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 .

Computer programmer David Jones earns £35,000 a year designing new computer games, yet he cannot find a bank prepared to let him have a cheque card. Instead, he has been told to wait another two years, until he is 18.

The 16-year-old works for a small firm in Liverpool, where the problem of most young people of his age is finding a job. David's firm releases two new games for the expanding home computer market each month. But David's biggest headache is what to do with his money.

Despite his salary, earned by inventing new programs within tight schedules, with bonus payments and profit-sharing, he cannot drive a car, take out a mortgage, or obtain credit cards.

He lives with his parents in their council house in Liverpool, where his father is a bus driver. His company has to pay £150 a month in taxi fares to get him the five miles to work and back every day because David cannot drive.

David got his job with the Liverpool-based company four months ago, a year after leaving school with six O-levels and working for a time in a computer shop. "I got the job because the people who run the firm knew I had already written some programs," he said.

"I suppose £35,000 sounds a lot but actually that's being pessimistic. I hope it will come to more than that this year." He spends some of his money on records and clothes, and gives his mother £20 a week. But most his spare time is spent working.

"Unfortunately, computing was not part of our studies at school," he said. "But 1 had been studying it in books and 'magazines for four years in my spare time. 1 knew what 1 wanted to do and never considered staying on at school. Most people in this business are fairly young, anyway."

David added: "I would like to earn a million and 1 suppose early retirement is a possibility. You never know when the market might disappear."

 

The word " pessimistic " in the reading passage probably means____.

Their children learn primarily by directly experiencing the world around it

The number of wildlife habitat reserves have been established in order to save endangered species from extinction

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word(s) OPPOSITE in meaning to the underlined word(s) in each of the following questions.

She denied having stolen his mother's money.

You were wrong _______ her for something she didn't do.

All applicants _______ hand in their application forms by Friday at the latest.

He is going to marry a _______ girl next month.

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 38 to 45.

A rather surprisingly geographical feature of Antarctica is that a huge freshwater lake, one of the world's largest and deepest, lies hidden there under four kilometers of ice. Now known as Lake Vostok, this huge body of water is located under the ice block that comprises Antarctica. The lake is able to exist in its unfrozen state beneath this block of ice because its waters are warmed by geothermal heat from the earth's core. The thick glacier above Lake Vostok actually insulates it from the frigid temperature (the lowest ever recorded on Earth) on the surface.

The lake was first discovered in the 1970s while a research team was conducting an aerial survey of the area. Radio waves from the survey equipment penetrated the ice and revealed a body of water of indeterminate size. It was not until much more recently that data collected by satellite made scientist aware of the tremendous size of the lake; satellite -borne radar detected an extremely flat region where the ice remains level because it is floating on the water of the lake.

The discovery of such a huge freshwater lake trapped under Antarctic is of interest to the scientific community because of potential that the lake contains ancient microbes that have survived for thousands upon thousands of years, unaffected by factors such as nuclear fallout and elevated ultraviolet light that have affected organisms in more exposed areas. The downside of the discovery, however, lies in the difficulty of conducting research on the lake in such a harsh climate and in the problems associated with obtaining uncontaminated samples from the lake without actually exposing the lake to contamination. Scientists are looking for possible ways to accomplish this.

All of the following are true about the 1970 survey of Antarctica EXCEPT that it____