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Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Whenever anyone measures educational success, East Asian countries are always top scorers. But in a recent league table, a European country, Finland, was top of the class. South Korea was still in second place, though. Britain was at number 6. In Korea the school day is long--typically 7 or 8 hours, followed by hours of private tutoring in the evenings. _ leaves Korean students so tired, they sometimes fall asleep in class next day. Worries about the effects of late night cramming led the government to force cramming schools to close by 10 p.m. Finnish children spend the least time in class in the developed world, often finishing just after lunch, with about one hour of homework a day. Private tuition is uncommon. The British and American school day is quite long in comparison, around 6 hours, and secondary school pupils do 2 or 3 hours of selfstudy a night. The Korean education system, like many in Asia, is intensely competitive, with students even competing to get into the best cramming schools, to help them get ahead. Finnish education is far less cutthroat. Classes are all mixed ability, and there are no league tables. British schools again occupy the middle ground, with quite high levels of competition for places at university, and schools and universities battling to come top of league tables for everything from exam results to student satisfaction. Korea and Finland both do well, yet their education systems are so different. However, there are some similarities between Korea and Finland. In those countries, teachers have high status in society, and education is very highly valued. Those attitudes can't change quickly. But it can be done. They might be the star pupils now, but until the 1970s, Finland's education system was poor. Their thoroughly different approach to schooling has taken them to the top in just a generation. Question: The students spend the least time in school in _ . Options: A: the UK B: Finland C: the USA D: Korea
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B

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Read the article and select the best answer. Article: Billie Holiday was one of the greatest jazz singers in America. Her life was just a mixture of success and tragedy. Her singing expressed her experiences and feelings. Billie Holiday was born Eleanora Fagan in 1915 in Baltimore, Maryland. Her parents were Sadie Fagan and Clarence Holiday. They were young when their daughter was born. Their marriage failed because Clarence Holiday was often out. He traveled as a musician with some of the earliest jazz bands and inspired his daughter. Sadie Fagan cleaned people's houses to make a living. But she could not support her family with the money she earned. So she moved to New York City where the pay was higher. She left her daughter in Baltimore with one of her distant relatives. The young girl Eleanora Fagan changed her name to Billie, because she liked a movie star, Billie Dove. The talented Billie Holiday loved singing. She sang and listened to music whenever she could. In one place near her home there was a machine that played records. The building was a theater where many famous singers also performed their newly-made songs for free. Billie cleaned floors and did other jobs for the theater so that she could listen to the records. It was there that young Billie first heard the records of some famous black American blues artists of the 1920s. she heard Bessie Smith sing the blues. And she heard Louis Armstrong play the horn. Both musicians had a great influence on her. Billie Holiday once said, "I do not think I'm singing. I feel like I am playing a horn. _ I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That is all I know." Question: Who might originally have had an influence on Billie Holiday's career in music? Options: A: Sadie Fagan B: Clerence Holiday. C: Bessie Smith. D: Louis Armstrong
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B

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Read the article and select the best answer. Article: My Best Enemy Once again, I was in a new school. So was a girl in my class named Lisa. That's where the similarities ended. I was tall and she was small. My thick black hair had been recently cut short into an untidy style. Her natural blonde hair flowed to her waist and looked great. I was 12 and one of the oldest in the class while she was 11 and the youngest. I was awkward and shy. She wasn't. I couldn't stand her, considering her my enemy. But she liked me and wanted to be friends. One day, she invited me over and I said yes--I was too shocked to answer any other way. My family had moved six times in six years, and I had never managed to develop any friendships. But this girl who wore the latest fashions wanted me to go home with her after school. She lived in a fun part of town that had two pizza places, an all-night bookstore, a movie theater and a park. As we walked from the school bus stop through her neighborhood, I tried to guess which house might be hers. Was it the white one with the perfect lawn or the three-story house with a front porch? I got very surprised when she led me into an old apartment building. She lived on the fourth floor in a two-room place with her mother,her stepfather, her two brothers and her sister. When we got into the room she shared with her sister, she took out a big case of Babies, which was my next surprise. I had never played with them. We sat on the floor,laughing as we made up crazy stories about the Babies. We found out that we both wanted to be writers when we were older and both had wild imaginations. We had a great day that afternoon. Lisa was loved by the whole neighborhood. The bookstore owners lent her fashion magazines; the movie theater gave her free tickets... Soon I was included in her magic world. We slept over at each other's houses and spent every free moment together. Lisa, my first real friend since childhood, helped me get through the rough year of early adolescence and taught me an amazing and very surprising thing about making friends: that your... Question: The writer and Lisa were similar in the way that _ . Options: A: they were of the same age B: they had the same hair styles C: they were both tall D: they were both new students
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D