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36.Last year, Smith’s Auto Shop made gross revenue of $460,000. This year, their gross revenue increased significantly - by an amazing 25%. What was the gross revenue this year?
38.The Mandarin Language Mandarin-or Putonghua (poo-tong-wah) “common language”-is the most widely spoken language in the China per capita (followed by Cantonese). It is also the (1) official language of the People’s Republic of China (mainland China), the Republic of China (Taiwan), and is one of the four official languages of Singapore. The language got its name in English from the Portuguese word, Mandarin meaning “an official of China”. It is a (2) tonal language, which means that it used different tones (pitches) to (3) distinguish between words. English, for example, has tones but it isn’t considered a tonal language since, in English, tones are used to indicate a generic yes-or-no question (rising tone on the last word of the sentence, i.e. “Did you eat (↑)?), among other uses. Mandarin has four tones, which are classified in the following manner: the first tone (1) is flat, the second tone (2) is rising, the third tone (3) is falling then rising, and the fourth tone (4) is falling. There is also a neutral tone, which is similar to the first tone, but shorter. In English, if you took the word “Ma” and gave it the different tones, it wouldn’t change the meaning of the word, it would still mean “mother.” Saying “Ma” in a different tone would change the melody of the word, but not the word itself. But in Mandarin the way tones distinguish words can be seen with the following: Ma (1) is mother, Ma (2) is a Sichuan pepper that leaves a numbing (4) sensation on the tongue, ma (3) is horse, and ma (4) is used when describing the verb (5) to scold. It is because of the tones in Mandarin that it is often erroneously considered “the most difficult language to learn.”
According to the passage, the reason that Mandarin is known as the “common language” is...
39.The Marianas Trench We often learn that top of Mount Everest is the tallest point above sea level (5.49 miles). But what about the lowest point below sea leave? The Mariana Trench-found in the waters of the Mariana (1) Archipelago, or Islands, in Micronesia-holds the record for deepest part of the oceans around the world. The trench, or ditch, can be compared to an underwater valley. Its depth has been recorded to reach over 6.8 miles (over 10.9 kilometers) below the sea surface. If you were (2) to stick Mount Everest in the trench, the top of this tallest mountain in the world wouldn’t touch the surface of the water. In fact, there would be a one-mile gap between the tip of the mountain and the surface’s waves. Also known as Marianas Trench, The Mariana Trench gets its name from the Mariana Islands due to the (3) proximity of the trench to the Islands. The islands were named after Queen Mariana of Spain by the King’s explorer Fernando Magellan, who claimed the archipelago as a Spanish (4) colony. The trench was discovered in the late-19th century by a British team of scientists and oceanographers who sought to map the ocean floor by dragging lines, also known as sounding. Later, echo sounding was used to acquire a more accurate reading of the oceans’ depths. The Mariana Trench is found at the (5) boundary of two tectonic plates, the Pacific Plate and the Mariana Plate. For millions of years, the Pacific Plate has been pushed below, or subducted beneath, the Mariana Plate, causing pressures leading to the formation of the Mariana Islands. Because of the formation of these plates, governments have proposed dumping nuclear waste deep into the trench, in hopes that because of the subduction of the Pacific Plate, the waste will be pushed down under this plate and therefore covered up. However, international law prohibits the dumping of nuclear waste in the ocean.
The verb “to stick”, bolded after the (2) in the first paragraph, is closest in meaning to
