Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word and phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 1 to 5. ⇱
A scientist said robots will be more intelligent than humans by 2029. The scientist's name is Ray Kurzweil. He works for Google as Director of Engineering. He is one of the world’s leading experts on (1) _____ intelligence (A.I). Mr. Kurzweil believes computers will be able to learn from experiences, just like humans. He also thinks they will be able to tell jokes and stories, and even flirt. Kurzweil‘s 2029 prediction is a lot sooner than many people thought. The scientist said that in 1999, many A.I. experts said it would be hundreds of years (2) _____ a computer was more intelligent than a human. He said that it would not be long before computer (3) _____ is one billion times more powerful than the human brain. Mr Kurzweil joked that many years ago, people thought he was a little crazy for predicting computers would be as intelligent as humans. His thinking has stayed the same but everyone else has changed the way they think. He said: “My views are not radical any more. I've actually stayed (4) _____. It's the rest of the world that's changing its View.” He highlighted examples of high-tech things we use, see or read about every day. These things make us believe that computers have intelligence. He said people think differently now: "Because the public has seen things like Siri (the iPhone’s voice-recognition technology) (5) _____ you talk to a computer, they've seen the Google self-driving cars."
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 6 to 10. ⇱
Climate change is one of the most intuitive changes in global warming. As a result of a large amount of carbon dioxide emissions, there is a sharp rise in high-temperature weather, which has an irreversible impact on our environment and ecology. Scientists say, “Changing weather patterns linked to rising global temperatures have resulted in a dearth of wind across northern China, according to several recent studies, exacerbating a wave of severe pollution that has been blamed for millions of premature deaths”. However, when I returned home last Christmas, there was no snow on the street, instead, it was a warm winter with sunshine. The continued of global warming may not only bring about changes in climate. The world may undergo more unpredictable changes due to global warming in the future.
Global climate change has seriously affected the living environment of animals, the change of climate, the quality of human life, and the threat to human security. Global warming has become a very difficult trend to reverse. It and rising temperatures have caused very serious consequences for human beings, brought great impact on the Earth’s organisms and seriously affected people’s lives, but people didn’t realize the seriousness of the problem. It is urgent to protect the environment and people should take active measures to deal with 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 11 to 17. ⇱
In most discussions of cultural diversity, attention has focused on visible, explicit aspects of culture, such language, dress, food, religion, music, and social rituals. Although they are important, these visible expressions of culture, which are taught deliberately and learned consciously, are only the tip of the iceberg or culture. Much of culture is taught and learned implicitly, or outside awareness. Thus, neither cultural insiders nor cultural outsiders are aware that certain "invisible" aspects of their culture exist.
Invisible elements of culture are important to us. For example, how long we can be late before being impolite, what topics we should avoid in a conversation, how we show interest or attention through listening behavior, what we consider beautiful or ugly. These are all aspects of culture that we learn and use without being aware of it. When we meet other people whose invisible cultural assumptions differ from those we have learned implicitly, we usually do not recognize their behavior as cultural in origin.
Differences in invisible culture can cause problems in cross-cultural relations. Conflicts may arise when we are unable to recognize others’ behavioral differences as cultural rather than personal. We tend to misinterpret other people's behavior, blame them, or judge their intentions or competence without realizing that we are experiencing cultural rather than individual differences.
Formal organizations and institutions, such as schools, hospitals, workplaces, governments, and the legal system are collection sites for invisible cultural differences. If the differences were more visible, we might have less misunderstanding. For example, if we met a man in a courthouse who was wearing exotic clothes, speaking a language other than ours, and carrying food that looked strange, we would not assume that we understood his thoughts and feelings or that he understood ours. Yet when such a man is dressed similarly to us, speaks our language, and does not differ from us in other obvious ways, we may fail to recognize the invisible cultural differences between us. As a result, mutual misunderstanding may arise.
Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word that differs from the other three in the position of primary stress in each of the following questions. ⇱
Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word whose underlined part differs from the other three in pronunciation in each of the following questions. ⇱
Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word (s) OPPOSITE in meaning to the underlined word (s) in each of the following questions. ⇱
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. ⇱
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. ⇱
Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions. ⇱
Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the most suitable response to complete each of the following exchanges. ⇱
-Harry: “I think Facebook is an effective platform for online trading.”
-Eric: “_____ Facebook violates users' privacy and information security to run ads and find customers for online shops.”
- Hanh: "Do you agree that all high school students must go to university?"
- Jenifer: “_____. It provides better chances to have a good job.”