______ the right buyer, he would have sold the house.
The unforeseen circumstances fed to the rescheduling of the conference that was _____ last month, much to the attendees' disappointment.
The science teacher _____ as a homework assignment.
He was accused of theft, but then he _____ as the real thief confessed to the police.
_____ while I was sleeping like a log in my bedroom last night.
By 1840, the US Army _____ most Eastern Indian tribes west of the Mississippi.
The company needs to hire someone who can _____ and respond to changes in the fashion industry.
Unsalted butter is best for this recipe, but _____ that, margarine will do.
Despite the highway gridlock, we still arrived at the airport under ______ to see her off.
A: Do you need help, or will you do it yourself?
B: I think I need a little more experience before I _____.
Have you thought of how massive the ______ might be if you did not win your case in court?
The desert plants were strangely _____ bushes with bizarrely twisted branches.
It is uncommon for the director to _____ power to his finance manager to make financial decisions for the company.
The break-in turned out to be _____ because it made us more aware of the insecurity of the neighborhood.
If they ask him "Why are you called Copper?", he just laughs and never explains, which makes his friends want to know the reason _____.
We all decreed that _____.
The needs of gifted children in schools have long been _____ neglected.
The horror film _____, all of the children froze in fear and were completely silent.
Her responsibilities go beyond the _____ of most junior internships.
Choose the correct word or phrase that best fits each space in the following passage.
In this week’s issue, our resident film critic discusses the etiquette of cinema going, and the audiences who prefer chewing hot-dogs, slurping drinks, gossiping and rustling crisp packets to actually watching the film. complaint, or just cinematic snobbery?
It’s the munchers and talkers, not those who complain about them, who are other people’s simple pleasures and the seem to me to be self-evident. Junk foods and even popcorns and choc ices, when eaten in a and possibly crowded space, are to demand living space. They spread themselves about - usually onto other people’s . Crisps, peanuts and boiled sweets make a lot of noise, first when being then when being crunched or sucked. These are definite , especially if you yourself - having merely come to see and hear the film - are not eating and not therefore generously your fried onions, mustard and ketchup with the trousers of the stranger in the seat.
Read the text and choose the best answer to fill in the blanks.
It only requires the completion of the reconstruction of the human genetic map for a whole host of hereditary diseases to be . Originally, it was forecast that the venture would take until the beginning of the 21st century to be . At present, it is clear that the task can be finished much earlier. Hundreds of scholars have gone to to help unravel the mystery of the human genetic structure with an ardent hope for mankind from disorders such as cancer, cystic fibrosis or arthritis.
The progress in this incredible undertaking is conditioned by an accurate interpretation of the information contained in the chromosomes forming the trillions of cells in the human body. Locating and characterizing every single gene may an implausible assignment, but very considerable has already been made. What we know by now is that the hereditary code is assembled in DNA, some of which may be diseased and to the uncontrollable transmission of the damaged code from parents to their children. Whereas work at the completion of the human genome may last for a few years more, notions like gene therapy or genetic engineering don't much surprise any longer. Their potential application has already been examined in the effective struggle against many viruses or in the genetic treatment of blood disorders. The hopes are, then, that hundreds of maladies that humanity is plagued at present might eventually to exist in the not-too-distant future.
Read the passage carefully and then fill ONE suitable word in each gap.
Life on a small island may seem very inviting to the tourists who spend a few weeks there in the summer, but the realities of living on is virtually a rock surrounded by water are quite different from what the casual visitor imagines. Although in summer the island villages are full of people, life and activity, when the tourist season is over, many of the shop owners shut down their businesses and return to the mainland to spend the winter in town. to say, those who remain on the island, whether by choice or necessity, face many hardships. One of the worst of these is isolation, with many attendant problems. When the weather is bad, which is often the in winter, the island is entirely cut off; this means not only that people cannot have goods delivered but also that a medical emergency can be fatal to someone confined to an island. At , telephone communication is cut off, which means that no word from the outside world can get through. Isolation and loneliness are basic reasons why so many people have left the islands for a better and more secure life in the mainland cities, in spite of the fact that this involves leaving "home".
Read the passage carefully and then fill ONE suitable word in each gap.
CRYING
A boyfriend or girlfriend we love dump us. How do we react? Most of us go through a period of crying our eyes . But have you ever wondered why humans cry? Most mammals produce tears to clean and lubricate the eyes but humans are unique - perhaps with the exception of gorillas and elephants - in producing tears in response to emotional stimuli. We might feel crying when we hear sad news, or even cry with happiness. Scientists are unsure what, if any, benefits there are from crying as it seems to have little or no immediate effect on the situation that has produced the tears. However, many people do say that they feel the benefits of a good cry in that after it they are emotionally stronger, so it’s possible that crying does in some way help us to get difficult emotional situations.
Some societies look down on adults crying. This attitude is, sometimes seen in the society’s language. Expressions such as “there’s no point crying over milk” and “grin and bear it” in English reflect a culture that - at least historically - does not value adult crying.
Crying can also be used as a means of deception. If you cry “crocodile tears”, you are on an act - pretending to be upset when in fact you are not.
There are 8 mistakes in the following text. The first mistake is corrected as an example numbered (0). Find the other seven mistakes, write and correct them.
Write the mistakes in the order they appeared in the text.
| Line | |
| 1 | Ministers have opened the door to expand the use of animal testing to ingredients |
| 2 | used in cosmetic products for the first time in 23 years, an animal welfare charity |
| 3 | has said. Cruelty Free International (CFI) said animal testing on ingredients |
| 4 | exclusively used in cosmetics – which was banned in the UK in 1998 – could be |
| 5 | required, after telling by the Home Office that the government had “reconsidered |
| 6 | its policy.” In a letter, the government said it was aligning it with a decision made |
| 7 | last year by the appealing board of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), which |
| 8 | said that some ingredients used only in cosmetics needed to be tested on animals |
| 9 | to assure they were safe. The Home Office insisted that UK law on animal testing |
| 10 | had not changed, but campaigners warned that accepting the ECHA’s ruling could |
| 11 | lead to a much wider use of animal testing. CFI has warned that the UK would be |
| 12 | “blowing a hole” over its leadership on animal testing. In response, a government |
| 13 | spokeperson said there had been no change in legislation and that the ban on using |
| 14 | animals for the testing of finished cosmetic products remained by force. |
Example: (0) Line 1: expand -> expanding
| Line | Errors | Corrections |
Read the following passage then choose the best answer to each question below.
Excerpted from What Video Games Have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee
When people learn to play video games, they are learning a new literacy. Of course, this is not the way the word "literacy" is normally used. Traditionally, people think of literacy as the ability to read and write. Why, then, should we think of literacy more broadly, in regard to video games or anything else, for that matter? There are two reasons.
First, in the modern world, language is not the only important communication system. Today images, symbols, graphs, diagrams, artifacts, and many other visual symbols are particularly significant. Thus, the idea of different types of "visual literacy" would seem to be an important one. For example, being able to "read" the images in advertising is one type of visual literacy. And, of course, there are different ways to read such images, ways that are more or less aligned with the intentions and interests of the advertisers. Knowing how to read interior designs in homes, modernist art in museums, and videos on MTV are other forms of visual literacy.
Furthermore, very often today words and images of various, sorts are juxtaposed and integrated in a variety of ways. In newspapers and magazines as well as in textbooks, images take up more and more of the space alongside words. In fact, in many modern high school and college textbooks in the sciences images not only take up more space, they now carry meanings that are independent of the words in the text. If you can't read these images, you will not be able to recover their meanings from the words in the text as was more usual in the past. In such multimodal texts (texts that mix words and images), the images often communicate different things from the words. And the combination of the two modes communicates things that neither of the modes does separately. Thus, the idea of different sorts of multimodal literacy seems an important one. Both modes and multimodality go far beyond images and words to include sounds, music, movement, bodily sensations, and smells.
None of this news today, of course. We very obviously live in a world awash with images. It is our first answer to the question of why we should think of literacy more broadly. The second answer is this: Even though reading and writing seem so central to what literacy means traditionally, reading and writing are not such general and obvious matters as they might at first seem. After all, we never just read or write; rather, we always read or write something in some way.
So there are different ways to read different types of texts. Literacy is multiple, then, in the sense that the legal literacy needed for reading law books is not the same as the literacy needed for reading physics texts or superhero comic books. And we should not be too quick to dismiss the latter form of literacy. Many a superhero comic is replete with the post-Freudian irony of a sort that would make a modern literary critic's heart beat fast and confuse any otherwise normal adult. Literacy, then, even as traditionally conceived to involve only print, vis not a unitary thing but a multiple matter. There are, even in regard to printed texts and even leaving aside images and multimodal texts, different "literacies."
Once we see this multiplicity of literacy (literacies), we realize that when we think about reading and writing, we have to think beyond print. Reading and writing in any domain, whether it is law, rap songs, academic essays, superhero comics, or whatever, are not just ways of decoding print, they are also caught up with and in social practices... Video games are a new form of art. They will not replace books; they will sit beside them, interact with them, and change them and their role in society in various ways; as, indeed, they are already doing strongly with movies. (Today many movies are based on video games and many more are influenced by them.) We have no idea yet how people "read" video games, what meanings they make from them. Still less do we know how they will "read" them in the future.
The word "awash" in the passage is CLOSEST in meaning to _____.
In the fifth paragraph, the author suggests that literacy is multiple, meaning that _____.
Read the following passage.
Prehistoric insects spawn new drugs
by Steve Connor
A. Insects entombed in fossilised amber for tens of millions of years have provided the key to creating a new generation of antibiotic drugs that could wage war on modern diseases. Scientists have isolated the antibiotics from microbes found either inside the intestines of the amber-encased insects or in soil particles trapped with them when they were caught by sticky tree resin up to 130 million years ago. Spores of the microbes have survived an unprecedented period of suspended animation, enabling scientists to revive them in the laboratory.
B. Research over the past two years has uncovered at least four antibiotics from the microbes and one has been able to kill modern drug-resistant bacteria that can cause potentially deadly diseases in humans. Present-day antibiotics have nearly all been isolated from micro-organisms that use them as a form of defence against their predators or competitors. But since the introduction of antibiotics into medicine 50 years ago, an alarming number have become ineffective because many bacteria have developed resistance to the drugs. The antibiotics that were in use millions of years ago may prove more deadly against drug-resistant modern strains of disease-causing bacteria.
C. Raul Cano, who has pioneered the research at the California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, said the ancient antibiotics had been successful in fighting drug-resistant strains of staphylococcus bacteria, a 'superbug' that had threatened the health of patients in hospitals across the globe. He now intends to establish whether the antibiotics might have harmful side effects. 'The problem is how toxic they are to other cells and how easy they are to purify,' said Cano.
D. A biotechnology company, Ambergene, has been set up to develop the antibiotics into drugs. If any ancient microbes are revived that resemble present-day diseases, they will be destroyed in case they escape and cause new epidemics. Drug companies will be anxious to study the chemical structures of the prehistoric antibiotics to see how they differ from modern drugs. They hope that one ancient molecule could be used as a basis to synthesise a range of drugs.
E. There have been several attempts to extract material such as DNA from fossilised life-forms ranging from Egyptian mummies to dinosaurs but many were subsequently shown to be contaminated. Cano's findings have been hailed as a break-through by scientists. Edward Golenburg, an expert on extracting DNA from fossilised life-forms at Wayne State University in Detroit, said: 'They appear to be verifiable, ancient spores. They do seem to be real.' Richard Lenski, professor of microbial ecology at Michigan State University, said the fight against antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria such as tuberculosis and staphylococcus could be helped by the discovery.
F. However, even the use of ancient antibiotics may not halt the rise of drug-resistant bacteria. Stuart Levy, a micro-biologist at Tufts University in Boston, warned that the bacteria would eventually evolve to fight back against the new drugs. 'There might also be an enzyme already out there that can degrade it. So the only way to keep the life of that antibiotic going is to use it sensibly and not excessively,' he said.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
two examples of bacteria that are no longer killed by modern antibiotic drugs:
a reference to the length of time we have been using antibiotic drugs:
the original source of the new drugs being developed:
the location of the studies into the new antibiotic drugs:
examples of other studies similar to Cano's:
You are going to read a magazine article about swimming with dolphins. Six sentences have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences A - G the one which fits each gap. There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.
A. This was a magical experience and, as time in the water is limited, everyone rotates to get an equal share. We spent the next two hours getting in and out of the boat and visiting other pods.
B. An excited shriek led us all to try something that one girl had just discovered, and we all rushed to hang our feet over the front so that the playful creatures would touch them.
C. A spotter plane circled above the bay, looking for large pods of dolphins to direct us towards. On deck, we watched for splashes on the surface of the water.
D. These include mothers gently guiding their young alongside, either to introduce them to the boat or to proudly show off their babies. Yet, when they become bored with playing, they leave.
E. After 20 minutes, we sighted our first small pod. The dolphins came rushing towards the boat, swimming alongside and overtaking us until they could surf on the boat's bow waves.
F. However, touching the creatures is strongly discouraged. This is despite the fact that dolphins have a very friendly reputation, and have never been known to be aggressive towards human beings in the wild.
G. Eventually it was time to leave, and the boat headed back to port. As we slowly motored along, we picked up another pod, which was joined by more and more dolphins until we had a huge escort.
Dolphins in the Bay of Plenty
Swimming with groups of dolphins, known as "pods", is becoming a popular holiday activity for the adventurous tourist. Our travel correspondent reports.
"You must remember that these dolphins are wild. They are not fed or trained in any way. These trips are purely on the dolphins' terms." So said one of our guides, as she briefed us before we set out for our rendezvous.
I was in Whakatane, in the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand, which is Cast becoming the place to visit for those who want a close encounter with dolphins. No skill is required to swim with dolphins, just common sense, and an awareness that we are visitors in their world. Once onboard the boat, our guides talked to us about what we could expect from our trip.
The common dolphin we were seeking has a blue-black upper body, a grey lower body, and a long snout. We had been told that if they were in a feeding mood we would get a short encounter with them, but if they were being playful then it could last as long as two hours.
Soon we were in the middle of a much larger pod, with dolphins all around us. The first group of six swimmers put on their snorkels, slipped off the back of the boat and swam off towards them.
After five minutes, that group was signalled back to the boat. I got ready to slide into the water with the next six swimmers, leaving the excited chatter of the first group behind. Visibility was not at its best, but the low clicking sounds and the high-pitched squeaks were amazing enough. The dolphins did not seem bothered by my presence in the water above them. Sometimes, they would rush by so close that I could feel the pressure-wave as they passed.
I personally found it more rewarding to sit on the bow of the boat and watch as the surface of the sea all around filled with their perfectly arching dolphin backs. Some of the more advanced snorkellers were able to dive down with these dolphins, an experience they clearly enjoyed.
In fact, they are very sociable animals, always supporting each other within the pod. The guides are beginning to recognize some of the local dolphins by the markings on their backs, and some individuals appear time after time.
Indeed, the pod we had found, on some hidden signal, suddenly turned away from the boat and headed off in the same direction at high speed. We watched as hundreds of backs broke through the water's surface at the same time, disappearing into the distance.
They had finally finished feeding and were content to play alongside as they showed us the way home. The sun beamed down, and as each dolphin broke the surface of the water and exhaled, a rainbow would form a few seconds in the mist. It was an enchanting experience.
(Adapted from FCE)
Complete the sentence by changing the form of the word in capitals.
I was a bit by my performance in the first exam, but I decided to make an extra effort in the ones left. (MORAL)
Complete the sentence by changing the form of the word in capitals.
patients are often given exercises to help prevent their muscles from becoming stiff. (BED)
Complete the sentence by changing the form of the word in capitals.
He represents not the continuing power of symbolic but its recession into the dead past. (INVEST)
Complete the sentence by changing the form of the word in capitals.
Before printing processes developed, books took an incredibly long time to make as they had to be written by hand. (PAIN)
Complete the sentence by changing the form of the word in capitals.
This state-of-the-art facility is so - it is unbelievably superior to any facility in the world. (FUTURE)
Complete the sentence by changing the form of the word in capitals.
Blogging had become a way of leading a kind of surrogate social life with people. (MIND)
Complete the sentence by changing the form of the word in capitals.
It's of him to lose his temper like that. He's usually very calm. (CHARACTER)
Complete the sentence by changing the form of the word in capitals.
The of the ancient treasure remain a mystery, despite countless searches over the years. (WHERE)
Complete the sentence by changing the form of the word in capitals.
Hundreds of from the war zone have arrived in the city and we are trying to find homes for them. (EVACUATE)
Complete the sentence by changing the form of the word in capitals.
In nursing, women tend to men by four to one. (NUMBER)
Complete the second sentence in each pair so that it has a similar meaning to the first one. You must use between THREE and EIGHT words, including the word given. DO NOT change this given word.
Your scheme is brilliant, but it won't succeed. (DOOMED)
=> Brilliant though failure.
Complete the second sentence in each pair so that it has a similar meaning to the first one. You must use between THREE and EIGHT words, including the word given. DO NOT change this given word.
They have a reason for wanting us to fail. (VESTED)
=> They have failure.
Complete the second sentence in each pair so that it has a similar meaning to the first one. You must use between THREE and EIGHT words, including the word given. DO NOT change this given word.
You stayed positive, so you didn't give up. (CHIN)
=> Without , you would have given up.
Complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first one, using the word in brackets. You must use between THREE and SIX words, including the word given. Do NOT change the word given.
Colleen started to feel nauseous due to the constant swaying of the boat. (GILLS)
=> The constant rocking of the boat caused Colleen .
Complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first one, using the word in brackets. You must use between THREE and EIGHT words, including the word given. Do NOT change the word given.
Can we really justify the idea that human lives matter more than nonhuman lives? (WEIGHT)
=> Is it possible for us to really justify the idea that human lives nonhuman lives?
Complete the second sentence using the word given so that it has the same meaning to the first.
George won't lend his tape recorder to you if you don't promise to bring it back by Saturday. (GIVE)
=> Unless ...........
Complete the second sentence using the word given so that it has the same meaning to the first.
Your encouragement helped to make things less grievous after such a heavy loss. (CUSHION)
=> It was .....
Complete the second sentence using the word given so that it has the same meaning to the first.
David was responsible for the family business as soon as his father retired. (CHARGE)
=> Scarcely ...........
Complete the second sentence using the word given so that it has the same meaning to the first.
I would have appreciated it if you hadn't pretended to support my view. (LIP)
=> I would sooner ...........
Complete the second sentence using the word given so that it has the same meaning to the first.
I don't mind whether we have the meeting today or tomorrow. (MAKES)
=> It ..........