EPT TIR 1401 Close Passage

Section Four: Cloze Passage

Directions: Words or phrases are omitted from the following passage, and they are numbered 86 to 100. With reference to the numbers in the passage choose (1), (2), (3), or (4) that best completes each blank. Then, on your answer sheet, find the number of the item and mark your answer.

You may be surprised to learn that nearly two thirds of the world’s richest men and women didn’t inherit their wealth, but made their own …(1)… through determination, luck, and taking risks. Many of these …(2)… billionaires didn’t even finish school or college, like software giant Bill Gates. Gates told his parents that he wanted to…(3)… Harvard University before finishing his degree in order to start a company selling software. …(4)…, they recognized how motivated he was, and agreed. That company became Microsoft.

While Bill Gates …(5)… go to college, Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur and businessman who …(6)… the Virgin empire, left school with no qualifications at the age of 16. His headmaster told him that he would …(7)… go to prison or become a millionaire. …(8)… Branson had dyslexia, a condition that can cause difficulties with reading and learning. Dyslexia was little …(9)… when he was at school and his teachers thought he was just stupid or lazy. Branson believes that if he …(10)… dyslexia, he probably wouldn’t have become a …(11)… because he wanted to prove to everyone that he was neither stupid nor lazy!

Some of these billionaires, like Opera Winfrey, the African-American talk show host, were born into …(12)… . She was the daughter of a housemaid and a coal miner, and lived in extreme financial hardship on her grandmother’s farm in Mississippi for a large part of her childhood. Oprah’s …(13)… came when she got a job in radio while she was still at high school. Oprah’s grandmother has often said that she always knew her granddaughter would …(14)… the stage because she never stopped talking as a child!  Full of struggle and sometimes pain, dreams, and courage, the stories of these rags to riches billionaires are a(n) …(15)… for us all.

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15