25. The campaign for more physical beauty seems to be both a tremendous success and a   ______failure.

26. When salesmen are doing well, there is pressure upon them to begin doing better, ______ they may start doing worse.

27. In its entertainment, television ______ far too much to the lowest instincts of man, particularly the lust for violence.

28. Modernity-snobs naturally tend to throw away their old ______ and buy new ones at a greater rate than those who are not modernity-snobs.

29. But far worse is the nightmare of travel in and around Los Angeles, where public transport does not exist and people are literally choking ______ in their exhaust fumes.

30. She felt her blood ______ her temples and there was pressure in her chest below the hollow.

31. We don’t advertise openings and we don’t solicit applications. We keep a low ______, and we do things differently.

32. She had hard work to see that the two young children who had been left to her ______ went to school regularly and got their meals regularly.

33. On the edge of a small cape that marked the side of the bay away from the promontory was a loose ______ of rocks.

34. She hurried on the almond Sundays and ______ the match for the kettle in quite a dashing way.

35. For all but the last six, I have done the work—all the tedious details that ______ between victory and defeat on election day—while men reaped the rewards, which is almost invariably the lot of women in politics.

36. The child strikes his head in the bath and falls unconscious. The man sits down and watches him ______.

37. Her tongue was cut and she was screaming in wild ______ shrieks.

38. I believe that TV’s appeal to the short attention span is not only inefficient communication but decivilizing ______.

39. Indeed from the first draw any mark of pleasure was taboo: one couldn’t mock the ______ man by any sign of relief.

 III. Each of the following sentences is given two choices of words or expressions. Choose  the right one to complete the sentence and write the corresponding letter on your Answer Sheet. （15 points, 1 point for each）

40. A fist fight followed, with much shouting and ______, until the ragged man succeeded in driving up to the door.

  A. disputing                                  B. squabbling

41. Susie will examine our secondary school programs to insure that all students are prepared to be responsible, productive and technologically ______ citizens of the 21st century.

  A. literary                                    B. literate

42. Meanwhile I’m just going to be hanging around ______ my thumbs, so if you’ve got anything an idle detective can do, just say the word.

  A. twiddling                                  B. twisting

43. These tasks were repetitive, lengthy, and lacking in any ______ interest.

  A. intrinsic                                  B. instinctive

44. Louisa said she could not go on living with a man who had married her under false ______.

  A. pretences                                 B. preferences

45. Deep at night, they could still hear gun-fire ______ in the distance.

  A. rumbling                                  B. rambling