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Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions.

I am sure your sister will lend you a sympathetic _______when you explain the situation to her.

Read the following passage, and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions.

SHAYNE’S DREAMS COME TRUE - BUT WILL THEY BE SHATTERED?

It is a week before The X Factor live tour when I meet the winner of the series, Shayne Ward. “It has been mental,” he says, referring to the past six months of his life. “I've just been talking to Louis Walsh on the phone. Louis Walsh!” Walsh, a top record producer and The X Factor judge, now manages Shayne’s career. “I was talking to Simon Cowell (a celebrity record producer) yesterday!” He shakes his head in amazement. And these people are telling me they're excited about working with me. “I can't get my head round it.”

Shayne is about as natural as any pop star arriving in the public arena can be. “I just can’t accept where I am now” he says sincerely. “It doesn't feel real. To me, this is just a job.” “What do you think being famous feels like?” I ask him. “I'm not sure, to be honest. Different from this?” he laughs, with only a hint of nerves. Since winning The X Factor, Shayne's success has been phenomenal. His debut single took just three days to reach the number one spot. On tour, he's going to play to audiences of 10,000 on average. He has already brought the house down at a gig in his home city. “I walked out after that performance and just thought, “I’m dreaming!”” Shayne is one of a family of seven children. Times were hard, but he has never wished or a different childhood. Although he thought about going to college, he ended up leaving school at sixteen, just to help his mother pay the rent. He set out on his reality show journey shortly afterwards. When he told he friends he had an audition for The X Factor, none of them really believed him. “I thought I’d go fot it because my family wanted me to, but I never really believed that I would win.”

Naturally, Ward is a fan of reality TV talent shows. “They're brilliant, because people who want recording contracts try for years and get nowhere. Then these competitions come along the people at home decide whether they like the singers or not. So its not just a few people at a record company deciding who gets a chance.” But the previous winner of The X Factor only had one hit. He hasn't been heard of since then. Is Shayne Ward going to be another talent show flop?

A lot of people feel cynical about reality TV show winners and their chances of continuing success. Audiences usually lose interest in them as soon as the show has finished. In fact, contestants on shows like Big Brother are given severe warnings from the show’s producers beforehand, basically telling them “you will not be liked”. Talent shows like The X Factor have to offer contestants a kind of stardom though, and something they can think of as a career, months afterwards at least.

The word “flop” in the passage is closest in meaning to

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions

For centuries, time was measured by the position of the sun with the use of sundials. Noon was recognized when the sun was the highest in the sky, and cities would set their clock by this apparent solar time, even though some cities would often be on a slightly different time. Daylight Saving Time (DST), sometimes called summer time, was instituted to make better use of daylight. Thus, clocks are set forward one hour in the spring to move an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening and then set back one hour in the fall to return to normal daylight.

Benjamin Franklin first conceived the idea of daylight saving during his tenure as an American delegate in Paris in 1984 and wrote about it extensively in his essay, "An Economical Project." It is said that Franklin awoke early one morning and was surprised to see the sunlight at such an hour. Always the economist, Franklin believed the practice of moving the time could save on the use of candlelight, as candles were expensive at the time.

In England, builder William Willett (1857–1915) became a strong supporter for Daylight Saving Time upon noticing blinds of many houses were closed on an early sunny morning. Willet believed everyone, including himself, would appreciate longer hours of light in the evenings. In 1909, Sir Robert Pearce introduced a bill in the House of Commons to make it obligatory to adjust the clocks. A bill was drafted and introduced into Parliament several times but met with great opposition, mostly from farmers. Eventually, in 1925, it was decided that summer time should begin on the day following the third Saturday in April and close after the first Saturday in October.

The U.S. Congress passed the Standard Time Act of 1918 to establish standard time and preserve and set Daylight Saving Time across the continent. This act also devised five time zones throughout the United States: Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, and Alaska. The first time zone was set on "the mean astronomical time of the seventy-fifth degree of longitude west from Greenwich" (England). In 1919, this act was repealed.

President Roosevelt established year-round Daylight Saving Time (also called War Time) from 1942–1945. However, after this period, each state adopted its own DST, which proved to be disconcerting to television and radio broadcasting and transportation. In 1966, President Lyndon Johnson created the Department of Transportation and signed the Uniform Time Act. As a result, the Department of Transportation was given the responsibility for the time laws. During the oil embargo and energy crisis of the 1970s, President Richard Nixon extended DST through the Daylight Saving Time Energy Act of 1973 to conserve energy further. This law was modified in 1986, and Daylight Saving Time was reset to begin on the first Sunday in April (to spring ahead) and end on the last Sunday in October (to fall back).

The word “devised” in paragraph 4 is closest in meaning to

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions.

I didn’t see the red light at the crossroads. Otherwise, I _____ my car.

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word(s) or phrase(s) CLOSEST in meaning to the bold and underlined word(s) or phrase(s) in each of the following questions.

Many organizations have been involved in drawing up the report on environmental campaigns.

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions.

My cousin was nervous about being interviewed on television, but he ______ to the occasion wonderfully.

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions.

Despite their normal cylindrical form, some of the documents ______ on silk that were found at Mawangdui, an archaeological site in southeastern China, were folded into rectangles.