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 from 35 to 42.
Public holidays in the United Kingdom, commonly referred to as bank holidays, are days where most businesses and non – essential services are closed although an increasing number of retail businesses (especially the larger ones) do open on some of the public holidays. There are restrictions on trading on Sundays and Christmas Day. Four public holidays are common to all countries of the United Kingdom. These are: New Year's Day, the first Monday in May, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. Some banks open on some bank holidays. In Scotland, while New Year's Day and Christmas Day are national holidays, other bank holidays are not necessarily public holidays, since the Scots instead observe traditional local customs and practice for their public holidays. In Northern Ireland, once again, bank holidays other than New Year's Day and Christmas Day are not necessarily public holidays. Good Friday and Christmas Day are common law holidays, except in Scotland, where they are bank holidays. In Scotland the holiday on 1 January (or 2 January if 1 January is Sunday) is statutory, and 25 December is also a statutory holiday (or 26 December if Christmas Day falls on a Sunday). Boxing Day is a holiday traditionally celebrated the day following Christmas Day, when servants and tradesmen would receive gifts, known as a "Christmas box", from their bosses or employers. Today, Boxing Day is the bank holiday that generally takes place on 26 December. And 28 December only is given if Boxing Day is Saturday.
Like Denmark, the United Kingdom has no national day holiday marked or celebrated for its formal founding date. Increasingly, there are calls for public holidays on the patron saints' days in England, Scotland and Wales. An online petition sent to the Prime Minister received 11,000 signatures for a public holiday in Wales on St. David's Day; the Scottish Parliament has passed a bill creating a public holiday on St. Andrew's Day although it must be taken in place of another public holiday; campaigners in England are calling for a bank holiday on St. George's Day; and in Cornwall, there are calls for a public holiday on St. Piran's Day.
The word “calls” in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to ______.




A.requests
B.yells
C.protests
D.approvals

Các câu hỏi liên quan

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.
In seventeenth-century colonial North America, all day-to-day cooking was done in the fireplace. By and large, fireplaces were planned for cooking as well as for warmth. Those in the Northeast were usually four or five feet high, and in the South, they were often high enough for a person to walk into. A heavy timber called the mantel tree was used as a lintel to support the stonework above the fireplace opening. This timber might be scorched occasionally, but it was far enough in front of the rising column of heat to be safe from catching fire.
Two ledges were built across from each other on the inside of the chimney. On these rested the ends of a "lug pole" from which pots were suspended when cooking. Wood from a freshly cut tree was used for the lug pole, so it would resist heat, but it had to be replaced frequently because it dried out and charred, and was thus weakened. Sometimes the pole broke and the dinner fell into the fire. When iron became easier to obtain, it was used instead of wood for lug poles, and later fireplaces had pivoting metal rods to hang pots from.
Beside the fireplace and built as part of it was the oven. It was made like a small, secondary fireplace with a flue leading into the main chimney to draw out smoke. Sometimes the door of the oven faced the room, but most ovens were built with the opening facing into the fireplace. On baking days (usually once or twice a week) a roaring fire of "oven wood," consisting of brown maple sticks, was maintained in the oven until its walls were extremely hot. The embers were later removed, bread dough was put into the oven, and the oven was sealed shut until the bread was fully baked.
Not all baking was done in a big oven, however. Also used was an iron "bake kettle," which looked like a stewpot on legs and which had an iron lid. This is said to have worked well when it was placed in the fireplace, surrounded by glowing wood embers, with more embers piled on its lid.
The word "scorched" in the first paragraph is closest in meaning to ______.




A.cut
B.bent
C.enlarged
D.burned

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 from 20 to 27.
HOW WILL LIFE IN 2050 BE LIKE?
What picture do you have of the future? Will life in the future be better, worse or the same as now? What do you hope about the future?
Futurologists predict that life will probably be very different in 2050 in all the fields of activity, from entertainment to technology. First of all, it seems that TV channels will have disappeared by 2050. Instead, people will choose a program from a ‘menu’ and a computer will send the program directly to the television. Today, we can use the World Wide Web to read newspaper stories and see pictures on a computer thousands of kilometers away. By 2050, music, films, programs, newspapers and books will come to us by computer.
In what concerns the environment, water will have become one of our most serious problems. In many places, agriculture is changing and farmers are growing fruit and vegetables to export. This uses a lot of water. Demand for water will increase ten times between now and 2050 and there could be serious shortages. Some futurologists predict that water could be the cause of war if we don't act now.
In transport, cars will run on new, clean fuels and they will go very fast. Cars will have computers to control the speed of the cars and there won't be any accidents. Today, many cars have computers that tell drivers exactly where they are. By 2050, the computer will control the car and drive it to your destination. On the other hand, space planes will take people halfway around the world in two hours. Nowadays, the United States Shuttle can go into space and land on Earth again. By 2050, space planes will fly all over the world and people will fly from Los Angeles to Tokyo in just two hours.
In the domain of technology, robots will have replaced people in factories. Many factories already use robots. Big companies prefer robots - they do not ask for pay rises or go on strike, and they work 24 hours a day. By 2050, we will see robots everywhere - in factories, schools, offices, hospitals, shops and homes.
Last but not least, medicine technology will have conquered many diseases. Today, there are electronic devices that connect directly to the brain to help people hear. By 2050, we will be able to help blind and deaf people see again and hear again. Scientists have discovered how to control genes. They have already produced clones of animals. By 2050, scientists will be able to produce clones of people and decide how they look, how they behave and how much intelligence they have.
(Source: Cambridge English for Schools by Andrew Littlejohn, Diana Hicks)
The passage mainly discusses ________ .




A.the effect of the futurologists' prediction on our lives
B.the changes in our future life compared with our life today
C.the importance of cloning in the future
D.effect of telecommunication and technology on our future life