If you wish to become a better reader, here are four important things to remember about reading _ : * Knowing why you are reading or what you are reading to find out will often help you to know whether to read rapidly or slowly. * Some things should be read slowly throughout. Examples are directions for making or doing something, arithmetic  problems, science and history books, which are full of important information. You must read such things slowly to remember each important step and understand each important ideas. * Some things should be read rapidly throughout. Examples are  simple stories meant for enjoyment, news letters from friends, pieces of news from local, or home-town, papers, telling what is happening to friends and neighbors. * In some of your reading, you must change your speed from fast to slow and slow to fast, as you go along. You will need to read certain pages rapidly and then slow down and do more careful reading when you come to important ideas which must be remembered. According to the passage which of the following is NOT true? A) Read slowly when you are reading something important to you. B) Read fast when you are reading something unimportant to you. C) Read the materials that you are interested in slowly. D) Read the materials that you are interested in fast.
D
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Greenwich  is on the River, five miles from the middle of London, and its history is two thousand years old. The first English people were fishermen there, and they named the place Greenwich, meaning "green village". Later the English kings and queens lived at Greenwich in their beautiful places. The name of the earliest palace was Placentia. Henry VIII lived there. He knew that England must be strong at sea. So he started two big ship-yards  at Greenwich. But trouble was coming to Greenwich. In 1649, a war started in England and for eleven years there was no king. The men who had worked for him at Placentia decided to live the place themselves. They sold all its beautiful things. Finally, the war ended and King Charles II came back. But Placentia was falling down. So King Charles built a new and bigger palace, which is now open to the public. At this time, Charles was worried about losing so many of its ships at sea: their sailors did not know how to tell exactly where they were. So in 1675, Charles made John Flamsteed, the first astronomer  in England, try to find the answer. Flamsteed worked in a new building on the high ground in Greenwich Park. From it with a telescope which he made himself, Flamsteed could look all round the sky. And he did, night after night, for twenty years. Carrying on Flamsteed's work a hundred years later, an astronomer called Harrison finally made a clock which told the time at sea, and helped sailors to know where they were. You can see Harrison's clock, still working, in Greenwich's museum of the sea. Because of Flamsteed's work, every country in the world now tells its time by Greenwich Time. What kind of trouble came to Greenwich in 1649? A) Placentia was destroyed. B) King Henry died. C) Ship-yards were built. D) A war started in England.
D
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Some of the world's most significant problems never hit headlines. One example comes from agriculture. Food riots  and hunger make news, but the trend lying behind these matters is rarely talked about. This is the decline in the growth in yields of some of the world's major crops. A new study by the University of Minnesota and McGill University in Montreal looks at where, and how far, this decline is occurring. The authors take a vast number of data pointing for the four most important crops; rice, wheat, corn and soybeans. They find that on between 24 and 39% of all harvested areas, the improvement in yields that took place before the 1980s slowed down in the 1990s and 2000s. There are two worrying features of the slowdown. One is that it has been particularly sharp in the world's most populous  countries,India and China. Their ability to feed themselves has been an important source of relative stability both within the countries and on world food markets. That self-sufficiency cannot be taken for granted if yields continue to slow down or reverse. Second, yield growth has been lower in wheat and rice than in corn and soybeans. This is problematic because wheat and rice are more important as foods' accounting for around half of all calories consumed. Corn and soybeans are more important as feed grains. The authors note that we have preferentially focused our crop improvement efforts on feeding animals and cars rather than on crops that feed people and are the basis of food security in much of the world. The report qualifies the more optimistic findings of another new paper which suggests that the world will not have to dig up a lot more land for farming in order to feed 9 billion people in 2050, as the Food and Agriculture Organization has argued. Instead, it says, thanks to slowing population growth, land currently ploughed  up for crops might be able to _ to forest or wilderness. This could happen. The trouble is that the forecast assumes continued improvements in yields, which may not actually happen. What does the author try to draw attention to? A) Food riots and hunger in the world. B) The decline of the grain yield growth. C) News headlines in the leading media* D) The food supply in populous countries.
B
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By the age of almost four,  Elijah Edney has never had a haircut in his life.  But now he can ' t wait to visit the barber's  -  for two reasons: losing his two - foot - long golden hair will mean   that strangers stop mistaking him for a girl; the hair will be donated to charity to provide a wig     for a child with cancer. Mrs.  Edney, who works in a restaurant, says, "Elijah has always had beautiful hair, so I let him grow it as he w8nted.  It' s like silk.  But now it is at a stage where people mistake him for a  girl and he wants it cut into a boy's haircut. " Mrs.  Edney and her husband want to collect enough money-PS350-to process Elijah's hair  for a sick child.  She says,  "I couldn't bear to see all Elijah's beautiful hair go to waste and my  mum mentioned charities that have human hair made into wigs. " Mrs. Edney says, "If we can raise the amount we want, it will mean a family will not have   to pay for the wig and can receive it for free.  When you've got children yourself, you hope that if  they lost their hair someone would do the same for them by donating their hair. " The two-foot-long hair will be donated to the Little Princess Trust    to  make a wig for children suffering cancer. Elijah keeps telling people he is giving his hair to poor  princesses and he is so excited about it. A spokesman for the Little Princess Trust says, "We're very grateful to anyone who decides   to have their hair cut to donate it to the Little Princess Trust. As a result of hair donations like  this, the charity receives real-hair wigs for free to pass on to families whose children have sadly  lost their own hair through cancer treatment. " Why has Mrs.  Edney let Elijah's hair grow so long? A) Because Elijah has beautiful hair. B) Because she likes long hair. C) Because Elijah looks nice with long hair. D) Because she wants to donate his hair to charity.

A
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