English Reading Practice Test Level B1 - Test No. 5

Read the passage and answer these following questions. Strictly speaking, cartography is the drawing or compiling of maps. The explorers and surveyors go out and make the measurements and gather the information from which the cartographers draw their maps. Sometimes the fieldwork and the creation of the map are done by the same person. But when the scope is broad and the sources of information many, maps are more often a compilation of that information. They represent the accumulated work of many people, brought together under the supervision of one person, the compiler. The value of the map depends, of course, on the expertise of the compiler, who must sift through available information, select the most accurate data, and come up with a thoughtful and accurate synthesis of the geographic knowledge of the region.

Read the passage and answer these following questions. Brown Dwarfs A brown dwarf is a celestial body that has never quite become a star. A typical brown dwarf has a mass that is 8 percent or less than that of the Sun. The mass of a brown dwarf is too small to generate the internal temperatures capable of igniting the nuclear burning of hydrogen to release energy and light.​​ A brown dwarf contracts at a steady rate, and after it has contracted as much as possible, a process that takes about 1 million years, it begins to cool off. Its emission of light diminishes with the decrease in its internal temperature, and after a period of 2 to 3 billion years, its emission of light is so weak that it can be difficult to observe from Earth. Because of these characteristics of a brown dwarf, it can be easily distinguished from stars in different stages of formation. A brown dwarf is quite distinctive because its surface temperature is relatively cool and because its internal composition – approximately 75 percent hydrogen – has remained essentially the same as it was when first formed. A white dwarf, in contrast, has gone through a long period when it burns hydrogen, followed by another long period in which it burns the helium created by the burning of hydrogen and ends up with a core that consists mostly of oxygen and carbon with a thin layer of hydrogen surrounding the core.​​​ It is not always as easy, however, to distinguish brown dwarfs from large planets. Though planets are not formed in the same way as brown dwarfs, they may in their current State have some of the same characteristics as a brown dwarf. The planet Jupiter, for example, is the largest planet in our solar System with a mass 317 times that of our planet and resembles a brown dwarf in that it radiates energy based on its internal energy. It is the mechanism by which they were formed that distinguishes a high-mass planet such as Jupiter from a low-mass brown dwarf.​​

Read the passage and answer these following questions. A major revolution for the automated office is electronic mail. The customary postal System requires messages written on paper to be transmitted physically from one location to another. With electronic mail, messages are converted into electronic signals, transmitted anywhere in the world, and then changed back into the original written form, all in several seconds or minutes at most. Through the use of video screens in company offices, a single document can be transmitted to hundreds of people in dozens of branch offices at the same time. Thus, electronic mail, along with databases, can be an important asset in teleconferences. Furthermore, the use of electronic mail in the form of a “mailbox” attached to a telephone is also of great value. Since in offices many telephone calls go uncompleted on the first attempt, with electronic mail, two-way conversion is not essential, so it reduces telephone use and saves time. Electronic mail is far more expensive than the postal system, as it must compete for transmission space on satellite, telephone, and cable links. But planned increases in satellite communications should lower the price and assist in the spread of electronic mail.

Read the passage and answer these following questions. Animal Congregation Many types of animals combine the advantages of family association with those conferred by membership in still larger groups. Bees congregate in hives; some fish move in schools; ants gather in mounds; wolves live in packs; deer associate in herds. The main advantage of membership in a mass community is the safety that it provides. A large group of prey may be easier for a predator to find at any given point than is a small one, and a predator may think twice before taking on such a group; if a predator does decide to challenge a large group, it may merely encounter a confusing mass of moving bodies and possibly may not succeed in its primary goal.