A. AGGRAVATED B. TEASED C. PERSECUTED D. PLAGUED PART 2. READ...

10. A. aggravated

B. teased

C. persecuted

D. plagued

Part 2. Read the text and use only ONE word to fill in each gap. (0.5 point)

In the modern world, there is a wealth of leisure activities to choose from. Entertainment

industries (1) ______ for your leisure time. You can watch TV, listen to music, go to an art gallery

or concert or, of course, read a book. Sometimes it seems that reading is neglected because, even if

you are a fast reader, it can take a considerable (2) ______ of time to finish a novel, for example.

But in the modern world, time is something that can be in (3) ______ supply. Book publishers have

not been slow to (4) ______ this and are now selling a product which needn't take up as much of

your time but still tells you an excellent story. The new product is the audio book- cassette

recording (5) ______ shortened novels often read by well-known personalities or the author

themselves. Audiobooks are relatively new, but people are becoming more (6) ______ of them and

sales are increasing all the time. One of the attractions of audiobooks is that they are (7) ______

listening to the radio, only better. You can listen to what you want, when you want, and you won't

ever (8) ______ anything. Much of their appeals lies in their flexibility. They allow you to do other

things (9) ______ you are listening, such as driving or doing the housework. For some people

audiobooks can be a much more enjoyable (10) ______ of gaining knowledge than reading.

Part 3. 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. (1. 0 point)

GENETICS

In the 1860s, an Austrian botanist and monk named Gregor Mendel began studying the

characteristics of pea plants. Specifically, he was interested in the way in which pea plants passed

on their characteristics to their offspring. Mendel chose to work with pea plants because they are

not self-pollinating. Unlike some plants, pea plants are distinctly male or female, and require the

presence of a pea plant of the opposite sex for pollination. In this way, they are roughly analogous

to humans and all other mammals, and it is for this reason that Mendel chose to study them.

In his experiments, Mendel selected seven distinct traits in pea plants: such as plants

producing round seeds versus those producing wrinkled seeds, or tall plants versus short plants.

Mendel then spent years breeding plants with different combinations of traits and observing the

results. What he concluded was that each trait is controlled by a gene which is passed down by

parents. For example, there is gene for pea plants with round seeds and one for plants with wrinkled

seeds. Mendel also concluded that a new pea plant must inherit a full set of genes from each of its

parents. In cases, where a plant inherited the gene for round seeds from one parent and the gene for

wrinkled seeds from

the other, the new plants would have round seeds. This led Mendel to

conclude that some genes are dominant, and others are recessive. Characteristics which are

controlled by recessive genes, like wrinkle seeds in pea plants, only surface if an organism inherits

the recessive gene from both of its parents.

Although it was greatly expanded upon in the 20

^th

century, Mendel’s basis theory has stood

up to more than one hundred years of scientific

scrutiny, and a whole field of scientific study,

genetics, has arisen around it. It is now known that Mendel’s genes are actually long strands of a

complex. Molecule called DNA. Each gene carries instructions for the production of a certain

protein, and it is these proteins which determine the traits of an organism. We also know that genes

are transmitted in structures called chromosomes, long chains of genes. Humans have 46

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chromosomes, receiving 23 from their mother and 23 from their father. Actually, each set of 23 is

basically a complete genetic package, but since some genes are dominant and some are recessive,

the redundancy evens out.

Mendel’s observations led him to a simple and elegant theory heredity, but while the basis

of his theory will stand, reality has not proven to be quite as simple as theory. Any living organism

has thousands of genes. For example, fruit flies have about 13,000 sets of genes, and humans have

somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 adding to the complexity implied by the sheer numbers of

genes is the fact that many traits are polygenic; that is, they are controlled by a combination of tens

or even hundreds of genes, rather than by a single gene as Mendel had

envisioned. So, while his

experiments produced black and white results (a pea plant had either round or wrinkled seeds), the

interactions of genes in determining traits are often not so straightforward, and there may be

hundreds or thousands of possible outcomes.

Genetics has had a huge impact on the first years of the 21

^st

century. While earlier scientists

were largely limited to investigating the genes of organisms and classifying which genes controlled

which traits, recent advances in chemistry and molecular biology have actually allowed scientists to

begin to alter those genes. The implications of this development are nearly infinite. While still in its

infancy, this new science, called genetic engineering, has allowed scientists to change organisms in

fundamental ways. Scientists can now deactivate harmful genes, promote the function of useful

genes, or introduce foreign genes into an organism to produce an entirely new trait.