Directions: Read the following texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.
     When prehistoric man arrived in new parts of the world, something strange happened to the large animals: they suddenly became extinct. Smaller species survived. The large, slow-growing animals were easy game, and were quickly hunted to extinction. Now something similar could be happening in the oceans.
     That the seas are being overfished has been known for years. What researchers such as Ransom Myers and Boris Worm have shown is just how fast things are changing. They have looked at half a century of data from fisheries around the world. Their methods do not attempt to estimate the actual biomass (the amount of living biological matter) of fish species in particular parts of the ocean, but rather changes in that biomass over time. According to their latest paper published in Nature, the biomass of large predators (animals that kill and eat other animals) in a new fishery is reduced on average by 80% within 15 years of the start of exploitation. In some long-fished areas, it has halved again since then.
     Dr. Worm acknowledges that these figures are conservative. One reason for this is that fishing technology has improved. Today's vessels can find their prey using satellites and sonar, which were not available 50 years ago. That means a higher proportion of what is in the sea is being caught, so the real difference between present and past is likely to be worse than the one recorded by changes in catch sizes. In the early days, too, longlines would have been more saturated with fish. Some individuals would therefore not have been caught, since no baited hooks would have been available to trap them, leading to an underestimate of fish stocks in the past. Furthermore, in the early days of longline fishing, a lot of fish were lost to sharks after they had been hooked. That is no longer a problem, because there are fewer sharks around now.
     Dr. Myers and Dr. Worm argue that their work gives a correct baseline, which future management efforts must take into account. They believe the data support an idea current among marine biologists, that of the "shifting baseline”. The notion is that people have failed to detect the massive changes which have happened in the ocean because they have been looking back only a relatively short time into the past. That matters because theory suggests that the maximum sustainable yield that can be cropped from a fishery comes when the biomass of a target species is about 50% of its original levels. Most fisheries are well below that, which is a bad way to do business.

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

     Do you remember all those years when scientists argued that smoking would kill us but the doubters insisted that we didn’t know for sure? That the evidence was inconclusive, the science uncertain? That the antismoking lobby was out to destroy our way of life and the government should stay out of the way? Lots of Americans bought that nonsense, and over three decades, some 10 million smokers went to early graves.
     There are upsetting parallels today, as scientists in one wave after another try to awaken us to the growing threat of global warming. The latest was a panel from the National Academy of Sciences, enlisted by the White House, to tell us that the Earth’s atmosphere is definitely warming and that the problem is largely man-made. The clear message is that we should get moving to protect ourselves. The president of the National Academy, Bruce Alberts, added this key point in the preface to the panel’s report: “Science never has all the answers. But science does provide us with the best available guide to the future, and it is critical that our nation and the world base important policies on the best judgments that science can provide concerning the future consequences of present actions.”
     Just as on smoking, voices now come from many quarters insisting that the science about global warming is incomplete, that it’s OK to keep pouring fumes into the air until we know for sure. This is a dangerous game: by the time 100 percent of the evidence is in, it may be too late. With the risks obvious and growing, a prudent people would take out an insurance policy now.
     Fortunately, the White House is starting to pay attention. But it’s obvious that a majority of the president’s advisers still don’t take global warming seriously. Instead of a plan of action, they continue to press for more research—a classic case of “paralysis by analysis.”
     To serve as responsible stewards of the planet,we must press forward on deeper atmospheric and oceanic research. But research alone is inadequate. If the Administration won’t take the legislative initiative,Congress should help to begin fashioning conservation measures. A bill by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, which would offer financial incentives for private industry, is a promising start. Many see that the country is getting ready to build lots of new power plants to meet our energy needs. If we are ever going to protect the atmosphere, it is crucial that those new plants be environmentally sound. 

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

     In order to “change lives for the better” and reduce “dependency,” George Osbome, Chancellor of the Exchequer, introduced the “upfront work search” scheme. Only if the jobless arrive at the job centre with a CV register for online job search, and start looking for work will they be eligible for benefit-and then they should report weekly rather than fortnightly. What could be more reasonable?
     More apparent reasonableness followed. There will now be a seven-day wait for the jobseeker’s allowance. “Those first few days should be spent looking for work, not looking to sign on.” he claimed. “We’re doing these things because we know they help people say off benefits and help those on benefits get into work faster” Help? Really? On first hearing, this was the socially concerned chancellor, trying to change lives for the better, complete with “reforms” to an obviously indulgent system that demands too little effort from the newly unemployed to find work, and subsides laziness. What motivated him, we were to understand, was his zeal for “fundamental fairness”-protecting the taxpayer, controlling spending and ensuring that only the most deserving claimants received their benefits.
     Losing a job is hurting: you don’t skip down to the jobcentre with a song in your heart, delighted at the prospect of doubling your income from the generous state. It is financially terrifying psychologically embarrassing and you know that support is minimal and extraordinarily hard to get. You are now not wanted; you support is minimal and extraordinarily hard to get. You are now not wanted; you are now excluded from the work environment that offers purpose and structure in your life. Worse, the crucial income to feed yourself and your family and pay the bills has disappeared. Ask anyone newly unemployed what they want and the answer is always: a job.
     But in Osborneland, your first instinct is to fall into dependency- permanent dependency if you can get it-supported by a state only too ready to indulge your falsehood. It is as though 20 years of ever—tougher reforms of the job search and benefit administration system never happened. The principle of British welfare is no longer that you can insure yourself against the risk of unemployment and receive unconditional payments if the disaster happens. Even the very phrase ‘jobseeker’s allowance’—invented in 1996—is about redefining the unemployed as a “jobseeker” who had no mandatory right to a benefit he or she has earned through making national insurance contributions. Instead, the claimant receives a time-limited “allowance,” conditional on actively seeking a job; no entitlement and no insurance, at £71.70 a week, one of the least generous in the EU.

Directions: Read the following texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.
     Many things make people think artists are weird. But the weirdest may be this: artists'only job is to explore emotions, and yet they choose to focus on the ones that feel bad.
     This wasn't always so. The earliest forms of art, like painting and music, are those best suited for expressing joy. But somewhere from the 19th century onward, more artists began seeing happiness as meaningless, phony or, worst of all, boring, as we went from Wordsworth's daffodils to Baudelaire's flowers of evil.
     You could argue that art became more skeptical of happiness because modern times have seen so much misery. But it's not as if earlier times didn't know perpetual war, disaster and the massacre of innocents. The reason, in fact,may be just the opposite: there is too much damn happiness in the world today.
     After all, what is the one modern form of expression almost completely dedicated to depicting happiness? Advertising. The rise of anti-happy art almost exactly tracks the emergence of mass media,and with it, a commercial culture in which happiness is not just an ideal but an ideology.
     People in earlier eras were surrounded by reminders of misery. They worked until exhausted, lived with few protections and died young. In the West, before mass communication and literacy, the most powerful mass medium was the church, which reminded worshippers that their souls were in danger and that they would someday be meat for worms. Given all this, they did not exactly need their art to be a bummer too.
     Today the messages the average Westerner is surrounded with are not religious but commercial, and forever happy. Fast-food eaters, news anchors, text messengers, all smiling, smiling, smiling. Our magazines feature beaming celebrities and happy families in perfect homes. And since these messages have an agenda - to lure us to open our wallets - they make the very idea of happiness seem unreliable.“Celebrate!” commanded the ads for the arthritis drug Celebrex, before we found out it could increase the risk of heart attacks.
     But what we forget—what our economy depends on us forgetting—is that happiness is more than pleasure without pain. The things that bring the greatest joy carry the greatest potential for loss and disappointment. Today, surrounded by promises of easy happiness, we need art to tell us, as religion once did, Memento mori: remember that you will die, that everything ends, and that happiness comes not in denying this but in living with it. It's a message even more bitter than a clove cigarette, yet, somehow, a breath of fresh air.

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing [A], [B], [C], or [D].
     If you were to examine the birth certificates of every soccer player in 2006’s World Cup tournament, you would most likely find a noteworthy quirk: elite soccer players are more likely to have been born in the earlier months of the year than in the late months. If you then examined the European national youth teams that feed the World Cup and professional ranks, you would find this strange phenomenon to be ever more pronounced.
     What might account for this strange phenomenon? Here are a few guesses: a) certain astrological signs confer superior soccer skills; b) winter born babies tend to have higher oxygen capacity, which increases soccer mania; c) soccer-mad parents are more likely to conceive children in springtime, at the annual peak of soccer mania; d) none of the above.
     Anders Ericsson, a 58-year-old psychology professor at Florida State University, says he believes strongly in “none of the above.” Ericsson grew up in Sweden, and studied nuclear engineering until he realized he would have more opportunity to conduct his own research if he switched to psychology. His first experiment, nearly 30 years ago, involved memory: training a person to hear and then repeat a random series of numbers. “With the first subject, after about 20 hours of training, his digit span had risen from 7 to 20,” Ericsson recalls. “He kept improving, and after about 200 hours of training he had risen to over 80 numbers.”
     This success, coupled with later research showing that memory itself is not genetically determined, led Ericsson to conclude that the act of memorizing is more of a cognitive exercise than an intuitive one. In other words, whatever inborn differences two people may exhibit in their abilities to memorize, those differences are swamped by how well each person “encodes” the information. And the best way to learn how to encode information meaningfully, Ericsson determined, was a process known as deliberate practice. Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.
     Ericsson and his colleagues have thus taken to studying expert performers in a wide range of pursuits, including soccer. They gather all the data they can, not just performance statistics and biographical details but also the results of their own laboratory experiments with high achievers. Their work makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers—whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming—are nearly always made, not born.

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

     Grade inflation—the gradual increase in average GPAs(grade-point averages) over the past few decades—is often considered a product of a consumer era in higher education, in which students are treated like customers to be pleased. But another, related force—a policy often buried deep in course catalogs called “grade forgiveness”—is helping raise GPAs.
     Grade forgiveness allows students to retake a course in which they received a low grade, and the most recent grade or the highest grade is the only one that counts in calculating a student’s overall GPA.
     The use of this little-known practice has accelerated in recent years, as colleges continue to do their utmost to keep students in school (and paying tuition) and improve their graduation rates. When this practice first started decades ago, it was usually limited to freshmen, to give them a second chance to take a class in their first year if they struggled in their transition to college-level courses. But now most colleges save for many selective campuses, allow all undergraduates, and even graduate students, to get their low grades forgiven.
     College officials tend to emphasize that the goal of grade forgiveness is less about the grade itself and more about encouraging students to retake courses critical to their degree program and graduation without incurring a big penalty. “Untimely,” said Jack Miner, Ohio State University’s registrar, “we see students achieve more success because they retake a course and do better in subsequent contents or master the content that allows them to graduate on time.”
     That said, there is a way in which grade forgiveness satisfies colleges’ own needs as well. For public institutions, state funds are sometimes tied partly to their success on metrics such as graduation rates and student retention—so better grades can, by boosting figures like those, mean more money. And anything that raises GPAs will likely make students—who, at the end of the day, are paying the bill—feel they’ve gotten a better value for their tuition dollars, which is another big concern for colleges.
     Indeed, grade forgiveness is just another way that universities are responding to consumers’ expectations for higher education. Since students and parents expect a college degree to lead a job, it is in the best interest of a school to turn out graduates who are as qualified as possible—or at least appear to be. On this, students’ and colleges’ incentives seem to be aligned.

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

     France, which prides itself as the global innovator of fashion, has decided its fashion industry has lost an absolute right to define physical beauty for woman. Its lawmakers gave preliminary approval last week to a law that would make it a crime to employ ultra-thin models on runways. The parliament also agreed to ban websites that “incite excessive thinness” by promoting extreme dieting.
     Such measures have a couple of uplifting motives. They suggest beauty should not be defined by looks that end up with impinging on health. That’s a start. And the ban on ultra-thin models seems to go beyond protecting models from starring themselves to health—as some have done. It tells the fashion industry that it must take responsibility for the signal it sends women, especially teenage girls, about the social tape–measure they must use to determine their individual worth.
     The bans, if fully enforced, would suggest to woman (and many men) that they should not let others be orbiters of their beauty. And perhaps faintly, they hint that people should look to intangible qualities like character and intellect rather than dieting their way to sine zero or wasp-waist physiques.
     The French measures, however, rely too much on severe punishment to change a culture that still regards beauty as skin-deep and bone-showing. Under the law, using a fashion model that does not meet a government-defined index of body mess could result in a $85, 000 fine and six months in prison.
     The fashion industry knows it has an inherent problem in focusing on material adornment and idealized body types. In Denmark, the United States, and a few other countries, it is trying to set voluntary standard for models and fashion images that rely more on peer pressure for enforcement.
     In contrast to France’s actions, Denmark’s fashion industry agreed last month on rules and sanctions regarding age, health, and other characteristics of models. The newly revised Danish Fashion Ethical charter clearly states, we are aware of and take responsibility for the impact the fashion industry has on body ideals, especially on young people. The charter’s main toll of enforcement is to deny access for designers and modeling agencies to Copenhagen. Fashion week, which is men by the Danish Fashion Institute. But in general it relies on a name-and-shame method of compliance.
     Relying on ethical persuasion rather than law to address the misuse of body ideals may be the best step. Even better would be to help elevate notions of beauty beyond the material standards of a particular industry.

Directions: Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.
     Over the past century, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been condemned or made illegal. But one insidious form continues to thrive: alphabetism. This, for those as yet unaware of such a disadvantage, refers to discrimination against those whose surnames begin with a letter in the lower half of the alphabet.
     It has long been known that a taxi firm called AAAA cars has a big advantage over Zodiac cars when customers thumb through their phone directories. Less well known is the advantage that Adam Abbott has in life over Zoë Zysman. English names are fairly evenly spread between the halves of the alphabet. Yet a suspiciously large number of top people have surnames beginning with letters between A and K. 

     Thus the American president and vice-president have surnames starting with B and C respectively; and 26 of George Bush’s predecessors (including his father) had surnames in the first half of the alphabet against just 16 in the second half. Even more striking, six of the seven heads of government of the G7 rich countries are alphabetically advantaged (Berlusconi, Blair, Bush, Chirac, Chrétien and Koizumi). The world’s three top central bankers (Greenspan, Duisenberg and Hayami) are all close to the top of the alphabet, even if one of them really uses Japanese characters. As are the world’s five richest men (Gates, Buffett, Allen, Ellison and Albrecht).
     Can this merely be coincidence? One theory, dreamt up in all the spare time enjoyed by the alphabetically disadvantaged, is that the rot sets in early. At the start of the first year in infant school, teachers seat pupils alphabetically from the front, to make it easier to remember their names. So short-sighted Zysman junior gets stuck in the back row, and is rarely asked the improving questions posed by those insensitive teachers. At the time the alphabetically disadvantaged may think they have had a lucky escape. Yet the result may be worse qualifications, because they get less individual attention, as well as less confidence in speaking publicly.
     The humiliation continues. At university graduation ceremonies, the ABCs proudly get their awards first; by the time they reach the Zysmans most people are literally having a ZZZ. Shortlists for job interviews, election ballot papers, lists of conference speakers and attendees: all tend to be drawn up alphabetically, and their recipients lose interest as they plough through them. 

Directions:
Read the following four texts. answer the question after each text by choosing A,B,C or D.
     In his book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell argues that social epidemics are driven in large part by the acting of a tiny minority of special individuals, often called influentials, who are unusually informed, persuasive, or well-connected. The idea is intuitively compelling, but it doesn't explain how ideas actually spread.
     The supposed importance of influentials derives from a plausible sounding but largely untested theory called the "two step flow of communication": Information flows from the media to the influentials and from them to everyone else. Marketers have embraced the two-step flow because it suggests that if they can just find and influence the influentials, those selected people will do most of the work for them. The theory also seems to explain the sudden and unexpected popularity of certain looks, brands, or neighborhoods. In many such cases, a cursory search for causes finds that some small group of people was wearing, promoting, or developing whatever it is before anyone else paid attention. Anecdotal evidence of this kind fits nicely with the idea that only certain special people can drive trends.  
     In their recent work, however, some researchers have come up with the finding that influentials have far less impact on social epidemics than is generally supposed. In fact, they don't seem to be required of all.
     The researchers' argument stems from a simple observing about social influence, with the exception of a few celebrities like Oprah Winfrey—whose outsize presence is primarily a function of media, not interpersonal, influence—even the most influential members of a population simply don't interact with that many others. Yet it is precisely these non-celebrity influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics by influencing their friends and colleagues directly. For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected, must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential. If people in the network just two degrees removed from the initial influential prove resistant, for example from the initial influential prove resistant, for example the cascade of change won't propagate very far or affect many people.
     Building on the basic truth about interpersonal influence, the researchers studied the dynamics of populations manipulating a number of variables relating of populations, manipulating a number of variables relating to people's ability to influence others and their tendency to be influenced. Our work shows that the principal requirement for what we call "global cascades"—the widespread propagation of influence through networks—is the presence not of a few influentials but, rather, of a critical mass of easily influenced people, each of whom adopts, say, a look or a brand after being exposed to a single adopting neighbor. Regardless of how influential an individual is locally, he or she can exert global influence only if this critical mass is available to propagate a chain reaction. 

Directions: Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.
     In spite of "endless talk of difference," American society is an amazing machine for homogenizing people. There is "the democratizing uniformity of dress and discourse, and the casualness and absence of deference" characteristic of popular culture. People are absorbed into “a culture of consumption" launched by the 19th-century department stores that offered "vast arrays of goods in an elegant atmosphere. Instead of intimate shops catering to a knowledgeable elite" these were stores "anyone could enter, regardless of class or background. This turned shopping into a public and democratic act". The mass media, advertising and sports are other forces for homogenization.
     Immigrants are quickly fitting into this common culture, which may not be altogether elevating but is hardly poisonous. Writing for the National Immigration Forum, Gregory Rodriguez reports that today's immigration is neither at unprecedented levels nor resistant to assimilation. In 1998 immigrants were 9.8 percent of the population; in 1900, 13.6 percent. In the 10 years prior to 1990, 3.1 immigrants arrived for every 1,000 residents; in the 10 years prior to 1890, 9.2 for every 1,000. Now, consider three indices of assimilation—language, home ownership and intermarriage.
     The 1990 Census revealed that “a majority of immigrants from each of the fifteen most common countries of origin spoke English 'well' or 'very well' after ten years of residence." The children of immigrants tend to be bilingual and proficient in English. "By the third generation, the original language is lost in the majority of immigrant families." Hence the description of America as a "graveyard" for languages. By 1996 foreign-born immigrants who had arrived before 1970 had a home ownership rate of 75.6 percent, higher than the 69.8 percent rate among native-born Americans.
     Foreign-born Asians and Hispanics "have higher rates of intermarriage than do U.S.-born whites and blacks." By the third generation, one third of Hispanic women are married to non-Hispanics, and 41 percent of Asian-American women are married to non-Asians.
     Rodriguez notes that children in remote villages around the world are fans of superstars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Garth Brooks, yet "some Americans fear that immigrants living within the United States remain somehow immune to the nation's assimilative power.“
     Are there divisive issues and pockets of seething anger in America? Indeed. It is big enough to have a bit of everything. But particularly when viewed against America's turbulent past, today's social indices hardly suggest a dark and deteriorating social environment.

Directions: Read the following texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.
     When prehistoric man arrived in new parts of the world, something strange happened to the large animals: they suddenly became extinct. Smaller species survived. The large, slow-growing animals were easy game, and were quickly hunted to extinction. Now something similar could be happening in the oceans.
     That the seas are being overfished has been known for years. What researchers such as Ransom Myers and Boris Worm have shown is just how fast things are changing. They have looked at half a century of data from fisheries around the world. Their methods do not attempt to estimate the actual biomass (the amount of living biological matter) of fish species in particular parts of the ocean, but rather changes in that biomass over time. According to their latest paper published in Nature, the biomass of large predators (animals that kill and eat other animals) in a new fishery is reduced on average by 80% within 15 years of the start of exploitation. In some long-fished areas, it has halved again since then.
     Dr. Worm acknowledges that these figures are conservative. One reason for this is that fishing technology has improved. Today's vessels can find their prey using satellites and sonar, which were not available 50 years ago. That means a higher proportion of what is in the sea is being caught, so the real difference between present and past is likely to be worse than the one recorded by changes in catch sizes. In the early days, too, longlines would have been more saturated with fish. Some individuals would therefore not have been caught, since no baited hooks would have been available to trap them, leading to an underestimate of fish stocks in the past. Furthermore, in the early days of longline fishing, a lot of fish were lost to sharks after they had been hooked. That is no longer a problem, because there are fewer sharks around now.
     Dr. Myers and Dr. Worm argue that their work gives a correct baseline, which future management efforts must take into account. They believe the data support an idea current among marine biologists, that of the "shifting baseline”. The notion is that people have failed to detect the massive changes which have happened in the ocean because they have been looking back only a relatively short time into the past. That matters because theory suggests that the maximum sustainable yield that can be cropped from a fishery comes when the biomass of a target species is about 50% of its original levels. Most fisheries are well below that, which is a bad way to do business.

Directions: Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.
     Hunting for a job late last year, lawyer Gant Redmon stumbled across Career Builder, a job database on the Internet. He searched it with no success but was attracted by the site’s "personal search agent." It’s an interactive feature that lets visitors key in job criteria such as location, title, and salary, then E-mails them when a matching position is posted in the database. Redmon chose the keywords legal, intellectual property, and Washington, D. C.. Three weeks later, he got his first notification of an opening. "I struck gold," says Redmon, who E-mailed his resume to the employer and won a position as in-house counsel for a company.
     With thousands of career-related sites on the Internet, finding promising openings can be time-consuming and inefficient. Search agents reduce the need for repeated visits to the databases. But although a search agent worked for Redmon, career experts see drawbacks. Narrowing your criteria, for example, may work against you: "Every time you answer a question you eliminate a possibility," says one expert.
     For any job search, you should start with a narrow concept—what you think you want to do—then broaden it. "None of these programs do that," says another expert. "There’s no career counseling implicit in all of this." Instead, the best strategy is to use the agent as a kind of tip service to keep abreast of jobs in a particular database; when you get E-mail, consider it a reminder to check the database again. "I would not rely on agents for finding everything that is added to a database that might interest me," says the author of a job-searching guide.
     Some sites design their agents to tempt job hunters to return. When Career Site’s agent sends out messages to those who have signed up for its service, for example, it includes only three potential jobs—those it considers the best matches. There may be more matches in the database; job hunters will have to visit the site again to find them—and they do. "On the day after we send our messages, we see a sharp increase in our traffic," says Seth Peets, vice president of marketing for Career Site.
     Even those who aren’t hunting for jobs may find search agents worthwhile. Some use them to keep a close watch on the demand for their line of work or gather information on compensation to arm themselves when negotiating for a raise. Although happily employed, Redmon maintains his agent at Career Builder. "You always keep your eyes open," he says. Working with a personal search agent means having another set of eyes looking out for you. 

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.
     Habits are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. “Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd,” William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word “habit” carries a negative implication.
     So it seems paradoxical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.
     Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact, the more new things we try—the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.
     But don’t bother trying to kill off old habits; once those ruts of procedure are worn into the brain, they’re there to stay. Instead, the new habits we deliberately press into ourselves create parallel pathways that can bypass those old roads.
     “The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder,” says Dawna Markova, author of The Open Mind. “But we are taught instead to ‘decide,’ just as our president calls himself ‘the Decider.’ ” She adds, however, that “to decide is to kill off all possibilities but one. A good innovational thinker is always exploring the many other possibilities.”
     All of us work through problems in ways of which we’re unaware, she says. Researchers in the late 1960 discovered that humans are born with the capacity to approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, relationally (or collaboratively) and innovatively. At the end of adolescence, however, the brain shuts down half of that capacity, preserving only those modes of thought that have seemed most valuable during the first decade or so of life.
     The current emphasis on standardized testing highlights analysis and procedure, meaning that few of us inherently use our innovative and collaborative modes of thought. “This breaks the major rule in the American belief system—that anyone can do anything,” explains M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book This Year I Will... and Ms. Markova’s business partner. “That’s a lie that we have perpetuated, and it fosters commonness. Knowing what you’re good at and doing even more of it creates excellence.” This is where developing new habits comes in.

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

     The journal Science is adding an extra round of statistical checks to its peer-review process, editor-in-chief Marcia McNutt announced today. The policy follows similar efforts from other journals, after widespread concern that basic mistakes in data analysis are contributing to the irreproducibility of many published research findings.
     “Readers must have confidence in the conclusions published in our journal,” writes McNutt in an editorial. Working with the American Statistical Association, the journal has appointed seven experts to a statistics board of reviewing editors(SBoRE). Manuscript will be flagged up for additional scrutiny by the journal’s internal editors, or by its existing Board of Reviewing Editors or by outside peer reviewers. The SBoRE panel will then find external statisticians to review these manuscripts.
     Asked whether any particular papers had impelled the change, McNutt said: “The creation of the ‘statistics board’ was motivated by concerns broadly with the application of statistics and data analysis in scientific research and is part of Science’s overall drive to increase reproducibility in the research we publish.”
     Giovanni Parmigiani, a biostatistician at the Harvard School of Public Health, a member of the SBoRE group, says he expects the board to “play primarily an advisory role.” He agreed to join because he “found the foresight behind the establishment of the SBoRE to be novel, unique and likely to have a lasting impact. This impact will not only be through the publications in Science itself, but hopefully through a larger group of publishing places that may want to model their approach after Science.”
     John Ioannidis, a physician who studies research methodology, says that the policy is “a most welcome step forward” and “long overdue.” “Most journals are weak in statistical review, and this damages the quality of what they publish. I think that, for the majority of scientific papers nowadays, statistical review is more essential than expert review,” he says, but he noted that biomedical journals such as Annals of Internal Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet pay strong attention to statistical review.
     Professional scientists are expected to know how to analyze data, but statistical errors are alarmingly common in published research, according to David Vaux, a cell biologist. Researchers should improve their standards, he wrote in 2012, but journals should also take a tougher line, “engaging reviewers who are statistically literate and editors who can verify the process”. Vaux says that Science’s idea to pass some papers to statisticians “has some merit, but a weakness is that it relies on the board of reviewing editors to identify ‘the papers that need scrutiny’ in the first place”.

Directions: Read the following text. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D.
     When it comes to the slowing economy, Ellen Spero isn’t biting her nails just yet. But the 47-year-old manicurist isn’t cutting, filing or polishing as many nails as she’d like to, either. Most of her clients spend $12 to $50 weekly, but last month two longtime customers suddenly stopped showing up. Spero blames the softening economy. “I’m a good economic indicator,” she says. “I provide a service that people can do without when they’re concerned about saving some dollars.” So Spero is down-scaling, shopping at middle-brow Dillard’s department store near her suburban Cleveland home, instead of Neiman Marcus. “I don’t know if other clients are going to abandon me, too.” she says.
     Even before Alan Greenspan’s admission that America’s red-hot economy is cooling, lots of working folks had already seen signs of the slowdown themselves. From car dealerships to Gap outlets, sales have been lagging for months as shoppers temper their spending. For retailers, who last year took in 24 percent of their revenue between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the cautious approach is coming at a crucial time. Already, experts say, holiday sales are off 7 percent from last year’s pace. But don’t sound any alarms just yet. Consumers seem only mildly concerned, not panicked, and many say they remain optimistic about the economy’s long-term prospects, even as they do some modest belt-tightening.
     Consumers say they’re not in despair because, despite the dreadful headlines, their own fortunes still feel pretty good. Home prices are holding steady in most regions. In Manhattan, “there’s a new gold rush happening in the $4 million to $10 million range, predominantly fed by Wall Street bonuses,” says broker Barbara Corcoran. In San Francisco, prices are still rising even as frenzied overbidding quiets. “Instead of 20 to 30 offers, now maybe you only get two or three,” says John Tealdi, a Bay Area real-estate broker. And most folks still feel pretty comfortable about their ability to find and keep a job.
     Many folks see silver linings to this slowdown. Potential home buyers would cheer for lower interest rates. Employers wouldn’t mind a little fewer bubbles in the job market. Many consumers seem to have been influenced by stock-market swings, which investors now view as a necessary ingredient to a sustained boom. Diners might see an upside, too. Getting a table at Manhattan’s hot new Alain Ducasse restaurant used to be impossible. Not anymore. For that, Greenspan & Co. may still be worth toasting. 

Directions:
Read the following four texts. answer the question after each text by choosing A,B,C or D.
     Over the past decade, thousands of patents have been granted for what are called business methods. Amazon.com received one for its "one-click" online payment system. Merrill Lynch got legal protection for an asset allocation strategy. One inventor patented a technique for lifting a box.
     Now the nation's top patent court appears completely ready to scale back on business-method patents, which have been controversial ever since they were first authorized 10 years ago. In a move that has intellectual-property lawyers abuzz the U.S. court of Appeals for the federal circuit said it would use a particular case to conduct a broad review of business-method patents. In re Bilski, as the case is known, is "a very big deal", says Dennis D. Crouch of the University of Missouri School of law. It "has the potential to eliminate an entire class of patents."
     Curbs on business-method claims would be a dramatic about-face, because it was the federal circuit itself that introduced such patents with is 1998 decision in the so-called state Street Bank case, approving a patent on a way of pooling mutual-fund assets. That ruling produced an explosion in business-method patent filings, initially by emerging internet companies trying to stake out exclusive rights to specific types of online transactions. Later, move established companies raced to add such patents to their files, if only as a defensive move against rivals that might beat them to the punch. In 2005, IBM noted in a court filing that it had been issued more than 300 business-method patents despite the fact that it questioned the legal basis for granting them. Similarly, some Wall Street investment films armed themselves with patents for financial products, even as they took positions in court cases opposing the practice.
     The Bilski case involves a claimed patent on a method for hedging risk in the energy market. The Federal Circuit issued an unusual order stating that the case would be heard by all 12 of the court's judges, rather than a typical panel of three, and that one issue it wants to evaluate is whether it should "reconsider" its state street Bank ruling.
     The Federal Circuit's action comes in the wake of a series of recent decisions by the Supreme Court that has narrowed the scope of protections for patent holders. Last April, for example the justices signaled that too many patents were being upheld for "inventions" that are obvious. The judges on the Federal circuit are "reacting to the anti-patent trend at the Supreme Court", says Harold C. Wegner, a patent attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School. 

Directions: Reading the following text and answer the questions by choosing the most suitable subheadings from the A-G for each of the numbered paragraph (1-5). There are two extra subheadings.

    In a social situation, eye contact with another person can show that you are paying attention in a friendly way. But it can also be antagonistic such as when a political candidate turns toward their competitor during a debate and makes eye contact that signals hostility. Here's what hard science reveals about eye contact:

We know that a typical infant will instinctively gaze into its mother's eyes, and she will look back. This mutual gaze is a major part of the attachment between mother and child. In adulthood, looking someone else in a pleasant way can be a complimentary sign of paying attention. It can catch someone's attention in a crowded room, "Eye contact and smile" can signal availability and confidence, a common-sense notion supported in studies by psychologist Monica Moore.

Neuroscientist Bonnie Augeung found that the hormone oxytocin increased the amount of eye contact from men toward the interviewer during a brief interview when the direction of their gaze was recorded. This was also found in high-functioning men with some autistic spectrum symptoms, who may tend to avoid eye contact. Specific brain regions that respond during direct gaze are being explored by other researches, using advanced methods of brain scanning.

With the use of eye-tracking technology, Julia Minson of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government concluded that eye contact can signal very different kinds of messages, depending on the situation. While eye contact may be a sign of connection or trust in friendly situations, it's more likely to be associated with dominance or intimidation in adversarial situations. "Whether you're a politician or a parent, it might be helpful to keep in mind that trying to maintain eye contact may backfire if you're trying to convince someone who has a different set of beliefs than you," said Minson.

When we look at a face or a picture, our eyes pause on one spot at a time, often on the eyes or mouth. These pauses typically occur at about three per second, and the eyes then jump to another spot, until several important points in the image are registered like a series of snapshots. How the whole image is then assembled and perceived is still a mystery although it is the subject of current research.

In people who score high in a test of neuroticism, a personality dimension associated with self-consciousness and anxiety, eye contact triggered more activity associated with avoidance, according to the Finnish researcher Jari Hietanen and colleagues. Our findings indicate that people do not only feel different when they are the centre of attention but that their brain reactions also differ." A more direct finding is that people who scored high for negative emotions like anxiety looked at others for shorter periods of time and reported more comfortable feelings when others did not look directly at them.

Directions: You are going to read a list of headings and a text about what parents are supposed to do to guide their children into adulthood. Choose a heading from the list A--G that best fits the meaning of each numbered part of the text (1-5). The first and last paragraphs of the text are not numbered. There are two extra headings that you do not need to use.

Directions:
Read the following text and answer the questions by choosing the most suitable subheading from the list A-G for each of the numbered paragraphs. There are two extra subheadings which you do not need to use.
     Canada’s premiers (the leaders of provincial governments), if they have any breath left after complaining about Ottawa at their late July annual meeting, might spare a moment to do something, together, to reduce health-care costs.
     They’re all groaning about soaring health budgets, the fastest-growing component of which are pharmaceutical costs.
     
     What to do? Both the Romanow commission and the Kirby committee on health care—to say nothing of reports from other experts—recommended the creation of a national drug agency. Instead of each province having its own list of approved drugs, bureaucracy, procedures and limited bargaining power, all would pool resources, work with Ottawa, and create a national institution.
     
     But "national" doesn’t have to mean that. "National" could mean interprovincial—provinces combining efforts to create one body.
     Either way, one benefit of a "national" organization would be to negotiate better prices, if possible, with drug manufacturers. Instead of having one province—or a series of hospitals within a province—negotiate a price for a given drug on the provincial list, the national agency would negotiate on behalf of all provinces.
     Rather than, say, Quebec, negotiating on behalf of seven million people, the national agency would negotiate on behalf of 31 million people. Basic economics suggests the greater the potential consumers, the higher the likelihood of a better price.
     
     A small step has been taken in the direction of a national agency with the creation of the Canadian Co-ordinating Office for Health Technology Assessment, funded by Ottawa and the provinces. Under it, a Common Drug Review recommends to provincial lists which new drugs should be included. Predictably, and regrettably, Quebec refused to join.
     A few premiers are suspicious of any federal-provincial deal-making. They (particularly Quebec and Alberta) just want Ottawa to fork over additional billions with few, if any, strings attached. That’s one reason why the idea of a national list hasn’t gone anywhere, while drug costs keep rising fast.
     
     Premiers love to quote Mr. Romanow’s report selectively, especially the parts about more federal money. Perhaps they should read what he had to say about drugs:"A national drug agency would provide governments more influence on pharmaceutical companies in order to constrain the ever-increasing cost of drugs."
     
     So when the premiers gather in Niagara Falls to assemble their usual complaint list, they should also get cracking about something in their jurisdiction that would help their budgets and patients. 

Directions:
Read the following text and answer the questions by choosing the most suitable subheading from the list A-G for each of the numbered paragraphs. There are two extra subheadings.
​     No matter how formal or informal the work environment, the way you present yourself has an impact. This is especially true in first impressions. According to research from Princeton University, people assess your competence, trustworthiness, and likeability in just a tenth of a second, solely based on the way you look.
     The difference between today’s workplace and the “dress for success” era is that the range of options is so much broader. Norms have evolved and fragmented. In some settings, red sneakers or dress T-shirts can convey status; in others not so much. Plus, whatever image we present is magnified by social-media services like LinkedIn. Chances are, your headshots are seen much more often now than a decade or two ago. Millennials, it seems, face the paradox of being the least formal generation yet the most conscious of style and personal branding. It can be confusing.
     So how do we navigate this? How do we know when to invest in an upgrade? And what’s the best way to pull off one that enhances our goals? Here are some tips: 

     
     As an executive coach, I’ve seen image upgrades be particularly helpful during transitions—when looking for a new job, stepping into a new or more public role, or changing work environments. If you’re in a period of change or just feeling stuck and in a rut, now may be a good time. If you’re not sure, ask for honest feedback from trusted friends, colleagues and professionals. Look for cues about how others perceive you. Maybe there’s no need for an upgrade and that’s OK. 

     
     Get clear on what impact you’re hoping to have. Are you looking to refresh your image or pivot it? For one person, the goal may be to be taken more seriously and enhance their professional image. For another, it may be to be perceived as more approachable, or more modern and stylish. For someone moving from finance to advertising, maybe they want to look more “SoHo.” (It’s OK to use characterizations like that.)
     

     Look at your work environment like an anthropologist. What are the norms of your environment? What conveys status? Who are your most important audiences? How do the people you respect and look up to present themselves? The better you understand the cultural context, the more control you can have over your impact.
     

     Enlist the support of professionals and share with them your goals and context. Hire a personal stylist, or use the free styling service of a store like J. Crew. Try a hair stylist instead of a barber. Work with a professional photographer instead of your spouse or friend. It’s not as expensive as you might think.
     

     The point of a style upgrade isn’t to become more vain or to spend more time fussing over what to wear. Instead, use it as an opportunity to reduce decision fatigue. Pick a standard work uniform or a few go-to options. Buy all your clothes at once with a stylist instead of shopping alone, one article of clothing at a time.