TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you're given an article and an answer. Your task is to generate the fill-in-the-blank question for this answer based on the given article. The blanks are always at the end of the question, and can be filled with more than one word or phrase.
PROBLEM: Article: A new report says the number of foreign students at colleges and universities in the United States increased by three percent last year. This has been the first obvious increase since 2001. American schools last fall had 583,000 foreign students. The record is 586,000. That was set in 2002 after many years of gains. But after that the numbers fell. The terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 led to more visa requirements. Now stronger efforts are being made to get more foreign students to study in the United States. China remained in second place in front of South Korea but behind India, whichsent almost 84,000 students last fall. The number of Japanese fell sharply by nine percent, although it remained in fourth place. There were three percent drops from Indonesia and Kenya, the only African country in the top twenty last year. But there were obvious increases from Saudi Arabia, Nepal and Vietnam. The number of Saudi students more than doubled, rising to nearly eight thousand. For a sixth year, the University of Southern California in Los Angeles had the most foreign students. Columbia University in New York was second. Other schools in the top five were New York University, the University of Illinois and Purdue University. Unlike American students in other countries, who often choose history and language study, the leading area of study in the USA was business and management. Second was engineering. The new report also says more than 220,000 Americans studied in other countries. That was during the 2005-2006 school year. It was a record number, and an increase of eight and a half percent from the year before. But only five percent of them stayed for a full year.
Answer: it was harder for foreign students to get permission to study in the USA

SOLUTION: After 2002, the number of foreign students in the USA fell mainly because _ .

PROBLEM: Article: According to US research, it can take up to ten years to become a near-native English speaker. Asian and Spanish students took between five and ten years to reach native speaker performance in English-only schools. Fluency obviously doesn't happen overnight. But time can definitely make you a better speaker. After testing his own memory, German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus discovered that humans forget most of what they learn in the first 20 minutes. So cramming right before a speaking exam is not likely to be as effective as practicing regularly over time. The more you practice, the more familiar new words will become. In the classroom, studies have also shown that repeating oral tasks improves a speaker's performance. One of the best repetition exercises is the 4/3/2 technique. Speakers give the same talk to three different listeners with a progressive decrease in delivery time, starting at four minutes, then three, and finally two minutes. This exercise has been proven to help learners speak faster. It can also result in less hesitation and more grammatical accuracy. While time dose make a difference when it comes to speaking perfect English, it would not hurt to brush up on your other language skills. Studies have also shown that reading can increase your speaking vocabulary. After one month of an extensive reading program, a 27-year-old student of French became more familiar with 65 percent of the new words. Aside from choosing the right learning methods, having certain personality traits may also help. US Stephen Krashen believes those with high motivation, self-confidence and a low level of anxiety are better equipped for speaking success. Krashen says students who don't have these qualities are more likely to have a "mental block". "Even if they understand the message, the input will not reach the part of the brain responsible for language acquisition," he writes in his book Principles and Practice in second Language Acquisition.
Answer: cramming new words every day

SOLUTION: According to the passage, if you want to be a near-native speaker, you need _ .

PROBLEM: Article: Charlie works in a post office. His father lost his job five years ago and his mother is often ill. And he has two brothers and a sister. He works hard and tries his best to buy enough food for his family. Last month his family had to move to an old house outside the city. It's farther from the post office and he has to get up early in the morning in order to catch the 6:30 train. The head of his office is strict and everybody has to get there on time. He knows what it'll mean if he's late. A friend of his had pity on him and lent his old car to him. The young man was happy and from then on he could go to work by car. Last Saturday Charlie went to buy some medicine for his mother. Bad luck! When he came out of the shop, he couldn't find the car. He was quite worried and began to look for it in front of the shop but he didn't find it. Suddenly he saw a woman parked a car there and hurried into the shop. Charlie saw the car wasn't locked. He got on it and drove it at once. He was afraid the loser would run after him and drove fast. A truck hit it at a crossing and he lost consciousness. This morning the young man came back to life and saw there were a few policemen standing by his bed. He asked, "Where am I?" "In Room 103." "In hospital or in prison ?"
Answer: seven

SOLUTION:
There're _ people in Charlie's family.