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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.
How is the news different from entertainment? Most people would answer that news is real but entertainment is fiction. However, if we think more carefully about the news, it becomes clear that the news is not always real. The news does not show us all the events of the day, but stories from a small number of chosen events. The creation of news stories is subject to specific constraints, much like the creation of works of fiction. There are many constraints, but three of the most important ones are: commercialism, story formulas, and sources. Newspapers, radio, and TV stations are businesses, all of which are rivals for audiences and advertising revenue. The amount of time that the average TV station spends on news broadcasts has grown steadily over the last fifty years - largely because news is relatively cheap to produce, yet sells plenty of advertising. Some news broadcasts are themselves becoming advertisements. For example, during one week in 1996 when the American CBS network was airing a movie about the sinking of the Titanic, CBS news ran nine stories about that event (which had happened 84 years before). The ABC network is owned by Disney Studios, and frequently runs news stories about Mickey Mouse. Furthermore, the profit motive drives news organizations to pay more attention to stories likely to generate a large audience, and to shy away from stories that may be important but dull. This pressure to be entertaining has produced shorter, simpler stories: more focus on celebrities than people of substance, more focus on gossip than on news, and more focus on dramatic events than on nuanced issues.
As busy people under relentless pressure to produce, journalists cannot spend days agonizing over the best way to present stories. Instead, they depend upon certain story formulas, which they can reuse again and again. One example is known as the inverted pyramid. In this formula, the journalist puts the most important information at the beginning of the story, than adds the next most important, and so on. The inverted pyramid originates from the age of the telegraph, the idea being that if the line went dead halfway through the story, the journalist would know that the most crucial information had at least been relayed. Modern journalists still value the formula for a similar reason. Their editors will cut stories if they are too long. Another formula involves reducing a complicated story into a simple conflict. The best example is "horse race" election coverage. Thorough explication of the issues and the candidates' views is forbiddingly complex. Journalists therefore concentrate more on who is winning in the opinion polls, and whether the underdog can catch up in the numbers than on politicians' campaign goals.
Sources are another constraint on what journalists cover and how they cover it. The dominant sources for news are public information officers in businesses and government offices. The majority of such officers try to establish themselves as experts who are qualified to feed information to journalists. How do journalists know who is an expert? In general, they don't. They use sources not on the basis of actual expertise, but on the appearance of expertise and the willingness to share it. All the major news organizations use some of the same sources (many of them anonymous), so the same types of stories always receive attention. Over time, the journalists may even become close friends with their sources, and they stop searching for alternative points of view. The result tends to be narrow, homogenized coverage of the same kind.
It can be inferred from paragraph 1 that the author of the passage thinks __________.
Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the answer to each of the question.
Hibernation is typically linked to seasonal changes that limit food supplies. It is identified by metabolic suppression, a drop in body temperature and torpor- a sleep- like state- interspersed with brief bouts of wakefulness. Though certain species of fish, amphibians, birds and reptiles are known to lie dormant during cold winter months, hibernation is generally associated with mammals, according to Don Wilson, a curator emeritus of vertebrate zoology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
Endothermic mammals- “warm- blooded” animals that generate body heat internally- need a constant energy source to keep their engines running, Wilson told Live Science. And when that energy source becomes difficult to find, hibernation can help them weather harsh conditions.
“During times of the year when that energy source is missing- especially in northern climates- one coping mechanism is to just shut down,” he said. “They’ll feed heavily during the few months when food is plentiful and build up fat, then go to sleep and live off their fat reserves”.
A special type of fat called “brown fat” accumulates in hibernating mammals, Wilson said. Bats that hibernate develop brown fat on their backs between their shoulder blades, but mammals can also store brown fat in their bellies and elsewhere in their bodies, Wilson said.
Brown fat goes a long way because the hibernating animal draws on it very slowly, reducing their metabolism to as little as 2 percent of their normal rate, according to a 2007 study published in the Journal of Neurochemistry.
Their core body temperature is also greatly reduced. It generally hovers close to the air temperature in the animal’s den but can sometimes fall as low as 27 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 3 degrees Celcius) in Arctic ground squirrels, according to Kelly Drew, a neurochemist and professor with the Institute of Artic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Arctic ground squirrels’ bouts or torpor last about two or three weeks, Drew told Live Science, and the animals rouse “ pretty consistently” for about 12 to 24 hours, before resuming their winter sleep. They repeat this process for up to eight months.
But even though Arctic squirrels maintain a lower body temperature than any other hibernating mammal, the changes in their bodies overall aren’t that different from those that occur in other hibernating mammals, Drew said.
“The quality of mammalian hibernation is similar from bears to hamsters to ground squirrels,” Drew said. “The distinguishing feature is how cold they get”.
The word “weather” in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to ______.
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.
If you want to give someone the nod in Bulgaria, you have to nod your head to say “no” and shake it to say “yes” – the exact opposite of what we do! In Belgium, pointing with your index finger or snapping your fingers at someone is very rude.
In France, you shouldn't rest your feet on tables or chairs. Speaking to someone with your hands in your pockets will only make matters worse. In the Middle East, you should never show the soles of your feet or shoes to others as it will be seen as a grave insult. When eating, only use your right hand because they use their left hands when going to the bathroom.
In Bangladesh, the 'thumbs-up' is a rude sign. In Myanmar, people greet each other by clapping, and in India, whistling in public is considered rude.
In Japan, you should not blow your nose in public, but you can burp at the end of a meal to show that you have enjoyed it. The 'OK' sign (thumb and index finger forming a circle) means "everything is good” in the West, but in China it means nothing or zero. In Japan, it means money, and in the Middle East, it is a rude gesture.
In the Middle East, people do not use their left hands for eating because they use their left hands _______.
Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D to indicate the answer to each of the question.
Accidents do not occur at random. People, eighty-five years of age and older, are twenty-two times likely to die accidentally than are children five to nine years old. The risk for native Americans is four times that for Asian-Americans and twice that for white Americans or African-Americans. Males suffer accidents at more than twice the rate of females, in part because they are more prone to risky behavior. Alaskans are more than three times as likely as Rhode Islanders to die in an accident. Texans are twenty-one times more likely than New Jerseyites to die in a natural disaster. Among the one hundred most populous counties, Kern County, California (Bakersfield), has an accident fatality rate three times greater than Summit County, Ohio (Akron).
Accidents happen more often to poor people. Those living in poverty receive inferior medical care, are more apt to reside in houses with faulty heating and electrical systems, drive older cars with fewer safety features, and are less likely to use safety belts. People in rural areas have more accidents than city or suburban dwellers because farming is much riskier than working in a factory or office and because emergency medical services are less readily available. These two factors - low income and rural residence - may explain why the south has a higher accident rate than the north.
(Source: Proficiency Reading)
Which of the following is true according to the passage?
