*Question*
Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Do your parents smoke? Where do they smoke - outside, at work or at home when you are around? According to a survey published in the journal Academic Pediatrics, an alarming number of US parents are still risking their children's lives by smoking in front of them. Half of all children aged 6 to 19, even those with asthma , have been exposed to second-hand smoke in the country, reported Reuters. "It's well known that smoking kills, but many smokers still don't realize the damage their smoke causes to those around them," Dame Sally, Chief Medical Officer for England, was quoted by the Independent as saying. Tobacco smoke contains more than 7,000 chemicals, hundreds of which are poisonous. About 70 of them can cause cancer, not to mention other diseases, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What's most scary is that there is no safe level of contact with second-hand smoke---even "low-level" exposure can be harmful to one's health. And "low-level" means when a parent or family member smokes in another room or even outside. While second-hand smoke can be harmful to people of all ages, children face a greater risk than adults: they have smaller lungs; they breathe more quickly; and they have less developed immune systems. Also, young children have little control over their surroundings. Babies can't move to another room because the air is smoky. They depend on the adults in their lives to make sure that their environments are safe. Recent years have seen second-hand smoke exposure drop---but for adults rather than kids, because policies have been started around the world to ban smoking in public places such as offices, bars and restaurants. However, "Children tend to be exposed to second-hand smoke in homes and cars, and these places are not included in most laws and policies," Amy Ferketich, a researcher at The Ohio State University, US, told Reuters. So what can we do to limit children's exposure to second-hand smoke? Parents should stop smoking for good. But if they can't, they... Question: Which of the following is TRUE according to the article? - Half of the children ages 9 to 18 in the US have parents who smoked at home. - Most smokers in the US don't care about the effects that smoking can have on those around them. - Dame Sally believes many parents who smoke in front of their kids have no idea of the damage that they are doing. - Hundreds of chemicals contained in tobacco can cause cancer.
**Answer**
Dame Sally believes many parents who smoke in front of their kids have no idea of the damage that they are doing.

*Question*
Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Parents might tell older children to "Act your age". But some researchers say that is what persons from thirteen to nineteen years old are doing. While teenagers can look all grown up, studies have shown that their brains are still developing. How much this explains their behavior, though, is a subject of debate. Jay Giedd of America's National Institutes of Health is a leader in this area of research. Doctor Giedd has been studying a group of young people since 1991. They visit him every two years for imaging tests of their brains. He says considerable development continues in young people from the teenage years into the twenties. A part of the brain called the dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex appears especially undeveloped in teenagers. Researchers believe that this area controls judgment and consideration of risk. So, its underdevelopment may explain why young people seem more willing to take risks like driving too fast. Laurence Steinberg is a psychology professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. He says stronger laws and stronger parental control are needed to protect teens from themselves. That includes raising the age for driving. He says research shows that teenage brains are not fully equipped to control behavior. Other researchers, however, say there is not enough evidence to make a strong case for such findings. Psychologist Robert Epstein is a visiting scholar at the University of California in San Diego. Mr. Epstein notes that teen behavior differs from culture to culture. He says behavior depends for the most part on socialization. He believes that teenagers will demonstrate better, safer behavior if they spend more time with adults, and are treated more like them. But is that always true? Mike Males works at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco. He suggests that all of this talk lately about brainless teens could be an attempt to take away attention from the reality. Writing in the New York Times, he says it is middle-aged adults whose behavior has worsened. In his... Question: Which of the following is TRUE about teenagers? - Their brains have almost stopped developing. - Their cultures have influenced their behavior more or less. - The behavior of brainless teens has drawn a lot more attention. - Staying more often with adults makes things even worse.
**Answer**
Their cultures have influenced their behavior more or less.

*Question*
Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: But what is teacher quality? How can one measure it reliably? An analysis is issued on a sample of data from a Texas school district. Experts argue convincingly that teacher effectiveness should be measured by students' gains on standardized tests: Mr. Smith is probably a better teacher than Ms. Brown if his students consistently improve their test scores more than hers do. Though this approach is appealing, there are tricky issues. For example, what if Ms. Brown teaches in a school where students score so high there is little room for improvement? The authors try to correct for this problem, as well as other sorts of measurement issues, to generate a measurement of teacher effectiveness. The paper is primarily concerned with how this measure is related to other observable characteristics. The first finding is that there is a large variation in teacher effectiveness: some teachers consistently have a larger impact on their students' achievement than others. Second, easily observable characteristics like having a master's degree or a passing score on the teacher certification exam are not correlated with teacher effectiveness. Then what does matter? The most important single influence is experience: first-year teachers are much less effective than others. The second year is significantly better, and by the fourth year, _ . It is not entirely clear whether this experience effect is learning by doing (the more you teach, the more effective you become) or survival of the fittest (those who are not good at teaching tend to drop out early.) From my reading of the paper, both effects appear important and there is no simple answer. The data do suggest, however, that teacher effectiveness is pretty clear by the end of the second year, so the information to make an informed decision is available at that time. The authors also investigate the contentious issue of racial matching of students and teachers. Here they find strong evidence that minority teachers tend to be more effective with minority students. Again, it is... Question: The author of this passage holds the view that _ . - teachers will perform better with time passing - ineffective teachers should leave earlier rather than later - teacher's effectiveness is apparent after a couple of years - a master's degree will improve teacher's effectiveness
**Answer**
teachers will perform better with time passing