Mallory I am going to buy tickets for the kpop concert

on May 18th. How should I make sure I get

tickets before they sell out for the prices get
extremely high?
Briana First of all, make sure you know the contact
information about the tickets, such as when
and where you can start buying them, the
concert schedule,the price,etc. Also decide
the ticket that are you going for. Depending
on the websites, you will need the click on
the type of tickets you want fast as you can
buy them. Make sure you have your payment
card and buy them. Make sure you have your
payment card and that you already logged
into or have an account beforehand. Good
luck!
Phillips If you want to get K-pop tickets, especially in
Korea before they sell out,I would suggest
using professional ticketing services. They
can book ticket from resellers as well.
Elena Buying K-pop tickets is like going to war. It
is really hard and stressful! I tried to do it last
year and failed. I spent hours clicking and
refreshing the website as the website kept
crashing. Absolutely frustrating.
Ishi For me, the best way to get those best seller
tickets is to watch out for them on both legit
online ticketing sites and third party reseller
websites. Have patience, be strategic, and
never give up!
Jun Do not worry buying them before they sell
out. You could go on Twitter or Facebook and
find plenty of people trying to sell their
tickets. I would not stress over getting tickets
the day they go on sale.

1) Brianna’s respond to Mallory’s post in order to………..

A. Warn her that she will probably not get the tickets
B. Explain how to buy tickets directly on the Internet
C. Suggest buying tickets using professional services
D. Describe the website where she can buy tickets
E. Argue the importance of being able to pay for the tickets.
2) Who posts the least relevant answer to Mallory’s question?
A) Brianna
B) Phillips
C) Elena
D) Ishi
 E) Jun
3) Which of the following issue stated at the beginning of the thread?
A) Getting tickets for K-pop concerts
B) Selling K-pop tickets concerts
C) Buying tickets after they are sold out
D) Being new to the K-pop industry
E) Watching K-pop concerts in Korea
4) Who explains the challenge of buying kpop concerts tickets by giving
evidence?
A) Brianna
B) Phillips
C) Elena
D) Ishi
E) Jun
5) What is the tone of thread?
A) Pessimistic
B) Concerned
C) Supportive
D) Critical
E) Informative
6) What is the closest meaning of legit?
A) Secure
B) Trustworthy
C) Responsive
D) Informative
Text 1
Americans are having fewer babies. At first, researchers thought the declining
fertility rate was because of the recession, but it kept falling even as the economy
recovered. Now it has reached a record low for the second consecutive year.

Because the fertility rate subtly shapes many major issues of the day — including
immigration, education, housing, the labor supply, the social safety net and support
for working families — there’s a lot of concern about why today’s young adults aren’t
having as many children. So we asked them.

Wanting more leisure time and personal freedom; not having a partner yet; not being
able to afford child-care costs — these were the top reasons young adults gave for not
wanting or not being sure they wanted children, according to a new survey conducted
by Morning Consult for The New York Times.

About a quarter of the respondents who had children or planned to said they had
fewer or expected to have fewer than they wanted. The largest shares said they
delayed or stopped having children because of concerns about having enough time or
money.

The survey, one of the most comprehensive explorations of the reasons that adults
are having fewer children, tells a story that is partly about greater gender equality.
Women have more agency over their lives, and many feel that motherhood has
become more of a choice.
But it’s also a story of economic insecurity. Young people have record student debt,
many graduated in a recession and many can’t afford homes — all as parenthood has
become more expensive. Women in particular pay an earnings penalty for having
children.
“We want to invest more in each child to give them the best opportunities to compete
in an increasingly unequal environment,” said Philip Cohen, a sociologist at the
University of Maryland who studies families and has written about fertility.

At the same time, he said, “There is no getting around the fact that the relationship
between gender equality and fertility is very strong: There are no high-fertility
countries that are gender equal.”

The vast majority of women in the United States still have children. But the most
commonly used measure of fertility, the number of births for every 1,000 women of
childbearing age, was 60.2 last year, a record low. The total fertility rate — which
estimates how many children women will have based on current patterns — is down
to 1.8, below the replacement level in developed countries of 2.1.
The United States seems to have almost caught up with most of the rest of the
industrialized world’s low fertility rates. It used to have higher fertility for reasons
like more teenage pregnancies, more unintended pregnancies and high fertility
among Hispanic immigrants. But those trends have recently reversed, in part
because of increased use of long-acting birth control methods like IUDs.

In the Morning Consult and Times survey, more than half of the 1,858 respondents —
a nationally representative sample of men and women ages 20 to 45 — said they
planned to have fewer children than their parents. About half were already parents.
Of those who weren’t, 42 percent said they wanted children, 24 percent said they did
not and 34 percent said they weren’t sure.

One of the biggest factors was personal: having no desire for children and wanting
more leisure time, a pattern that has also shown up in social science research. A
quarter of poll respondents who didn’t plan to have children said one reason was
they didn’t think they’d be good parents.

Jessica Boer, 26, has a long list of things she’d rather spend time doing than raising
children: being with her family and her fiancé; traveling; focusing on her job as a
nurse; getting a master’s degree; playing with her cats.

“My parents got married right out of high school and had me and they were
miserable,” said Ms. Boer, who lives in Portage, Mich. “But now we know we have a
choice.”
She said she had such high expectations for parents that she wasn’t sure she could
meet them: “I would have the responsibility to raise this person into a functional and
productive citizen, and some days I’m not even responsible.”

This generation, unlike the ones that came before it, is as likely as not to earn less
than their parents. Among people who did not plan to have children, 23 percent said
it was because they were worried about the economy. A third said they couldn’t
afford child care, 24 percent said they couldn’t afford a house and 13 percent
cited student debt.

Financial concerns also led people to have fewer children than what they considered
to be ideal: 64 percent said it was because child care was too expensive, 43 percent
said they waited too long because of financial instability and about 40 percent said it
was because of a lack of paid family leave.

Text 2

Would you have a baby, or add more children to your family, if the government offers
to help you cover the bills? Government programs that give parents money for having
kids are appearing in more and more countries as a strategy to combat declining
birth rates.

Researches study birth rates as a way to measure the stability of a community. In

general, people will have children if they feel they have job security and stable
economy. They will also want more children if they feel supported in starting a
family. However, declining population growth can destroy the economy. Financial
incentives and bonuses are one way to support parents and boost birth rates.

In one small municipality in Finland, Lestijarvi, fewer and fewer babies are born.
Only one child had been born per year before 2013. Since then, local officials have
given a “baby bonus” in which each baby born is worth 10,000 euros. This is paid to
the family over the course of 10 years.

The bonuses for having children seem to be able to solve problem of low birth rate un
various places. This works in Finlandia, Italy, Japan, and Australia. Governments
can persuade parents to have children by promising easy childcare. They can also
encourage women to have jobs while also having children.

7) According to the text 1, what is one reason people say foe not having
children?
A. They want to enjoy their lives without additional burden.
B. They can simply adopt babies when they need one.
C. The government does not give them money.
D. Their parents do not support them to have kids.
E. They want more money to support themselves in their old age.
8) The expression “have more agency over” in Text 1 Paragraph 2 is
closest in meaning to….
A. Acquire more establishment
B. Own more enterprises
C. Possess more control
D. Keep more business
E. Hold more offices
9) What is the main idea of text 1?
A. Americans do not have enough money, time, and ability to support
more children.
B. People are having fewer children because humans have become less
fertile over the past century.
C. The government can do various things to increase the country’s
population, such as giving parents money.
D. Americans are more reluctant to have children because of
economic, social, and personal, reasons.
E. Women are often blamed for decreased birth rate because they
have become too independent.

10) Which of the following best restates the sentence” Would you have a
baby, or add more children to your family, if the government offers to
help you cover the bills?” in Text paragraph 1?
A. Would you add more kids to your family of the state charge
childcare bills?
B. Would you want to have more children if the country provides
financial assistance?
C. Would you want to have more kids if it were possible to do so?
D. Would you adopt more children id the government pays for the
adoption fees?
E. Would you have another baby if the government offers an easy
childcare?

11) The author’s purpose in writing Text 2 is to….

A. Inform that financial help seems to be an effective strategy to
overcome declining the birth rate.
B. Calculate how much a government may spend to persuade people
to have kids
C. Persuade readers to have more because it will strengthen economy.
D. Prove that modern parents ask the government for more and more
money.
E. Compare the birth rate between rich and poor countries.

12) Which of the following statements shows the author’s positive attitude
toward government support?
A. Young people have student debt, many graduated in a recession,
and many cannot afford homes.
B. Financial concerns also led people to have fewer children than what
they considered to be ideal.
C. Researches study birth rates as a way to measure the stability of
community.
 D. In general, people will have children if they feel they have job
security and stable economy.
E. These bonuses for having children seem to be able to solve problem
of low birth rate in various places.

13) Which of the following can be concluded from both text?

A. Children are becoming more expensive to raise, so the government

must take the responsibility.
B. To combat declining birth rate, countries must force their citizens
C. Providing good suppo0rt for women can help overcome population
decline.
D. Having children in the modern era can cause economic hardship
and loss of happiness for families
E. Richer people tend to have less children, while poorer people tend
to have more.

Text 4
Rock weathering is a process of weakening breaking down of rocks
and minerals. Both non-living element, such as variations in
temperature, flora and fauna, acids, salts, and liquid or solid water,
can cause this. Rocks on the Earth’s surface tend to weather faster
than those underground. Weathering is one of the processes that
lead to soil production.

Different types of weathering affect rocks. These consist of chemical

weathering, biological weathering, and physical or mechanical
weathering. The process of physical or mechanical weathering
essentially fragment rocks. Freezing and thawing water is one way
that physical deterioration occurs. Water may easily pass through
any pores or fissures in rocks while it is liquid. This water will
expand inside those rocks is it freezes.

A weathering process is known as honeycomb weathering can be

triggered by salt. By capillary action, groundwater pours into rock
pores and finally evaporates. This produces crystals of salt, which
raise the pressure within rocks. The rocks will eventually break.
This may leave behind honeycomb-like salt crystal pits. In dry
areas, salt crystallization weathering is frequently observed.

Extremes in temperature can also have an impact on how rocks

weather. Thermal stress is one term for one kind of physical
weathering process. This is typical feature of desert regions, where
overnight lows can be relatively chilly and midday highs can be
extremely hot. Over time, rocks that experience frequent extreme
temperature swings will eventually fracture and flake, this process
known as exfoliation.

Text 2
The deterioration and corrosion of rocks, metals, and man-made
materials is known as weathering, Chemical and physical
 weathering are two primary categories. Acid rain is one instance of
chemical weathering for rocks. Scientists believe that rock
weathering can an play important role in preventing global
warming by controlling the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
The elements contained in volcanic rocks react with water or air in
volcanic rocks react with water or air in the atmosphere and absorb
carbon.

Natural rock weathering process can take millions of years, making

it too slow to counteract global warming. However, rock weathering
accelerates when the rock is crushed into a fine dust. It distributed
throughout croplands worldwide, this” enhanced” rock weathering
has the potential to store 215 billion tons of carbon dioxide over the
course of the next 75 years, according to previous studies.

Researchers from University of California applied crushed rock,

both metablast and olivine, on 5 acres of a fallowed cornfield in the
Sacramento Valley. In comparison to plots without crushed rocks,
they discovered that during the study, the crushed rock plots stored
0.15 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare. If this amount of carbon
was removed across all California cropland, it would be equivalent
to taking 350,000 cars off the road every year.

It appears that many hardworking researches are now looking for

answers to how the process of rock weathering occurs in dry areas.
It is known that drylands cover 41% of Earth’s total area, and they
are growing as a results of climate change. This according o some
prominent researches, makes it even more crucial to look into
improved rock weathering in drylands.

14) According to Text 1 Paragraph 4, what is exfoliation?

A. The process of breaking and flaking of rocks due to frequent
extreme temperature swings.
B. A type of volcanic rocks that significantly undergo frequent extreme
temperature in dry areas
C. An extreme thermal process on volcanic rocks usually due to
frequent temperatures in desert areas.
D. One kind of chemical rock weathering where the pore inside the
rock are triggered by the extreme temperature
E. A typical feature of desert regions, where overnight lows can be
relatively chilly and middays highs can be extremely hot

15) The word “it” in text 2 paragraph 2 refers to……

A) Carbon dioxide
B) Weathering process
C) The rock
D) Global warming
E) A fine dust

16) Which of the following sentence from text 2 is the author’s opinion?
 A. The elements contained in volcanic rocks react with water or air
in the atmosphere and absorb carbon ( FACT)
B. Researchers from University of California applied crushed rock,
both metabasalt and olivine, on 5 acres of fallowed cornfield in
the Sacramento Valley. ( FACT)
C. In comparison to plots without crushed rock, they discovered
during the study, ( FACT)
D. It appears that many hardworking researchers are now looking
for answers to how the process of rock weathering occurs in dry
areas.
E. It is known that drylands cover 41% of Earth’s total area, and they
growing as a result of climate change.

17) What is the relationship between text 1 and text 2?

A. Text 1 describes the different types of rocks weathering processes
whose effects on reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere are
mentioned in text 2.
B. Text 1 describes the chemical and physical process of rock weathering,
while text 2 describes the influence of acid rain to the physical rock
weathering.
C. Text 2 describes the process of rock weathering in dryland areas
studied by the researchers mentioned in text 1.
D. Text 2 explains the process of chemical and physical rock weathering
whose causes are discussed in text 1.
E. Both text describe the effect of rock weathering on reducing the
amount of carbon in the atmosphere.
18) An explanation of rock weathering that occurs in dry areas can be
found in ….
A. Text 1 paragraph 1, text 2 paragraph
B. Text 1 paragraph 1, text 2 paragraph 4
C. Text 1 paragraph 3, text 2 paragraph 4
D. Text 1 paragraph 4, text 2 paragraph 3
E. Text 1 paragraph 4, text 2 paragraph 4

19) Based on the information from both texts, which of the following will
most likely happen in the future?
A, Crushed volcanic rock containing metabasalt and olivine will be
used as fertilizers for cropland in dry areas.
B. Global warming will cause the natural process of rock weathering t
happen more frequently.
C. Acid rain will occur more frequently as a result of rock weathering in
dry areas.
D. Natural rock weathering process in dry areas will continuously be
observed
E. A honeycomb weathering will be used to reduce the global warming