reading test 1

Question 16 How can money assist people to control their weight.. conventional PASSAGE 3: Don''''t let the name fool you: a black hole is anything but empty space.. A similar process can oc

PASSAGE 1:

I used to feel guilty about books I own but haven’t read They would sit in piles making me feel unworthy as a writer and a reader And no matter how many books I might read in a year, I would always find myself buying more I couldn’t win It was a destructive cycle and it drove me mad It was yet another kind of information I seemed to be drowning in

One day I realized there was another way to frame my behavior The goal should not be efficiency because efficiency makes you conservative As a writer I need an ambitious curiosity, not a safe one It’s good to take a chance on books that are at the limits of my comfort zone That willingness to buy such books signals to myself there are new worlds other creators make, and for the price of a meal I can purchase the opportunity to

discover them I can’t penalize myself for trying If I never read any of the books that might be a problem, but merely not reading some of them is entirely sensible The clothes we buy mostly sit unworn Our couches are mostly not sat in It’s rare for a thing to be used as much as it could be

On top of that, buying books also has larger effects in the literary world A purchase sends a signal to the creator that I’m interested in what he or she made Buying a book also sends a signal to agents, editors, and publishers as my purchase adds one more vote for the best-sellers list And it makes me feel good to know that I contributed to the career of a successful writer when I see more of his or her publications in the future

I feel no guilt now in abandoning books, either They’re not children, they’re invented things If I don’t like it after fifty pages I owe the author nothing In fact, since I bought the book, I paid for the right to read as much or as little as I please Never finishing books is a different problem, and the solution for that is buying better books

Not sold yet? How about this: on the day I was born there were already more books published than I could ever read There was never the potential to read everything I have to abandon the expectation of perfection in my book

purchases, for the same reasons I need to abandon the expectation of perfection in everything Books are cheap, my literary inefficiencies don’t cost much in the long run, especially if those bets and gambles help me find a book or two a year that changes my life

Question 4

In paragraph 2, what does the word “them” (in bold) refer to? A meals

C books D worlds D creators

D A shirt that he rarely wears Question 6

According to the third paragraph, what makes the author feel good? A Seeing that other people have bought the same book that he did

B Seeing that someone whose book he bought before is still writing C Seeing a book he bought in the past is still being sold in bookstores D Seeing that a book he bought is being sold in different bookstores

Question 9

What is the author’s final opinion?

A Wasting money on books he doesn’t read or finish is small compared to the value he gets from those that have a positive impact on him

B He doesn’t really spend very much money on buying books, especially compared to how much he enjoys reading a few good ones

C Because of how inexpensive they are, he doesn’t think he wastes very much money on books that he doesn’t read or finish reading

D He may not be a very efficient reader, but that’s okay because every year he’s able to find one or two really good books that he enjoys

Question 10

What is the main purpose of the passage?

A To make others feel good who experience a certain problem B To give advice for others dealing with a particular problem C To express the author’s concern and worries about a problem D To explain how the author changed his mind about a subject

PASSAGE 2:

For many people, culture has an even greater influence than biology on eating habits and attitudes toward food and body weight If you grew up with eating habits based on ethnic, religious, or other cultural traditions, those practices may be strongly imbedded in your thinking today The types of foods you choose, how you prepare them, the

seasonings you add, when you eat, how much you eat, and how much you think you should weigh, can all have great social meaning if you strongly identify with your culture

Your culture includes where you live, your family size and composition, your age, your gender, your ethnicity, your marital status, your education level and that of your family, your occupation and the occupations of your family members Your culture permeates every aspect of your life, including how much exercise you get and how you view your own body

Your job and your work culture can have a strong influence on your eating and activity habits, as well as your weight, especially if you work around food or your job involves taking clients out to eat very often If you’re like most people, your job has more of an effect on your activity level, especially if you are sitting or standing still throughout most of your workday, and don’t have the flexibility to go out to a gym or even take a full lunch hour and use it to take a walk

Income also affects eating and exercise habits; statistics show that higher-income women tend to be thinner than lower-income women Money gives you more control over your life and affords resources such as gym

memberships, personal trainers, nutrition counseling, spa visits, and specially prepared foods, all of which can help with weight control

Just as your personal culture affects your attitude about food and eating, cultural values and norms affect how you think about fatness and thinness Some groups of people are more accepting of higher body weights than others Traditionally, most cultures have valued a certain amount of heaviness over extreme thinness But social ideals change with time and thinness has remained in style, especially in the United States and Europe America’s obsession with dieting and weight control clearly shows that we value thinness over heaviness Thin is considered healthier, though this is not always the case Unfortunately, this prevailing cultural attitude toward size and shape, with its emphasis on reducing weight, affects our self-esteem and can influence how we feel, not only about our bodies, but also about our place in society

Since the early 1960s, the overall obesity rate among American men and women has more than doubled As of 2010, when nationwide surveys were completed, 75% of adults (3 out of every 4) weighed in as overweight, obese, or extremely obese This is considered by many health experts to be a weight crisis of epidemic proportions Yet from a psychological standpoint (and quite possibly from a medical one), if you’re otherwise happy and healthy, there’s a lot to be said for accepting yourself at whatever weight you are

Question 16

How can money assist people to control their weight? A It helps them to make resources affordable to others B It assists them to access weight control resources C It encourages them to share gym memberships D It makes them more attractive to health experts

Question 17

What does the writer mainly discuss in paragraph 5? A Americans’ and Europeans’ preference of thinness to heaviness

B Impact of cultural values and norms on Americans’ dieting and weight control C How body weight affects people’s self-esteem and their place in society

D Influence of cultural values and norms on people’s attitudes towards body weight Question 18

What is the trend of body weight when social ideals change? A Thinness is still in vogue

B Heaviness has remained in style C Thinness is strongly criticized D Heaviness is associated with shame

Question 19

What is the word “prevailing” in paragraph 5 closest in meaning to? A predominant

B distinctive C reputable D conventional

PASSAGE 3:

Don't let the name fool you: a black hole is anything but empty space Rather, it is a great amount of matter packed into a very small area - think of a star ten times more massive than the Sun squeezed into a sphere approximately the diameter of New York City The result is a gravitational field so powerful that nothing, not even light, can escape It thus disappears from view - it is now a black hole

Although the term was not coined until 1967 by a Princeton physicist John Wheeler, the idea of an object in space so massive and dense that light could not escape it has been around for centuries Most famously, black holes were predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, which showed that when a massive star dies, it leaves behind a small, extremely dense remnant core If the core's mass is more than about three times the mass of the Sun, the equations showed, the force of gravity overwhelms all other forces and produces a black hole However, as the star collapses, a strange thing occurs As the surface of the star nears an imaginary surface called the "event horizon," the boundary in which gravitational pull is so great to make any escape possible, time on the star slows relative to the time kept by observers far away When its surface reaches the event horizon, to the latter, time stands still, and the star can collapse no more - it is a frozen collapsing object

Scientists can't directly observe black holes with telescopes that detect x-rays, light, or other forms of

electromagnetic radiation One can, however, infer the presence of black holes and study them by detecting their effect on other matter nearby If a black hole passes through a cloud of interstellar matter, for example, it will draw matter inward in a process known as accretion A similar process can occur if a normal star passes close to a black hole In this case, the black hole can tear the star apart as it pulls it toward itself As the attracted matter accelerates and heats up, it emits x-rays that radiate into space Recent discoveries offer some tantalizing evidence that black holes have a dramatic influence on the neighborhoods around them - emitting outshining gamma ray bursts, devouring nearby stars, and spurring the growth of new stars in some areas while stalling it in others

Even bigger black holes can result from stellar collisions Soon after its launch in December 2004, NASA's Swift telescope observed the powerful, fleeting flashes of light known as gamma ray bursts Chandra and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope later collected data from the event's "afterglow," and together the observations led astronomers to conclude that the powerful explosions can result when a black hole and a neutron star collide, producing another black hole

D A Spectacular Astronomical Phenomenon Question 22

In paragraph 1, what can be best understood by this sentence “Don't let the name fool you: a black hole is anything but empty space.”?

A One may get confused by the way black holes are named B One should not be mystified by black holes just by their name

C Black holes are black but not empty space as their name suggests D Their name as black holes gives a misleading image about themselves

Question 23

What does the word “it” (in bold) in paragraph 2 refer to? A idea

B term C space D object

Question 24

What could best replace the phrase “leaves behind” in paragraph 2? A results in

B ends up C becomes D abandons

Question 25

In paragraph 2, what can best express the essential information of the following sentence?

“When its surface reaches the event horizon, to the latter, time stands still, and the star can collapse no more - it is a frozen collapsing object.”

A To external viewers, time stops as the star’s surface gets to the event horizon B B A star will become frozen once it passes the event horizon of a black hole C Time will slow down for outside observers of a black hole while it is still for insiders D When the star passes through the event horizon, time’s motion will stop

Question 28

In paragraph 3, what can be learnt about the process of accretion?

If a black hole passes through a cloud of interstellar matter, for example, it will draw matter inward in a process known as accretion A similar process can occur if a normal star passes close to a black hole In this case, the black hole can tear the star apart as it pulls it toward itself

A It is a mutual process between black holes and normal stars

B It is triggered by the presence of interstellar matter near a black hole C It occurs when a black hole attracts more matter from companion stars D It happens when black holes and stars are moving in the space

Question 29

According to the passage, which of the following terms is NOT further explained? A process of accretion

B gamma ray C interstellar matter D black hole

PASSAGE 4:

Over on Facebook, I've been posting three works a day this week, Monday to Friday, in response to being nominated for the Art Challenge that's going around It's funny to notice how uncomfortable I feel doing that, because I do post work in this blog regularly and put the links up at Facebook Part of it is that I don't like Facebook’s denial of basic copyright laws, but the larger discomfort is just a kind of shyness I feel about blowing my own horn so loudly for a whole week in an environment where (a) everybody is doing that all the time and (b) people over there seem to harbor the same insecurities and self-criticisms and tendency to compare themselves to others that made high school miserable, and have carried over into a lot of adult lives My blog feels like my own home, where I can just be myself, and people can show up or not, as they want On the other hand, a lot of people I care about only

communicate through Facebook now I've appreciated seeing other artists' work in more depth and breadth during this current challenge, so I'm going to assume other people feel the same way

My own discomfort was palpable enough that I needed to explore it Being good at things - unless they're sports - wasn't a way to be happy and popular when I was young, especially growing up in an under-achieving and pretty anti-intellectual environment My parents encouraged me to be myself, but by second grade I had learned to be quiet in public about my enthusiasms, interests, and eagerness "Keeping my light under a bushel" seemed like the best way to go In college, I was surprised to meet kids from urban areas who were extremely competitive, pushy, and brash about their own achievements, and who were quite ready to walk all over other people on their climb to the top: this was a personality type I simply hadn't encountered I also met other kids from smaller school who were a lot like me, and had had some of the same challenges It took all four years for me to learn to take advantage of the opportunities that were offered, holding to values of kindness and decency while developing my own skills and ability to navigate in a large, competitive world

When we were moving from Vermont, I found a box of old papers from college, and in it, a letter of

recommendation from my advisor praising my strengths, while noting "a lack of confidence." That might seem odd to people who know me now, but not to me: I not only remember how I felt, but I know how other people felt, too I never wanted to be one of those who was willing to do anything to get into medical school, or get noticed by the visiting genius professor I just wanted to be myself, to work hard, and not to be disliked for it My parents told me things would work out, and they did, but not without some cost I've lost some things that were once important to me, and I've lost certain people too, while gaining authenticity, satisfaction, confidence, and the ability to be comfortable and at peace with myself The early pains in our lives may be forgiven, but clearly, they aren't totally forgotten, even forty years later

Question 31

What does the phrase “over there” in paragraph 1 refer to? A high school

B this blog C Facebook D Art Challenge

C It is a place where everybody boasts about their abilities D It does not acknowledge artists’ basic copyrights

Question 34

Why does the writer mention high school in paragraph 1?

A to argue that people bring their negative attitudes from high school to Facebook B to compare the behaviour of people on Facebook to that in high school

C to express her concern about how people behave on Facebook

D to emphasize her discomfort about the environment created by Facebook Question 35

What can the word “palpable” in paragraph 2 be best replaced by? A severe

B intense C obvious D enormous

Question 38

The writer mentions the way she feels about Facebook at the beginning as _ A a truth to be testified

B a question to be answered C.a matter to be further studied D a mystery to be explained Question 39

What can be inferred about the writer from the last paragraph in the passage? A She held grudges against people who are too competitive in school

B She has not forgiven those who caused her pains in her earlier years C She finds the sacrifices on the way of accepting her identity worthy D She unintentionally made people misunderstand and misjudge her

C A reflection on how one comes to terms with one’s identity D A personal struggle to find one’s identity in a competitive world