VOCABULARY 1:
Which TWO answers are similar in meaning to the underlined word or phrase?
____ 1. Man: Should we buy this chair? I think it would look good in our living room.
Woman: I disagree. The style is attractive, but the colors don't match our other furniture.
a. appealing
b. basic
c. efficient
d. lovely
____ 2. Woman: Are you going shopping tomorrow? There are some great sales on at the mall.
Man: I doubt it. I try to avoid the mall when the stores get really crowded.
a. be aware of
b. not go to
c. stay away from
d. go back on
____ 3. Man: Did you know the convenience store down the street only accepts cash?
Woman: Yeah, I told you that the other day.
Man: You did? I must have forgotten.
a. money
b. cards
c. credit
d. coins and notes
____ 4. Man: We need some food for the weekend. Should we go to Green's Supermarket?
Woman: No. The prices are too expensive there. Let's go to Price Saver instead of Green's.
a. rather than
b. in spite of
c. in addition to
d. as an alternative to
____ 5. Woman: Do you want to go shopping tomorrow, Bob?
Man: Sure, that sounds ... oh, it's a holiday. All the stores will be closed.
a. goods
b. items
c. markets
d. shops
____ 6. Woman 1: You always manage to get such good deals when you go shopping, Diane. How do
you do it?
Woman 2: Before I go, I check smartbuyer.net. It's a website that has great strategies for saving money.
a. books
b. methods
c. moods
d. ways
7. Man 1: What's the most expensive product you've ever bought?
Man 2: Hmm. I'd say it was my car.
a. concept
b. item
c. profit
d. thing
VOCABULARY 2:
Write ONE word to answer each question.
attitude customer influence limit message natural notice probably
8. What verb means to make people think in a certain way about something?
_______contemplate____________
9. What adjective describes something that is not man-made?
________synthetic____________
10. What verb means to see something or become aware of it?
________perceive___________
11. What noun means a person who buys something from a store?
________ clients____________
12. What noun describes the way a person thinks or feels about something?
___________________
13. What noun describes a fixed level of something, or the amount of it allowed?
________stability____________
14. What adverb is used to say something is likely, but not definitely true?
_________necessarily___________
15. What noun means something a person says or writes?
Statement
READING SKILL REVIEW - IDENTIFYING SUPPORTING IDEAS:
Supporting ideas help a reader to understand the main idea of a paragraph. They provide more
information about that idea, such as details, examples, or reasons.
Look at the four underlined sentences in this passage. Then answer the questions.
What Companies Don't Want You to Know about Online Shopping
A The growth of online shopping has been incredible. When it first started in the U.K. in 1979, it was
not well known. As a result, sales totals were small. By the mid-1990s, when the Internet really
started to become popular, online shopping was becoming better known and more attractive. By
the early 2000s, shoppers in the U.S. spent over $50 billion online. And these days, online sales continue
to grow. For example, data from 2016 shows that just one online retailer - Amazon - achieved more than
$80 billion in sales. As a majority of Americans prefer shopping online to visiting stores, this figure does
not seem surprising. What may be surprising, or perhaps shocking, is that different customers may be
offered different prices online.
B The price that a shopper sees online seems to depend on several things. One is the geographical
location of the customer: Where he or she lives, in other words. People shopping from a large city, for
example, might see lower prices than customers who live in the countryside. Or shoppers who live near
a large bookstore might be able to buy books online more cheaply than customers who live far away
from any stores selling books. This is probably due to competition. In places with a lot of competition,
stores - both physical and online - usually have lower prices in order to attract more customers.
C Shopping history is another factor that can affect the price an online customer sees. A simple example
can show how this works. Customer A, for example, often shops online and spends around $300 per
month. When he buys something, he looks for quality and rarely buys the cheapest item. In contrast,
Customer B is not a regular online shopper. When she does buy something, she usually waits until the
item is on sale. Online stores track and save this information - among other details - about
customers, and they use it to set prices that are likely to be attractive. Not surprisingly, the prices
offered to a shopper like Customer A are generally going to be higher than the prices Customer B would
see
D Among online shopping sites, some offer better prices to people who connect using a mobile device
like a smartphone or tablet, rather than a desktop or laptop computer. Others give cheaper prices to
customers who are logged in to the site. Some may offer different prices to users who visit by following
a link from a social media site. As these examples suggest, how a shopper connects to the Internet
may affect the prices that he or she is offered
1. What is the function of the underlined sentence in paragraph A?
a. it gives a main idea
b. it gives a supporting idea
2. What is the function of the underlined sentence in paragraph B?
a. it gives a main idea
b. it gives a supporting idea
3. What is the function of the underlined sentence in paragraph C?
a. it gives a main idea
b. it gives a supporting idea
4. What is the function of the underlined sentence in paragraph D?
a. it gives a main idea
b. it gives a supporting idea
Extra Reading (The best country in the world to live in)
An international team of researchers has spent the last five years finding out about the best
country in the world to live in. 120 countries were ranked in ten categories, which included the
cost of living, leisure facilities, the economy, education and diet. The results show that the top
three countries are Australia, Switzerland and Germany.
In terms of cost of living, Australia was less expensive than the other two. Switzerland received
a high score because of its strong economy. Germany has better leisure facilities than the others.
Both Germany and Switzerland provide very good education throughout the country, but in
Australia this varied from city to city. Here, some areas were excellent, but in other areas,
education was described as poor. The range and variety of leisure facilities in Switzerland are
considerably less than in Australia or Germany. The researchers decided that this was because
the Swiss work longer hours than many countries, and therefore do not have as much free time.
When it comes to diet, Germany scores less than the others because meals, which are often rich
in meat, are not always very healthy.
In addition to facts and statistics, researchers also based their results on how happy people
were. In answer to the question ‘Would you consider yourself a happy person?’, 77% of
Australians said that they were happy, a slightly higher figure than 75% for Switzerland and
72% for Germany.
Fill in each blank with NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage except for one question
