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.
When I was a little girl growing up in the 1940s, (51)____we didn't have much in the way of material things. The Great Depression had hit just about everyone, and we were just climbing (52)____it. My dad had a job at a factory, and mom stayed at home with the kids. I got a new outfit (53)_____a year, and that was only because Mom was pretty good (54)______the sewing machine. Good thing, too, because when World War II came, mom got a job sewing uniforms for the soldiers. The extra money helped, and (55)_______I was in my teens in the late 1950s we had enough to get one of those fancy new television sets. It was black and white and only got three channels, but we were glued to it.
I decided around that time that I didn't want to work in a factory or sew (56)_____my mom had. I wanted to go to college. A girl aspiring to a career at that time raised some eyebrows. Worse still, I wanted to be a lawyer. Though others scoffed, (57)_____my parents told me that they would support me in any way they could. Fortunately, I worked hard at school and got a (58)_____. It wasn't easy, but a few years later I was a lawyer. At first I was a little overwhelmed. But in the late '60s I knew I could use my education and spirit to help our nation. I took a job working against discrimination as a civil rights attorney. That's where I met your Grandpa. He was not only handsome but believed in the same things I did and still do— equality and justice. When your mom came along, I took a year (59)____but went right back to work. We were able to (60)______a color TV and, like me, your mom was glued to it. She had an intense interest not in the programs, but how the thing worked. I guess I knew from the time she was watching "Sesame Street" that she would also take a path that was not normally taken by women. She became an electrician.
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.
Leeches are small wormlike creatures that live in water and suck the blood of animals and humans. In the past, though, leeches were commonly used in medicine to drain blood from people. Then advances in science led to other kinds of treatments, and leeches disappeared from the sick room. Now, however, they are making a comeback. Leeches are being used after operations for the reattachment of body parts, in the prevention of pain from arthritis, and in the treatment of heart disease. The use of leeches in medicine goes back at least 2,500 years. Doctors used them to treat the sick in ancient Egypt, India, Persia, and Greece. It was believed in those days that taking blood from patients helped to bring their bodies back into balance. This belief and the practice of draining blood with leeches continued through the ages, reaching a high point in early nineteenth century France. At that time. Parisian hospitals required as many as 6 million leeches a year for their patients.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the practice of draining blood from patients was becoming less popular. With a better understanding of diseases and of the human body, doctors realized that taking blood from the patient (with or without leeches) was not always helpful and leeches made no real difference in many cases. By the twentieth century. doctors had completely abandoned the use of leeches to drain blood. But in 1985 Dr. Joseph Upton, a surgeon in Boston, Massachusetts, discovered a new use for them. Faced with a young patient whose ear had been bitten off by a dog, Upton successfully reattached the ear in a twelve-hour operation. However, within three days, the ear had turned black because blood could not move through it properly. During the operation, it had been fairly easy for Upton to reattach the arteries that brought blood to his patient's ear, since artery walls are thick and easy to see. However, since the veins that carry blood away from the ear are much smaller and hard to find. Upton had not been able to reattach enough of them. If something wasn't done quickly, the ear would not survive.
Luckily, Dr. Upton remembered an article he had read about research into the properties of leeches. Though the results of the research were stilt uncertain, Upton decided to take a chance. He bought some leeches from a laboratory and placed them on the boy's ear and they began to feed. The boy felt no pain because the mouths of leeches contain a natural painkiller. As the leeches sucked some of the extra blood out of the boy's ear, they added a special chemical to the blood so it would not harden and form clots and it would flow more easily. Within a few minutes, the boy's ear began to lose the terrible black color. The leeches had soon eaten enough and fell off. Several days later, after applying more leeches, the boy's ear was entirely pink and healthy. Other doctors then began to experiment with the use of leeches in the reattachment of other body parts, and finally. in 2004. the United States Food and Drug Administration approved the use of medicinal leeches in reconstructive surgery.
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.
What do you do if your cell phone rings while you are with a group of people? If you are French, you will probably ignore the call. If you are English, you may walk away from the group to answer it. If you are Spanish, you are likely to answer it there in the middle of the group and invite everyone around you to join the conversation. As many travelers have noticed, there are considerable differences from one country to another in the way people use their cell phones. This has been confirmed by a recent study of cell phone use in three European cities-Madrid, London, and Paris.
According to Amparo Lasen, the Spanish sociologist who conducted the study, there were no real surprises for anyone who is familiar with the customs in these cities. Lasen interviewed people and observed their behavior in three different settings: a major train station, a commercial area, and a business district in each city. She found that Londoners use their cell phones the least in public. If they are with others, they prefer to let calls be answered by voice mail (a recorded message) and then they check for messages later. If the English do answer a call on the street, they seem to dislike talking with others around. They tend to move away from a crowded sidewalk and seek out a place where they cannot be heard, such as the far side of a subway entrance or even the edge of a street. They seem to feel that the danger of the traffic is preferable to the risk of having their conversation be overheard. This has led to a behavior that Laser) has called "clustering." At a busy time of day on the streets of London, you may find small crowds of cell phone users grouped together, each one talking into a cell phone. Even when it is raining-as it often is in London-people still prefer not to hold their conversations where others could hear. They talk under their umbrellas or in a doorway.
In Madrid, on the other hand, few people use voice mail because the Spanish dislike talking with machines rather than real voices. If there is no answer, they don't leave a message. They prefer to try again later or wait for a return call. And since the Spanish are not shy about answering their calls in public, the call may come sooner than it would in London or Paris. In fact, in Madrid it is common to hear loud and lively phone conversations on the street, accompanied by shouts, laughter and the waving of hands. In fact, sometimes it happens that a group of friends may be walking down the street together, each talking on their own phone, but smiling and nodding as though it were one large conversation that everyone could hear. Even when they are not using their phones, the Spanish often hold them in their hands as they walk down the steet or put them on the table at a restaurant, so they will not miss any incoming calls. In a movie theater, not only do cell phones occasionally ring, but people sometimes answer them and have brief conversations. In Paris, however, there are stricter rules about how and when to use cell phones. It is not considered polite to use a phone in a restaurant, for instance, though it might be acceptable in the more informal setting of a café. One special custom that has developed in cafés seems unique to Paris. Young women often place their cell phones on the table beside them to signal that they are expecting someone. When the friend arrives, the phone is put away. In fact, the French are generally very disapproving of phone use in public and are quick to express that disapproval, even to strangers.