Ques: When you are traveling, it's vital to know about the customs and etiquette(,)of the global village. What we consider polite behavior at home isn't always accepted outside our borders. * Etiquette of Gift Giving Gift giving should be a happy, positive experience. When selecting a present for someone in Netherlands, don't purchase fancy kitchen knives or scissors. Giving sharp, pointy objects as gifts is considered unlucky. Be careful when presenting flowers to a friend or a business partner in Russia. Yellow blooms suggest cheat or a relationship break up. Traditionally, red carnations are placed on the tombs of the dead. Writing cards or notes while visiting South Korea, be mindful of your pen's ink color1. Writing a person's name in red ink traditionally suggests that the person has passed away--an important point to remember when giving a birthday card. * Eating Customs Being early or on time is viewed as being rude, too eager or even greedy in Venezuela. If you are invited to someone's home for a meal, it's recommended that you arrive 10 minutes later than the requested time. When having a meal in Egypt, don't use the salt shaker  . It's insulting to your host to spread salt on your food, which means that you find the meal terrible. Japan is a very polite nation, and their fondness for etiquette extends to the use of chopsticks. According to Japanese custom, if you're in the middle of eating, use the opposite end of your chopsticks to secure food from a shared plate. When doing business in Turkey, it's the custom for your host to pay for your meal. Requests to split the bill won't be accepted. If you would like to pay your fair share, Turks recommend inviting your host to a follow-up meal. Which of the following is tree according to the passage? A) You can use blue ink to write notes to your friend from South Korea. B) Giving a fancy kitchen knife to a friend from Russia is a good choice. C) Dining with Japanese, one can use either end of the chopsticks to get food from shared plates. D) Invited to a meal, one should arrive earlier to show respect for the host.
Ans: A

Ques: Scientists who discovered a new way of generating electricity from water say they may have come across an alternative source of clean energy to rival wind and solar power. The breakthrough, which scientists say is the first new way to generate electricity in 160 years, could lead to batteries that use water instead of poisonous substances. The scientists made the discovery when they were investigating what happens when tap water is forced through extremely narrow glass tubes. Water squeezed down the tubes, each of which was narrower than a tenth the thickness of a human hair, generating a small electric current that ran the length of the tube. To produce a larger electric current, the team tried forcing water through a glass water filter that contained thousands of narrow channels lined up side by side. "When we took a syringe of water and squeezed it through the filter, we got enough power to light a light bulb," said Larry Kostiuk of the University of Alberta in Canada. "The harder you push the syringe, the more electric current you get." The current is produced because of an effect in the glass tubes. When they are filled with water, positively charged ions fixed in the tubes are washed away, leaving a slight negative charge on the glass surface. When water is then forced along the tube, the surface _ negatively charged ions in the water while positively charged ions are attracted down the tube. The result is a net flow of positively charged ions that sets up an electric current. According to Dr Kostiuk, no one has ever thought to use water to produce electricity in this way. "The last time someone came up with a way of generating electricity was Michael Faraday in 1839," he said. "So this is the first new way of generating electricity in 160 years, which is why we are so excited about it." Dr Kostiuk says water batteries might one day be used to power mobile phones and calculators, but admitted that the engineering challenges might make other applications more realistic. "You'd need to be sure it wouldn't... What does the passage mainly want to tell us about? A) A kind of solar power discovered by scientists. B) A kind of new energy source found in tap water. C) The breakthrough to generate electricity 160 yeas ago. D) A kind of new battery invented without poisonous substances.
Ans: B

Ques: Having a great collection of books at home doesn't really mean that you are a person who loves reading. It may be got from your father or your father's father, and it can just impress people around you with the fact that you are a person of culture. From my point of view, reading is very important in our daily life. For example, reading is a way of gaining knowledge in different areas. It can help us have a great imagination, and it makes things easier when it comes to making compositions on different themes. It gives you the possibility to speak about science, even if you don't work in this field. You can express your opinions about a political event because you have read something about that. Secondly, reading gives us the possibility to enter the world of imagination. We can imagine what life will be like in the future. Sometimes, we compare ourselves with the people in the stories we read and they can give us some clues to solve the problems and tell us what to do in certain situations. Books are based on real life. Even if writers are considered to be somehow different from common people, they often face the same problems as we all do. In short, I would like to say that literature is the perfect way of enriching our culture, expressing correctly, having a rich vocabulary, being able to understand different fields and really being considered to be a learned person. In the author's opinion, a person has many books at home only to   _  . A) make his house look more beautiful B) show that his father is a learned person C) impress others with the fact that he loves reading D) show that he is rich enough to collect many books
Ans: C

Ques: Gwendolyn Brooks wrote hundreds of poems during her lifetime. She was known around the world for using poetry to increase understanding of black culture in America. During the 1940's and the 1950's, Gwendolyn Brooks used her poems to describe conditions among the poor,racial  inequality and drug use in the black community. She also wrote poems about the struggles of black women. But her skill was more than her ability to write about struggling black people. She combined traditional European poetry styles with the African American experience. Gwendolyn Brooks once said that she wrote about what she saw and heard in the street. She said she found most of her materials through looking out of the window of her second-floor apartment in Chicago, Illinois. In her early poetry, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about the South Side of Chicago, where many black people live. In her poems, the South Side is called Bronzeville. It was "A Street in Bronzeville" that gained the attention of literary experts in 1945. Critics praised her poetic skills and her powerful descriptions about the black experience during the time. The Bronzeville poems were her first published collection. In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. She won the prize for her second book of poems called "Annie Allen". "Annie Allen" is a collection of poetry about a Bronzeville girl as a daughter, a wife and a mother. She experiences loneliness, loss, death andpoverty . Gwendolyn Brooks said that winning the prize changed her life. Her next work was a novel written in 1953 called "Maud Martha". "Maud Martha" attracted little attention when it was first published. But now it is considered an important work by some critics. Its main ideas about the difficult lives of many women are popular among female writers today. We can infer that the book "Annie Allen" mainly deals with  _  . A) family life B) inequality C) adventure D) failure
Ans:
A