Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: For millions of people,the American dream of owning a home seems to be slipping out of reach. "Maybe young couples can no longer afford to buy a ready-made house as their parents did,' says 40-year-old building instructor Pat Hennin."But they can still have a home.Like their pioneer ancestors,they can build it themselves,and at less than half the cost of a ready-made house." The owner-builders came from every occupational group,although surprisingly few are professional building workers.Many take the plunge with little or no experience."l learned how to build my house from reading books,"says John Brown,who built a six-room home for$25,000 in High Falls,New Jersey."If you have patience and the carpentry skill to make a bookcase,you can build a house."An astonishing 50 percent of these owner builders hammer every nail.1ay every pipe,and wire every switch with their own hands.The rest contract for some parts of the task.But even those who just act as contractors and finish the insides of their homes can save from 30 percent to 45 percent of what a ready-made home would cost. One survey revealed that 60 percent of owner-builders also design their homes.Many others buy commercial house plans for less than $100 or use plans available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Question: What does the passage mainly tell us? - The cost of having a house built. - A comparison between young couples and their parents. - The life of owner-builders in America. - The American dream of owning a house.
The American dream of owning a house.

Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: Joker found one of the biggest diamonds in the world right in his own back yard. He sold the stone to a diamond dealer for over three hundred thousand dollars. In New York, the diamond was resold---this time for almost eight hundred thousand dollars. The true value of a diamond is never known until it has been cut. Once cut successfully, its value can increase a thousand times. It's easy to understand why the owner of Joker's diamond went to the best diamond cutter he knew, Kaplan. The cutter studied the diamond for twelve whole months. When he felt he was ready to start work, he discovered a flaw . He had to begin his calculations all over again, or he might have made the stone useless. Six months passed, and Kaplan finally said to the owner, "I am ready to start my work. There will be one excellent diamond that will be comparable one excellent diamond of first-class quality " Kaplan waited a few more days until he felt he was in the best physical and mental condition possible. He picked up his tools and held his breath as he made the diamond exactly as he promised. Question: A diamond dealer is a person _ . - in the diamond business - who stole diamonds - who cuts diamonds - who sells diamonds
in the diamond business

Q: Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: There are two kinds of memory: short-term and long-term. Information in long-term memory can be remembered at a later time when it is needed. The information may be kept for days or weeks. However, information in short-term memory is kept for only a few seconds, usually by repeating the information over and over. The following experiment shows how short-term memory has been studied. Henning studied how students who are learning English as a second language remember vocabulary. The subjects in his experiment were 75 college students. They represented all levels of ability in English: beginning, intermediate , and native speaking students. To begin, the subjects listened to a recording of a native speaker reading a paragraph in English. Following the recording, the subjects took a 15-question test to see which words they remembered. Each question had four choices. The subjects had to circle the word they had heard in the recording, Some of the questions had four choices that sound alike. For example, weather, whether, wither, and wetter are four words that sound alike. Some of the questions had four choices that have the same meaning. Method, way, manner, and system would be four words with the same meaning. Finally the subjects took a language proficiency test. Henning found that students with a lower proficiency in English made more of their mistakes on words that sound alike; students with a higher proficiency made more of their mistakes on words that have the same meaning. Henning's results suggest that beginning students hold the sound of words in their short-term memory, and advanced students hold the meaning of words in their short-term memory. Question: From Henning's result we can see that _ . - beginners have difficulty distinguishing the pronunciation of words - advanced students always remember words by their meaning - it is difficult to remember words that sound alike - it is difficult to remember words that have the same meaning
A: beginners have difficulty distinguishing the pronunciation of words

(Question)
Read the following article and select the best answer. Article: There's something rotten in Rio and the smell is coming from the huge stacks of rubbish pried up on sidewalks all over the city. Rio's street sweepers chose the carnival holiday to demand better salaries. Their wages start at roughly $400 a month. There could hardly be a better time for them to prove their importance. The streets were left a mess after hundreds of carnival parades and now, rubbish pries up in both poor and uptown neighbourhoods and in tourist areas like Ipanema or Copacabana beach. The president of Rio's rubbish collecting company has even appealed to the population to store rubbish at home whenever possible. He says 30% of the city's sweepers have gone on strike. Some of those who have been working have been threatened by the strike movement so now the police has been deployed alongside rubbish collectors to keep them sage as they go about their business. The strike has divided opinions in Rio. On social media, many support the sweepers' demands for better salaries. Others say they are opportunists and the situation is a big embarrassment to the city. But Brazil's culture of littering the streets doesn't help. A video that went viral online shows that even authorities have a problem with that. Rio's mayor, Eduardo Paes, is seen throwing what seemed to be the rest of an apple on the sidewalk--and now promised to impose himself a fine for his wrongdoing. His government recently created a programme to keep Rio's residents from littering the streets. Question: The reason why the police are involved is that _ - the police are called out to put down the riot - the police are required to protect some cleaners - the police are to collect rubbish for the time being - the police are sent to arrest people who litter around
(Answer)
the police are required to protect some cleaners