I. Statistically almost two-thirds of the UK's top earners finished their education very early. The well-educated graduate is less likely to stay at the Hilton Hotel than apply for a job in its kitchen. Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin, is a classic example, leaving school at sixteen to start a mail order company and later running his own airline, publishing, broadcasting, construction, holiday empire. Is education the key to successful life today? (200-250 words)

II. Please answer ONE of the following questions:

1. What does globalization mean to you?
2. Will globalization cause new tensions or will it be a great pacifier?
3. Does history repeat itself?

III. The last part of the examination is dealing with text comprehension.

• Please read the text carefully and then summarize its content, you should try to avoid the original wording of the text (total in 150 words).
  
• You are also asked to relate yourself to the bolded fragment of the text.

LIFE AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW

As lotto mania sweeps the nation, thousands of Americans are becoming sudden millionaires - but pots of gold don't seem to go to their head

In Los Angeles entrepreneur Keith Porchia checks on the progress of the 51-unit apartment complex he is developing. In Florida Sheela Ryan meets the board of the Ryan Foundation to map programs for what she calls „the new poor". Somewhere in southern Atlantic waters, Anthony Palermo cruises with his family aboard his own yacht, joyfully named Picked Six.

When state-run lotteries first became popular in the late 1970s, „instant millionaires" were isolated stuff of media sensation. Now Porchia, Ryan and Palermo are part of something else entirely: an expanding niche of American society filled with overnight plutocrats. As lotto mania has swept the nation, one result is an entirely new social stratum of millionaires, over 3,000 in all, and more are added each month. With some prizes soaring past nine digits (the largest: million in California), a few recipients even approach being superrich. But America's pot-of-gold winners are to a surprising degree the opposite of the Me-first cohort of nouveau speculators who bedecked the greedy ‘80s.

According to the most comprehensive survey, winners are heavily clustered in high-income brackets. Once they win, they don't go out on a crazy spending, but pay off debts, and by a high percentage, continue to work or get additional education. Only 23% quit their job. Sharon Turner, who won .5 million, says that her husband will stay at his job at high school „because he wants to teach." Last week Don Wittman, 29, of Denver, amazed everybody twice: he won his second million prize - against odds figured at 17 trillion to 1 - and decided to stay at his job as a carpenter. „Sure, I'm going to keep on working," he says. „Otherwise I'd just be bored."

The odds of joining the flourishing ranks of lotto millionaires are still longer than the risk of being struck by lightning. About 90 million players will ring up .6 billion in ticket sales this year. So far, 34 states have joined the lottery gold rush obtaining vital revenues for depleted coffers. Professors Charles Clotfelter and Philip Cook challenge the games of chance as regressive, inefficient means of raising revenue and suggest they target minorities and the poor. They also wonder whether the lotteries' get-rich-quick appeal undermines the American work ethic.

Nonetheless, more and more rainbows continue to end on American doorsteps.

Cautionary tales abound of lottery winners whose bad investments lead them to bankruptcy, but most America's luckiest people seem to keep their feet on the ground. The fact that they are paid in 20 annual taxable instalments helps. (Annual payments also mean a much lower outlay by the lotteries.) Most winners stay in the same neighbourhood, keep old friends and continue to look at price tags.

Even for those who win big, there's the chance that lightning might just strike more than once. There is George Magalio, 49, who, using his own system of picking winning numbers, has struck gold in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania for a total of million. He has invested his winnings conservatively. And he's still playing.