Passage 1 

   Some scientists are busy 21 genes of animals and plants to create new varieties that are 22 to insects and to herbicides. A new, golden-colored rice, high in Vitamin A is also a product of genetic alteration. 23 these “biotech” varieties seem to offer clear advantages, critics continue to reveal the risks of genetic alteration of foods. 

   The amount of time young children in the UK spend with screens like TVs, computers, smartphones and tablets has been the subject of 24 . 

   The UK’s culture secretary Matt Hancock condemns children’s unlimited and unsupervised access to smartphones. He urges teachers to ban them in schools, and calls for parents to set boundaries for their children on the use of them. 

   However, according to Andy Przybylski, associate professor at the University of Oxford, there is no substantial evidence to 25 the idea that screen time is inherently bad for young children.

   With the increase of overseas students 26 campus, it is important for universities to be 27 of the major issues these students face. Many of these overseas students 28 with language barriers, cultural barriers and life barriers. Hence, the Student Union, the counseling department and the college orientation department will be organizing an orientation to 29 educate these students. All of the overseas students will be 30 to attend.

    Men and women often have different ideas of what’s important—and at what point “important” topics should be raised. A woman told me, with lingering astonishment, of a conversation with her boyfriend. Knowing he had seen his friend Oliver, she asked, “What’s new with Oliver?” He replied, “Nothing.” 31 , later in the conversation it came out that Oliver and his girlfriend had decided to get married. “That’s nothing?” the woman gasped in 32 . For men, “Nothing” may be a ritual 33 at the start of a conversation. A college woman missed her brother but rarely called him because she found it difficult to get talk going. A 34 conversation began with her asking, “What’s up with you?” and his replying, “Nothing.” Hearing his “Nothing” as meaning “There is nothing personal I want to talk about,” she supplied talk by filling him in on her news and 35 hung up in frustration. But when she thought back, she remembered that later in the conversation he had mumbled, “Christie and I got into another fight.” This came so late and so low that she didn’t pick up on it. And he was probably equally frustrated that she didn’t.

Passage 1 

   Sports are ubiquitous. Sky TV has at least thirteen sports channels. Throughout the world there is a proliferation of newspapers and magazines totally dedicated to sports. Sports personalities have become cultural icons, worshipped like movie stars and sought after by sponsors and advertisers alike. Where sports were once for fun and amateurs, they are now the stuff of serious investment. 

  Of course, sports have always mattered. But the point is that in the past sports knew their place.  Now they invade areas of life where previously they had no presence: fashion, showbiz, business. They are a worldwide obsession. 

   We seriously believe that sports are something we can still do, however badly or however well. Tens of thousands set off on the London and New York Marathons. Amateur soccer matches take place all over the world every weekend. Playing a sport is a democratic activity.

Athens, Greece 

   Athens is a very unusual city. About 14 million people live there. Tourists love Athens because it has many beautiful, old monuments, and the food is great. At night, the seafood restaurants are very popular. Food in Athens is very reasonable for tourists. It doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg. Traffic is a problem in the city, because there are too many cars for the old streets. There are also subways, trains, and buses. The weather is very good in summer. But in winter, it can get very cold.

 Vancouver, Canada 

   Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It’s near the mountains and the pacific ocean. There are many great parks where visitors can walk, ride a bicycle, or just relax. The city has good public transportation, with buses and fast trams that go everywhere. There are about 610,000 people in Vancouver, but it’s a very clean city, and there’s not much pollution. Two bad points—prices there are very high, and the weather is not very good. Vancouver is famous for rain! However, there are many good museums for those rainy days, and in the evening, the city has great restaurants and nightclubs to visit.

   Tainan is the site of the main Dutch colony on the island. It became the country’s first capital until 1887 when the capital made a brief appearance in Taichung before settling in Taipei. In the early years, settlements developed on a harbor that is now Anping. The Japanese did a lot of urban planning and restructuring of the city in the early part of the 20th century. Tainan is known for its history, temples, traditional lifestyles and traditional snack food. It really is a culture-rich and traditional city, and rarely a week goes by without some special religious celebration or parade. Tainan has a population of about three-quarters of a million people, making it the fourth largest city in Taiwan. The public transportation in the city is lacking, and most people ride scooters to get around. There is a bus system, but it is under-used and infrequent. 

   For centuries, researchers have been investigating how the human brain produces and comprehends human languages. According to ancient Greeks, injuries to the head could affect language use, which refers to the term aphasia, meaning language problems associated with a head injury. The best way to examine language in the brain was by checking injuries to the head or brain and pinpointing their location and then examining the type of language impairment, through a postmortem examination of a patient’s brain. Much of the brain damage in senior people was the result of strokes, whereas in younger people the damage was often caused by a trauma. Among victims, as many people know, a stroke in the right side of the brain affects the left side of the body and vice versa. Through studying brain injuries, human language is much more present in the left hemisphere than in the right. Interestingly, bilingual patients with head injuries show that sometimes one language is affected while the other is not, which illustrates how brain stores language.

   Paul Broca, a French surgeon, discovered that speech production was hampered by injuries to the left frontal cortex. Patients with injuries to the left frontal cortex can frequently comprehend language well but are unable to produce much speech. This area of the brain has been called Broca’s area. People suffering from speech loss due to injury there have Broca’s aphasia.

   The opposite type of injury also occurs, in which a patient can produce words that sound normal but is difficult to comprehend speech. Usually the words are mixed together, which really makes no sense. This region of brain becomes known as Wernicke’s area, named after Karl Wernicke, a German doctor who found the correlation between comprehension difficulties and this area of the brain in the 1870s.

   Obviously, language production and comprehension are correlated with each other. There is a bundle of nerves called the arcuate fasciculus that connects Broca’s area to Wernicke’s area. When the arcuate fasciculus is injured, the resulting aphasia is called conductive aphasia. Patients with the injury usually have good comprehension of language and can speak well. But their speech is mixed with unnatural stops and pauses.