People are often surprised to learn just how long some varieties of trees can live.

If
asked to estimate the age of the oldest living trees on Earth, they often come up with guesses
in the neighborhood of two or perhaps three hundred years. The real answer is considerably
larger than that, more than five thousand years.
The tree that wins the prize for its considerable maturity is the bristlecone pine of
California. This venerable pine predates wonders of the ancient world such as the pyramids of
Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the Colossus of Rhodes. It is not nearly as tall as
the giant redwood that is allso found in California, and in fact, it is actually not very tall
compared with many other trees, often little more than five meters in height. This relatively
short height may be one of the factors that aid the bristlecone pine in living to a ripe old age—
high winds and inclement weather cannot easily reach the shorter trees and cause damage. An
additional factor that contributes to the long life of the bristlecone pine is that this type of tree
has a high percentage of resin, which prevents rot from developing in the tree trunk and
branches.

1. The best title for this passage would be ...

a. The Size of the Bristlecone Pine
b. Three-Hundred-Year-Old Forests
c. The Wonders of the Ancient World
d. An Amazingly Enduring Tree

2. The word “estimate” in line 2 is closest in meaning to ...

a. measure
b. approximate
c. evaluate
d. view

3. The expression “in the neighborhood of” in line 3 could best be replaced by ...
a. of approximately
b. on the same block as
c. with the friendliness of
d. located close to

4. It can be inferred from the passage that most people...

a. are quite accurate in their estimates of the ages of the trees
b. have two to three hundred trees in their neighborhoods
c. do not really have any idea how old the oldest trees on Earth are
d. can name some three-hundred-year-old tree

5. According to the passage, approximately how old are the oldest trees on Earth?
a. Two hundred years old
b. Three hundred years old
c. Five hundred years old
d. Five thousand years old
6. The word “venerable” in line 6 is closest in meaning to which of the following?
a. Ancient
b. Incredible
c. Towering
d. Unrecognizable

7. The author mentions the Egyptian pyramids as an example of something that is ...
a. far away
b. believed to be strong
c. extremely tall
d. known to be old

8. Which of the following is true about the bristlecone pine?

a. It is as tall as the great pyramids.
b. It is never more than five meters in height.
c. It is short in comparison to many other trees.
d. It can be two to three hundred feet tall

9. The word “inclement” in line 11 could best be replaced by ...

a. sunny
b. bad
c. unusual
d. strong

10. The passage states that resin ...

a. assists the tree trunks to develop
b. is found only in the bristlecone pine
c. flows from the branches to the tree trunk
d. helps stop rot from starting

It was born as a child of jazz, blues, and country music. More recently, it has been
influenced by movies, television, sex, drugs, art, literature, and electronics. Since its birth, rock
and roll has been grouped and regrouped into an explosion of styles; folk rock, soul, Motown,
hard rock, jazz rock, country rock, heavy metal, punk rock, reggae, new wave, rap, and so on.
Each type has its own style, themes, and stars. Two of the more successful stlyes are rap and
reggae.
On the newer styles of rock and roll is rap. Rap is a form of dance music in which
singers—rappers—speak in ryhthm and rhyme rather than sing. Rap first appeared in the discos
of New York City’s black and neighbourhoods. Disco DJs teamed up with rappers to play
songs for dancers at parties. At first, the role of the rapper was to keep the beat going with hand
claps while DJ changed record. Soon, rappers added lyrics, slogans, rhymes, and call-and-
response exchanges with the audience. Early rap songs were mainly about dancing, partying,
and the romantic adventure of the rappers, but politics became an important theme in the late
eighties and nineties. Although rap is primarily the music of young black males, the first white
rappers appeared in 1980, and a woman rapper, Queen Latifah, began her career in 1989. M.C.
Hammer’s 1990 album, Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em, has sold fifteen million copies,
making it the best-selling rap album of the decade.
Another style of rock and roll is reggae, which was born on the Caribbean island of
Jamaica in the sixties and spread throughout the world in the seventies. It developed from a
kind of Afro-Caribbean music called mento, which was sung and played on guitars and drums.
Some musicians changed mento into a music called ska by adding a hesitation beat. A few
years later, another musician changed ska, and reggae was born. Reggae’s special sound comes
from reversing the roles of the instruments; The guitar plays the rhythm and the bass plays the
melody. An important influence on reggae music was the Rastafarian cult. The Rastafarians
added unusual sound mixes, extra-slow tempos, strange lyrics, and mystical-political themes.
The best known reggae musician in the United States is Bob Marley.
Rock and roll music is constantly changing. New styles are born, which in turn grow,
change, and produce offshoots. Some styles enjoy lasting popularity, but others disappear
rather quickly. However, all contribute to the power and excitement of rock and roll music in
our country.

11. Rock and roll music is mainly influenced by ...

a. explosive stles of music
b. jazz, blues and country music
c. native popular culture
d. mass media, sex, and drug
e. soul, Motown, and heavy metal

12. A suitable title for the text is ...

a. The History of Rap Music
b. The Origin of Rock and Roll Music
c. The Role of Jazz in Today’s Music
d. Styles of Rock and Roll Music
e. The Young Black Male’s Music

13. Which of the following is TRUE about rap?

a. Rappers do not sing at all but speak in rhythm.
b. Rap was originally a form of dance of the 1970s.
c. Rappers enjoy interacting with the audience.
d. Rap music is confined to black neighborhoods.
e. Themes of rap music are limited to casual things.

14. From the text we may conclude that rock and roll music ...
a. was born and developed among black people
b. became popular when the first white rapper appeared
c. is a means to unite back and white people.
d. will grow and change into other forms of music
e. is limited to adults because of its serious themes

15. Which of the following is not a characteristic of raggae?

 a. It is particularly used to convey political messages
b. It is sung and played on guitars and drums
c. Its appearance was inspired by a religious group
d. It has a hesitation beat like mento and ska
e. Its instruments have to play different roles

Scientists are as obsessed with the question of why the superold survive and thrive as
Ponce de Leon was to find the Fountain of Youth. They want to understand why the Japanese
islands of Okinawa are home to the world’s largest population of centenarians, with almost 600
of its 1.3 million inhabitants living into their second century—many of them active and looking
decades younger than their actual years. Like weekend visitors on the summer ferry Martha’s
Vineyard, scientists and sociologists clog the boats to Sardinia and Nova Scotia, Canada, to see
why those craggy locales harbor outsize clusters of the superold.
As well as studying these populations intensively to unlock their secrets, scientists have
also taken a hard look at the very old in the U.S., most notably in the New England Centenarian
Study, led by Dr. Thomas Perls, a geriatrician at Bostonn University, and in a major study
under way at the National Institute on Aging. While the very old are happy to offer homespun
explanations for their longetivity-“I never took a drink”; “I drank a shot of whiskey every
day”—experts are trying to unravel and understand the biological factors that allow some
people to reach 100 while others drop off in their 70s or 80s. Researchers are particularly
interested in determining which factors allow up to 30% of those who reach 100 to do so in
sufficient mental and physical health: a whopping 90% of centenarians, according to Perls,
remain functionally independent up to age 92.
It’s pretty obvious even to nonscientists that how you get there depends partly on the
genes you are born with and partly on lifestyle—what and how much you eat, where you live
and what types of stress and trauma you experience. How much depends on each factor, though,
was unknown until Swedish scientists tackled the problem in 1998. They did it by looking at
the only set of people who share genes but not lifestyle: identical twins who were separated at
birth and reared apart. If genes were most important, you would expect the twins to die at about
the same age. In fact, they don’t, and the average difference convinced the scientists that only
about 20% to 30% of how long we live is genetically determined. The dominant factor is
lifestyle.

16. What is the topic of the text above?

a. Survival
b. Youth
c. Long-life span
d. Old age
e. Health secrets

17. Which of the following best expresses the main idea of the text?
a. The population of the elderly people is increasing.
b. Elderly people cluster in particular parts of the world.
c. Biological factors influence mental and physical health.
 d. Genes and life style are essential for a long life span.
e. Several biological factors are at work affecting life span.

18. Which of the following is true about the information in the text?
a. Superold people normally can exceed 100
b. Okinawa people look younger at their actual age
c. All alcoholic drinks decrease life expectation
d. All of Dr. Perl’s subjects are self-reliant.
e. Gene quality contributes much more to life span

Population growth occurs because there are currently three births for every death. In
the past, the crude birthrates were only slightly higer than crude death rates, but with
improvements in medicine and economic growth, the death rate fell more than birth rates. Much
of the world’s population growth is occuring in less-developed countries, which are unable to
support such growth. The causal effect between poverty and population growth can be looked
at in two ways. First, population growth causes poverty as, the limited resources are depleted
and there are too many people for the available goods, resulting in poverty. The other view is
that poverty causes high population growth because lack of education, lack of health care , and
lack of a reasonable standard of living cause high population growth. Also, parents believe that
having many children will ensure that several of them will survive to take care of them in their
old age. Cultures in which children are a form of security encourage high population growth,
ass children reach reproductive age and have large families.
Much of the growth is happening disproportionately in urban areas. Cities are
enviromentally harmful because they import many resources for the people that live there, and
they export their waste. They also have an impact on the local and regional metereology and
are centers for social problems such as crime, homelessness, and unemployment to name a few.
Cities do offer many amenities such as cultural opportunities, jobs, and education. There are
some good enviromental aspects to cities, such as the promotion of efficiency in transportation,
housing, utilities; the provision of necessary goods and services; and the accomodation of large
numbers of people within a relatively small space. The biggest problem with cities is that
people want the benefits of city while still living in the country. This leads to urban sprawl and
suburban.

19. The purpose of the text is to...

a. Show negative impacts of population growth
b. Describe factors contributing to poverty in cities
c. Analyze causes of economic growth to populaion
d. Compare population growth in the past and present
e. Discuss population problems in urban areas of developing countries

20. The pronoun ‘they’ in “... because they import many resources ...” (paragraph 2) refers to
...
a. People
b. Areas
c. Resources
 d. Cities
e. Families

21. Which of the following is trues according to the text?

a. High population growth results in problem where cities cannot provide enough jobs.
b. Parents now tend to have few children in less-developed and developed countries.
c. Large families are tolerated in less-developed countries due to their predominant belief.
d. Economic growth gives little contribution to population growth.
e. In the past there were three births for every death in less developed countries.

22. The writer organizes the ideas in the text by ...

a. Showing the causes of population growth and their effect
b. Defining population growth followed with several examples
c. Arguing against population growth, followed with a case in urban places
d. Describing a historical account of population growth in the past and the present
e. Comparing effects of population growth in countries of different development

The organization that today is known as the Bank of America did start out in America,
but under quite a different name, Italian American A.P. Giannini established this bank on
October 17, 1904, in a renovated saloon in San Fransisco’s Italian community of North Beach
under the name Bank of Italy, with immigrants and first-time bank customers comprising the
majority of his first customer. During its development, Giannini’s bank survived major crises
in the form of a natural disaster and a major economic upheavel that not all other banks were
able to overcome.
One major test for Giannini’s bank occurred on April 18, 1906, when a massive
earthquake struck San Fransisco, followed by a raging fire that destroyed much of the city.
Giannini obtained two wagons and teams of horses, filled the wagons with the bank’s reserves,
mostly in the form of gold, covered the reserves with crates of oranges, and escaped from the
chaos of the city with his clients’ funds protected. In the aftermath of the disaster, Giannini’s
bank was the first to resume operations. Unable to install the bank in a proper office setting,
Giannini opened up shop on the Washington Street Wharf on a makeshift desk created from
boards and barrels.
In the period following the 1906 fire, the Bank of Italy continued to prosper and expand.
By 1918 there were twenty-four branches of the Bank of Italy, and by 1928 Giannini had
acquired numerous other banks, including a Bank of America located in New York City. In
1930 he consolidated all the branches of the Bank of Italy, the Bank of America in New York
City, and another Bank of America that he had formed in California into the Bank of America
Naional Trust and Savings Association.
A second major crisis for the bank occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Although Giannini had already retired prior to the darkest days of the Depression, he became
incensed when his successor began selling off banks during the bad economic times. Giannini
resumed leadership of the bank at the age of sixty-two. Under Giannini’s leadership, the bank
weathered the storm of Depression and subsequently moved into a phase of everseas
development.
23. According to the passage, Giannini...
a. Opened the Bank of America in 1904
b. Worked in a bank in Italy prior itu sebelum
c. Set up the Bank of America prior to setting up the Bank of Italy
d. Later changed the name of the Bank of Italy

24. Where did Giannini open his first bank?

a. In New York City
b. In what used to be a bar saloon: bar
c. On Washington Street Wharf
d. On a makeshift desk

25. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true about the San Fransisco
earthquake?
a. It happened in 1906
b. It occured in the aftermath of a fire
c. It caused problems for Giannini’s bank
d. It was a tremendous earthquake

26. The word “raging” in line 9 could best be replaced by ...

a. Angered
b. Localized
c. Intense
d. Feeble

27. It can be inferred from the passage that Giannini used crates of oranges after the
earthquake...
a. To hide the gold
b. To fill up the wagons
c. To provide nourishment for his customers
d. To protect the gold from the fire

28. The word “chaos” in line 12 is cosest in meaning to ...

a. Legal system
b. Extreme heat
c. Overdevelopment
d. Total confusion

29. The word “consolidated” in line 19 is closest in meaning to ...

a. Hardened
b. Merged menggabung
c. Moved
d. Sold

30. The passage states that after his retirement, Giannini ...
 a. Began selling off banks
b. Cause economic misfortune to occur
c. Supported the bank’s new management
d. Returned to work

31. The expression “weathered the storm of” in line 26 could best be replaced by ...
a. Found a cure
b. Rained on the parade
c. Survived the ordeal of
d. Blew its stack at

32. Where in the passage does the author describe Giannini’s first banking client?
a. Lines 2-5
b. Lines 8-9
c. Lines 13-14
d. Lines 16-18

33. The paragraph following the passage most likely discusses...

a. Bank failures during the Great Depression
b. A third major crisis of the Bank of America
c. The international development of the Bank of America
d. How Giannini spent his retirement

Stress is an experience that puts pressure or a requirement on us. That pressure means
we have to adjust to our new situation or environment. Stress can last for a short period, as
when a driver has to act to avoid having an accident, or it can last longer, as when a woman is
told she has a medical problem and thus must change her diet or daily routine in order to
become well again. We all experience stress as just a nervous or busy feeling. Other people
experience stress so strongly that it may cause them to seek professional help at a hospital. Still
other people may die from experiencing so much stress that it leads to heart disease or other
serious health-problems. Sometimes these health-related problems are physical, and other
times they are psychological. Some people have a personality type that causes them to
experience stress more than others. These people are often impatient, competitive, and
agressive and are always short on time.
34. The topic of the paragraph is ...
a. The adjustment to stress in human life
b. The possible causes of stress
c. The effect of stress on people
d. The ways to overcome stress
e. The behaviour of stressed people

35. With which of the following sentences should the paragraph end?
a. In conclusion, controlling the impact of stress is very important.
b. Therefore, stress should be totally avoided because it can causes problems.
c. Thus, stress is something people experience that puts pressure on us.
d. Thus, stress is part of life and it has different effects on different people.
e. Thus, stress is useful to keep us challenged and involved in life.