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 from 44 to 50.

The changing profile of a city in the United States is apparent in the shifting definitions used by the United States Bureau of the Census. In 1870 the census officially distinguished the nation's “urban” from its “rural” population for the first time. “Urban population” was defined as persons living in towns of 8,000 inhabitants or more. But after 1900 it meant persons living in incorporated places having 2,500 or more inhabitants. Then, in 1950 the Census Bureau radically changed its definition of “urban” to take account of the new vagueness of city boundaries. In addition to persons living in incorporated units of 2,500 or more, the census now included those who lived in unincorporated units of that size, and also all persons living in the densely settled urban fringe, including both incorporated and unincorporated areas located around cities of 50,000 inhabitants or more. Each such unit, conceived as an integrated economic and social unit with a large population nucleus, was named a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA).

          Each SMSA would contain at least (a) one central city with 50,000 inhabitants or more or (b) two cities having shared boundaries and constituting, for general economic and social purposes, a single community with a combined population of at least 50,000, the smaller of which must have a population of at least 15,000. Such an area included the county in which the central city is located, and adjacent counties that are found to be metropolitan in character and economically and socially integrated with the county of the central city. By 1970, about two-thirds of the population of the United States was living in these urbanized areas, and of that figure more than half were living outside the central cities.

While the Census Bureau and the United States government used the term SMSA (by 1969 there were 233 of them), social scientists were also using new terms to describe the elusive, vaguely defined areas reaching out from what used to be simple “towns” and “cities”. A host of terms came into use: “metropolitan regions,” “polynucleated population groups”, “conurbations,” “metropolitan clusters,” “megalopolises,” and so on.

Prior to 1900, how many inhabitants would a town have to have before being defined as urban?

A. 2,500

B. 8,000

C. 15,000

D. 50,000

Read the following passage and choose the best answer to each question.

Predictions about the Cities of the Future

Cities are built to survive and prosper. Over the years, we have learned to transform our surroundings according to our needs. We have cut through mountains to make more land and created artificial islands to make skyscrapers. City planning, as an organized profession, has existed for less than a century. However, a considerable amount of evidence (both archaeological and historical) proves the existence of fully planned cities in ancient times. Over the years, humans have made some mistakes in terms of using an excessive amount of resources for cities. This gives rise to the question of how sustainable the cities of the future would be. We might be looking at smart cities in which street lights would only switch on when you are close by and traffic light would be eliminated by smart driving. The cities of the future would try to save our resources rather than deplete them. An example of an advanced city is Kansas. Plans are in place to make Kansas a smart futuristic city in the future. Planners are considering introducing sensors to monitor the water mains. Warning would be issued to city officials when the infrastructure requires repair or replacement. In this way, the city would never be at risk of having broken pipes. While the idea sounds fantastic, a large amount of rational critique has called this plan an oversold dream. Amy Glasmier is an urban planning professor at MIT. She is a smart city skeptic who believes that all the research and talk is great but gravely oversold.

Question: All of the following statements may be true about smart cities EXCEPT that ______.

A. street lights automatically switch on when necessary

B. traffic light would be controlled by smart driving

C. smart driving wouldn’t need traffic light

D. cities in the future would conserve energy

Exercise 2: read the passage and choose the best answer.

Los Angeles, California is the most exciting city in the USA. It’s got Hollywood, Disneyland, fantastic beaches and the LA Dodgers baseball team.But LA wasn’t always exciting. In 1900 it was smaller and quieter, and Hollywood was a small village. Then film studios arrived, and the village of Hollywood changed. Today it is part of LA, and Hollywood’s ‘Walk of Fame’ is the most famous place in the city. It’s got more than 2,000 stars on it! It’s always sunny in LA and there are lots of different attractions. You can go shopping on Sunset Boulevard (It’s too expensive for me!), or you can surf on Venice Beach. There are theatres, museums, the biggest theme parks in the USA and the noisiest sports stadiums. LA is the best city in the world!

A.Decide if the statements are true (T) or false (F). ( note: A for True , B for False)

26.LA is the world’s most exciting city. 27.Hollywood used to be a small village

28.There are a lot of tourist attractions in LA.

29.The weather is good in LA.

30.The shops on Sunset Boulevard are cheap.

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 from 44 to 50.

The changing profile of a city in the United States is apparent in the shifting definitions used by the United States Bureau of the Census. In 1870 the census officially distinguished the nation's “urban” from its “rural” population for the first time. “Urban population” was defined as persons living in towns of 8,000 inhabitants or more. But after 1900 it meant persons living in incorporated places having 2,500 or more inhabitants. Then, in 1950 the Census Bureau radically changed its definition of “urban” to take account of the new vagueness of city boundaries. In addition to persons living in incorporated units of 2,500 or more, the census now included those who lived in unincorporated units of that size, and also all persons living in the densely settled urban fringe, including both incorporated and unincorporated areas located around cities of 50,000 inhabitants or more. Each such unit, conceived as an integrated economic and social unit with a large population nucleus, was named a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA).

          Each SMSA would contain at least (a) one central city with 50,000 inhabitants or more or (b) two cities having shared boundaries and constituting, for general economic and social purposes, a single community with a combined population of at least 50,000, the smaller of which must have a population of at least 15,000. Such an area included the county in which the central city is located, and adjacent counties that are found to be metropolitan in character and economically and socially integrated with the county of the central city. By 1970, about two-thirds of the population of the United States was living in these urbanized areas, and of that figure more than half were living outside the central cities.

While the Census Bureau and the United States government used the term SMSA (by 1969 there were 233 of them), social scientists were also using new terms to describe the elusive, vaguely defined areas reaching out from what used to be simple “towns” and “cities”. A host of terms came into use: “metropolitan regions,” “polynucleated population groups”, “conurbations,” “metropolitan clusters,” “megalopolises,” and so on.

Which of the following is NOT true of an SMSA?

A. It has a population of at least 50,000

B. It can include a city's outlying regions

C. It can include unincorporated regions

D. It consists of at least two cities

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 31 to 35.

Health is something we tend to (31) _______ when we have it. When our body is doing well, we are hardly aware of it. But illness can come, even (32) _______ we are young. In fact, childhood has been a very susceptible time. Many diseases attack children in particular, and people know very little how to cure them once they struck. The result was that many children died. About a century ago,(33) _________, scientists found out about germs, and then everything changed. The cause of many diseases was found, and cures were developed. As this medical discovery spread, the world became____ (34) _____ safer for children. The result is that whereas a hundred years ago, the average man lived for 35 years, nowadays, in many areas of the world, people can expect to live for 75 years. And what do we expect by the year 2020? Undoubtedly, medical science will continue to (35) ________. Some people will be able to avoid medical problems that are unavoidable today

Điền ô số 35

A. speed up

B. run

C. accelerate

D. advance

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 31 to 35.

Health is something we tend to (31) _______ when we have it. When our body is doing well, we are hardly aware of it. But illness can come, even (32) _______ we are young. In fact, childhood has been a very susceptible time. Many diseases attack children in particular, and people know very little how to cure them once they struck. The result was that many children died. About a century ago,(33) _________, scientists found out about germs, and then everything changed. The cause of many diseases was found, and cures were developed. As this medical discovery spread, the world became____ (34) _____ safer for children. The result is that whereas a hundred years ago, the average man lived for 35 years, nowadays, in many areas of the world, people can expect to live for 75 years. And what do we expect by the year 2020? Undoubtedly, medical science will continue to (35) ________. Some people will be able to avoid medical problems that are unavoidable today

Điền ô số 31

A. forget

B. ignore

C. give up

D. throw away

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 31 to 35

Health is something we tend to (31) _______ when we have it. When our body is doing well, we are hardly aware of it. But illness can come, even (32) _______ we are young. In fact, childhood has been a very susceptible time. Many diseases attack children in particular, and people know very little how to cure them once they struck. The result was that many children died. About a century ago,(33) _________, scientists found out about germs, and then everything changed. The cause of many diseases was found, and cures were developed. As this medical discovery spread, the world became____ (34) _____ safer for children. The result is that whereas a hundred years ago, the average man lived for 35 years, nowadays, in many areas of the world, people can expect to live for 75 years. And what do we expect by the year 2020? Undoubtedly, medical science will continue to (35) ________. Some people will be able to avoid medical problems that are unavoidable today

Điền ô số 33

A. therefore

B. however

C. although

D. moreover

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 31 to 35.

Health is something we tend to (31) _______ when we have it. When our body is doing well, we are hardly aware of it. But illness can come, even (32) _______ we are young. In fact, childhood has been a very susceptible time. Many diseases attack children in particular, and people know very little how to cure them once they struck. The result was that many children died. About a century ago,(33) _________, scientists found out about germs, and then everything changed. The cause of many diseases was found, and cures were developed. As this medical discovery spread, the world became____ (34) _____ safer for children. The result is that whereas a hundred years ago, the average man lived for 35 years, nowadays, in many areas of the world, people can expect to live for 75 years. And what do we expect by the year 2020? Undoubtedly, medical science will continue to (35) ________. Some people will be able to avoid medical problems that are unavoidable today

Điền ô số 34

A. more

B. much

C. very

D. quite

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 31 to 35.

Health is something we tend to (31) _______ when we have it. When our body is doing well, we are hardly aware of it. But illness can come, even (32) _______ we are young. In fact, childhood has been a very susceptible time. Many diseases attack children in particular, and people know very little how to cure them once they struck. The result was that many children died. About a century ago,(33) _________, scientists found out about germs, and then everything changed. The cause of many diseases was found, and cures were developed. As this medical discovery spread, the world became____ (34) _____ safer for children. The result is that whereas a hundred years ago, the average man lived for 35 years, nowadays, in many areas of the world, people can expect to live for 75 years. And what do we expect by the year 2020? Undoubtedly, medical science will continue to (35) ________. Some people will be able to avoid medical problems that are unavoidable today.

Điền ô số 32

A. if  

B. so

C. when

D. while

Read the following passage and choose the best answer to each question.

Predictions about the Cities of the Future

Cities are built to survive and prosper. Over the years, we have learned to transform our surroundings according to our needs. We have cut through mountains to make more land and created artificial islands to make skyscrapers. City planning, as an organized profession, has existed for less than a century. However, a considerable amount of evidence (both archaeological and historical) proves the existence of fully planned cities in ancient times. Over the years, humans have made some mistakes in terms of using an excessive amount of resources for cities. This gives rise to the question of how sustainable the cities of the future would be. We might be looking at smart cities in which street lights would only switch on when you are close by and traffic light would be eliminated by smart driving. The cities of the future would try to save our resources rather than deplete them. An example of an advanced city is Kansas. Plans are in place to make Kansas a smart futuristic city in the future. Planners are considering introducing sensors to monitor the water mains. Warning would be issued to city officials when the infrastructure requires repair or replacement. In this way, the city would never be at risk of having broken pipes. While the idea sounds fantastic, a large amount of rational critique has called this plan an oversold dream. Amy Glasmier is an urban planning professor at MIT. She is a smart city skeptic who believes that all the research and talk is great but gravely oversold.

Question: City planning is thought_______.

A. to have become a profession for about a hundred years

B. to have existed professionally since ancient times

C. to have come into existence to transform nature

D. to make more land and created artificial islands to make skyscrapers