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Some people call it a traveling museum. Others refer to it as a living or open-air museum. Built in Brazil to celebrate the quincentennial of Columbus’ first voyage to the New World, the Nina, a Columbus-era replica ship, provides visitors with an accurate visual of the size and sailing implements of Columbus’ favorite ship from over 500 years ago.
I joined the crew of the Nina in Gulf Shores, Alabama, in February 2013. As part of a research project sponsored by my university, my goal was to document my days aboard the ship in a blog. I quickly realized that I gained the most valuable insights when I observed or gave tours to school-age children. The field-trip tour of the Nina is hands-on learning at its best. In this setting, students could touch the line, pass around a ballast stone, and move the extremely large tiller that steered the ships in Columbus’ day. They soon came to understand the labor involved in sailing the ship back in his time. I was pleased to see the students become active participants in their learning process.
The Nina is not the only traveling museum that provides such field trips. A visit to Jamestown Settlement, for example, allows visitors to board three re-creations of the ships that brought the first settlers from England to Virginia in the early 1600s. Historical interpreters, dressed in period garb, give tours to the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery. These interpreters often portray a character that would have lived and worked during that time period. Students touring these ships are encouraged to interact with the interpreters in order to better understand the daily life in the past.
My experience on the Nina helps substantiate my long-held belief that students stay interested, ask better questions, and engage in higher-order thinking tasks when they are actively engaged in the learning process. The students who boarded the Nina came as passive learners. They left as bold explorers.
36. What line of business is the author engaged in?
(A) Shipping.
(B) Education.
(C) Ecological tourism.
(D) Museum administration.

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37. Which of the following is true about the Nina introduced in the passage?
(A) She is a replica of a ship that Columbus built in Brazil.
(B) She is always crowded with foreign tourists during holidays.
(C) She is the boat Columbus sailed in his voyage to the New World.
(D) She displays a replica of the navigational equipment used in Columbus’ time.

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38. What is the third paragraph mainly about?
(A) Guidelines for visitors on the ships.
(B) Life of the first settlers in Jamestown Settlement.
(C) Duties of the interpreters in the British museums.
(D) Introduction to some open-air museums similar to the Nina.

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39. What does the author mean by the last two sentences of the passage?
(A) The students are interested in becoming tour guides.
(B) The experience has changed the students’ learning attitude.
(C) The students become brave and are ready to sail the seas on their own.
(D) The museums are successful in teaching the students survival skills at sea.

An ancient skull unearthed recently indicates that big cats originated in central Asia-not Africa as widely thought, paleontologists reported on Wednesday.
Dated at between 4.1 and 5.95 million years old, the fossil is the oldest remains ever found of a pantherine felid, as big cats are called. The previous felid record holder-tooth fragments found in Tanzania-is estimated to be around 3.8 million years old.
The evolution of big cats has been hotly discussed, and the issue is complicated by a lack of fossil evidence to settle the debate.
“This find suggests that big cats have a deeper evolutionary origin than previously suspected,” said Jack Tseng, a paleontologist of the University of Southern California who led the probe.
Tseng and his team made the find in 2010 in a remote border region in Tibet. The fossil was found stuck among more than 100 bones that were probably deposited by a river that exited a cliff. After three years of careful comparisons with other fossils, using DNA data to build a family tree, the team is convinced the creature was a pantherine felid.
The weight of evidence suggests that central or northern Asia is where big cats originated some 16 million years ago. They may have lived in a vast mountain refuge, formed by the uplifting Himalayas, feeding on equally remarkable species such as the Tibetan blue sheep. They then dispersed into Southeast Asia, evolving into the clouded leopard, tiger and snow leopard lineages, and later movements across continents saw them evolve into jaguars and lions.
The newly discovered felid has been called Panthera Blytheae, after Blythe Haaga, daughter of a couple who support a museum in Los Angeles, the university said in a news release.
40. According to the passage, why is the origin of big cats a hot issue?
(A) Because not many fossils have been found.
(B) Because they moved across continents.
(C) Because no equipment was available for accurate analysis.
(D) Because they have evolved into many different species of felid.

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41. Where was the new felid fossil found?
(A) In Tanzania.
(B) In Tibet.
(C) In California.
(D) In Southeast Asia.

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42. According to the passage, which of the following statements is true regarding big cats?
(A) Some big cats evolved into jaguars 16 million years ago.
(B) The oldest fossil of big cats ever discovered is 3.8 million years old.
(C) Big cats are descendants of snow leopards living in high mountains.
(D) Tibetan blue sheep was a main food source for big cats in the Himalayas.

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43. What is the purpose of this passage?
(A) To promote wildlife conservation.
(B) To report on a new finding in paleontology.
(C) To introduce a new animal species.
(D) To compare the family trees of pantherine felids.

American cooking programs have taught audiences, changed audiences, and changed with audiences from generation to generation. In October 1926, the U.S. Department of Agriculture created this genre’s first official representative, a fictional radio host named Aunt Sammy. Over the airwaves, she educated homemakers on home economics and doled out advice on all kinds of matters, but it was mostly the cooking recipes that got listeners’ attention. The show provided a channel for transmitting culinary advice and brought about a national exchange of recipes.
Cooking shows transitioned to television in the 1940s, and in the 1950s were often presented by a cook systematically explaining instructions on how to prepare dishes from start to finish. These programs were broadcast during the day and aimed at middle-class women whose mindset leaned toward convenient foods for busy families. Poppy Cannon, for example, was a popular writer of The Can-Opener Cookbook. She appeared on various television shows, using canned foods to demonstrate how to cook quickly and easily.
Throughout the sixties and seventies, a few chef-oriented shows redefined the genre as an exhibition of haute European cuisine by celebrity gourmet experts. This elite cultural aura then gave way to various cooking styles from around the world. An example of such change can be seen in Martin Yan’s 1982 “Yan Can Cook” series, which demonstrated Chinese cuisine cooking with the catchphrase, “If Yan can cook, you can too!” By the 1990s, these cooking shows ranged from high-culture to health-conscious cuisine, with chefs’ personalities and entertainment value being two keys to successful productions.
At the beginning of the 21st century, new cooking shows emerged to satisfy celeb-hungry, reality-crazed audiences. In this new millennium of out-of-studio shows and chef competition reality shows, chefs have become celebrities whose fame rivals that of rock stars. Audiences of these shows tend to be people who are interested in food and enjoy watching people cook rather than those who want to do the cooking themselves, leaving the age-old emphasis on following recipes outmoded.
44. Which of the following is closest in meaning to “haute” in the third paragraph?
(A) Coarse.
(B) Civilian.
(C) Various.
(D) High-class.

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45. Which of the following is true about audiences of American cooking shows?
(A) Those in the ’30s preferred advice on home economics to cooking instructions.
(B) Those in the ’40s and ’50s were interested in food preparation for busy families.
(C) Those in the ’60s and ’70s were eager to exchange recipes with each other.
(D) Those in the ’80s enjoyed genuine American-style gourmet cooking.