Section A

Directions: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Write your choices in the Answer Sheet.

I haven’t slept very well this week, and perhaps as a result, have had some nightmares. My dream last night was so upsetting that I actually don’t want to describe it, for fear that somehow it might come true, but I’ll just say that it 【B1】______ a family member’s extremely horrible health emergency.

Thankfully this sort of thing doesn’t happen to me too often, but when it does, it leaves me emotionally drained and 【B2】______ all day—even though I know what I dreamt isn’t “real.” I tend to feel guilty about dwelling on something I only 【B3】______ , but according to Alice Robb, author of Why We Dream: The Transformative Power of Our Nightly Journey, out later this month, it’s 【B4】______ to experience real, bodily effects after traumatic dreams. “Emotions and stress experienced in dreams can have very real emotional and physiological 【B5】______,” she says. “There are even a few reported cases in which nightmares seem to have contributed to heart attacks.”

【B6】______, there are some strategies people can employ to reduce their nightmares’ frequency and harm. In the long- term, Robb suggests practicing some dream techniques during the day. In her book, she writes: “If people can learn to become 【B7】______ in their dreams, they can wake themselves up or even drive away their dream-foes.” She describes a 2006 experiment done by psychologists at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, in which the researchers asked some 【B8】______ to practice clear dream induction techniques on their own, gave private clear dreaming lessons to others, and then left a third group untreated. Both groups that 【B9】______ clear dreaming techniques saw fewer nightmares as a result: “Patients who learned in private sessions started out with an average of 3.6 nightmares, and that number went down to 1.4,” Robb writes. “The 【B10】______ didn’t depend on achieving clarity; several people who never managed to become clear in their dreams still had a reduction in nightmares.”