AT THE MOMENT THERE IS NO ______ OF THE PRIME MINISTER RESIGNING....

10. At the moment there is no ______ of the Prime Minister resigning.

PART C: READING.

I. Read the text below and think of the word which best fits each space. Use only ONE word in each

space.

Trees for life

Trees are amongst the biggest and longest-living things on Earth, some dating back longer than

the oldest buildings. But as well as being nice to look at, trees also (1)______ an important role in

improving the quality of our lives.

On a world-wide scale, forests help to slow down the (2)______ of global warming by using up

the gas known as carbon dioxide and giving (3)_______ the oxygen we need to breathe. At local

neighborhood level, trees also (4)_____ important environmental benefits. They offer shade and

shelter, which in turn reduces the (5)______ of energy needed to heat and cool nearby buildings, at the

same time, they also remove other impurities from the air we breathe.

Urban trees are especially important because for many people they provide the only daily

contact with the natural world. What’s (6)_____, urban trees also provide a home for birds, small

animals and butterflies. (7)_______ the trees, we would lose the pleasure of seeing these creatures in

our cities. Regrettably, (8)_____, trees in cities are now coming under (9)______. There is a limit to

the level of pollution they can put up with and down at the street level, their roots are (10)_______

seriously disturbed by the digging needed to make way for modern telephone, television and other

cables.

II. Choose A, B, C, or D to complete the following passage.

AS OLD AS YOU FEEL

It might after all be true that you are only as old as you feel. A British clinic is carrying out new

high-tech tests to calculate the “real” biological age of patients (1) ______ on the rate of physical

deterioration.

Information on every (2)______ of a patient’s health, fitness, lifestyle and family medical

history is (3)______ into a computer to work out whether they are older or younger than their calendar

age suggests.

The availability and increasing accuracy of the tests has (4) ______ one leading British

gerontologist to call for biological age to be used to determine when workers should retire. He

(5)______ that if an employee’s biological or “real” age is shown, for example, to be 55 when he

reaches his 65

^th

birthday, he should be (6) ______ to work for another decade. Apparently most

employers only take into (7)______ a person’s calendar years, and the two may differ considerably.

Some of those prepared to pay a substantial sum of money for the examinations will be able to

smugly walk away with medical (8) ______ showing that they really are as young as they feel, giving

them the confidence to act and dress as if they were younger. Dr Lynette Yong, resident doctor at the

clinic where the tests are offered claims that the purpose of these tests will be to motivate people to

(9)_______ their health.

The concept of “real” age is set to become big (10) ______ in the USA with books and

websites helping people work out whether their body is older or younger than their years. Others

firmly believe that looks will always be the best indicator of age.