Directions: Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow

Google

You know that you're doing something big when your company name becomes a verb. Ask Xerox. In
1959 they created the first plain paper copy machine. It was one of the most successful products ever.
The company name Xerox grew into a verb that means "to copy," as in "Bob, can you Xerox this for me?"
Around 50 years later, the same thing happened to Google. Their company name grew into a verb that
means "to do an internet search." Now everyone and their grandma knows what it means to Google it.

Unlike Xerox, Google wasn't the first company to invent their product, not by a long shot. Lycos released
their search engine in 1993. Yahoo! came out in 1994. AltaVista began serving results in 1995. Google
did not come out until years later, in 1998. Though a few years difference may not seem like much, this
is a major head start in the fast moving world of tech. So how did Google do it? How did they overtake
their competitors who had such huge leads in time and money? Maybe one good idea made all the
difference.

There are millions and millions of sites on the internet. How does a search engine know which ones are
relevant to your search? This is a question that great minds have been working on for decades. To
understand how Google changed the game, you need to know how search engines worked in 1998. Back
then most websites looked at the words in your query. They counted how many times those words
appeared on each page. Then they might return pages where the words in your query appeared the
most. This system did not work well and people often had to click through pages and pages of results to
find what they wanted.

Google was the first search engine that began considering links. Links are those blue underlined words
that take you to other pages when you click on them. Larry Page, cofounder of Google, believed that
meaningful data could be drawn from how those links connect. Page figured that websites with many
links pointing at them were more important than those that had few. He was right. Google's search
results were much better than their rivals. They would soon become the world's most used search
engine.

It wasn't just the great search results that led to Google becoming so well liked. It also had to do with
the way that they presented their product. Most of the other search engines were cluttered. Their home
pages were filled with everything from news stories to stock quotes. But Google's homepage was, and
still is, clean. There's nothing on it but the logo, the search box, and a few links. It almost appears empty.
In fact, when they were first testing it, users would wait at the home page and not do anything. When
asked why, they said that they were, "waiting for the rest of the page to load." People couldn't imagine
such a clean and open page as being complete. But the fresh design grew on people once they got used
to it.

These days Google has its hands in everything from self-driving cars to helping humans live longer.
Though they have many other popular products, they will always be best known for their search engine.
The Google search engine has changed our lives and our language. Not only is it a fantastic product, it is
a standing example that one good idea (and a lot of hard work) can change the world.
1. Which event happened last?
a. Lycos released their search engine.
b. Yahoo! released their search engine.
c. Google released their search engine.
d. Xerox released their copy machine.

2. Which statement would the author of this text most likely disagree with?
a. Part of Google's success is due to the design of their homepage.
b. Google succeeded by following examples of others in their field.
c. Google wasn't the first search engine, but it was the best.
d. Google's success may not have been possible without Larry Page.

3. Which best expresses the main idea of the third paragraph?

a. There are lots and lots of websites connected to the internet.
b. Google created a better way to organize search results.
c. Many smart people have worked on search engines over the years.
d. Older search engines used unreliable methods to order results.

4. What is the author's main purpose in writing this article?

a. To explain how Google overtook its rivals
b. To compare and contrast Google and Xerox
c. To persuade readers to use Google for internet searches
d. To discuss how companies can influence language over time

5. Which statement would the author most likely agree with?

a. Google became successful because its founders were well-connected.
b. Google was the world's first and best search engine.
c. Google changed the world by solving an old problem in a new way.
d. Google's other products are now more important to its success than search

6. Which best expresses the main idea of the fourth paragraph?

a. Links allow people to surf from one website to the next.
b. Larry Page's ideas about links helped Google get to the top.
c. Larry Page contributed to the internet by inventing the link.
d. Google is a website that serves important links to users.

7. Which best explains why the author discusses Xerox in this text?
a. He is discussing big companies that came before Google.
b. He is explaining how companies must change with the times.
c. He is showing how companies can affect our language.
d. He is comparing and contrasting Google and Xerox

8. How did Google improve search quality in 1998?

a. They counted how many times queries appeared on each page.
b. They looked more closely at the words in search queries.
c. They linked to more pages.
d. They studied the relationships of links.
9. Which was cited as a reason why Google became so popular?
a. Google's homepage was clean.
b. Google provided catchy news stories on their homepage.
c. Google homepage loaded quickly.
d. Google provided useful stock quotes on their homepage

10. Which title best expresses the author's main purpose in writing this text?
a. Xerox Vs. Google: Battle of the Titans
b. Search Engines: How They Work and Why They're Important
c. A Better Way: How Google Rose to the Top
d. Search Engines: A Short History of Important Tools

A biography of Kilian Jornet

When you picture mountain climbers scaling Mount Everest, what probably comes to
mind are teams of climbers with Sherpa guides leading them to the summit, equipped
with oxygen masks, supplies and tents. And in most cases you'd be right, as 97 per
cent of climbers use oxygen to ascend to Everest's summit at 8,850 metres above sea
level. The thin air at high altitudes makes most people breathless at 3,500 metres, and
the vast majority of climbers use oxygen past 7,000 metres. A typical climbing group
will have 8–15 people in it, with an almost equal number of guides, and they'll spend
weeks to get to the top after reaching Base Camp.
But ultra-distance and mountain runner Kilian Jornet Burgada ascended the mountain in
May 2017 alone, without an oxygen mask or fixed ropes for climbing.
Oh, and he did it in 26 hours.
With food poisoning.
And then, five days later, he did it again, this time in only 17 hours.
Born in 1987, Kilian has been training for Everest his whole life. And that really does
mean his whole life, as he grew up 2,000 metres above sea level in the Pyrenees in the
ski resort of Lles de Cerdanya in Catalonia, north-eastern Spain. While other children
his age were learning to walk, Kilian was on skis. At one and a half years old he did a
five-hour hike with his mother, entirely under his own steam. He left his peers even
further behind when he climbed his first mountain and competed in his first cross-
country ski race at age three. By age seven, he had scaled a 4,000er and, at ten, he
did a 42-day crossing of the Pyrenees.
He was 13 when he says he started to take it 'seriously' and trained with the Ski
Mountaineering Technical Centre (CTEMC) in Catalonia, entering competitions and
working with a coach. At 18, he took over his own ski-mountaineering and trail-running
training, with a schedule that only allows a couple of weeks of rest a year. He does as
many as 1,140 hours of endurance training a year, plus strength training and technical
workouts as well as specific training in the week before a race. For his record-breaking
ascent and descent of the Matterhorn, he prepared by climbing the mountain ten times
until he knew every detail of it, even including where the sun would be shining at every
part of the day.
Sleeping only seven hours a night, Kilian Jornet seems almost superhuman. His resting
heartbeat is extremely low at 33 beats per minute, compared with the average man's
60 per minute or an athlete's 40 per minute. He breathes more efficiently than average
people too, taking in more oxygen per breath, and he has a much faster recovery time
after exercise as his body quickly breaks down lactic acid – the acid in muscles that
causes pain after exercise.
All this is thanks to his childhood in the mountains and to genetics, but it is his mental
strength that sets him apart. He often sets himself challenges to see how long he can
endure difficult conditions in order to truly understand what his body and mind can
cope with. For example, he almost gave himself kidney failure after only drinking 3.5
litres of water on a 100km run in temperatures of around 40°C.
It would take a book to list all the races and awards he's won and the mountains he's
climbed. And even here, Kilian’s achievements exceed the average person as,
somehow, he finds time to record his career on his blog and has written three
books, Run or Die, The Invisible Border and Summits of My Life.

Choose the best answer.

1.The majority of climbers on Everest …

need oxygen to finish their ascent.

are accompanied.
make slow progress to the top.
(all of the above)

2. Kilian Jornet is unlike most Everest climbers because …

he is a professional climber.
he ascended faster.
he found the climb difficult.
(all of the above)

3. In his training now, Kilian …

demands a lot of himself.

takes a lot of rest periods.
uses a coach.
(none of the above)

4. Kilian partly owes his incredible fitness to …

the way he makes extra time for sleep.

his ability to recover from injury.
where he grew up.
(all of the above)
5. His training includes …

psychological preparation.
making sure he drinks enough water.
trying to reduce his recovery time.
(none of the above)

Choose the correct heading for sections A-D and F from the list of headings
below. Write the correct number i-ix in boxes 1-5
List of Headings

i The probable effects of the new international trade agreement

ii The environmental impact of modern farming
iii Farming and soil erosion
iv The effects of government policy in rich countries
v Governments and management of the environment
vi The effects of government policy in poor countries
vii Farming and food output
viii The effects of government policy on food output
ix The new prospects for world trade

Section A________________________
v
Section B ________________________
vii
Section C _____________________
ii
Section D _____________________
iv
Section E _____________________
vi
Section F _____________________
i

Section A

The role of governments in environmental management is difficult but inescapable. Sometimes, the
state tries to manage the resources it owns, and does so badly. Often, however, governments act in an
even more harmful way. They actually subsidise the exploitation and consumption of natural resources.
A whole range of policies, from farm-price support to protection for coal-mining, do environmental
damage and (often) make no economic sense. Scrapping them offers a two-fold bonus: a cleaner
environment and a more efficient economy. Growth and environmentalism can actually go hand in
hand, if politicians have the courage to confront the vested interest that subsidies create.

Section B
No activity affects more of the earth's surface than farming. It shapes a third of the planet's land area,
not counting Antarctica, and the proportion is rising. World food output per head has risen by 4 per cent
between the 1970s and 1980s mainly as a result of increases in yields from land already in cultivation,
but also because more land has been brought under the plough. Higher yields have been achieved by
increased irrigation, better crop breeding, and a doubling in the use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers
in the 1970s and 1980s.

Section C

All these activities may have damaging environmental impacts. For example, land clearing for agriculture
is the largest single cause of deforestation; chemical fertilisers and pesticides may contaminate water
supplies; more intensive farming and the abandonment of fallow periods tend to exacerbate soil
erosion; and the spread of monoculture and use of high-yielding varieties of crops have been
accompanied by the disappearance of old varieties of food plants which might have provided some
insurance against pests or diseases in future. Soil erosion threatens the productivity of land in both rich
and poor countries. The United States, where the most careful measurements have been done,
discovered in 1982 that about one-fifth of its farmland was losing topsoil at a rate likely to diminish the
soil's productivity. The country subsequently embarked upon a program to convert 11 per cent of its
cropped land to meadow or forest. Topsoil in India and China is vanishing much faster than in America.

Section D

Government policies have frequently compounded the environmental damage that farming can cause.
In the rich countries, subsidies for growing crops and price supports for farm output drive up the price of
land. The annual value of these subsidies is immense: about $250 billion, or more than all World Bank
lending in the 1980s. To increase the output of crops per acre, a farmer's easiest option is to use more of
the most readily available inputs: fertilisers and pesticides. Fertiliser use doubled in Denmark in the
period 1960-1985 and increased in The Netherlands by 150 per cent. The quantity of pesticides applied
has risen too: by 69 per cent in 1975-1984 in Denmark, for example, with a rise of 115 per cent in the
frequency of application in the three years from 1981.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s some efforts were made to reduce farm subsidies. The most dramatic
example was that of New Zealand, which scrapped most farm support in 1984. A study of the
environmental effects, conducted in 1993, found that the end of fertiliser subsidies had been followed
by a fall in fertiliser use (a fall compounded by the decline in world commodity prices, which cut farm
incomes). The removal of subsidies also stopped landclearing and over-stocking, which in the past had
been the principal causes of erosion. Farms began to diversify. The one kind of subsidy whose removal
appeared to have been bad for the environment was the subsidy to manage soil erosion.

In less enlightened countries, and in the European Union, the trend has been to reduce rather than
eliminate subsidies, and to introduce new payments to encourage farmers to treat their land in
environmentally friendlier ways, or to leave it fallow. It may sound strange but such payments need to
be higher than the existing incentives for farmers to grow food crops. Farmers, however, dislike being
paid to do nothing. In several countries they have become interested in the possibility of using fuel
produced from crop residues either as a replacement for petrol (as ethanol) or as fuel for power stations
(as biomass). Such fuels produce far less carbon dioxide than coal or oil, and absorb carbon dioxide as
they grow. They are therefore less likely to contribute to the greenhouse effect. But they are rarely
competitive with fossil fuels unless subsidized - and growing them does no less environmental harm
than other crops.
Section E

In poor countries, governments aggravate other sorts of damage. Subsidies for pesticides and artificial
fertilizers encourage farmers to use greater quantities than are needed to get the highest economic crop
yield. A study by the International Rice Research Institute of pesticide use by farmers in South East Asia
found that, with pest-resistant varieties of rice, even moderate applications of pesticide frequently cost
farmers more than they saved. Such waste puts farmers on a chemical treadmill: bugs and weeds
become resistant to poisons, so next year's poisons must be more lethal. One cost is to human health.
Every year some 10,000 people die from pesticide poisoning, almost all of them in the developing
countries, and another 400,000 become seriously ill. As for artificial fertilizers, their use world-wide
increased by 40 per cent per unit of farmed land between the mid 1970s and late 1980s, mostly in the
developing countries. Overuse of fertilizers may cause farmers to stop rotating crops or leaving their
land fallow. That, in turn, may make soil erosion worse.

Section F

A result of the Uruguay Round of world trade negotiations is likely to be a reduction of 36 per cent in the
average levels of farm subsidies paid by the rich countries in 1986-1990. Some of the world's food
production will move from Western Europe to regions where subsidies are lower or non-existent, such
as the former communist countries and parts of the developing world. Some environmentalists worry
about this outcome. It will undoubtedly mean more pressure to convert natural habitat into farmland.
But it will also have many desirable environmental effects. The intensity of farming in the rich world
should decline, and the use of chemical inputs will diminish. Crops are more likely to be grown in the
environments to which they are naturally suited. And more farmers in poor countries will have the
money and the incentive to manage their land in ways that are sustainable in the long run. That is
important. To feed an increasingly hungry world, farmers need every incentive to use their soil and
water effectively and efficiently.