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Directions: For this part, you are required to summarize the main idea of the following passage in plain language in less than 150 words, trying to use your on expressions as much as possible. You should write your summary on the ANSWER SHEET."Attitude is everything because it saves us from pitfalls of pessimism.""Attitude is everything", goes the copy of an advertisement that you must have seen on hoardings in many places. The one line says it all. Just reflect upon it and you'll realize the simple truth in it.What is it that makes the difference between a happy and a sad person? His attitude to the prevailing circumstances. Agreed, not everybody can be happy always, but one can attempt to derive happiness from as many situations as possible. What needs to be changed is the way we look at certain things, the attitude we have towards them.Think about the times you have been upset over trivial matters and ruined your day going around with a long face and a lousy mood that would have affected not only you but also those close to you.On hindsight, you may feel terrible about having done that. You may even resolve not to let such a situation trap you again. Resolutions are fine, but you do need something to sustain it. And what is that something? That magic ingredient is a positive, winning attitude. Having the right attitude is half the battle won.The right attitude can make all the difference between winning and losing.You cannot win in every situation. But, you can extract something beneficial from every situation. A positive attitude will help you analyze situations, whereas a negative attitude will highlight obstacles, both real and imaginary.Let us take an example of an active person who is in a situation wherein he has to give up many of his activities due to an injury. If the person has a negative approach, he will become bitter, always regretting the accident and thinking back on how he could have prevented it from happening and torturing himself in the process. Such an attitude is bound to spill over into the person’s behavior and will affect those around him.On the other hand, a person armed with a positive attitude will be able to face the fact of his accident, put it behind him and try to adapt to the new circumstances he finds himself in. He may try to learn new skills that suits his present physical capacities. His positive attitude will encourage him to try to be as self-reliant as possible, both mentally and physically, though the physical self-sufficiency might pose practical problems. In which case, he will accept his shortcomings and try to build upon his strengths instead.Your attitude reflects the real you. A positive attitude will bring you bouncing back from great adversities, whereas a pessimistic attitude can pull you down into the depths of gloom. Through the ages, humans have been through various calamities, wars and what not. But each incident has seen us bounce back into normal life with greater intensity than before.Mentally strong people can come out unscathed from the worst of situations. World War II saw prisoners being subjected to untold misery, but there were those few strong men among them who used to bolster confidence in their fellow prisoners by comforting them and supporting them in their hour of need. Remember these were people who themselves could have used some help, but they found it in themselves to help others. That is the mark of a strong human being. One who will lead others to survival and success.So resolve to develop a positive attitude if you want to be a winner and a leader. How? You may ask. Well, it is all there in you, you just need to find it. Remind yourself from time to time of what you have and how you can use that. Pining for what you do not have will only make you unhappy. Instead, do your best with the best of your resources and see yourself reaching out for success and happiness.Happiness is not a measure of your material possessions but your state of mind. A person with limited income but with the right attitude towards life can be a more contented and happy person than the richest person on earth, (word count: 687)

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The collapse of belief we have been witnessing throughout the twentieth century comes with globalism. The post modern condition is not an artistic movement or a cultural fad or an intellectual theory-although it produces all of those and is in some ways defined by them. It is what inevitably happens as people everywhere begin to see that there are many beliefs, many kinds of belief, many ways of believing.Postmodernism is globalism; it is the half-discovered shape of the one unity that transcends all our differences.In a global—and globalizing ---era, all of the old structures of political reality, all the old ways of saying who we are and what we are for and what we are against, seem to be melting away into air.How to have an identity in such a world? Nationalism becomes semi-obsolete before it even completes its conquest; national governments everywhere are challenged from front and rear, past and future. They are forced to do battle against pre-modern tribal and ethnic identities even as they resist the threats to their fragile sovereignties that are posed by international organization and movements and economic forces. The weaker national sovereignty is as an absolute principle, the less secure we are in defining ourselves according to national citizenship.How about ideology? Throughout the era of the Cold War, global ideologies seemed to be replacing national loyalties as the supreme definers of political reality.  For a time, the world appeared to be divided into two opposed belief systems rather than into many nations.But the international ideologies never quite managed to separate themselves from nationalism (Marxism had a particularly hard time with that, was widely suspected of being merely a tool of Russian ambitions), and today hardly anybody other than a few intransigent communists and die-hard anti-communists believe that the world is politically bipolar.Religion is still a potent definer of political reality and still an explosive one—we may still be having holy wars when we have stopped having any other kind—but it is also the most vulnerable of all to being unveiled as a creation of the human mind.Each of these sets of categories, each of these ways that people construct who they are and what they believe is increasingly chimerical, capable of evaporating in a moment when people look at the world with different eyes.Class and race may prove to be more durable definers of reality, more stable markers of who is ‘us’ and who is ‘them’. But each of those, too, becomes anything but predictable in a postmodern world. The wretched of the earth may be a force for rebellious change because they believe some form of Marxist doctrine about class conflict, or merely because they cease to believe in the various social constructions of reality that held their condition to be part of God’s own arrangement. Oppressed races grow skeptical (as the world gains understanding of the games oppressors play) about the social constructions of reality that define their place and strive to keep them in it.

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Changes in residence and jobs place a tremendous(1)of stress and pressure on people (2)  they try to adjust themselves to new people and places. Yet transient relationships are not (3)  only to people and places. Objects move in and out of our lives at an astonishing rate. America, the “consumer society”, has also (4)  the name ‘the throw away society”. Every year we throw away (5)  quantities of bottles, cans, paper, and on and on. Buildings are tom (6)  around us, and new ones take their place, for they are  (7)  to replace than to repair. (8)every major change, our places feel (9)  familiar. Our lives become filled with a sense of impermanence and uncertainty.The rate at which new and sometimes contradictory information comes at us (10)  contributes to our feelings of instability and transience. It’s estimated that 90 percent of all scientists who ever lived are (11)  today. New scientific discoveries are being made every day of the week, (12)  unlike in other ages, new ideas are quickly in practical ways. The (13)  of new technology on our lives is felt almost immediately.As we look  (14)  on history, we think in terms of large periods of time, from the ten thousand years of the agricultural revolution to the three hundred years of the industrial (15)   .Today time  (16)  like it' s accelerating. We no longer (17)  to think of change in terms of centuries  (18)  in terms of  (19)   : the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The day may come when we think of great (20)  of historical change in terms of years, even months.

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Extraordinary creative activity has been characterized as revolutionary, flying in the face of what is established and producing not what is acceptable but what will become accepted. According to this formulation, highly creative activity transcends the limits of an existing form and establishes a new principle of organization. However, the idea that extraordinary creativity transcends established limits is misleading when it is applied to the arts, even though it may be valid for the science. Differences between highly creative art and highly creative science arise in part from a difference in their goals. For the sciences, a new theory is the goal and end result of the creative act Innovative science produces new propositions in terms of which diverse phenomena can be related to one another in more coherent ways. Such phenomena as a brilliant diamond or a nesting bird are relegated to the role of data, serving as the means for formulating or testing a new theory. The goal of highly creative art is different: the phenomenon itself becomes the direct product of the creative act. Shakespeare's Hamlet is not a tract about the behavior of indecisive princes or the uses of political power, nor is Picasso's painting Guernica primarily a propositional statement about the Spanish Civil War or the evils of fascism. What highly creative activity produces is not a new generalization that transcends established limits, but rather an aesthetic particular. Aesthetic particulars produced by the highly creative artist extend or exploit rather than transcend that form.This is not to deny that a highly creative artist sometimes establishes a new principle of organization in the history of an artistic field; the composer Monteverdi, who created music of the highest aesthetic value, comes to mind. More generally, however, whether or not a composition establishes a new principle in the history of music has no bearing on its aesthetic worth. Because they embody a new principle of organization, some musical works, such as the operas of the Florentine Camerata, are of signal historical importance, but few listeners or musicologists would include these among the great works of music. On the other hand, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro is surely among the masterpieces of music even though its modest innovations are confined to extending existing means. It has been said of Beethoven that he toppled the rules and freed music from the stifling confines of convention. But a close study of his composition reveals that Beethoven overturned no fundamental rules. Rather, he was an incomparable strategist who exploited limits—the rules, forms, and conventions that he inherited from predecessors such as Haydn and Mozart, Handel and Bach --- in striking original ways.1. According to the author, distinctions between those engaged in the creative arts and in natural sciences can in part be explained by(    ) .2.Why is Beethoven rated among highly creative artists, from the author’s point of view?3.The passage implies that an original contribution in science is one that(   ) .4.Which of the following would most likely follow the final sentence of the passage?

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Almost since its inception, Israel has been in conflict. What role does war play in shaping the Jewish states’ identity?I'm on this whirlwind tour of the Holy Land courtesy of Birthright, a foundation that offers every American with Jewish heritage a free trip to Israel. The only requirements are that you’re between the ages of 18 and 26 and you have at least one Jewish parent. That's it. Birthright gives you an all-expenses paid tour (I'm talking airfare, food, accommodation, everything) around Israel to learn about the country and its complicated past and precarious future.I went into my trip to Israel a veritable clean state, a sheltered girl from small-town Nevada with no strong political convictions. An agnostic in faith and in life. At this point in my life I don't follow Judaism or any religion for that matter. Culturally, I’m kind of whatever, celebrating Christmas and Groundhog Day and any other holiday that seems like fun. I didn’t know much about Israelis as a people, and knew hardly anything about the politics of the region.Pm on a bus in Israel leaving the airport. It's very early in the morning. The day is already so hot you can see waves of heat shimmering off the highway. I feel like I always do at the start of a great adventure: jet lagged, thirsty, excited. The buildings of Tel Aviv are getting smaller the further we drive.Our tour guide, his name is Eitan, is talking into a microphone. “As we head out of the city you’ll see a lot of countryside,” he says, his blue eyes gazing fondly out the window at his adopted homeland (Eitan is American, you see, and he has “made aliyah,’’ or taken Israel as his homeland and chosen a Hebrew name).“Israel is not all desert like you might have thought.” I pay attention now, because this is what I did in fact think. “Look at that field of sunflowers, for example."I look out the window to my left and see the tall yellow flowers. I’m thinking they are pretty and picturesque, then Eitan says, “Don’t they look like proud soldiers lined up ready for battle?"It won't occur to me until much later, when my ten-day tour around Israel is finished and I’m back in the safety of my predictable, air-conditioned American life, that this comment represents two things I’ve come to understand about Israel and its people. One: Israelis are determined to show the world their country is beautiful, not just bombs and problems. Two: They have an unwavering belief in their right to belong as a nation and their right to defend it. Conclusion: Where Americans see sunflowers, Israelis see soldiers.I came out of my trip with dates and history and passionate speeches rattling around in my head, less sure than ever who should have rightful “ownership” of the land.1.A free trip to Israel is offered to every young American with Jewish heritage in order for them(  ).2.By “I went into my trip to Israel a veritable slate”, the author implies that she went into Israel (  ).  3.The sentence, “Where Americans see sunflowers, Israelis see soldiers”, suggests that subconsciously  (  ).  4.As can be inferred from the passage, the author finds her ten-day tour around Israel(  ).

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The spectacular aurora light displays that appear in the Earth's atmosphere around the north and south magnetic poles were once mysterious phenomena. Now, scientists have data from satellites and ground-based observations from which we know that the aurora brilliance is an immense electrical discharge similar to that occurring in a neon sign.To understand the cause of auroras, first picture the Earth enclosed by its magnetosphere, a huge region created by the Earth magnetic field. Outside the magnetosphere, blasting toward the Earth is the solar wind, a swiftly moving plasma of ionized gases with its own magnetic field. Charged particles in this solar wind speed earthward along the solar wind's magnetic lines of force with a spiraling motion. The Earth’s magnetosphere is a barrier to the solar wind and forces the charged particles of the solar wind to flow around the magnetosphere itself. But in the polar regions, the magnetic lines of force of the Earth and of the solar wind bunch together. Here many of the solar wind’s charged particles break through the magnetosphere and enter Earth’s magnetic field. They then spiral back and forth between the Earth's magnetic poles very rapidly. In the polar regions, electrons from the solar wind ionize and excite the atoms and molecules of the upper atmosphere, causing them to emit aurora radiation of visible light.The colors of an aurora depend on the atoms emitting them. The dominant greenish white light comes from low energy excitation of oxygen atoms. During huge magnetic storms oxygen atoms also undergo high energy excitation and emit a crimson light. Excited nitrogen atoms contribute bands of color varying from blue violet. Viewed from outer space, auroras can be seen as dimly glowing belts wrapped around each of the Earth’s magnetic poles. Each aurora hangs like a curtain of light stretching over the polar regions and into the higher latitudes. When the solar flares that result in magnetic storms and aurora activity are very intense, aurora displays may extend as far as the southern regions of the United States. Studies of aurora have given physicists new information about the behavior of plasmas, which has helped to explain the nature of outer space and is being applied in attempts to harness energy from the fusion of atoms.1.Which of the following statements about scientists' understanding of auroras is true according to the passage?2.What serves as the Earth’s means of protection against the solar winds?3.Why do auroras show different colors?4.What's the subject matter of this passage?

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From the health point of view we are living in a marvelous age. We are immunized from birth against many of the most dangerous diseases. A large number of once fatal diseases can now be cured by modern drugs and surgery. It is almost certain that one day remedies will be found for the most stubborn remaining diseases. The expectation of life has increased enormously. But though the possibility of living a long and happy life is greater than ever before, every day we witness the incredible slaughter of men, women and children on the roads. Man versus motor-car! It is a never-ending battle which man is losing. Thousands of people the world over are killed or horribly injured each year and we are quietly sitting back and letting it happen.It has been rightly said that when a man is sitting behind a steering wheel, his car becomes the extension of his personality. There is no doubt that the motor-car often brings out a man's very worst qualities. People who are normally quiet and pleasant may become unrecognizable when they are behind the steering wheel. They swear, they are ill-mannered and aggressive, willful as two-year-olds and utterly selfish. All their hidden frustrations, disappointments and jealousies seem to be brought to the surface by the act of driving.The surprising thing is that society smiles so benignly on the motorist and seems to condone his behavior. Everything is done for his convenience. Cities are allowed to become almost uninhabitable because of heavy traffic; towns are made ugly by huge car parks; the countryside is desecrated by road networks; and the mass annual slaughter becomes nothing more than a statistic, to be conveniently forgotten.It is high time a world code were created to reduce this senseless waste of human life. With regard to driving, the laws of some countries are notoriously lax and even the strictest are not strict enough. A code which was universally accepted could only have a dramatically beneficial effect on the accident rate. Here are a few examples of some of the things that might be done. The driving test should be standardized and made far more difficult than it is; all the drivers should be made to take a test every three years or so; the age at which young people are allowed to drive any vehicle should be raised to at least 21; all vehicles should be put through stringent annual test for safety. Even the smallest amount of alcohol in the blood can impair a person's driving ability. Present drinking and driving laws (where they exist) should be made much stricter. Maximum and minimum speed limits should be imposed on all roads. Governments should lay down safety specifications for manufacturers, as has been done in the USA. All advertising stressing power and performance should be banned. These measures may sound inordinately harsh. But surely nothing should be considered as too severe if it results in reducing the annual toll of human life. After all, the world is for human beings, not motor-cars.1.The main idea of this passage is that(  ).2.Which of the statements below is NOT in keeping with the implication of the 2nd paragraph?3.Which of the following is NOT mentioned as a counter-measure against traffic accidents?4.The author’s attitude toward the social phenomenon is(  ).

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Lateral thinking (thinking in a roundabout way), first described by Edward de Bono in 1967, is just a few years older than Edward's son. You might imagine that Caspar was raised to be an adventurous thinker, but the de Bono name was so famous, Caspar’s parents worried that any time he would say something bright at school, his teachers might snap, “Where do you get that idea from?” “We had to be careful and not overdo it,” Edward admits.Now Caspar is at Oxford, which once looked unlikely because he is also slightly dyslexic. In fact, when he was applying to Oxford, none of his school teachers thought he had a chance. “So then we did several thinking sessions,” his father says, "using my techniques and, when he went up for the exam, he did extremely well.” Soon after, Edward de Bono decided to write his latest book, Teach Your Child How to Think, in which he transforms the thinking skills he developed for brain-storming businessmen into informal exercises for parents and children to share.Thinking is traditionally regarded as something executed in a logical sequence, and everybody knows that children aren't very logical. So isn't it an uphill battle, trying to teach them to think? “You know,” Edward de Bono says, “if you examine people’s thinking, it is quite unusual to find faults of logic. But, the faults of perception are huge! Often we think ineffectively because we take too limited a view.” Teach Your Child How to Think offers lessons in perception improvement, of clearly seeing the implications of something you are saying and of exploring the alternatives.1.What is true about Caspar?2.Caspar succeeded in applying for admission to Oxford because(  ).3.Which of the following statements shows Edward de Bono’s view, according to paragraph 3?4.Lateral thinking involves all the following except(  ).

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