Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Bring the Family? Port Regis School is well situated for exploring the beautiful South and West of England Wales. Sibford School is located in Oxfordshire with easy access to London, Oxford and Stratfordupon-Avon. Each school has excellent hotels and guest houses nearby for parents who are dropping off or collecting children from school. Please note: *All students attending English Country Schools must live residentially on site. *We do not recommend that parents live locally while their child is in school:experience suggests that this often upsets the child and disrupts progress. Howard's House Country Hotel & Restaurant About 15 minutes from Port Regis School, Howard's House is set in large gardens hidden away in the quietness of the lovely Nadder valley. Plumber Manor Plumber Manor is a comfortable Jacobean manor house built of local stone, situated about 20 minutes from Port Regis School. The 17th-century house is surrounded by lawns and is set in the tranquil Dorset countryside. Woodville Farm Bed & Breakfast+Self-catering Woodville Farm is family-run arable & livestock farm set in the Dorset countryside about 5 minutes from Port Regis School. Bed and Breakfast accommodation:one double bedroom & one twin bedroom both with bathrooms, tea & coffee making facilities, color1 television & hairdryer. There is also a self-catering 2-bedroom house nearby. Stock Hill Country House Hotel and Restaurant Stock Hill Country House Hotel and Restaurant is a late Victorian mansion set in eleven acres of mature and beautiful wooden grounds on the borders of Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire. About 10 minutes from Port Regis School. Question: If you stay at Plumber Manor, how long does it take you to reach Port Regis School? Options: A: About 5 minutes. B: About 10 minutes. C: About 15 minutes. D: About 20 minutes.
D

Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Would you want a doctor who got high marks in medical school just for trying hard? Apparently many college students would have no problem with that. They believe students are owed a good grade simply because they put a lot of effort into a class. The researchers asked more than 800 undergraduates if they agreed or disagreed with some statements. For example: "If I have completed most of the reading for a class, I deserve a B in that course." And: "A professor should not be annoyed with me if I receive an important call during class." Just 16 percent thought it was OK to take that phone call. But 66 percent agreed that a professor should consider effort and not just the quality of a student's work when deciding grades. And 40 percent thought they should get a B, the second highest mark, just because they did most of the reading for class. Some experts are not surprised that students often see no difference between effort and results. Social critics like to say that in children's activities these days everyone gets an award just for trying, so no one will feel rejected. Yet competition to get into the best colleges is fiercer than ever. Students may worry that low grades will keep them out of graduate school or a good job. And there may be another explanation: pressure from parents to get a good return on the family's investment. These days, college can cost more than a house. A former teaching assistant recently wrote to the New York Times about his experience with grade expectations. He would try to explain it this way when students asked for a top grade just for studying hard in chemistry class: What if a baseball player came to spring training and worked harder than all the others, but still could not play well? Would the team accept him anyway, just because he tried so hard? The students would say no. But most of them would still ask for an A. Question: What does the passage mainly discuss? Options: A: How students can get a good grade in the course. B: Whether students are allowed to answer calls in class. C: Whether students deserve high marks just for trying hard. D: Why students put a lot of efforts in their studies.
C

Q: Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Surgeons in Spain have successfully carried out the world's first organ transplant using new stem cell technology. Some people are calling it the greatest medical breakthrough so far this century. But what are stem cells? As we know, most cells in our bodies are designed to serve specific purposes - for example, a liver cell develops to work in the liver and cannot become a heart cell. But stem cells are different. They are very young, and in the laboratory scientists can grow them into different types of cell. Claudia Castillo needed a new windpipe after getting a serious disease. Scientists from the University of Bristol in the UK took a donor windpipe, or trachea, from someone who had recently died. They used strong chemicals to remove the donor's cells, leaving a tissue scaffold . This was refilled with cells from Ms Castillo's windpipe, and stem cells from her bone. After four days the cells had grown sufficiently for the windpipe to be transplanted into Ms Castillo. Currently, transplant patients have to take drugs for the rest of their lives to prevent their bodies rejecting the new organs. These drugs can have bad side-effects, and do not always prevent rejection. But by using Ms Castillo's own cells, doctors were able to trick her body into thinking the new windpipe was her own organ. Five months on, Claudia Castillo is in perfect health. This ground-breaking procedure could be used in other transplant operations in the future. Scientists also believe stem cells might be used to treat Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, diabetes, burns and so on. However, stem cell research is extremely controversial. The most effective stem cells do not come from adults but from embryos created in laboratories and which are just a few days old. Many people have religious or ethical objections to growing embryos, even if they can be used to cure diseases. Question: Which word can best describe the scientists' attitude towards the stem cell technology? Options: A: controversial B: confident C: conservative D: critical
A: B

(Q).
Read the article and select the best answer. Article: In her new book, "The Smartest Kidsin the World", Amanda Ripley, an investigative journalist, tells the story of Tom, a high-school student from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, who decides to spend his senior year in Wroclaw, Poland. Poland is a surprising educational success story: in the past decade, the country raised students' test scores from significantly below average to well above it. Polish kids have now outscored American kids in math and science, even though Poland spends, on average, less than half as much per student as the United States does. One of the most striking differences between the high school Tom attended in Gettysburg and the one he ends up at in Wroclaw is that the latter has no football team or teams of any kind. That American high schools spend more time and money on sports than on math is an old complaint. In December, when the latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results are announced, it's safe to predict that American high-school students will once again show their limited skills in math and reading, outscored not just by students in Poland but also by students in places like China, Finland, Singapore, and Japan. Meanwhile, they will have played some very exciting football games, which will have been breathlessly written up in their hometown papers. Why does this situation continue? Well, for one thing, kids like it. And for another, according to Ripley, parents seem to like the arrangement, too. She describes a tour she took of a school in Washington D.C., which costs thirty thousand dollars a year. The tour leader -- a mother with three children in the school -- was asked about the school's flaws . When she said that the math program was weak, none of the parents taking the tour reacted. When she said that the football program was weak, theu mean?" One of the ironies of the situation is that sports show what is possible. American kids' performance on the field shows just how well they can do when expectations are high. It's too bad that their test scores show... Question: Tom decides to spend his senior year in Poland because _ . Options: A: he intends to improve his scores B: Polish kids are better at learning C: sports are not supported at schools in Gettysburg D: he wants to be the smartest kid in the world
(A).
A