The passage has 15 blanks. For each blank there are four choices marked A), B), C) and D) on the right side of the paper. You should choose the ONE that best fits into the passage.
Passage 1
It is well known that teenage boys tend to do better 1)______ math than girls, that male high school students are more likely than their female counterparts 2)______ advanced math courses like calculus, that virtually all the great mathematicians 3)______ men. Are women born with 4)______ mathematical ability? Or does society’s sexism slow their progress? In 1980, two Johns Hopkins University researchers tried 5)______ the eternal nature/nurture debate. Julian Stanley and Camilla Benbow 6)______ 10,000 talented seventh and eighth graders between 1972 and 1979. Using the Scholastic Aptitude Test, in which math questions are meant to measure ability rather than knowledge, they discovered 7)______ sex differences. 8)______ the verbal abilities of the males and females 9)______ differed, twice as many boys as girls scored over 500 (on a scale of 200 to 800) on mathematical ability; at the 700 level, the ratio was 14 to 1. The conclusion: males have 10)______ superior mathematical reasoning ability.
