4. Should you avoid stress or encourage it? The experts don’t have the answer. Since stress has always been part of the human condition and life is not static—unexpected things do happen—complete avoidance is impossible. In fact, worrying about stress is a stress itself. Some authorities suggest that everyone use meditation and relaxation techniques to lessen the effects of stress. They favor changing our busy life-style to slower-paced living, striving less, and staying put more. Other authorities state that these methods may erase the beneficial effects of stress and that if you receive gratifications from a hectic lifestyle, adopting a more relaxed routine may deprive you of needed stimuli and lower the quality of your life.

5.All do agree that attitude is one of the most important factors. A positive attitude can make stress your ally. A negative attitude will make stress your enemy. Since we may never know whose advice to follow, perhaps the best course is to accept stress as inevitable, both good and bad, and to keep the stress that feels good and try to eliminate the stress that feels bad. You be your own expert!

31. Total relaxation enables you to receive new information more easily than stressful circumstance.
32. People age much more quickly if they are active after retirement.
33. People under stress can sometimes make incredible events happen.
34. Women whose weight is over 110 pounds can lift a one-ton object.
35. Whether stress is good or bad is not decided by the stressful situation itself, but by how people view it.
36. Stress keeps some people young, alive and lively.
37. There have been controversies among the authorities over whether meditation and relaxation techniques should be recommended.
38. According to the author, stresses can not be classified into positive and negative ones.
39. Stressful experiences won’t be that awful if we adopt right attitude towards them.
40. If you want to live longer, please stay put and be quiet and peaceful.

V. Directions: Read Passages 3 and 4 and choose the correct answer. Blacken the corresponding letter of the answer on your ANSWER SHEET.(20 points, 1 point for each)

Passage 3

1. In the evolution of mammals from reptiles, there was a succession of physical changes: the development of warm blood, body hair instead of scales, and the beginning of the nursing of the young. This radical physical transformation provided mammals with a greater tolerance for external temperature and required reliance on specialized food types. When the dominant dinosaurs became extinct, the Age of Mammals began. For the rest 60 million years mammals expanded into the biological vacuum which they were better equipped to exploit than all but a few varieties of reptiles.

2. The habitat of life forms on earth has been the entire planet, conveniently dividing the world into the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and the creatures of the land. The evolutionary process also created sea-dwelling mammals who appeared to reverse the process of evolution as they returned to the sea. The whales’ limbs became flipperlike, and they lost the hair on their bodies, suiting them better to aquatic life.