1

In “In addition to these specialists, banks need general clerical help" (lines 25-27), the phrase these specialists refers to

2

The fragment “Banks simplify people’s lives, but the business of banking is anything but simple” (lines 2-3) means that banking is a(n)
3

From the fragment of the text “Although oil and natural gas prices have decoupled in recent years, there is still an indirect link between the price of oil and the price of natural gas, because both oil and natural gas are often produced from the same well” (lines 38-42), it can be inferred that
4
In paragraph 7, the word However in the fragment “In the humanoid league, the players are human-like robots with human-like senses. However, they are rather slow” can be replaced, without change in meaning, by
5

In the fragment of the text “It all comes down to the relationship between oil and gas production and the price of electricity, which directly affects the bottom line of technologies like wind and solar” (lines 14-17), the pronoun which refers to
6
In the 2nd paragraph of the text, in the fragment “That determination would appear to eliminate the possibility that Navy pilots who reported seeing unexplained aircraft”, the word who refers to
7

In the sentence of the last paragraph “In short, banks are best-placed to succeed if they commit to end-to-end digital transformation”, the phrase In short conveys an idea of

8

Based on the meanings of the words in the text, it can be said that
9

Based on the information presented in Text I, the expression in bold type and the item in parenthesis are semantically equivalent in

10
In the sentence fragment of the fifth paragraph “Designing robots for sports requires much more than experts in state-of-the-art technology”, the words in bold can be replaced, without any change in meaning, by the following words:
11


In the fragment of the text “Thankfully, this time around, the

outlook for renewable energy isn't so bleak" (lines 11-12), the

word bleak can be replaced, with no change in meaning, by

12

In the fragment “The threat to stability is all the greater given that Iran is likely to win any such clash and to treat the result as a licence to reassert its influence in the region" (lines 17-20), given that can be replaced, without change in meaning, by

13

Based on the meanings in Text I, the two items that express synonymous ideas are

14

In the fragments “some recent data suggests that as economic growth has picked up" (lines 47-48) and “Beijing has high ambitions for a much cleaner energy economy, driven not least by the levels of air pollution in many of the major cities" (lines 49-51), picked up and driven by mean, respectively,

15

In “Candidates can also check Internet job sites and the classified ads in local newspapers as well" (lines 45- 47), the modal verb can is replaced, without change in meaning, by