It is commonly believed in the United States that school is where people go to get an education. Nevertheless, it has been said that today children interrupt their education to go to school. The distinction between schooling and education implied by this remark is important.

Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than schooling. Education knows no bounds. It can take place anywhere, whether in the shower or on the job, whether in a kitchen or on a tractor. It includes both the formal learning that takes place in schools and the whole universe of informal learning. The agents of education can range from a revered grandparent to the people debating politics on the radio, from a child to a distinguished scientist. Whereas schooling has a certain predictability, education quite often produces surprises. A chance conversation with a stranger may lead a person to discover how little is known of other religions. People are engaged in education from infancy on. Education, then, is a very broad, inclusive term. It is a lifelong process, a process that starts long before the start of school, and one that should be an integral part of one's entire life.

Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process, whose general pattern varies little from one setting to the next. Throughout a country, children arrive at school at approximately the same time, take assigned seats, are taught by an adult, use similar textbooks, do homework, take exams, and so on. The slices of reality that are to be learned, whether they are the alphabet or an understanding of the workings of government, have usually been limited by the boundaries of the subject being taught. For example, high school students know that they are not likely to find out in their classes the truth about political problems in their communities or what the newest filmmakers are experimenting with. There are definite conditions surrounding the formalized process of schooling.

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.

Life originated in the early seas less than a billion years after Earth was formed. Yet another three billion years were to pass before the first plants and animals appeared on the continents. Life's transition from the sea to the land was perhaps as much of an evolutionary challenge as was the genesis of life.

What forms of life were able to make such a drastic change in lifestyle? The traditional view of the first terrestrial organisms is based on mega fossils — relatively large specimens of essentially whole plants and animals. Vascular plants, related to modern seed plants and ferns, left the first comprehensive mega fossil record. Because of this, it has been commonly assumed that the sequence of terrestrialization reflected the evolution of modern terrestrial ecosystems. In this view, primitive vascular plants first colonized the margins of continental waters, followed by animals that fed on the plants, and lastly by animals that preyed on the plant-eaters. Moreover, the mega fossils suggest that terrestrial life appeared and diversified explosively near the boundary between the Silurian and the Devonian periods, a little more than 400 million years ago. Recently, however, paleontologists have been taking a closer look at the sediments below this Silurian-Devonian geological boundary. It turns out that some fossils can be extracted from these sediments by putting the rocks in an acid bath. The technique has uncovered new evidence from sediments that were deposited near the shores of the ancient oceans — plant microfossils and microscopic pieces of small animals. In many instances the specimens are less than one-tenth of a millimeter in diameter. Although they were entombed in the rocks for hundreds of millions of years, many of the fossils consist of the organic remains of the organism.

These newly discovered fossils have not only revealed the existence of previously unknown organisms, but have also pushed back these dates for the invasion of land by multicellular organisms. Our views about the nature of the early plant and animal communities are now being revised. And with those revisions come new speculations about the first terrestrial life-forms.

Around the year 1500, hunting people occupied the entire northern third of North America. They lived well from the animals with which they shared these lands. Hunters of sea mammals had colonized the Arctic coasts of Canada and Greenland between four and five thousand years before. Land-hunting people had lived throughout much of the northern interior for at least 12,000 years.

Northern North America is part of a larger circumpolar ecological domain that continues across the narrow Bering Strait into Siberia and northern Europe. The overall circumpolar environment in the 1500's was not very different from the environment of the present. This vast landmass had a continental climate and was dominated by cold arctic air throughout a long winter and spring season. Summer temperature ranged from near freezing to the mid-20's Celsius, while winter temperature were often as low as 40 degrees below zero Celsius.

Geographers divide the overall circumpolar domain into two zones, the Arctic and, below it, the Subarctic. They refer to the landforms of these areas as tundra and taiga, respectively.

Temperatures in the northern lands were below freezing for eight or nine months of the year. Subsurface soil in the Arctic's tundra remained permanently frozen. Even when summer temperatures were above freezing and the top inches of earth became saturated with water, the soil below remained frozen into a permafrost, as hard as rock. When water flowed upon the surface of permanently frozen tundra, it made overland travel extremely difficult. Summer travel in the boggy lands, or muskeg country, of the Sub Arctic’s taiga was also slow and arduous. Tracking animals was more difficult than it was during the winter when the swampy ground was frozen solid and covered with snow. In both tundra and taiga, hordes of mosquitoes and biting flies bred in the standing pools of water. Clothing lost its thermal efficiency when it became damp. Northern people looked forward to the turn of the season to bring the easier traveling conditions associated with cold weather. In the Arctic, they could haul food and supplies by dogsled while in the Subarctic; people could travel quickly and efficiently by snowshoes and toboggan.

Archimedes’s Principle is a law of physics that states that when an object is totally or partially immersed in a fluid, it experiences an upthrust equal to the weight of the fluid displaced. The principle is most frequently applied to the behaviour of objects in water, and helps to explain floating and sinking, and why objects seem lighter in water. It also applies to balloons.

        The key word in the principle is “upthrust”, which refers to the force acting upward to reduce the apparent weight of the object when it is under water. If, for example, a metal block with a volume of 100 cm³  is dipped in water, it displaces an equal volume of water, which has a weight of approximately 1 N (3.5 oz). The block therefore seems to weigh about 1 N less.

        An object will float if its average density is less than that of water. If it is totally submerged, the weight of the water it displaces (and hence the upthrust on it) is greater than its own weight, and it is forced upward and out of water, until the weight if water displaced by submerged part is exactly equal to the weight of the floating object. Thus a block of wood with a density six tenths that of water will float with six tenths of its volume under water, since at that point the weight of fluid displaced is the same as the blocks’s own weight. If a dense material is made into a suitable shape, it will float because of Archimedes’s principle. A ship floats, whereas a block of iron of the same mass sinks.

        It is also because of Archimedes’s principle that ships float lower in the water when they are heavily loaded (more water must be displaced to give the necessary upthrust). In addition, they cannot be so heavily loaded if they are to sail in fresh water as they can if they are to sail in the sea, since fresh water is less dense than sea water, and so more water must be displaced to give the necessary upthrust. This means the ship is lower in the water, which can be dangerous in rough weather.

         From “Archimedes’s Principle”, MicrosoftÒ Student 2008[DVD]. Microsoft Corporation, 2007.

In the West, cartoons are used chiefly to make people laugh. The important feature of all these cartoons is the joke and the element of surprise which is contained. Even though it is very funny, a good cartoon is always based on close observation of a particular feature of life and usually has a serious purpose.

          Cartoons in the West have been associated with political and social matters for many years. In wartime, for example, they proved to be an excellent way of spreading propaganda. Nowadays cartoons are often used to make short, sharp comments on politics and governments as well as on a variety of social matters. In this way, the modern cartoon has become a very powerful force in influencing people in Europe and the United States.

          Unlike most American and European cartoons, however, many Chinese cartoon drawings in the past have also attempted to educate people, especially those who could not read and write. Such cartoons about the lives and sayings of great men in China have proved extremely useful in bringing education to illiterate and semi-literate people throughout China. Confucius, Mencius and Laozi have all appeared in very interesting stories presented in the form of cartoons. The cartoons themselves have thus served to illustrate the teachings of the Chinese sages in a very attractive way.

          In this sense, many Chinese cartoons are different from Western cartoons in so far as they do not depend chiefly on telling jokes. Often, there is nothing to laugh at when you see Chines cartoons. This is not their primary aim. In addition to commenting on serious political and social matters, Chinese cartoons have aimed at spreading the traditional Chinese thoughts and culture as widely as possible among the people.

          Today, howerver, Chinese cartoons have an added part to play in spreading knowledge. They offer a very attractive and useful way of reaching people throughout the world, regardless of the particular country in which they live. Thus, through cartoons, the thoughts and teachings of the old Chinese philosophers and sages can now reach people who live in such countries as Britain, France, America, Japan, Malaysia or Australia and who are unfamiliar with the Chinese culture.

          Until recently, the transfer of knowledge and culture has been overwhelmingly from the West to the East and not vice versa. By means of cartoons, however, publishing companies in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore are now having success in correcting this imbalance between the East and the West.

Cartoons can overcome language barriers in all foreign countries. The vast increase in the popularity of these cartoons serves to illustrate the truth of Confucius’s famous saying “One picture is worth a thousand words.”

There has been an outbreak of avian influenza, better known as bird flu in Asia recently. The first (31) _____ died two weeks ago in Vietnam and there have been the cases reported since in Thailand, and there are some suspected cases in Cambodia as well as. 

          Wild birds are affected by a large number of flu viruses, just as the humans and other animals are, but they are normally exclusive to birds. If the viruses manage to mutate, they can to jump the species barrier and infect human beings. The first case (32) _____ someone died was in Hong Kong in 1997. 

          There  are  the  several  different  forms  of  bird  flu,  ranging  from  mild  to  very  (33)  _____  infections, which spreading rapidly and kill many of the birds they infect. It is spread by wild birds-ducks, in particular – which carry the virus, but aren't killed by it. They can spread the virus to farm birds through (34) _____ contact or by the contaminating water supplies. 

World  Health  Organization  officials  have  attributed  the  spread  of  bird  flu  to  human  contact  with  the

droppings of infected birds and (35) _____ sanitation. There was no evidence at first that the virus spread from person to person, though there has been a case of this happening being investigated by scientists.

The heart has long been considered to be (31)………….feelings of love dwell. In love songs throughout the ages, love almost always goes together (32)…….the heart. The heart has continuously been viewed as the place where love begins and develops. Even the Bible gives preference to love and the heart.

The role of the heart in love must come from what happens to it when a person feels strongly (33)…….. to someone. The strong feelings (34)………the other person, especially in the early stages of a relationship, have the results that the heart starts beating faster and breathing starts speeding up.

According to psychologists, a love relationship is a situation that (35)………a lot of stress and the body reacts to this by getting ready to face the unknown. This has been called the "fight or flight" reaction, meeting danger by fighting it or running away. So with love, the heart accelerates and breathing becomes quick.

The heart has long been considered to be (31)___feelings of love dwell. In love songs throughout the ages, love almost always goes together (32)___the heart. The heart has continuously been viewed as the place where love begins and develops. Even the Bible gives preference to love and the heart.

The role of the heart in love must come from what happens to it when a person feels strongly (33) ___ to someone. The strong feelings (34)___the other person, especially in the early stages of a relationship, have the results that the heart starts beating faster and breathing starts speeding (35)

How men first learnt to (1) ........ words is unknown; in other words, the origin of language is a mystery. All we really know is that men, unlike animals, (2) ............ invented certain sounds to express thoughts and feelings, actions and things so that they could communicate with each other; and that later they agreed (3) ........... certain signs, called letters, which could be combined to represent those sounds, and which could be written down. These sounds, (4) .......... spoken or written in letters, are called words. Great writers are those who not only have great thoughts but also express these thoughts in words that a peal powerfully to our minds and emotions. This charming and telling use of words is what we call literary (5) ........... Above all, the real poet is a master of words.