In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. 

     Think of those fleeting moments when you look out of an aeroplane window and realize that you are flying, higher than a bird. Now think of your laptop, thinner than a brown-paper envelope, or your cellphone in the palm of your hand. Take a moment or two to wonder at those marvels. You are the lucky inheritor of a dream come true.
     The second half of the 20th century saw a collection of geniuses, warriors, entrepreneurs and visionaries labour to create a fabulous machine that could function as a typewriter and printing press, studio and theatre, paintbrush and gallery, piano and radio, the mail as well as the mail carrier. (1).
     The networked computer is an amazing device, the first media machine that serves as the mode of production, means of distribution, site of reception, and place of praise and critique. The computer is the 21st century’s culture machine.
     But for all the reasons there are to celebrate the computer, we must also act with caution. (2). I call it a secret war for two reasons. First, most people do not realize that there are strong commercial agendas at work to keep them in passive consumption mode. Second, the majority of people who use networked computers to upload are not even aware of the significance of what they are doing.
     All animals download, but only a few upload. Beavers build dams and birds make nests. Yet for the most part, the animal kingdom moves through the world downloading. Humans are unique in their capacity to not only make tools but then turn around and use them to create superfluous material goods—paintings, sculpture and architecture—and superfluous experiences—music, literature, religion and philosophy. (3).
     For all the possibilities of our new culture machines, most people are still stuck in download mode. Even after the advent of widespread social media, a pyramid of production remains, with a small number of people uploading material, a slightly larger group commenting on or modifying that content, and a huge percentage remaining content to just consume. (4).

     Television is a one-way tap flowing into our homes. The hardest task that television asks of anyone is to turn the power off after he has turned it on. (5) .
     What counts as meaningful uploading? My definition revolves around the concept of “stickiness” — creations and experiences to which others adhere.

In the following text, some segments have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks.
     Coinciding with the groundbreaking theory of biological evolution proposed by British naturalist Charles Darwin in the 1860s, British social philosopher Herbert Spencer put forward his own theory of biological and cultural evolution. Spencer argued that all worldly phenomena, including human societies, changed over time, advancing toward perfection. 
     American social scientist Lewis Henry Morgan introduced another theory of cultural evolution in the late 1800s. Morgan helped found modern anthropology—the scientific study of human societies, customs and beliefs—thus becoming one of the earliest anthropologists. In his work, he attempted to show how all aspects of culture changed together in the evolution of societies. 
     In the early 1900s in North America, German-born American anthropologist Franz Boas developed a new theory of culture known as historical particularism. Historical particularism, which emphasized the uniqueness of all cultures, gave new direction to anthropology. 
     Boas felt that the culture of any society must be understood as the result of a unique history and not as one of many cultures belonging to a broader evolutionary stage or type of culture. 
     Historical particularism became a dominant approach to the study of culture in American anthropology, largely through the influence of many students of Boas. But a number of anthropologists in the early 1900s also rejected the particularist theory of culture in favor of diffusionism. Some attributed virtually every important cultural achievement to the inventions of a few, especially gifted peoples that, according to diffusionists, then spread to other cultures. 
     Also in the early 1900s, French sociologist Émile Durkheim developed a theory of culture that would greatly influence anthropology. Durkheim proposed that religious beliefs functioned to reinforce social solidarity. An interest in the relationship between the function of society and culture became a major theme in European, and especially British, anthropology.

Directions:
In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the fist A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET.
     (1) Teri Byrd

     I was a zoo and wildlife park employee for years. Both the wildlife park and zoo claimed to be operating for the benefit of the animals and for conservation purposes. This claim was
false. Neither one of them actually participated in any contributions whose bottom line is much more important than the condition of the animals.
     Animals despise being captives in zoos. No matter how you “enhance” enclosures, they do not allow for freedom, a natural diet or adequate time for transparency with these institutions, and it’s past time to eliminate zoos from our culture.
     (2) Karen R. Sime

     As a zoology professor, I agree with Emma Marris that zoo displays can be sad and cruel. But she underestimates the educational value of zoos.
     The zoology program at my university attracts students for whom zoo visits were the crucial formative experience that led them to major in biological sciences. These are mostly students who had no opportunity as children to travel to wilderness areas, wildlife refuges or national parks. Although good TV shows can help stir children’s interest in conservation, they cannot replace the excitement of a zoo visit as an intense, immersive and interactive experience. Surely there must be some middle ground that balances zoos’ treatment of animals with their educational potential.
     (3) Greg Newberry

     Emma Marris’s article is an insult and a disservice to the thousands of passionate who work tirelessly to improve the lives of animals and protect our planet. She uses outdated research and decades-old examples to undermine the noble mission of organization committed to connecting children to a world beyond their own.
     Zoos are at the forefront of conservation and constantly evolving to improve how they care for animals and protect each species in its natural habitat. Are there tragedies? Of course. But they are the exception not the norm that Ms. Marris implies. A distressed animal in a zoo will get as good or better treatment than most of us at our local hospital.
     (4) Dean Gallea

     As a fellow environmentalist animal-protection advocate and longtime vegetarian. I could properly be in the same camp as Emma Marris on the issue of zoos. But I believe that well-run zoos and the heroic animals that suffer their captivity so serve a higher purpose. Were it not for opportunities to observe these beautiful wild creatures close to home many more people would be driven by their fascination to travel to wild areas to seek out disturb and even hunt them down.
     Zoos are in that sense similar to natural history and archeology museums serving to satisfy our need for contact with these living creatures while leaving the vast majority undisturbed in their natural environments.
     (5) John Fraser

     Emma Marris selectively describes and misrepresents the findings of our research. Our studies focused on the impact of zoo experiences on how people think about themselves and
nature and the data points extracted from our studies.
     Zoos are tools for thinking. Our research provides strong support for the value of zoos in connecting people with animals and with nature. Zoos provide a critical voice for conservation and environmental protection. They afford an opportunity for people from all backgrounds to encounter a range of animals from drone bees to springbok or salmon to better understand the natural world we live in.

Directions: In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks.
     The time for sharpening pencils, arranging your desk, and doing almost anything else instead of writing has ended. The first draft will appear on the page only if you stop avoiding the inevitable and sit, stand up, or lie down to write. (1) 
     Be flexible. Your outline should smoothly conduct you from one point to the next, but do not permit it to railroad you. If a relevant and important idea occurs to you now, work it into the draft. (2)  Grammar, punctuation, and spelling can wait until you revise. Concentrate on what you are saying. Good writing most often occurs when you are in hot pursuit of an idea rather than in a nervous search for errors. 

     (3)  Your pages will be easier to keep track of that way, and, if you have to clip a paragraph to place it elsewhere, you will not lose any writing on the other side. 

     If you are working on a word processor, you can take advantage of its capacity to make additions and deletions as well as move entire paragraphs by making just a few simple keyboard commands. Some software programs can also check spelling and certain grammatical elements in your writing. (4)These printouts are also easier to read than the screen when you work on revisions. 

     Once you have a first draft on paper, you can delete material that is unrelated to your thesis and add material necessary to illustrate your points and make your paper convincing. The student who wrote “The A & P as a State of Mind” wisely dropped a paragraph that questioned whether Sammy displays chauvinistic attitudes toward women. (5) 
     Remember that your initial draft is only that. You should go through the paper many times—and then again—working to substantiate and clarify your ideas. You may even end up with several entire versions of the paper. Rewrite. The sentences within each paragraph should be related to a single topic. Transitions should connect one paragraph to the next so that there are no abrupt or confusing shifts. Awkward or wordy phrasing or unclear sentences and paragraphs should be mercilessly poked and prodded into shape.

Directions: In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of numbered gaps.
     On the north bank of the Ohio river sits Evansville, Ind., home of David Williams, 52, and of a riverboat casino (a place where gambling games are played). During several years of gambling in that casino, Williams, a state auditor earning $35,000 a year, lost approximately $175,000. He had never gambled before the casino sent him a coupon for $20 worth of gambling.
     He visited the casino, lost the $20 and left. On his second visit he lost $800. The casino issued to him, as a good customer, a “Fun Card,” which when used in the casino earns points for meals and drinks, and enables the casino to track the user's gambling activities. For Williams, those activities became what he calls “electronic heroin."
     In 1997 he lost $21,000 to one slot machine in two days. In March 1997 he lost $72,186. He sometimes played two slot machines at a time, all night, until the boat docked at 5 a.m., then went back aboard when the casino opened at 9 a.m. Now he is suing the casino, charging that it should have refused his patronage because it knew he was addicted. It did know he had a problem. 

     In March 1998, a friend of Williams's got him involuntarily confined to a treatment center for addictions, and wrote to inform the casino of Williams's gambling problem. The casino included a photo of Williams among those of banned gamblers, and wrote to him a “cease admissions” letter. Noting the "medical/psychological” nature of problem gambling behavior, the letter said that before being readmitted to the casino he would have to present medical/psychological information demonstrating that patronizing the casino would pose no threat to his safety or well-being.
     

     The Wall Street Journal reports that the casino has 24 signs warning:"Enjoy the fun... and always bet with your head, not over it." Every entrance ticket lists a toll-free number for counseling from the Indiana Department of Mental Health. Nevertheless, Williams's suit charges that the casino, knowing he was “helplessly addicted to gambling," intentionally worked to "lure” him to "engage in conduct against his will.” Well. 

     The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders says "pathological gambling” involves persistent, recurring and uncontrollable pursuit less of money than of the thrill of taking risks in quest of a windfall. 

     Pushed by science, or what claims to be science, society is reclassifying what once were considered character flaws or moral failings as personality disorders akin to physical disabilities. 

     Forty-four states have lotteries, 29 have casinos, and most of these states are to varying degrees dependent on—you might say addicted to—revenues from wagering. And since the first Internet gambling site was created in 1995, competition for gamblers' dollars has become intense. The Oct. 28 issue of Newsweek reported that 2 million gamblers patronize 1,800 virtual casinos every week. With $3.5 billion being lost on Internet wagers this year, gambling has passed pornography as the Web's most profitable business.

Directions:
In the following article, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)
        In the movies and on television, artificial intelligence is typically depicted as something sinister that will upend our way of life. When it comes to AI in business, we often hear about it in relation to automation and the impending loss of jobs, but in what ways is AI changing companies and the larger economy that don’t involve doom-and-gloom mass unemployment predictions?
        A recent survey of manufacturing and service industries from Tata Consultancy Services found that companies currently use AI more often in computer-to-computer activities than in automating human activities. One common application? Preventing electronic security breaches, which, rather than eliminating IT jobs, actually makes those personnel more valuable to employers, because they help firms prevent hacking attempts.
        Here are a few ways AI is aiding companies without replacing employees: 
        Better hiring practices
        Companies are using artificial intelligence to remove some of the unconscious bias from hiring decisions. “There are experiments that show that, naturally, the results of interviews are much more biased than what AI does,” says Pedro Domingo, author of The Master Algorithm. How the quest for the Ultimate learning Machine Will Remake Our World and a computer science（1） One company that’s doing this is called Blendoor. It uses analytics to help identify where there maybe bias in the hiring process.
        More effective marketing
        Some AI software can analyze and optimize marketing email subject lines to increase open rates. One company in the UK, Phrases, claims their software can outperform humans by up to 10 percent when it comes to email open rates. This can mean millions more in revenue.（2）These are “tools that help people use data, not a replacement for people,” says Patrick H Winston, a professor of artificial intelligence and computer science at MIT.
        Saving customers money
        Energy companies can use AI to help customers reduce their electricity bills, saving them money while helping the environment Companies can also optimize their own energy use and cut down on the cost of electricity. Insurance companies, meanwhile, can base their premiums on AI models that more accurately access risk. “（3）” says Domingos. 

        Improved accuracy
        “Machine learning often provides a more reliable form of statistics which makes data more valuable,” says Winston, “It helps people make smarter decisions.”（4） 

        Protecting and maintaining infrastructure
        A number of companies, particularly in energy and transportation, use AI image processing technology to inspect infrastructure and prevent equipment failure or leaks before they happen. “If they fail first and then you fix them, its very expensive,” says Domingo’s.（5）

In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the list A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the blanks.

     The social sciences are flourishing. As of 2005, there were almost half a million professional social scientists from all fields in the world, working both inside and outside academia. According to the World Social Science Report 2010,the number of social-science students worldwide has swollen by about 11% every year since 2000.
     Yet this enormous resource is not contributing enough to today’s global challenges including climate change, security, sustainable development and health.(1)  Humanity has the necessary agro-technological tools to eradicate hunger, from genetically engineered crops to artificial fertilizers. Here, too, the problems are social: the organization and distribution of food, wealth and prosperity.
     (2)  This is a shame—the community should be grasping the opportunity to raise its influence in the real world. To paraphrase the great social scientist Joseph Schumpeter: there is no radical innovation without creative destruction.
   Today, the social sciences are largely focused on disciplinary problems and internal scholarly debates, rather than on topics with external impact. Analyses reveal that the number of papers including the keywords “environmental changed” or “climate change” have increased rapidly since 2004,(3) .
     When social scientists do tackle practical issues, their scope is often local: Belgium is interested mainly in the effects of poverty on Belgium, for example. And whether the community’s work contributes much to an overall accumulation of knowledge is doubtful.
   The problem is not necessarily the amount of available funding (4)  this is an adequate amount so long as it is aimed in the right direction. Social scientists who complain about a lack of funding should not expect more in today’s economic climate.
     The trick is to direct these funds better. The European Union Framework funding programs have long had a category specifically targeted at social scientists. This year, it was proposed that system be changed: Horizon 2020, a new program to be enacted in 2014, would not have such a category. This has resulted in protests from social scientists. But the intention is not to neglect social science; rather, the complete opposite.(5)  That should create more collaborative endeavors and help to develop projects aimed directly at solving global problems.

Directions: In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the fist A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks.
      How does your reading proceed? Clearly you try to comprehend, in the sense of identifying meanings for individual words and working out relationships between them, drawing on your implicit knowledge of English grammar.（1）You begin to infer a context for the text, for instance, by making decisions about what kind of speech event is involved: Who is making the utterance, to whom, when and where.

     The ways of reading indicated here are without doubt kinds of comprehension. But they show comprehension to consist not just of passive assimilation but of active engagement inference and problem-solving. You infer information you feel the writer has invited you to grasp by presenting you with specific evidence and clues.（2） 

     Conceived in this way, comprehension will not follow exactly the same track for each reader. What is in question is not the retrieval of an absolute, fixed or “true” meaning that can be read off and checked for accuracy, or some timeless relation of the text to the world.（3） 

     Such background material inevitably reflects who we are, （4）This doesn’t, however, make interpretation merely relative or even pointless. Precisely because readers from different historical periods, places and social experiences produce different but overlapping readings of the same words on the page — including for texts that engage with fundamental human concerns-debates about texts can play an important role in social discussion of beliefs and values.

     How we read a given text also depends to some extent on our particular interest in reading it. （5）such dimensions of reading suggest — as others introduced later in the book will also do-that we bring an implicit (often unacknowledged) agenda to any act of reading. It doesn’t then necessarily follow that one kind of reading is fuller, more advanced or more worthwhile than another. Ideally, different kinds of reading inform each other, and act as useful reference points for and counterbalances to one another. Together, they make up the reading component of your overall literacy, or relationship to your surrounding textual environment.

Directions:
In the following text, some sentences have been removed. For Questions 1-5, choose the most suitable one from the fist A-G to fit into each of the numbered blanks. There are two extra choices, which do not fit in any of the gaps. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET.
     (1) Teri Byrd

     I was a zoo and wildlife park employee for years. Both the wildlife park and zoo claimed to be operating for the benefit of the animals and for conservation purposes. This claim was
false. Neither one of them actually participated in any contributions whose bottom line is much more important than the condition of the animals.
     Animals despise being captives in zoos. No matter how you “enhance” enclosures, they do not allow for freedom, a natural diet or adequate time for transparency with these institutions, and it’s past time to eliminate zoos from our culture.
     (2) Karen R. Sime

     As a zoology professor, I agree with Emma Marris that zoo displays can be sad and cruel. But she underestimates the educational value of zoos.
     The zoology program at my university attracts students for whom zoo visits were the crucial formative experience that led them to major in biological sciences. These are mostly students who had no opportunity as children to travel to wilderness areas, wildlife refuges or national parks. Although good TV shows can help stir children’s interest in conservation, they cannot replace the excitement of a zoo visit as an intense, immersive and interactive experience. Surely there must be some middle ground that balances zoos’ treatment of animals with their educational potential.
     (3) Greg Newberry

     Emma Marris’s article is an insult and a disservice to the thousands of passionate who work tirelessly to improve the lives of animals and protect our planet. She uses outdated research and decades-old examples to undermine the noble mission of organization committed to connecting children to a world beyond their own.
     Zoos are at the forefront of conservation and constantly evolving to improve how they care for animals and protect each species in its natural habitat. Are there tragedies? Of course. But they are the exception not the norm that Ms. Marris implies. A distressed animal in a zoo will get as good or better treatment than most of us at our local hospital.
     (4) Dean Gallea

     As a fellow environmentalist animal-protection advocate and longtime vegetarian. I could properly be in the same camp as Emma Marris on the issue of zoos. But I believe that well-run zoos and the heroic animals that suffer their captivity so serve a higher purpose. Were it not for opportunities to observe these beautiful wild creatures close to home many more people would be driven by their fascination to travel to wild areas to seek out disturb and even hunt them down.
     Zoos are in that sense similar to natural history and archeology museums serving to satisfy our need for contact with these living creatures while leaving the vast majority undisturbed in their natural environments.
     (5) John Fraser

     Emma Marris selectively describes and misrepresents the findings of our research. Our studies focused on the impact of zoo experiences on how people think about themselves and
nature and the data points extracted from our studies.
     Zoos are tools for thinking. Our research provides strong support for the value of zoos in connecting people with animals and with nature. Zoos provide a critical voice for conservation and environmental protection. They afford an opportunity for people from all backgrounds to encounter a range of animals from drone bees to springbok or salmon to better understand the natural world we live in.

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.

​     The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) continues to bleed red ink. It reported a net loss of $5.6 billion for fiscal 2016, the 10th straight year its expenses have exceeded revenue. Meanwhile, it has more than $120 billion in unfunded liabilities, mostly for employee health and retirement costs. There are many bankruptcies. Fundamentally, the USPS is in a historic squeeze between technological change that has permanently decreased demand for its bread-and-butter product, first-class mail, and a regulatory structure that denies management the flexibility to adjust its operations to the new reality 

     And interest groups ranging from postal unions to greeting-card makers exert self-interested pressure on the USPS’s ultimate overseer-Congress-insisting that whatever else happens to the Postal Service, aspects of the status quo they depend on get protected. This is why repeated attempts at reform legislation have failed in recent years, leaving the Postal Service unable to pay its bills except by deferring vital modernization.
     Now comes word that everyone involved---Democrats, Republicans, the Postal Service, the unions and the system's heaviest users—has finally agreed on a plan to fix the system. Legislation is moving through the House that would save USPS an estimated $28.6 billion over five years, which could help pay for new vehicles, among other survival measures. Most of the money would come from a penny-per-letter permanent rate increase and from shifting postal retirees into Medicare. The latter step would largely offset the financial burden of annually pre-funding retiree health care, thus addressing a long-standing complaint by the USPS and its union.
     If it clears the House, this measure would still have to get through the Senate – where someone is bound to point out that it amounts to the bare, bare minimum necessary to keep the Postal Service afloat, not comprehensive reform. There’s no change to collective bargaining at the USPS, a major omission considering that personnel accounts for 80 percent of the agency’s costs. Also missing is any discussion of eliminating Saturday letter delivery. That common-sense change enjoys wide public support and would save the USPS $2 billion per year. But postal special-interest groups seem to have killed it, at least in the House. The emerging consensus around the bill is a sign that legislators are getting frightened about a politically embarrassing short-term collapse at the USPS. It is not, however, a sign that they’re getting serious about transforming the postal system for the 21st century.

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing [A], [B], [C], or [D].

     It never rains but it pours. Just as bosses and boards have finally sorted out their worst accounting and compliance troubles, and improved their feeble corporation governance, a new problem threatens to earn them – especially in America – the sort of nasty headlines that inevitably lead to heads rolling in the executive suite: data insecurity. Left, until now, to odd, low-level IT staff to put right, and seen as a concern only of data-rich industries such as banking, telecoms and air travel, information protection is now high on the boss’s agenda in businesses of every variety.
     Several massive leakages of customer and employee data this year – from organizations as diverse as Time Warner, the American defense contractor Science Applications International Corp and even the University of California, Berkeley – have left managers hurriedly peering into their intricate IT systems and business processes in search of potential vulnerabilities.
     “Data is becoming an asset which needs to be guarded as much as any other asset,” says Haim Mendelson of Stanford University’s business school. “The ability to guard customer data is the key to market value, which the board is responsible for on behalf of shareholders.” Indeed, just as there is the concept of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), perhaps it is time for GASP, Generally Accepted Security Practices, suggested Eli Noam of New York’s Columbia Business School. “Setting the proper investment level for security, redundancy, and recovery is a management issue, not a technical one,” he says.
     The mystery is that this should come as a surprise to any boss. Surely it should be obvious to the dimmest executive that trust, that most valuable of economic assets, is easily destroyed and hugely expensive to restore – and that few things are more likely to destroy trust than a company letting sensitive personal data get into the wrong hands.
     The current state of affairs may have been encouraged – though not justified – by the lack of legal penalty (in America, but not Europe) for data leakage. Until California recently passed a law, American firms did not have to tell anyone, even the victim, when data went astray. That may change fast: lots of proposed data-security legislation is now doing the rounds in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, the theft of information about some 40 million credit-card accounts in America, disclosed on June 17th, overshadowed a hugely important decision a day earlier by America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that puts corporate America on notice that regulators will act if firms fail to provide adequate data security.

Directions: Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     Financial regulators in Britain have imposed a rather unusual rule on the bosses of big banks. Starting next year, any guaranteed bonus of top executives could be delayed 10 years if their banks are under investigation for wrongdoing. The main purpose of this "clawback"" rule is to hold bankers accountable for harmful risk-taking and to restore public trust in financial institutions. Yet officials also hope for a much larger benefit: more long-term decision-making not only by banks but by all corporations, to build a stronger economy for future generations.

      "Short-termism, "or the desire for quick profits, has worsened in publicly traded companies, says the Bank of England's top economist, Andrew Haldane. He quotes a giant of classical economics, Alfred Marshall, in describing this financial impatience as acting like "children who pick the plums out of their pudding to eat them at once" rather than putting them aside to be eaten last.

     The average time for holding a stock in both the United States and Britain, he notes, has dropped from seven years to seven months in recent decades. Transient investors, who demand high quarterly profits from companies, can hinder a firm's efforts to invest in long-term research or to build up customer loyalty. This has been dubbed "quarterly capitalism. "
     In addition, new digital technologies have allowed more rapid trading of equities, quicker use of information, and thus shorter attention spans in financial markets. "There seems to be a predominance of short-term thinking at the expense of long-term investing, " said Commissioner Daniel Gallagher of the US Securities and Exchange Commission in a speech this week.
     In the US, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has pushed most public companies to defer performance bonuses for senior executives by about a year, slightly helping reduce"short-termism. " In its latest survey of CEO pay, The Wall Street Journal finds that "a substantial part" of executive pay is now tied to performance.
     Much more could be done to encourage"long-termism", such as changes in the tax code and quicker disclosure of stock acquisitions. In France, shareholders who hold onto a company investment for at least two years can sometimes earn more voting rights in a company.
     Within companies, the right compensation design can provide incentives for executives to think beyond their own time at the company and on behalf of all stakeholders. Britain's new rule is a reminder to bankers that society has an interest in their performance, not just for the short term but for the long term. 

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     While still catching-up to men in some spheres of modern life, women appear to be way ahead in at least one undesirable category. “Women are particularly susceptible to developing depression and anxiety disorders in response to stress compared to men,” according to Dr. Yehuda, chief psychiatrist at New York’s Veteran’s Administration Hospital.

     Studies of both animals and humans have shown that sex hormones somehow affect the stress response, causing females under stress to produce more of the trigger chemicals than do males under the same conditions. In several of the studies, when stressed-out female rats had their ovaries (the female reproductive organs) removed, their chemical responses became equal to those of the males.

     Adding to a woman’s increased dose of stress chemicals, are her increased “opportunities” for stress. “It’s not necessarily that women don’t cope as well. It’s just that they have so much more to cope with,” says Dr. Yehuda. “Their capacity for tolerating stress may even be greater than men’s,” she observes, “it’s just that they’re dealing with so many more things that they become worn out from it more visibly and sooner.”

     Dr. Yehuda notes another difference between the sexes. “I think that the kinds of things that women are exposed to tend to be in more of a chronic or repeated nature. Men go to war and are exposed to combat stress. Men are exposed to more acts of random physical violence. The kinds of interpersonal violence that women are exposed to tend to be in domestic situations, by, unfortunately, parents or other family members, and they tend not to be one-shot deals. The wear-and-tear that comes from these longer relationships can be quite devastating.”

     Adeline Alvarez married at 18 and gave birth to a son, but was determined to finish college. “I struggled a lot to get the college degree. I was living in so much frustration that that was my escape, to go to school, and get ahead and do better.” Later, her marriage ended and she became a single mother. “It’s the hardest thing to take care of a teenager, have a job, pay the rent, pay the car payment, and pay the debt. I lived from paycheck to paycheck.”

     Not everyone experiences the kinds of severe chronic stresses Alvarez describes. But most women today are coping with a lot of obligations, with few breaks, and feeling the strain. Alvarez’s experience demonstrates the importance of finding ways to diffuse stress before it threatens your health and your ability to function.

Directions:
Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. 

     First two hours, now three hours — this is how far in advance authorities are recommending people show up to catch a domestic flight, at least at some major U.S. airports with increasingly massive security lines.
     Americans are willing to tolerate time-consuming security protocols in return for increased safety. The crash of Egypt-Air Flight 804, which terrorists may have downed over the Mediterranean Sea, provides another tragic reminder of why. But demanding too much of air travelers or providing too little security in return undermines public support for the process. And it should: Wasted time is a drag on Americans' economic and private lives, not to mention infuriating.
     Last year, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) found in a secret check that undercover investigators were able to sneak weapons — both fake and real — past airport security nearly every time they tried. Enhanced security measures since then, combined with a rise in airline travel due to the improving economy and low oil prices, have resulted in long waits at major airports such as Chicago's O'Hare International. It is not yet clear how much more effective airline security has become — but the lines are obvious.
     Part of the issue is that the government did not anticipate the steep increase in airline travel, so the TSA is now rushing to get new screeners on the line. Part of the issue is that airports have only so much room for screening lanes. Another factor may be that more people are trying to overpack their carry-on bags to avoid checked-baggage fees, though the airlines strongly dispute this.
     There is one step the TSA could take that would not require remodeling airports or rushing to hire: Enroll more people in the PreCheck program. PreCheck is supposed to be a win-win for travelers and the TSA. Passengers who pass a background check are eligible to use expedited screening lanes. This allows the TSA to focus on travelers who are higher risk, saving time for everyone involved. TSA wants to enroll 25 million people in PreCheck.
     It has not gotten anywhere close to that, and one big reason is sticker shock: Passengers must pay $85 every five years to process their background checks. Since the beginning, this price tag has been PreCheck's fatal flaw. Upcoming reforms might bring the price to a more reasonable level. But Congress should look into doing so directly, by helping to finance PreCheck enrollment or to cut costs in other ways.
     The TSA cannot continue diverting resources into underused PreCheck lanes while most of the traveling public suffers in unnecessary lines. It is long past time to make the program work.

Directions: Read the following texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     There will eventually come a day when The New York Times ceases to publish stories on newsprint. Exactly when that day will be is a matter of debate. “Sometime in the future,” the paper’s publisher said back in 2010. 

     Nostalgia for ink on paper and the rustle of pages aside, there’s plenty of incentive to ditch print. The infrastructure required to make a physical newspaper― printing presses, delivery trucks ― isn’t just expensive; it’s excessive at a time when online-only competitors don’t have the same set of financial constraints. Readers are migrating away from print anyway. And though print ad sales still dwarf their online and mobile counterparts, revenue from print is still declining.
     Overhead may be high and circulation lower, but rushing to eliminate its print edition would be a mistake, says BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti.
     Peretti says the Times shouldn’t waste time getting out of the print business, but only if they go about doing it the right way. “Figuring out a way to accelerate that transition would make sense for them,” he said, “but if you discontinue it, you’re going to have your most loyal customers really upset with you.”
     Sometimes that’s worth making a change anyway. Peretti gives the example of Netflix discontinuing its DVD-mailing service to focus on streaming.. “It was seen as blunder,” he said. The move turned out to be foresighted. And if Peretti were in charge at the Times?“I wouldn’t pick a year to end print,”he said. “I would raise prices and make it into more of a legacy product.”
     The most loyal customers would still get the product they favor, the idea goes, and they’d feel like they were helping sustain the quality of something they believe in. “So if you’re overpaying for print, you could feel like you were helping, ”Peretti said. “Then increase it at a higher rate each year and essentially try to generate additional revenue.” In other words, if you’re going to make a print product, make it for the people who are already obsessed with it. Which may be what the Times is doing already. Getting the print edition seven days a week costs nearly $500 a year ― more than twice as much as a digital - only subscription.
     “It’s a really hard thing to do and it’s a tremendous luxury that BuzzFeed doesn’t have a legacy business,” Peretti remarked. “But we’re going to have questions like that where we have things we’re doing that don’t make sense when the market changes and the world changes. In those situations,it’s better to be more aggressive that less aggressive.” 

Directions: Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.

     It’s no surprise that Jennifer Senior’s insightful, provocative magazine cover story, "I love My Children, I Hate My Life," is arousing much chatter — nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling, life-enriching experience. Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable, Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness: instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy, we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition. Even though the day-to-day experience of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard, Senior writes that "the very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification and delight."
     The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstands this week. There are also stories about newly adoptive — and newly single — mom Sandra Bullock, as well as the usual "Jennifer Aniston is pregnant" news. Practically every week features at least one celebrity mom, or mom-to-be, smiling on the newsstands.
     In a society that so persistently celebrates procreation, is it any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing ? It doesn’t seem quite fair, then, to compare the regrets of parents to the regrets of the childless. Unhappy parents rarely are provoked to wonder if they shouldn’t have had kids, but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message that children are the single most important thing in the world: obviously their misery must be a direct result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives.
     Of course, the image of parenthood that celebrity magazines like Us Weekly and People present is hugely unrealistic, especially when the parents are single mothers like Bullock. According to several studies concluding that parents are less happy than childless couples, single parents are the least happy of all. No shock there, considering how much work it is to raise a kid without a partner to lean on; yet to hear Sandra and Britney tell it, raising a kid on their "own" (read: with round-the-clock help) is a piece of cake.
     It’s hard to imagine that many people are dumb enough to want children just because Reese and Angelina make it look so glamorous: most adults understand that a baby is not a haircut. But it’s interesting to wonder if the images we see every week of stress-free, happiness-enhancing parenthood aren’t in some small, subconscious way contributing to our own dissatisfactions with the actual experience, in the same way that a small part of us hoped getting " the Rachel" might make us look just a little bit like Jennifer Aniston.

Directions:
Read the following four texts. answer the question after each text by choosing A, B, C or D. 
    Scientific publishing has long been a licence to print money. Scientists need journals in which to publish their research, so they will supply the articles without monetary reward. Other scientists perform the specialised work of peer review also for free, because it is a central element in the acquisition of status and the production of scientific knowledge.
    With the content of papers secured for free, the publisher needs only to find a market for its journal. Until this century, university libraries were not very price sensitive. Scientific publishers routinely report profit margins approaching 40% on their operations, at a time when the rest of the publishing industry is in an existential crisis.
    The Dutch giant Elsevier, which claims to publish 25% of the scientific papers produced in the world, made profits of more than £900m last year, while UK universities alone spent more than £210m in 2016 to enable researchers to access their own publicly funded research; both figures seem to rise unstoppably despite increasingly desperate efforts to change them.
    The most drastic, and thoroughly illegal, reaction has been the emergence of Sci-Hub, a kind of global photocopier for scientific papers, set up in 2012, which now claims to offer access to every paywalled article published since 2015. The success of Sci-Hub, which relies on researchers passing on copies they have themselves legally accessed, shows the legal ecosystem has lost legitimacy among its users and must be transformed so that it works for all participants.
    In Britain the move towards open access publishing has been driven by funding bodies. In some ways it has been very successful. More than half of all British scientific research is now published under open access terms: either freely available from the moment of publication, or paywalled for a year or more so that the publishers can make a profit before being placed on general release.
    Yet the new system has not worked out any cheaper for the universities. Publishers have responded to the demand that they make their product free to readers by charging their writers fees to cover the costs of preparing an article. These range from around £500 to £5,000. A report last year pointed out that the costs both of subscriptions and of these "article preparation costs" had been steadily rising at a rate above inflation.
    In some ways the scientific publishing model resembles the economy of the social internet: labour is provided free in exchange for the hope of status, while huge profits are made by a few big firms who run the market places. In both cases, we need a rebalancing of power.