Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.

The United States of America, due to its immense size and diverse heritage, has one of the most complex cultural identities in the world. Millions of immigrants from all over the globe have journeyed to America (96)________ the Europeans discovered and generalized the land back in the 17th and 18th centuries. The blending of cultural (97)________ and ethnicities in America led to the country becoming known as a “melting pot.” As the third largest country in both area and population, America’s size has enabled the formation of subcultures within the country. These subcultures are often geographical as a result of settlement(98)_______ by non-natives as well as regional weather and landscape differences. While there are countless ways to divide the U.S. into regions, here we have referenced the four regions that are West, Midwest, North East and South. People from (99)_______ region may have different lifestyles, cultural values, business practices and dialects. While there are qualities and values (100)______most Americans commonly share, it is important not to generalize or assume that all Americans think or act the same way.

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It can be inferred from the passage that _______.

According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true?

The word “ceased” in paragraph 2 mostly means _______.

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 44 to 50

If you go back far enough, everything lived in the sea. At various points in evolutionary history, enterprising individuals within many different animal groups moved out onto the land, sometimes even to the most parched deserts, taking their own private seawater with them in blood and cellular fluids. In addition to the reptiles, birds, mammals and insects which we see all around us, other groups that have succeeded out of water include scorpions, snails, crustaceans such as woodlice and land crabs, millipedes and centipedes, spiders and various worms. And we mustn’t forget the plants, without whose prior invasion of the land, none of the other migrations could have happened.

Moving from water to land involved a major redesign of every aspect of life, including breathing and reproduction. Nevertheless, a good number of thoroughgoing land animals later turned around, abandoned their hard-earned terrestrial re-tooling, and returned to the water again. Seals have only gone part way back. They show us what the intermediates might have been like, on the way to extreme cases such as whales and dugongs. Whales (including the small whales we call dolphins) and dugongs, with their close cousins, the manatees, ceased to be land creatures altogether and reverted to the full marine habits of their remote ancestors. They don’t even come ashore to breed. They do, however, still breathe air, having never developed anything equivalent to the gills of their earlier marine incarnation. Turtles went back to the sea a very long time ago and, like all vertebrate returnees to the water, they breathe air. However, they are, in one respect, less fully given back to the water than whales or dugongs, for turtles still lay their eggs on beaches.

There is evidence that all modem turtles are descended from a terrestrial ancestor which lived before most of the dinosaurs. There are two key fossils called Proganochelys quenstedti and Palaeochersis talampayensis dating from early dinosaur times, which appear to be close to the ancestry of all modem turtles and tortoise. You might wonder how we can tell whether fossil animals lived in land or in water, especially if only fragments are found. Sometimes it’s obvious. Ichthyosaurs were reptilian contemporaries of the dinosaurs, with fins and streamlined bodies. The fossils look like dolphins and they surely lived like dolphins, in the water. With turtles it is a little less obvious. One way to tell is by measuring the bones of their forelimbs.

Which of the following is TRUE about the main reason for discrimination?