Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to choose the word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 9 to 18.
What is meant by the term economic resources? In general, these are all the natural, man-made, and human resources that go into the (9) _________of goods and services. Economic resources can be broken down into (10) _________ general categories: property resource – land and capital, and human resources – labor and entrepreneurial skills.
What do economists mean (11) __________land? Much more than the non-economist, land refers to all the natural resources (12) ________ are usable in the production process: arable land, forests, mineral and oil deposits, and (13)__________ on. What about capital? Capital goods are all the man-made aids to producing, storing, transporting, and distributing goods and (14) __________. Capital goods differ from consumer goods in that (15) __________ satisfy wants directly, while the former do so indirectly by facilitating the production of consumer goods. It should be noted that capital as defined here does not (16) ___________ to money. Money, as such, produces nothing.
The term labor refers to the physical and mental talents of humans used to produce goods and services (with the exception of a certain set of human talents, entrepreneurial skills, which will be considered separately because of their special significance). Thus the services of a factory worker or an office worker, a ballet (17) ___________ or an astronaut all fall (18) __________ the general heading of labor.
Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the answer to each of the questions .
Quite different from storm surges are the giant sea waves called tsunamis, which derive their name from the Japanese expression for “high water in a harbor.” These waves are also referred to by the general public as tidal waves, although they have relatively little to do with tides. Scientists often referred to them as seismic sea waves, far more appropriate in that they do result from undersea seismic activity.
Tsunamis are caused when the sea bottom suddenly moves, during an underwater earthquake or volcano for example, and the water above the moving earth is suddenly displaced. This sudden shift of water sets off a series of waves. These waves can travel great distances at speeds close to 700 kilometers per hour. In the open ocean, tsunamis have little noticeable amplitude, often no more than one or two meters. It is when they hit the shallow waters near the coast that they increase in height, possibly up to 40 meters.
Tsunamis often occur in the Pacific because the Pacific is an area of heavy seismic activity. Two areas of the Pacific well accustomed to the threat of tsunamis are Japanand Hawaii. Because the seismic activity that causes tsunamis in Japanoften occurs on the ocean bottom quite close to the islands, the tsunamis that hit Japanoften come with little warning and can, therefore, prove disastrous. Most of the tsunamis that hit the Hawaiian Islands, however, originate thousands of miles away near the coast of Alaska, so these tsunamis have a much greater distance to travel and the inhabitants of Hawaiigenerally have time for warning of their imminent arrival.
Tsunamis are certainly not limited to Japanand Hawaii. In 1755, Europe experienced a calamitous tsunami, when movement along the fault lines near the Azores caused a massive tsunami to sweep onto the Portuguese coast and flood the heavily populated area around Lisbon. The greatest tsunami on record occurred on the other side of the world in 1883 when the Krakatoa volcano underwent a massive explosion, sending waves more than 30 meters high onto nearby Indonesian islands; the tsunami from this volcano actually traveled around the world and was witnessed as far away as the English Channel.
Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the answer to each of the questions .
Esperanto is what is called a planned, or artificial, language. It was created more than a century ago by Polish eye doctor Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof. Zamenhof believed that a common language would help to alleviate some of the misunderstandings among cultures.
In Zamenhof’s first attempt at a universal language, he tried to create a language that was as uncomplicated as possible. This first language included words such as ab, ac, ba, eb, be, and ce. This did not result in a workable language in that these monosyllabic words, though short, were not easy to understand or to retain.
Next, Zamenhof tried a different way of constructing a simplified language. He made the words in his language sound like words that people already knew, but he simplified the grammar tremendously. One example of how he simplified the language can be seen in the suffixes: all nouns in this language end in o, as in the noun amiko, which means “friend”, and all adjectives end in -a, as in the adjective bela, which means “pretty”. Another example of the simplified language can be seen in the prefix mal-, which makes a word opposite in meaning; the word malamiko therefore means “enemy”, and the word malbela therefore means “ugly” in Zamenhof’s language.
In 1887, Zamenhof wrote a description of this language and published it. He used a pen name, Dr. Esperanto, when signing the book. He selected the name Esperanto because this word means “a person who hopes” in his language. Esperanto clubs began popping up throughout Europe, and by 1950, Esperanto had spread from Europe toAmerica andAsia.
In 1905, the First World Congress of Esperanto took place inFrance, with approximately700 attendees from 20 different countries. Congresses were held annually for nine years, and 4,000 attendees were registered for the Tenth World Esperanto Congress scheduled for 1914, when World War I erupted and forced its cancellation.
Esperanto has had its ups and downs in the period since World War I. Today, years after it was introduced, it is estimated that perhaps a quarter of a million people are fluent in it. This may seem like a large number, but it is really quite small when compared with the billion English speakers and billion Mandarin Chinese speakers in today’s world. Current advocates would like to see its use grow considerably and are taking steps to try to make this happen.