Exercise 1.

Choose the correct preposition that goes along with the following verbs

on with
from
in with
with on on
from in with from

in with
from from

Complete these sentences using the given verbs above

result

specialize

coincide

benefit

stem

arise
arise
concern

insist

depend elaborate

Exercise 2. Choose the correct word to fill in the blanks

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Exercise 3. Use the correct word form of the given words in capital to fill in these blanks

continuous

evoling
revolutionary

flexibility
adjustment

adaptable
influential
capability

unaltered
electrifying
Exercise 4. Answer questions 1-6 which are based on the reading passage below.
Birth of the Internet
A. The story of the internet commences with two computers which were kept miles apart and were intended
to send a message. The first-ever characters sent by the internet are recorded as 'LO'. The original message
attempted was 'LOG IN', but the computer crashed just after sending LO, and the remaining letters were never
sent. The world has been ever-changing since 29th October 1969 as the internet was born in Stanford Research
Institute by establishing the first-ever link between computers on the ARPANET. The entire team of engineers
was led by Leonard Kleinrock. At that time, he never thought that this discovery would change things forever
connecting machines and thereby, people sitting right across the desk or across continents.

B. Experiments with computer networks started in the late 1960s with four computers. It was called
ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). The project was initiated by the U.S. government to
compete with Soviets who launched the world's first artificial satellite, Sputnik. The four ARPANET computers

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were stationed at UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, SRI International and the University of Utah.

C. In July 1961, Leonard Kleinrock published a paper on the Packet switching theory and then a book on the
same subject in 1964. Both were the earliest documents on the subject. He also convinced Lawrence G. Roberts,
an MIT researcher, to apply packet connectivity in place of conventional circuits for effective computer
communication. In August 1962, J.C.R. Licklider of MIT was the first to give the idea of a worldwide computer
network through a series of memos while discussing his concept of ‘Galactic Network’. This concept was the
predecessor of the Internet of today.
D. The other crucial step was to make computers ‘communicate’ with each other. To experiment this, Roberts
and Thomas Merrill worked together in 1965. They established a connection between the TX-2 computer in
Massachusetts and the Q-32 computer in California with the help of a low-speed dial-up telephone line. It was a
small setup, but it gave birth to the first-ever computer network covering a large geographical area (WAN- wide
area network).
E. As a result of the experiment, Roberts realised that the time-shared computers could work reasonably well
together, retrieving data and running programs as necessary on the remote machines, but the telephone system
based on circuit switching was inefficient for completion of the job. This confirmed Kleinrock’s conviction of
the requirement for the packet switching technique.
Questions 1-6
The reading passage has 6 paragraphs, A-E. Which paragraph contains the following information?
Note: You may choose any letter more than once.
1. An initiative to be in the race B
2. Remotely situated machines managed to exchange a message A
3. Preference for new technology over the old c
4. A test validating the need for an efficient technique e

5. The first network via the telephone system d

6. The earliest documents mentioning global computer network C

Exercise 5. Read the following passage and time yourself to answer the questions
Information theory - the big idea
Information theory lies at the heart of everything - from DVD players and the genetic code of DNA to the
physics of the universe at its most fundamental. It has been central to the development of the science
of communication, which enables data to be sent electronically and has therefore had a major impact on our
lives
A.In April 2002 an event took place which demonstrated one of the many applications of information theory.
The space probe, Voyager I, launched in 1977, had sent back spectacular images of Jupiter and Saturn and then
soared out of the Solar System on a one-way mission to the stars. After 25 years of exposure to the freezing
temperatures of deep space, the probe was beginning to show its age. Sensors and circuits were on the brink of
failing and NASA experts realised that they had to do something or lose contact with their probe forever. The
solution was to get a message to Voyager I to instruct it to use spares to change the failing parts. With the probe

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12 billion kilometres from Earth, this was not an easy task. By means of a radio dish belonging to NASA’s
Deep Space Network, the message was sent out into the depths of space. Even travelling at the speed of light, it
took over 11 hours to reach its target, far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Yet, incredibly, the little probe managed to
hear the faint call from its home planet, and successfully made the switchover.
B.It was the longest-distance repair job in history, and a triumph for the NASA engineers. But it also
highlighted the astonishing power of the techniques developed by American communications engineer Claude
Shannon, who had died just a year earlier. Born in 1916 in Petoskey, Michigan, Shannon showed an early talent
for maths and for building gadgets, and made breakthroughs in the foundations of computer technology when
still a student. While at Bell Laboratories, Shannon developed information theory, but shunned the resulting
acclaim. In the 1940s, he single-handedly created an entire science of communication which has since inveigled
its way into a host of applications, from DVDs to satellite communications to bar codes - any area, in short,
where data has to be conveyed rapidly yet accurately.
C.This all seems light years away from the down-to-earth uses Shannon originally had for his work, which
began when he was a 22-year-old graduate engineering student at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in 1939. He set out with an apparently simple aim: to pin down the precise meaning of the
concept of ‘information’. The most basic form of information, Shannon argued, is whether something is true or
false - which can be captured in the binary unit, or ‘bit’, of the form 1 or 0. Having identified this fundamental
unit, Shannon set about defining otherwise vague ideas about information and how to transmit it from place to
place. In the process he discovered something surprising: it is always possible to guarantee information will get
through random interference - ‘noise’ - intact.
D.Noise usually means unwanted sounds which interfere with genuine information. Information theory
generalises this idea via theorems that capture the effects of noise with mathematical precision. In particular,
Shannon showed that noise sets a limit on the rate at which information can pass along communication
channels while remaining error-free. This rate depends on the relative strengths of the signal and noise
travelling down the communication channel, and on its capacity (its ‘bandwidth’). The resulting limit, given in
units of bits per second, is the absolute maximum rate of error-free communication given signal strength and
noise level. The trick, Shannon showed, is to find ways of packaging up - ‘coding’ - information to cope with
the ravages of noise, while staying within the information-carrying capacity - ‘bandwidth’ - of the
communication system being used.
E.Over the years scientists have devised many such coding methods, and they have proved crucial in many
technological feats. The Voyager spacecraft transmitted data using codes which added one extra bit for every
single bit of information; the result was an error rate of just one bit in 10,000 - and stunningly clear pictures
of the planets. Other codes have become part of everyday life - such as the Universal Product Code, or bar code,
which uses a simple error-detecting system that ensures supermarket check-out lasers can read the price even
on, say, a crumpled bag of crisps. As recently as 1993, engineers made a major breakthrough by discovering so-
called turbo codes - which come very close to Shannon’s ultimate limit for the maximum rate that data can be
transmitted reliably, and now play a key role in the mobile videophone revolution.
F.Shannon also laid the foundations of more efficient ways of storing information, by stripping out superfluous
(‘redundant’) bits from data which contributed little real information. As mobile phone text messages like ‘I CN
C U’ show, it is often possible to leave out a lot of data without losing much meaning. As with error
correction, however, there’s a limit beyond which messages become too ambiguous. Shannon showed how to
calculate this limit, opening the way to the design of compression methods that cram maximum information into
the minimum space.

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Questions 1-6. Reading Passage has six paragraphs, A-F. Which paragraph contains the following
information?
1 an explanation of the factors affecting the transmission of information
2 an example of how unnecessary information can be omitted
3 a reference to Shannon’s attitude to fame
4 details of a machine capable of interpreting incomplete information
5 a detailed account of an incident involving information theory
6 a reference to what Shannon initially intended to achieve in his research
Questions 7-11. Complete the notes below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for
each answer.
The Voyager 1 Space Probe
• The probe transmitted pictures of both 7 …………………….., then left the 8 ………………………
• The freezing temperatures were found to have a negative effect on parts of the space probe.
• Scientists feared that both the 9 …………………………were about to stop working.
• The only hope was to tell the probe to replace them with 10 …………………….. - but distance made
communication with the probe difficult.
• A 11 ……………………………was used to transmit the message at the speed of light.
• The message was picked up by the probe and the switchover took place
Questions 12-14 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
12 The concept of describing something as true or false was the starting point for Shannon in his attempts to
send messages over distances.
13 The amount of information that can be sent in a given time period is determined with reference to the signal
strength and noise level.
14 Products have now been developed which can convey more information than Shannon had anticipated as
possible.
Exercise 6. Read the following passage and answer the questions
The intense rate of change in the world
A. The intense rate of change in the world gives rise to numerous new products – many of them electronic.
What is brand new and state-of-the-art one month is quickly relegated to old model’ status the next. Within the

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world of computing, this frenetic pace of change has led to millions of out-dated, worthless products. Keystone,
an American-based research company reported. In 2005, one computer became obsolete for every new one
introduced in die market. By the year 2010, experts estimate that in the USA there will be over 500 million
obsolete computers. Most of these computers will be destined for landfills, incinerators or hazardous waste
exports.’ Old, outdated keyboards, monitors and hard drives all combine to produce what is now widely known
as ‘e-waste’ and the way to appropriately dispose of them is proving to be a challenge.

B. Most computers are a complicated assembly of hundreds of different materials, many of which are highly
toxic. Most computer users are unaware that these toxic metals, acids, plastics and other substances have been
shown to be the cause of various blood diseases and cancers, Amongst workers involved in the recycling of
computer products, there has been a proliferation of blood diseases Printed circuit boards for example, contain
heavy metals such as antimony, silver, chromium, zinc, lead, tin and copper. Environmentalist Kieran Shaw
estimates there is hardly any other product for which the sum of the environmental impacts of raw material,
extraction, industrial refining and production, use and disposal is so extensive as for printed circuit boards.

C. Workers involved in the disposal of computers via incineration are themselves being exposed to significantly
high levels of toxicity. Copper, for example, is a catalyst in the release of harmful chemicals when exposed to
the high tempera lures of incineration. In US and Canadian environments, incineration is one of the greatest
sources of heavy metal contamination of the atmosphere. Unfortunately, another form of incineration, smelting,
can present dangers similar to incineration. Concerns have been expressed that the Noranda .Smelter in Quebec,
Canada is producing atmospheric pollutants from the residual presence of plastics in the e-scrap.

D. In an effort to explore other alternatives, landfills have been tried, Studies have Shown however, that even
the best landfills are not completely safe, In feet the shortcomings of dealing with waste via modern landfills are
well documented. The main ‘offender’ in the area of metal leaching is mercury. In varying degrees, mercury
escapes or leaches from certain electronic devices such as circuit breakers, condensers and computer circuit
boards into the soil, According to Phil Stevenson, managing director of CleanCo a recycling plant in the UK,
‘Everyone knows that landfills leak – it has become common knowledge Even the best, state-of-the-art landfills
are not completely tight throughout their lifetimes, to one degree or another, a certain amount of chemical and
metal leaching occurs The situation is far worse for older or less stringent dump sites. If uncontrolled fires are
allowed to burn through these landfill areas, other toxic chemicals such as lead and cadmium are released.

E. An overwhelming majority of the world’s hazardous e-waste is generated by the industrialised market
economies. Because labour costs are cheap and government regulations in some countries are decidedly lax, the
exporting of e-waste has been practiced as another method to deal with its disposal. In the USA for example,
Datatek, a research company, estimated that it was 12 times cheaper to ship old computer monitors to China
than it was to recycle them. Data on the prevalence of this activity is scarce due to past bad publicity and dealers
of e-scrap not bothering to determine the final destination of the products they sell in 1989 the world
community established the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste for final
Disposal to stop the industrialised nations of the OECD from dumping their waste on and in less-developed
countries.

F. Europe has taken the lead on e-waste management by requiring governments to implement laws controlling
the production and disposal of electrical products. The European Union (EL) lias drafted legislation on Waste
from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (the WE EE Directive) based on a concept known as Extended
Producer Responsibility (EFR), Essentially, EFR places the responsibility’ of the production and disposal
squarely on the shoulders of the producers of electronic products, it requires that producers consider carefully

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the environmental impact of the products they bring to the marketplace. The aim of EPR is to encourage
producers of electrical equipment to prevent pollution and reduce resource and energy use at each stage of the
product file cycle. The lead in Europe has been necessary’ because WERE is about three times higher than the
growth of any other municipal waste streams.

G. WEE legislation will phase-out the use of toxic substances such as mercury, cadmium and lead in electronic
and electrical goods by the year 2008. It will require producers of electrical equipment to be responsible
financially for the collection, recycling and disposal of their products. It has stipulated that products containing
any lead, mercury, cadmium and other toxic substances must not be incinerated. It encourages producers to
integrate an increasing quantity of recycled material in any new products they produce. In fact, between 70%
and 90% by weight of all collected equipment must be recycled or re-used. These directives will go a long way
toward improving the e-waste problem in Europe and other governments of the world should look seriously at
the implementation of some or all of the legislation.
Questions 1 – 7. Reading Passage has 7 paragraphs, A-G.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
List of Headings
i. Exporting e-waste
ii. The hazards of burning computer junk
iii. Blame developed countries for e-waste
iv. Landfills are not satisfactory
v. Producer’s legal responsibility
vi. The dangers of computer circuit boards
vii. Electronic changes bring waste
viii. European e-waste laws
ix. The dangerous substances found in computers
x. Landfills and mercury leaching
xi. New products must contain recycled products
1) Paragraph A
2) Paragraph B
3) Paragraph C
4) Paragraph D
5) Paragraph E
6) Paragraph F
7) Paragraph G
Questions 8 – 11. Look at the following list of statements (Questions 8-11) and the list of companies below.
Match each statement with the correct company.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
8) waste sites without strict dumping rules leads to big problems
9) e-waste should be re-located to other countries
10) most old computers will be buried or burned
11) it is impossible to contain metal waste in soil
List of companies

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A. Noranda Smelter C. Keystone
B. Datatek D. CleanCo
Questions 12 – 14Choose THREE letters, A-G, According to the information in the text, which THREE of
the following pollution laws have been proposed in Europe?
A. Manufacturers will have to pay for disposal of their products.
B. Manufacturers must dispose of the electronic goods they produce.
C. Products made in Europe must be completely recyclable.
D. Consumers are responsible for the disposal of the products they purchase.
E. Disposal of products containing mercury should be incinerated.
F. Other governments around the world will implement the EU laws.
G. A large percentage of old products must be included in new products.

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