Model 18

1-التطورات الحضارية

1) With the population explosion that began during the1700s and continued through the 1800s, cities grew as rural people streamed into urban areas. This rapid growth was not due to larger families. In fact, families in most industrialized countries had fewer children. Instead, populations soared because the death rate fell and nutrition improved, thanks in part to improved methods of farming, food storage, and distribution. Medical advances and improvements in public sanitation also slowed death rates.
2) Since the 1600s, scientists had known of microscopic organisms, or microbes. Some scientists speculated that certain microbes might cause specific infectious diseases. Yet most doctors dismissed this germ theory. Not until 1870 did French chemist Louis Pasteur clearly show the link between microbes and disease. Pasteur went on to make other major contributions to medicine, including the development of vaccine. He also discovered a process called pasteurization that killed disease-carrying microbes in milk. Also, in the 1880s. the German doctor Robert Koch identified the bacterium that caused tuberculosis, a respiratory disease that claimed about 30 million human lives in the 1800s.
3) These successes brought about a soaring populations and changed the face of cities forever with some undergoing rapid development. Together with growing wealth and industrialization, this altered the basic layout of European cities. City planners created spacious new squares and boulevards. They lined these avenues with government buildings, offices, department stores and theatres. The most extensive urban renewal, or rebuilding of the poor areas of a city, took place in Paris in the 1850s. Georges Haussmann, chief planner for Napoleon III, destroyed many narrow medieval streets full of poor housing. In their place, he built wide boulevards and grand public buildings. The project put many people to work, decreasing the threat of social unrest. The wide boulevards also made it harder for rebels to put up barricades and easier for troops to reach any part of the city.
4) Further improvements followed, with paved streets making urban areas much more livable. First, as lamps, and then electric street lights illuminated the night, increasing safety.
5) Beneath the streets, sewage systems made cities much healthier placed to live. City planners knew that clean water supplies and better sanitation methods were needed to combat epidemics of cholera and tuberculosis. In Paris, sewer lines expanded from 139 kilometers in 1852 to more than 1200 kilometers by 1911. The massive new sewer systems of London and Paris were costly, but they cut death rates dramatically.
6) By 1900, architects were using steel to construct tall buildings. American architects like Louis Sullivan pioneered a new structure, the skyscraper. In large cities, single-family middle-class homes gave way to multistory apartment buildings.
7) Despite these efforts to improve cities, urban life remained harsh for the poor. Some working-class families could afford better clothing, newspapers or tickets to a music hall. But they went home to small row houses in overcrowded neighborhoods.
8) In the worst areas, whole families were often crammed into a single room. Unemployment or sickness meant lost wages that could ruin a family. High rates of crime were a constant curse. Conditions had improved somewhat from the early days of the Industrial Revolution, but slums remained a fact of city life.
9) Despite their drawbacks, cities attracted millions. New residents were drawn as much by the excitement as by the opportunity for work. For tourists too, cities were centers of action. Music halls, opera houses and theatres provided entertainment for every taste. Museums and libraries offered educational opportunities. Sports, from tennis to boxing drew citizens of all classes. Few of these enjoyments were available in country villages.

1. What nationality was Louis Sullivan?

2. When did population levels begin to increase very quickly?

3. What do microbes cause?

4. Who rebuilt parts of Paris in the 1800s?

2-الروايات والقصص القصيرة

1) Narratives are stories – something you hear and tell every day – Some are true: they’re a way to share the events of your latest experiences, and they’re a way to reveal the events in the world. These stories are nonfiction. But not all stories have to be true. When the stories are made up, they are called fiction, and they can take on a life of their own. You see, hear, and imagine fictional stories when you watch television sitcoms, read novels, or daydream about becoming a movie star. One kind of imaginative narration is the short story – a written piece of fiction that follows specific rules and has its own unique characteristics.
2) A short story is a brief fictional narrative that combines elements to create a world that attracts the reader’s attention and interest. An effective short story:
 uses details to create a setting of time and place in the reader’s mind.
 presents a main character who takes part in the action.
 introduces and develops a conflict, or a problem, to be resolved.
 suggests a theme or generalization about life.
3) Short stories, as well as other forms of fiction, may be categorized according to the types of setting or conflict they present. Here are a few examples of types of short stories:
 Mysteries – present a story with important missing information, which is revealed as the plot unfolds.
 Westerns – usually focus on a specific combination of character, setting, and time: cowboys in the western parts of the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century.
 Thrillers – create a high level of tension by introducing danger in the conflict they present.

5. What is the writer’s main purpose?

6. What is the main idea in Paragraph (2)?

3-الحيوانات

1) Humans are not the only species on Earth capable of building extraordinary structures. The natural world is in fact full of ingenious animals that can achieve just as impressive feats of engineering.
2) Building behavior is common in mammals, birds, insects and arachnids. Many animals learn to build by observation and even through communication. However, in some cases building is thought to be instinctive.
3) Animals will often construct their own habitats for shelter against potential predators and the outside elements. Many dwellings are also built for nesting purposes and to catch, store and even cultivate food.
4) Animal architecture can also be quite sophisticated; with many structures incorporating clever ventilation systems for temperature control, and even secure entry and exit points to keep unwanted visitors away.
5) Complex builds are often undertaken as a group, which helps speed up construction time. Take for example the humble ant. An army of ants can move up to 50 tons of soil per year in just 2.6 square kilometers. A single ant is capable of carrying up to 50 times its own weight, so working together as a colony means they’re able to accomplish impressive feats. In fact, within a week, a large army of garden ants can construct an underground city big enough to house thousands of insects.
6) Established deep underground, ant nests are made up of multiple chambers and connecting tunnels. Each chamber has a different use; some store food while others are used as nurseries for the young and resting spaces for busy worker ants and the deepest central chamber is where the queen ant lays her eggs.

7. What does Paragraph (1) say about the natural world?

8. Which of the following statements about building behavior does Paragraph (2) support?

9. What does Paragraph (3) reveal about animal constructions?

10. Which sentence gives the main idea of Paragraph (5)?

11. Which statement about animal architecture in Paragraph (5) is correct?

4-العمل الإيجابي

1) An affirmative action program is a plan designed to increase the number of minority employees at all levels within an organization. Employers with federal contracts of more than $50,000 per year must have written affirmative action plans. The objective of such programs is to ensure that minorities are represented within the organization in approximately the same proportion as in the surrounding community. If 25 percent of the electricians in a geographic area in which a company is located are African-Americans, then approximately 25 percent of the electricians it employs also should be African-Americans.
2) Unfortunately, affirmative action programs have been plagued by two problems. The first involves quotas. In the beginning, many firms pledged to recruit and hire a certain number of minority members by a specific date. To achieve this goal, they were forced to consider only minority applicants for job openings. However, the courts have ruled that such quotas are unconstitutional even though their purpose is commendable. They are, in fact a form of discrimination called reverse discrimination.
3) The second problem is that although most such programs have been reasonably successful, not all businesspeople are in favor of affirmative action programs. Managers not committed to these programs can «play the game» and still discriminate against workers. To help solve this problem, Congress created a government agency with the power to investigate complaints of employment discrimination and sue firms that practice it.
4) The threat of legal action has persuaded some corporations to amend their hiring and promotional policies, but the discrepancy between men’s and women’s salaries still exists. For more than 50 years, women have consistently earned only about 77 cents for each dollar earned by men.

12. What is one important idea that the writer mentions about quotas in Paragraph (2)?

13. What is one important idea the writer mentions about affirmative action programs in Paragraph (3)?

14. What is one important idea that the writer mentions about women in Paragraph (4)?

15. Why does the writer mention that affirmative action programs had two problems?

16. What is the main topic of the passage?

5-الزراعة

1) Between 1950 and 1970, a world-wide effort to combat hunger and malnutrition led to dramatic improvements in farming techniques and crop yields. This effort came to be called the green revolution because it greatly increased the world’s food supply. Green revolution technologies enabled many countries to end chronic food shortages and, in some cases, become exporters of surplus food.
2) At the heart of the green revolution was the use of high-yield varieties of seed and fertilizer. For thousands of years, farmers have added essential nutrients in the form of natural fertilizers such as animal manure. While some farmers today still use these traditional methods, many farmers use artificial fertilizers.
3) Fertilizers are labeled with three numbers that reflect the percentage by weight of three elements: nitrogen N), phosphorus P), and potassium K). A bag of garden fertilizer labeled «20-10-5» is 20 percent nitrogen, 10 percent phosphorus, and 5 percent potassium by weight.
4) Fertilizers and pesticides must be used with great care. Over fertilizing can kill crop plants by putting too high a concentration of salts into the soil. The intensive use of fertilizers can also affect the groundwater. When large amounts of nitrogen and phosphate-containing fertilizer are used near wetlands and streams, runoff from the fields may contaminate the water. Pesticides can also pose a health risk. Chemical pesticides are poisons, and they have the potential to harm wildlife and leave dangerous chemical residues in food.

17. Why does the writer use the word while in Paragraph (2)?

18. What does Paragraph (2) say about the green revolution?

19. How did some countries become exporters of food?

20. Why was the green revolution important?

21. How does over fertilization affect plants?

6-التشريح البشري

1) Medieval physicians relied on the works of the ancient physician Galen. Galen, however, had made many errors, in part because he had limited knowledge of human anatomy. During the Renaissance, physicians made new efforts to study the human body. In 1543, Andreas Vesalius published on the Structure of the Human Body, the first accurate and detailed study of human anatomy. Vesalius used whatever means he could to increase his knowledge of anatomy. He used friendships with people of influence to get invitations to autopsies. He also autopsied bodies that he himself obtained – counting on friends in the local government to look the other way.
2) In the early 1540s, French physician Ambroise Paré developed a new and more effective ointment for preventing infection. He also developed new surgical techniques, introduced the use of artificial limbs, and invented several scientific instruments. Then in the early 1600s, William Harvey, an English scholar, described the circulation of the blood for the first time. He showed how the heart serves as a pump to force blood through veins and arteries. Later in the century, the Dutch inventor Anton van Leeuwenhoek perfected the microscope and became the first human to see cells and microorganisms. These pioneering scientists opened the way for further discoveries.

22. What was the main reason Galen made mistakes in his writing?

23. How was Vesalius able to get dead bodies for his research?

24. What is one reason new discoveries were possible after the 1600s?

25. The word accurate in Paragraph 1) is closest in meaning to ……

26. The word introduced in Paragraph 2) is closest in meaning to ……

27. The word invented in Paragraph (2) is closest in meaning to …….

7-الشركات والمنظمات

1) Corporations are organizations that are created by following statutory guidelines enacted by the state. Once incorporated, these organizations, unlike a partnership, have separate legal existence. A corporation is sometimes referred to as an artificial person and even has some constitutional rights. Corporations can be formed for many different purposes. The two main types of corporations are business corporations and nonprofit corporations. Business corporations are formed for a business purpose-that is, to engage in a business for the purpose of making a profit that can be distributed to the owners of the corporation. A nonprofit corporation is formed to serve some public purpose-often charitable, religious: or educational. Although nonprofit corporations sometimes generate income, this income is not distributed to individual owners. It is used by the corporation for its stated purpose.
Business Corporations
1) A business corporation is a legal entity separate from its owners. Its legal existence does not depend on the life of its owners, and the corporation is liable for its own debts and pays its own taxes. A corporation is formed by complying with statutory requirements. Business corporations come in all sizes. Some may.
2) A business corporation is a legal entity separate from its owners. Its legal existence does not depend on the life of its owners, and the corporation is liable for its own debts and pays its own taxes. A corporation is formed by complying with statutory requirements. Business corporations come in all sizes. Some may have only one owner or shareholder; others have thousands. Regardless of the size, however, certain characteristics are the same. All corporations are formed by filing a document known as articles or certificates of incorporation with the secretary of state of some state. Usually this is the state in which the business is primarily operating, but it need not be. Articles or certificates of incorporation give the corporation its legal existence. This usually very simple document describes the name and general powers of the business. Businesses can incorporate in one state and do business as a corporation in other states. There may be documents they must file in these states to qualify to do business, but they need to incorporate in only one state. When a corporation does this, it is said to be qualified as a foreign corporation. A foreign corporation is one that does business within a state but is not incorporated within that state.
3) Corporations are governed by a set of rules or policies known as bylaws. Bylaws are the internal regulations for the corporation. They describe such things as the powers of the corporation and the duties and responsibilities of the directors and officers. Bylaws are kept at the corporate office; they are not filed with any government agency.
4) Three groups play an important role in all corporations: shareholders, directors, and officers. Shareholders are the owners of the business. They usually have invested money, property, or services in the business and in return they share in profits that the business makes. Profits are usually distributed to the shareholders in the form of dividends. When shareholders invest in the business they purchase a security. Even though shareholders are the owners of the business, unlike other forms of business, these owners do not directly manage and operate the business. Their power is usually limited to electing the directors, although they do have the right to approve certain types of business decisions made by the directors. Shareholders are usually required to meet at least once a year and hold a regular meeting. Minutes of these meetings are prepared.
5) Directors or the board of directors have general management power over the corporation. They are responsible for setting general business policies. Directors are sometimes also shareholders. This is especially true of corporations that have only a few shareholders. Like shareholders, the directors are required to hold a regular meeting at least once a year. They are also allowed to hold special meetings whenever necessary. Written minutes are always kept. Directors are not responsible for the day-to-day operation of the business; day-to-day management is the responsibility of the officers of the corporation. The officers are chosen by the directors.
6) Corporations have various officers. The traditional officers are president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer. Today the president and treasurer are usually referred to as the chief executive officer CEO) and the chief financial officer CFO), respectively. In smaller corporations, the officers of the corporation are also shareholders and directors.
7) Directors and officers of corporations owe legal duties to the corporations they represent. However, courts recognize that if directors and officers are constantly threatened with lawsuits whenever a business suffers a loss, business will be seriously hindered. In assessing whether directors or officers have breached their duties and are liable for corporate losses, the courts have adopted an «independent business judgment» rule. Under this rule a court will not second-guess the business judgment of directors or officers absent some extraordinary situations. The rule creates a presumption that the directors or officers have not violated their legal duties. This presumption, however can be overcome if a party can show that the director or officer did not act in good faith or that there is no rational explanation for the questionable action.

28. What are the two main types of corporations?

29. Which people must meet at least once a year?

8-تحلل المركبات

1) Decomposition of compounds into elements and the combination of elements to make compounds are examples of chemical processes. Using the atomic theory, such processes are seen as changes in the combinations of atoms. Such transformations are called chemical reactions. The term reaction means to produce a result. A chemical reaction is a process in which one set of chemicals is mixed and transformed into a new set of chemicals. When charcoal, which is mostly elemental carbon, burns in air, the process is envisioned as carbon atoms combining with diatomic oxygen molecules to produce molecules of carbon dioxide gas.
2) As mentioned above, the law of conservation of matter expresses that atoms are not created or destroyed in chemical processes. In other words, atoms are conserved in chemical reactions. A reaction is a special process in which certain chemical combinations of atoms transform into new combinations of atoms. In a reaction, the total atom count does not change. Thus, destroying matter by chemical reactions is not possible.
30. The word theory in paragraph (1) is closest in meaning to………

31. The word expresses in Paragraph (2) is closest in meaning to …….

9-مخاطر الطيران

1) There’s a lot more to trying to evaluate whether a particular risk is big or small than you might think. Flying in airplanes is a case in point.
2) You’d think that you could determine the numbers the odds and that would be it. The annual risk of being killed in a plane crash for the average American is about 1 in 11 million. On that basis, the risk looks pretty small. Compare that, for example, to the annual risk of being killed in a motor vehicle crash for the average American, which is about 1 in 5,000.
3) But if you think about those numbers, problems occur right away. Some people fly more and some fly less and some don’t fly at all. So if you take the total number of people killed in commercial plane crashes and divide that into the total population, the result, the risk for the average American, may be a good general guide to whether the risk is big or small, but it’s not specific to your personal risk.
4) Then there is another numbers problem: You can calculate the risk of flying by dividing
the number:
1. Of people who die into the total number of people, which gives you the risk for the average person;
2. Of victims into the number of total flights all passengers took, which gives the risk per flight; and some don’t fly at all. So if you take the total number of people killed in commercial plane crashes and divide that into the total population, the result, the risk for the average American, may be a good general guide to whether the risk is big or small, but it’s not specific to your personal risk.
4) Then there’s another numbers problem: You can calculate the risk of flying by dividing the number:
1. Of people who die into the total number of people, which gives you the risk for the average person;
2. Of victims into the number of total flights all passengers took, which gives the risk per flight;
3. Of victims into the total number of miles all of them flew, which gives you the risk per mile.
5) They all produce accurate numbers, but which one is most relevant to you depends on your personal flying patterns. Some fliers take lots of short flights and some take longer ones. Since the overwhelming majority of the few plane crashes that do occur take place in connection with takeoffs and landings, the risk is less a matter of how far you fly and more a matter of how often. If you are a frequent flier, then the risk per flight means more. For occasional long-distance fliers, the risk per mile means more. A frequent, long-distance flier would want to consider both.

32. What are two words the writer uses to mean «judge»?

33. What are two words that the writer uses to mean, «Find out»?

34. How is the writer’s view about plane crash risk different from the general belief?

35. According to the passage, which of the following is a fact about most plane crashes?

36. What can we understand from the passage about airplane crashes?

10-حاستا التذوّق والشم

1) Our sense of taste involves four basic sensations – sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. All other tastes are mixtures of these. Investigators have, however, been frustrated in their search for specialized nerve fibers for each of the four basic taste sensations.
2) Taste is a chemical sense. Inside the little bumps on the top and sides of your tongue are 200 or more taste buds. Each contains a pore that catches food chemicals. These molecules are sensed by 50 taste receptor cells that project antenna like hairs into the pore. Some of these receptors respond mostly to sweet-tasting molecules, others to salty, sour, or bitter – tasting ones.
3) Although taste buds are essential for taste, there is more to taste than meets the tongue. Hold your nose, close your eyes, and have someone feed you various foods. A piece of apple may then be indistinguishable from a piece of raw potato; a piece of steak may taste like cardboard. To savor a taste, we normally breathe the aroma through our nose-which is why eating is not much fun when you have a bad cold, and why people who lose their sense of smell may think they have also lost their sense of taste. Smell not only adds to our perception of taste, it also changes it. A drink’s strawberry odor enhances our perception of its sweetness. This is sensory interaction at work the principle that one sense may influence another. Smell plus taste equals flavor.

Passage B: Smell
1) Breaths come in pairs-inhale, exhale-except at two moments: birth and death. Each day, As you inhale and exhale nearly 20,000 breaths of life sustaining air, you bathe your nostrils in a stream of molecules full of scents.
2) Like taste, smell is a chemical sense. We smell something when air-carried molecules of a substance reach a tiny cluster of 5 million receptor cells at the top of each nasal cavity. These olfactory receptor cells respond selectively to the aroma of cake baking, to a wisp of smoke, to a friend’s fragrance, and they instantly alert the brain through their axon fibers.
3) Even nursing infants and mothers have a literal chemistry to their relationship, as they quickly learn to recognize each other’s scents. Aided by smell, a mother fur seal returning to a beach crowded with pups will find her own. Our own sense of smell is less impressive than the acuteness of our seeing and hearing. Looking out across a garden we see its forms and colors in exquisite detail and hear its singing birds, yet smell little of it without jamming our nose into the flowers.
4) Precisely how olfactory receptors work is a mystery. Unlike light, which can be separated into its spectral colors, an odor cannot be separated into more elemental odors. Thus, the olfaction system has no parallel to the retina, which detects myriad colors with sensory cells dedicated to red, green, or blue. Olfactory receptors recognize odors individually.

37. What can we understand from Passages A and B about both taste and smell?

38. What do the passages say about the receptor cells involved in taste and smell?

39. According to the passages, why are taste and smell important for us to enjoy food?