to these forms of literature

B. To emphasize the contrast he is making

C. For variety in a lengthy paragraph

D. To wind down his argument

The girls and flowers __________ he painted were vivid.

A. that                           

B. who                 

C. which               

D. whose

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 question.

          Life expectancy is the period of time that a person can expect to live. Life expectancy varies greatly between genders and cultures. It used to be that women had a lower life expectancy than men (1 in every 4 women died in childbirth), but now they live an average of four to five years longer than men. Life expectancy has been increasing rapidly over the last centuries. With the advent of such modern miracles as sewers, medicine and a greater understanding of how diseases are spread, our life expectancy has increased by 25 – 30 years.

          In developing countries like Swaziland, where there is a high HIV/AIDS rate, life expectancy is as low as 32,6 years. In developed countries like Australia, life expectancy rates as high as 81 years. There are an increasing number of factors which can cancel out the disadvantages you have. The one that we are looking at now is how your career can affect your life expectancy. Choosing the wrong career can result in a shorter life!

          If you want your career to positively influence your life expectancy, you have to be made of money. That’s right. Rich people in wealthy areas of England and France live 10 years longer than the people in poorer areas. Having a successful career has its drawbacks, too if the result of hard work its stress.

          Stress can lead to a number of psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety, fatigue, tension and aggression. These conditions may result in a lack of concentration and an increase in serious injuries at work. They can also lead to high blood pressure and heart attacks which seriously affect life expectancy.

          If you are worried that your job might decrease your  life expectancy, you probably need to avoid careers on “dangerous jobs” list such as timber cutters, pilots, construction workers, roofer, truck drivers.

          So if you don’t want to kick the bucket at an early age, choose a career in something other than timber cutting, but above all, remember to relax.

From Pre-Essence Reading by Rachel Lee, Longman

The passage mainly discusses _______

A. The definition of life expectancy 

B. The comparison of life expectancy between women and men

C. The importance of a successful career 

D. The effects of a career on one’s life expectancy

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word for each of the blanks from 33  to 42.

What is meant by the term economic resources? In general, these are all the natural, man-made, and human resources that go into the (33) of goods and services. Economic resources can be broken down into (34) general categories: property resource – land and capital, and human resources – labor and entrepreneurial skills.

What do economists mean (35) land? Much more than the non-economist, land refers to all the natural resources (36) are usable in the production process: arable land, forests, mineral and oil deposits, and (37) _ on. What about capital? Capital goods are all the man-made aids to producing, storing, transporting, and distributing goods and (38). Capital goods differ from consumer goods in that (39) satisfy wants directly, while the former do so indirectly by facilitating the production of consumer goods. It should be noted that capital as defined here does  not (40) to money. Money, as such, produces nothing.

The term labor refers to the physical and mental talents of humans used to produce goods and services (with the exception of a certain set of human talents, entrepreneurial skills, which will be considered separately because of their special significance). Thus the services of a factory worker or an office  worker, a ballet (41) or an astronaut all fall (42) the general heading of labor.

Điền vào ô 40

A. come 

B. go

C. speak 

D. refer

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 question.

          Life expectancy is the period of time that a person can expect to live. Life expectancy varies greatly between genders and cultures. It used to be that women had a lower life expectancy than men (1 in every 4 women died in childbirth), but now they live an average of four to five years longer than men. Life expectancy has been increasing rapidly over the last centuries. With the advent of such modern miracles as sewers, medicine and a greater understanding of how diseases are spread, our life expectancy has increased by 25 – 30 years.

          In developing countries like Swaziland, where there is a high HIV/AIDS rate, life expectancy is as low as 32,6 years. In developed countries like Australia, life expectancy rates as high as 81 years. There are an increasing number of factors which can cancel out the disadvantages you have. The one that we are looking at now is how your career can affect your life expectancy. Choosing the wrong career can result in a shorter life!

          If you want your career to positively influence your life expectancy, you have to be made of money. That’s right. Rich people in wealthy areas of England and France live 10 years longer than the people in poorer areas. Having a successful career has its drawbacks, too if the result of hard work its stress.

          Stress can lead to a number of psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety, fatigue, tension and aggression. These conditions may result in a lack of concentration and an increase in serious injuries at work. They can also lead to high blood pressure and heart attacks which seriously affect life expectancy.

          If you are worried that your job might decrease your  life expectancy, you probably need to avoid careers on “dangerous jobs” list such as timber cutters, pilots, construction workers, roofer, truck drivers.

          So if you don’t want to kick the bucket at an early age, choose a career in something other than timber cutting, but above all, remember to relax.

From Pre-Essence Reading by Rachel Lee, Longman

According to the passage, all of the following are true EXCEPT _______.

A. Our life expectancy has increased by 25 – 30 years because there are fewer wars today. 

B. In the past, women’s life expectancy was lower than that of men. 

C. Life expectancy varies greatly depending on genders and cultures 

D. There has been a dramatic increase in average life expectancy over the last centuries

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

The principle of use and disuse states that those parts of organisms' bodies that are used grown larger. Those parts that are not tend to wither away. It is an observed fact that when you exercise  particular muscles, they grow. Those that are never used dimish. By examining a man's body, we can tell which muscles he uses and which he doesn't. We may even be able to guess his profession or his reaction. Enthusiasts of the "body- building" cult make use of the principle of use and disuse to "build" their bodies, almost like a piece of sculpture, into whatever unnatural shape is demanded by fashion in this peculiar minority culture. Muscles are not the only parts of the body that respond to use in this kind of way. Walk barefoot and you acquire harder skin on your soles. It is easy to tell a farmer from a bank teller by looking at their hands alone. The farmer's hands are horny, hardened by long exposure to rough work. The teller's hands are relatively soft.

The principle of use and disuse enables animals to become better at the job of surviving in their world, progressively better during their lifetime as a result of living in that world. Humans, through direct exposure to sunlight, or lack of it, develop a skin color which equips them better to survive in the particular local conditions.

Too much sunlight is dangerous. Enthusiastic sunbathers with very fair skins are susceptible to skin cancer. Too little sunlight, on the other hand, leads to vitamin-D deficiency and rickets. The brown pigment melanin which is synthesized under the influence of sunlight, makes a screen to protect the underlying tissues from the harmful effects of further sunlight. If a suntanned person moves to a less sunny climate, the melanin disappears, and the body is able to benefit from what little sun there is. This can be represented as an instance of the principle of use and disuse: skin goes brown when it is "used", and fades to white when it is not.

The word "Those" in line 3 refers to………. 

A. organisms

B. bodies

C. parts

D. muscles