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 following questions.

Books which give instructions on how to do things are very popular in the United States today. Thousands of these How-to books are useful. In fact, there are about four thousand books with titles that begin with the words “How to”. One book may tell you how to earn more money. Another may tell you how to save or spend it and another may explain how to give your money away.

Many How-to books give advice on careers. They tell you how to choose a career and how to succeed in it. If you fail, however, you can buy the book — How to Turn Failure into Success”. If you would like to become very rich, you can buy the book “How to Make a Millionaire”. If you never make any money at all, you may need a book called “How to Live on Nothing”.

One of the most popular types of books is one that helps you with personal problems. If you want to have a better love of life, you can read “How to Succeed in Love every Minute of Your Life”. If you are tired of books on happiness, you may prefer books which give step by step instructions on how to redecorate or enlarge a house.

Why have How-to books become so popular? Probably because life has become so complex. Today people have far more free time to use, more choices to make, and more problems to solve. How-to books help people deal with modern life.

Which of the following is NOT the type of books giving information on careers?

A. “How to Succeed in Love every Minute of Your Life”.

B. “How to Live on Nothing”

C. “How to Make a Millionaire”

D. “How to Turn Failure into Success”

1. Imagine you have broken an arm or a leg you can't go to school for tow weeks. The other students in your class write you a letter hoping you get well soon and anwer it.

Hello everyone,

Thanks for your letter, ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

See you all soon,............................

2. Imagine one of your classmates is at home and can't go to school. Write him or her a letter.

Dear,......................

Miss................................ told us about your accident ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Lost of love,

Your friend in class 8A

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 following questions.

People appear to be born to compute. The numerical skills of children develop so early and so inexorably that it is easy to imagine an internal clock of mathematical maturity guiding their growth. Not long after learning to walk and talk, they can set the table with impressive accuracy – one plate, one knife, one spoon, one fork, for each of the five chairs. Soon they are capable of noting that they have placed five knives, spoons, and forks on the table and, a bit later, that this amounts to fifteen pieces of silverware. Having thus mastered addition, they move on to subtraction. It seems almost reasonable to expect that if a child were secluded on a desert island at birth and retrieved seven years later, he or she could enter a second-grade mathematics class without any serious problems of intellectual adjustment.

Of course, the truth is not so simple. This century, the work of cognitive psychologists has illuminated the subtle forms of daily learning on which intellectual progress depends. Children were observed as they slowly grasped or, as the case might be, bumped into concepts that adults that for granted, as they refused, for instance, to concede that quantity is unchanged as water pours from a short stout glass into a tall thin one. Psychologists have since demonstrated that young children, asked to count the pencils in a pile, readily report the number of blue or red pencils, but must be coaxed into finding the total.

Such studies have suggested that the rudiments of mathematics are mastered gradually, and with effort. They have also suggested that the very concept of abstract numbers – the idea of a oneness, a twoness, a threeness that applies to any class of objects - is a prerequisite for doing anything more mathematically demanding than setting a table – is itself far from innate.

The word “illuminated” is closest in meaning to _______.

A. clarified

B. accepted

C. illustrated

D. lighted

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 following questions.

People appear to be born to compute. The numerical skills of children develop so early and so inexorably that it is easy to imagine an internal clock of mathematical maturity guiding their growth. Not long after learning to walk and talk, they can set the table with impressive accuracy – one plate, one knife, one spoon, one fork, for each of the five chairs. Soon they are capable of noting that they have placed five knives, spoons, and forks on the table and, a bit later, that this amounts to fifteen pieces of silverware. Having thus mastered addition, they move on to subtraction. It seems almost reasonable to expect that if a child were secluded on a desert island at birth and retrieved seven years later, he or she could enter a second-grade mathematics class without any serious problems of intellectual adjustment.

Of course, the truth is not so simple. This century, the work of cognitive psychologists has illuminated the subtle forms of daily learning on which intellectual progress depends. Children were observed as they slowly grasped or, as the case might be, bumped into concepts that adults that for granted, as they refused, for instance, to concede that quantity is unchanged as water pours from a short stout glass into a tall thin one. Psychologists have since demonstrated that young children, asked to count the pencils in a pile, readily report the number of blue or red pencils, but must be coaxed into finding the total.

Such studies have suggested that the rudiments of mathematics are mastered gradually, and with effort. They have also suggested that the very concept of abstract numbers – the idea of a oneness, a twoness, a threeness that applies to any class of objects - is a prerequisite for doing anything more mathematically demanding than setting a table – is itself far from innate.

What does the passage mainly discuss?

A. Trends in teaching mathematics to children

B. The fundamental concepts of mathematics that children must learn

C. The development of mathematical ability in children

D. The use of mathematics in child psychology

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 following questions from 35 to 42.

CUTTING THE APRON STRINGS

There is substantial evidence that students going off to college have changed over the years. For one thing, studies show that they are emotionally closer to their parents and their parents to them. One thing that means is that they depend on each other more for happiness. It puts a burden on children for parents to use their children as vehicles for their own happiness - although today’s young people seem complicit in this arrangement, perhaps because they have known no other way even if it creates anxiety in the children. That’s one reason parents like to be involved in their children’s college experiences, and colleges have had to devise novel ways of getting parents off campus when they transport their kids to school.

There’s also evidence that students today seem to be choosing schools with reference to proximity to home. The closer a student is to home, the easier it is to bring the laundry home and to land in your old bed with tea and sympathy when you have the sniffles. And the easier it is for parents to visit you at university whenever the mood strikes. The amount of visiting parents do is far more than in generations past.

But in a real sense, students don’t really leave their parents behind. Their parents go to college right along with them - in their front pockets. That is, the parents are a speed dial away by cellphone. This, of course, significantly reduces independence. A student doesn’t get the chance to solve minor problems on his own - he just calls Mom or Dad. A student has initial problems getting along with a roommate? A roommate doesn’t do laundry as often as the other roommate wishes? A student gets a C grade on her first paper? Instead of absorbing the negative information and figuring out how to resolve the problem or how to do better, the call gets made to home, where Mom or Dad solves the problem, often by calling the school administration. This kind of behavior is, sadly, commonplace today and is a mark of the lack of coping skills among students because all the lumps and bumps have been taken out of life for them until now.

In addition to being tethered to parents, incoming freshmen are now very heavily connected by cellphone to classmates from high school, who are presumably at other colleges. So there isn’t the great impetus to mix and venture forth to meet new people, to get out of one’s comfort/one, to get drawn into new experiences, that has traditionally marked the beginning of freshman year. The laws of physics still apply, 6 and it is difficult to be meeting new people and seeking novel experiences while you are talking to your old pals.

Paragraph 1 shows that children ________.

A. are not willing to act as a means to their parents’ happiness 

B. tend to cling to their parents only as a source of finance 

C. are willing to act as an agent to their parents’ happiness 

D. demand a form of payment to go to college