Questions 17—20 are based on the following talk about the language ability.
Is language a basic human need without which a child at a critical period of life can be starved and damaged Judging from the experiment of Frederick in the thirteenth century it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue, he told the nurses to keep silent. All the infants died before the first year.
Today no such drastic deprivation exists. Nevertheless, some children are still backward in speaking. Most often the reason is that the mother is insensitive to the signals of the infant. There are critical times when children learn more readily. If these sensitive periods are neglected, the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and they might never be learned so easily again.
Linguists suggest that speech milestone is reached in a fixed sequence and at a constant age. At twelve weeks a baby smiles and utters vowel-like sounds; at twelve months he can speak simple words and understand simple commands; at eighteen months he has a vocabulary of three to fifty words. At three he knows about 1,000 words which he can put into sentences, and at four his language differs from that of his parents in style rather than grammar.
Recent evidence suggests that an infant is born with the capacity to speak. What is special about man’s brain is the complex system which enables a child to connect the sight and feel. And even more incredible is the young brain’s to pick out an order in language from the hubbub of sound around him, to analyze, to combine and recombine the parts of a language in novels.
But speech has to be triggered, and this depends on interaction between the mother and child. Insensitivity of the mother dulls the interaction because the child gets discouraged and sends out only the obvious signals. Sensitivity to the child’s non-verbal cues is essential to the growth and development of language.

The world’s population keeps growing. There now are about 4 billion of us on earth. That could reach 6 billion by the end of the century and 11 billion in a further 75 years. Experts have long been concerned about such a growth. Where will we fund the food, water, jobs, houses, schools and health to care for all these people
A major new study shows that the situation may be changing. A large and rapid drop in the world’s birth rates has taken place during the past 10 years. Families generally are smaller now than they were a few years ago. It is happening in both developing and industrial nations.
Researchers said they found a number of reasons for this. More men and women are waiting longer to get married and are using birth control devices and methods to prevent or delay pregnancy. More women are going to school or working at jobs away from home instead of having children. And more governments, especially in developing nations, now support family planning programs to reduce population growth.
China is one of the nations that have achieved great progress in reducing its population growth. China has already cut its rate of population growth by about one half since 1970.
Each Chinese family is now urged to have no more than one child. And the hope is to reach a zero population growth with the total number of births equaling the total number of deaths by the year 2003.
Several nations in Europe already have fewer births than deaths. Experts said that these nations could face a serious shortage of workers in the future. And the persons who are working could face much higher taxes to help support the growing number of retired people.

Throughout history, people have been the victims of pickpockets. Today, pickpocketing is one of the most rapidly increasing crimes. Pickpockets are increasing in number and developing better methods to apply their skill. Approximately, one million Americans lose money to pickpockets every year, and no one is really safe from a skilled pickpocket. His victims, or "marks" as they are called, can be rich or poor, young or old.
During the 18th century, pickpockets were hanged in England. Large crowds of people would gather to watch the hanging which was supposed to be a warning to other pickpockets. However, in time the practice was continued. The reason: while people were concentratively watching the hanging of a pickpocket other pickpockets skillfully stole the money of the spectators!
Police officials say that most efficient pickpockets come from South America. Many of these expert pickpockets are trained in special schools called "Jingle Bell School". A pickpocket graduates from a J. B. S. when he is able to steal a wallet from a dressed dummy (mannequin) that has bells inside its pockets.
Even the most well-dressed, respectable person may be a pickpocket. Some of the favorite places of pickpockets are banks, airports, racetracks, supermarkets, elevators, and train and bus stations. Usually a pickpocket will work with another pickpocket as his partner. Another kind of pickpocket works outside or inside bars and specializes in stealing from persons who have had too much alcohol to drink. The pickpocket that specialized in stealing from women is called a "purse snatcher".
To avoid being the victim of a pickpocket, it is important to be very cautious and alert when in the midst of large gatherings of people.

It was long ago noticed that different plants open and close at different times of the day. In fact, in the nineteenth century they used to make gardens in the shape of a clock face, with different flowers opening at different times. It was possible to tell the time just by looking at this "flower clock". No one really understands why flowers open and close like this at particular times, but recently some interesting experiments have been done. Once, flowers were put in a laboratory in constant darkness. One might predict that these flowers, not having any information about the time of day, would not open as they usually do. But in fact they continue to open as if they were in a normal garden. This suggests that they have some mysterious way of keeping time; that they have, in other words, a kind of "biological clock".
It has recently been found that not just flowers, but all living things (including man)have "cycles of activity". Because these cycles last about twenty-four hours, they are called "circadian cycles" (circa = about, diem = day). Some scientists believe these cycles are controlled by an "internal clock". According to this theory, the flowers in the laboratory open because their "internal clock" tells them to do so.
There are other scientists, including the American Dr Brown, who believe that the biological clock is controlled by the environment. He studied the way oysters open and close their shells at high and low tide. He took some oysters from the sea to his laboratory a thousand miles away in Illinois. According to the "internal clock" theory one would expect the oysters to open and close as they had done before. But in fact their cycle changed. Brown and his colleagues could not understand this until they asked themselves the question: "If Illinois were on the sea, when would high and low tides take place" He found that the oysters were opening and closing at exactly these times. Brown concluded that the oysters’ cycle was controlled by changes in the atmosphere — changes that, in places where there is a sea, are associated with the tides.

Questions 17—20 are based on the following talk about the language ability.
Is language a basic human need without which a child at a critical period of life can be starved and damaged Judging from the experiment of Frederick in the thirteenth century it may be. Hoping to discover what language a child would speak if he heard no mother tongue, he told the nurses to keep silent. All the infants died before the first year.
Today no such drastic deprivation exists. Nevertheless, some children are still backward in speaking. Most often the reason is that the mother is insensitive to the signals of the infant. There are critical times when children learn more readily. If these sensitive periods are neglected, the ideal time for acquiring skills passes and they might never be learned so easily again.
Linguists suggest that speech milestone is reached in a fixed sequence and at a constant age. At twelve weeks a baby smiles and utters vowel-like sounds; at twelve months he can speak simple words and understand simple commands; at eighteen months he has a vocabulary of three to fifty words. At three he knows about 1,000 words which he can put into sentences, and at four his language differs from that of his parents in style rather than grammar.
Recent evidence suggests that an infant is born with the capacity to speak. What is special about man’s brain is the complex system which enables a child to connect the sight and feel. And even more incredible is the young brain’s to pick out an order in language from the hubbub of sound around him, to analyze, to combine and recombine the parts of a language in novels.
But speech has to be triggered, and this depends on interaction between the mother and child. Insensitivity of the mother dulls the interaction because the child gets discouraged and sends out only the obvious signals. Sensitivity to the child’s non-verbal cues is essential to the growth and development of language.

Questions 14—16 are based on the following talk about the bank credit card.
The system of bank credit cards operates in much the same way as a store credit account except that the holder is not restricted to making purchases in one place.
Cards can be presented at any place where the bank card sign is displayed, and that could be at a shop, a service station, a hotel, a restaurant or in fact at all kinds of businesses.
The sales assistant imprints the card details on to a sales voucher which the customer signs, and the card is then returned to the customer. Each month the bank sends the holder a credit card statement setting out where purchases were made and totaling what is owing. A payment has to be made within 25 days of the date of the statement, but not necessarily the full amount. If the customer pays in full within this time the use of the card does not cost anything. But if he decides to pay only the minimum repayment shown on the statement — $5 or 5% of the outstanding balance, whichever is the greater — he automatically chooses to use the system’s extended repayment facility. The remaining balance is then carried forward and attracts interest at the rate of 2.25% per month.
Bank credit cards are more versatile than store credit accounts in that they also enable people to obtain cash. Any bank displaying the bank card sign will arrange a cash advance for a card holder, whether or not he is one of their own customers. For money drawn in this way the bank makes a charge at the rate of 2.25% a month, calculated daily from the day the advance is obtained. Details of cash advances appear on the monthly bank card statement.
The bank credit card system operates entirely separately from cheque accounts, but nevertheless it is a customer’s previous relationship with his bank that is used as a guide to the amount of credit he will be extended. When a card is issued a personal credit limit is imposed indicating the maximum that can be owing at any one time. This is confidential between customer and bank and does not appear on the card.

The world’s population keeps growing. There now are about 4 billion of us on earth. That could reach 6 billion by the end of the century and 11 billion in a further 75 years. Experts have long been concerned about such a growth. Where will we fund the food, water, jobs, houses, schools and health to care for all these people
A major new study shows that the situation may be changing. A large and rapid drop in the world’s birth rates has taken place during the past 10 years. Families generally are smaller now than they were a few years ago. It is happening in both developing and industrial nations.
Researchers said they found a number of reasons for this. More men and women are waiting longer to get married and are using birth control devices and methods to prevent or delay pregnancy. More women are going to school or working at jobs away from home instead of having children. And more governments, especially in developing nations, now support family planning programs to reduce population growth.
China is one of the nations that have achieved great progress in reducing its population growth. China has already cut its rate of population growth by about one half since 1970.
Each Chinese family is now urged to have no more than one child. And the hope is to reach a zero population growth with the total number of births equaling the total number of deaths by the year 2003.
Several nations in Europe already have fewer births than deaths. Experts said that these nations could face a serious shortage of workers in the future. And the persons who are working could face much higher taxes to help support the growing number of retired people.