SECTION 1: LISTENING COMPREHENSION
Time: Approximately 35 minutes (50 Questions)
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Audio Track #6
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Audio Track #7
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Audio Track #10
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Audio Track #11
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Proceed to Section 2: Structure
SECTION 3: READING COMPREHENSION
Time: 55 minutes (50 Questions)
Reading Passage:
SECTION 3
READING COMPREHENSION
Time:55 minutes
50 Questions
Lines Question 1 through 10 are based on the following passage
Niagara Falls, on of the most famous North American natural wonders, has long been a popular tourist destination. Tourists today flock to see the two falls that actually constitute Niagara falls: the 173-foot-high Horseshoe Falls on the canadian side of the Niagara river in the canadian province of ontario and the 182-foot-high American Falls on the U.S. side of the river in the state of New York. Approximately 85 percent of the water that goes over the falls actually goes over Horseshoe Falls, with the rest going over American Falls.
Most visitors come between April an October, and it is quite popular activity to take a streamer out onto river and right up to the base of the falls for the close up view. It is also possible to get a spectacular view of the falls from the strategic locations along the Niagara river, such as prospect point of table rock, or from one of the four observation towers which have heights up to 500 feet.
Tourists have been visiting Niagara Falls in large numbers since the 1800s; annual visittation now averages above 10 million visitors per year. Because of concern that all these tourists would inadvertently destroy the natural beauty of this scenic wonder, the state of New York in 1885 created Niagara Falls Park in order to protect the land surrounding American Falls. A year later Canada created Queen Victoria park on the Canadian side of the Niagara, around Horseshoes Falls. With the area surrounding the falls under the jurisdiction of goverment agencies, appropriate steps could be taken to preserve the pristine beauty of the area.
Reading Passage:
Lines Question 11 through 19 are based on the following passage
What is commonly called pepper in reality comes from two very different families of plants. Black and white pepper both come from the fruit of the Piper nigrum, a vine with fruits called peppercorns. The peppercorns turn from green to red as they ripen and finally blacken as they dry out. The dried-out peppercorns are ground to obtain black pepper. White pepper; which has a more subtle flavor than black pepper, comes from the same peppercorns as black pepper; to obtain white pepper, the outher hull of the peppercorns, the pericarp, is removed before the peppercorns is ground.
Red and green peppers, on the other hand, come from completely different family from black and white pepper. Red and green pepper are from the genus Capsicum. Plant of this type generaly have tiny white flowers and fruite which can be any one of a numbers of colors, shape and sizes. These peppers range in flavor from very mild and sweet to the ost incredibly burning taste imaginable.
Bell peppers are the most mild, while habaneros are the most burning.
Cristopher Columbus is responsible for the present-day confusion over what a pepper is. The Piper nigrum variety of pepper was highly valued for centuries, and high demand for pepper by Europeans was a major cause of the fisteenth-century push to locateocena routes to spice-growing regions of Asia. When Columbus arrived in the New World in 1492, he was particulary interested in finding black peppers because of the high price that it would command in Europe, Columbus came accross plants from the Capsicum family in use among the people of the New World, and he incorrectly identified them as relatives of black pepper. Columbus introduced the spicy Capsicum chili peppers to Europeans on his return from the 1492 voyage and traders later spread them to Asia and Africa. These capsicum peppers have continued to be called peppers in spite of the fact that they are not related to the black and white pepper of the Piper nigrum family.
Reading Passage:
Lines Question 20 through 31 are based on the following passage
Just two month after the flight of Apollo 10, the Apollo 11 astronauts made their historic landing on the surface of the moon. This momentous trip for humanity also provided scientists with an abundance of material for study; from rock and soil samples brought back from the moon. Scientist have been able to determine much about hte composition of the moon as well as to draw inferences about the development of the moon from its composition.
The moon soil that came back from apollo 11 contains small bits of rock and glass which were probalby grounds from larger rocks when meteors impacted with the surface of the moon. The bits of glass are spherical in shape and constitute approximately half of the moon soil. Scientists found no trace of animal or plant life in this soil.
In addition to the Moon soil, astronauts gathered two basic types of rocks from the surface of the Moon. Basalt and Breccia. Basalt is acooled and hardened vocanic lava common to the Earth. Since Basalt is formed under extremely high temperatures, the presence of this type of Rock is an indication that the temperature of the Moon was once Extremely hot. Breccia, the other kind of rock brought back by the astronauts, was formed during the impac of falling objects on the surface of the Moon. This secong type of rock consists of small pieces of rock compressed together by the force of impact. Gases such as hydrogen ang helium were found in some of rocks, and scientists believe that these gases were carried to the Moon by the solar wind, the streams of gases that are constantly emitted by the Sun.
Reading Passage:
Questions 32 through 40 are based on the following passage.
Today the most universally known style of trousers for both men an women is jeans; these trouser are worn throughout the world on a variety of occasions and in diverse situations. Also called levis or denims, jeans have an interesting history, on that is intermixed with the derivations of the words jeans, denim, and levis.
The word jeans is derived from the name of the place where a similar style of pants developed. In the sixteen century, sailor from Genoa, Italy, wore a rather unique type of cotton trousers. In the french language, the word for the city of Genoa and for the people from that city is genes; this name became attached to the specific style of pants worn by sailors from this city and developed into the words jeans that today describes the descendents of the Genovese sailor's cotton pants.
Similar to the word jeans, the word denim is also derived from a place name. In the seventeenth century, french tailors begin making trousers out of a specialized type of cloth that was developed in the city of Nimes, France, and was known as serge de Nimes. This name for the cloth underwent some transformations, and it eventually developed in today's denim, the material from which jeans are made and alternate name name of these populer pants.
The word levis came from the name of a person rather than a place. In the nineteenth century, imigrant Levi Strauss came to America and tried his hand at selling heavy canvas to miners taking part in the hunt for gold in northen California. Strauss intended for this canvas to be used by miners to make heavy-duty tents. This first endeavor was a failure, but Strauss later found success when he used the heavy canvas to make indestructible pants for the miners. Levi then switched the fabric from brown canvas to blue denim, creating a style of pants that long outlived him and today is referred to by his name. A modern-day urban shopper out to buy some levis is seraching for a close relative of the product that Strauss had developed years earlier.
Reading Passage:
Lines Questions 41 through 50 are based on the following passage.
During the heyday of the railroads, when america's rail system provided the bulk of the country's passanger and freight transportation, various types of railroad cars were in service to accomplish the varied tasks handled by the railroads. One type of car that was not available for public use prior to the civil war, however, was a slepping car; ideas for sleeping car abounded at the time, but these idea were unworkable. It unfortunatelly took the death of a president to make the sleeping car a viable reality.
Cabinet maker George M. Pullman had recognized the demand for sleeping cars and had worked on developing experimental models of sleeping cars in the decade leading up to the Civil War. However, inspite of the fact that he had made succesfull test run on the Chicago and Alton Railroads with his models, he was unable to sell his idea because his models were too wide and to high for Existing train stations and bridges. In 1863, after spending time working as a storekeeper in a Colorado mining town, he invested his savings of twenty thousand dollars, a huge fortune at that time and all the money that he had in the world, in a luxurious sleeping car that he named the Pioneer. Pullman and friend Ben Field bilt the Pioneer on the site of the present-day Chicago Union Station for two years, however, the Pioneer sat on a railroad siding, useless because it could not fit through train station and over bridges.
Following President Lincoln's assassination in 1865, the states of Illionis, Lincoln's birthplace, wanted to transport the presidential casket in the finest fashion possible. The Pullman Pioneer was the most elegant car around; in order to make the Pulman part of the presidential funeral trin in its run from Springfield to Chicago, the stated cut down station platforms and raised bridges in order to accomodate the luxurious railway car. The Pullman car greatly impressed the funeral party, which included Lincoln's successor as president, general Ulysses S. Grant, and Grant later requested the central railroads followed. George Pullman founded the Pullman Palace car Company in partnership with financier Andrew Carnegie and eventually became a millionaire.
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