Read the following passage on native Americans, and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase for each of the blanks from 51 to 60.
The first American immigrants, beginning more than 20,000 years ago, were intercontinental wanderers: hunters and their families following animal (51)______ from Asia to America, across a land bridge where the Bering Strait is today. (52)______ Spain’s Christopher Columbus “discovered” the New World in 1492, about 1.5 million Native Americans lived in what is now the continental United States, although estimates of the number (53)______ greatly. Mistaking the place where he landed – San Salvador in the Bahamas – (54)______ the Indies, Columbus called the Native Americans “Indians.”
During the next 200 years, people from several European countries followed Columbus across the Atlantic Ocean to explore America and (55)______ up trading posts and colonies. Native Americans suffered (56)______ from the influx of Europeans. The transfer of land from Indian to European – and later American – hands (57)______ accomplished through treaties, wars, and coercion, with Indians constantly giving (58)______ as the newcomers moved west. In the 19th century, the government’s preferred solution to the Indian “problem” was to force tribes to inhabit specific plots of land called reservations. Some tribes fought to keep from (59)______ land they had traditionally used. In many cases the reservation land was (60)______ poor quality, and Indians came to depend on government assistance. Poverty and joblessness among Native Americans still exist today.
(Extracted from InfoUSA – CD Version)
Read the following passage on commuting, and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions .
Commuting is the practice of travelling a long distance to a town or city to work each day, and then travelling home again in the evening. The word commuting comes from commutation ticket, a US rail ticket for repeated journeys, called a season ticket in Britain. Regular travellers are called commuters.
The US has many commuters. A few, mostly on the East Coast, commute by train or subway, but most depend on the car. Some leave home very early to avoid the traffic jams, and sleep in their cars until their office opens. Many people accept a long trip to work so that they can live in quiet bedroom communities away from the city, but another reason is ‘white flight’. In the 1960s most cities began to desegregate their schools, so that there were no longer separate schools for white and black children. Many white families did not want to send their children to desegregated schools, so they moved to the suburbs, which have their own schools, and where, for various reasons, few black people live.
Millions of people in Britain commute by car or train. Some spend two or three hours a day travelling, so that they and their families can live in suburbia or in the countryside. Cities are surrounded by commuter belts. Part of the commuter belt around London is called the stockbroker belt because it contains houses where rich business people live. Some places are becoming dormitory towns, because people sleep there but take little part in local activities.
Most commuters travel to and from work at the same time, causing the morning and evening rush hours, when buses and trains are crowded and there are traffic jams on the roads. Commuters on trains rarely talk to each other and spend their journey reading, sleeping or using their mobile phones, though this is not popular with other passengers. Increasing numbers of people now work at home some days of the week, linked to their offices by computer, a practice called telecommuting.
Cities in both Britain and the US are trying to reduce the number of cars coming into town each day. Some companies encourage car pooling (called car sharing in Britain), an arrangement for people who live and work near each other to travel together. Some US cities have a public service that helps such people to contact each other, and traffic lanes are reserved for car-pool vehicles. But cars and petrol/gas are cheap in the US, and many people prefer to drive alone because it gives them more freedom. In Britain many cities have park-and-ride schemes, car parks on the edge of the city from which buses take drivers into the centre.
(Extracted from Oxford Guide to British and American Culture, Oxford University Press, 2000)
Read the following passage on learning by Mazur, James E, and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions .
Learning means acquiring knowledge or developing the ability to perform new behaviors. It is common to think of learning as something that takes place in school, but much of human learning occurs outside the classroom, and people continue to learn throughout their lives.
Even before they enter school, young children learn to walk, to talk, and to use their hands to manipulate toys, food, and other objects. They use all of their senses to learn about the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells in their environments. They learn how to interact with their parents, siblings, friends, and other people important to their world. When they enter school, children learn basic academic subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics. They also continue to learn a great deal outside the classroom. They learn which behaviors are likely to be rewarded and which are likely to be punished. They learn social skills for interacting with other children. After they finish school, people must learn to adapt to the many major changes that affect their lives, such as getting married, raising children, and finding and keeping a job.
Because learning continues throughout our lives and affects almost everything we do, the study of learning is important in many different fields. Teachers need to understand the best ways to educate children. Psychologists, social workers, criminologists, and other human-service workers need to understand how certain experiences change people’s behaviors. Employers, politicians, and advertisers make use of the principles of learning to influence the behavior of workers, voters, and consumers.
Learning is closely related to memory, which is the storage of information in the brain. Psychologists who study memory are interested in how the brain stores knowledge, where this storage takes place, and how the brain later retrieves knowledge when we need it. In contrast, psychologists who study learning are more interested in behavior and how behavior changes as a result of a person’s experiences.
There are many forms of learning, ranging from simple to complex. Simple forms of learning involve a single stimulus. A stimulus is anything perceptible to the senses, such as a sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste. In a form of learning known as classical conditioning, people learn to associate two stimuli that occur in sequence, such as lightning followed by thunder. In operant conditioning, people learn by forming an association between a behavior and its consequences (reward or punishment). People and animals can also learn by observation - that is, by watching others perform behaviors. More complex forms of learning include learning languages, concepts, and motor skills.
(Extracted from Microsoft® Student 2009 – DVD Version)