Read the followingpassage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer for each of the question.

It is estimated that over 99 percent of all species that ever existed have become extinct. What causes extinction? When a species is no longer adapted to a change environment, _it may perish. The exact causes of a species’ death vary from situation to situation. Rapid ecological change may render an environment hostile to a species. For example, temperatures may change and a species may not be adapt. Food resources may be affected by environmental changes, which will then cause problems for a species requiring these resources. Other species may become better adapted to an environment, resulting in competition and, ultimately,    in the death of a species.

The fossil record reveals that extinction has occurred throughout the history of Earth. Recent analyses have also revealed that on some occasions many species became extinct at the same time - a mass extinction. One of the best - known examples of mass extinction occurred 65 million years ago with the demise of dinosaurs and many other forms of life. Perhaps the largest mass extinction was the one that occurred 225 million years ago, when approximately 95 percent of all species died. Mass extinctions can be caused by a relatively rapid change in the environment and can be worsened by the close interrelationship of many species. If, for example, something were to happen to destroy much of the plankton in the oceans, then the oxygen content of Earth would drop, affection even organisms not living in the oceans. Such a change would probably lead to a mass extinction.

One interesting, and controversial, finding is that extinctions during the past 250 million years have tended to be more intense every 26 million years. The periodic extinction might be due to intersection of the earth’s orbit with a cloud of comets, but this theory is purely speculative. Some researchers have also speculated that extinction may often be random. That is, certain species may be eliminated and others may survive for no particular reason. A species’ survival may have nothing to do with its ability or inability to adapt. If so, some of revolutionary history may reflect a sequence of essentially random events.

 

 The word “demise” in line 12 is closest in meaning to

 

 

Mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word whose underlinedpart ispronounced differently from the other three in each of the following questions.

A.carriages                    B.whistles              C.assures               D.costumes

Mr. Duncan does not know___________the lawn mower after they had flnished using it.

Losing my job was a great shock, but I think I’m___________it

A nurse practioner has training in a specialized area of medicine.

Read the followingpassage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer for each of the question.

The economic depression in the late-nineteenth-century United States contributed significantly to a growing movement in literature toward realism and naturalism. After the 1870' s, a number of important authors began to reject the romanticism that had prevailed Line immediately following the Civil War of 1861-1865 and turned instead to realism.

Determined to portray life as it was, with fldelity to real life and accurate representation without idealization, they studied local dialects, wrote stories which focused on life in speciflc regions of the country, and emphasized the "true" relationships between people. In doing so, they reflected broader trends in the society, such as industrialization, evolutionary theory which emphasized the effect of the environment on humans, and the influence of science.

Realists such as Joel Chandler Harris and Ellen Glasgow depicted life in the South; Hamlin Garland described life on the Great Plains; and Sarah One Jewett wrote about everyday life in rural New England. Another realist, Bret Harte, achieved fame with stories that portrayed local life in the California mining camps.

Samuel Clemens, who adopted the pen name Mark Twain, became the country's most outstanding realist author, observing life around him with a humorous and skeptical eye. In his stories and novels, Twain drew on his own experiences and used dialect and common speech instead of literary language, touching off a major change in American prose style.

Other writers became impatient even with realism. Pushing evolutionary theory to its limits, they wrote of a world in which a cruel and merciless environment determined human fate. These writers, called naturalists, often focused on economic hardship, studying people struggling with poverty, and other aspects of urban and industrial life.

Naturalists brought to their writing a passion for direct and honest experience. Theodore Dreiser, the foremost naturalist writer, in novels such as Sister Carrie, grimly portrayed a dark world in which human beings were tossed about by forces beyond their understanding or control. Dreiser thought that writers should tell the truth about human affairs, not fabricate romance, and Sister Carrie, he said, was "not intended as a piece of literary craftsmanship, but was a picture of conditions."

Which aspect of late-nineteenth-century United States literature does the passage mainly discuss?

“ I couldn’t take the history class I wanted last semester” “Why didn’t you talk to your

advisor? She___________able to help you get in”

You should bear in mind that children of tender years are notoriously___________.