Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks.

The first question we might ask is: What can you learn in college that will help you in being an employee? The schools teach a great many things of value to the future accountant, doctor or electrician. Do they also teach anything of value to the future employee? Yes, they teach the one thing that it is perhaps most valuable for the future employee to know. But very few students bother (1) ______ it. This basic is the skill ability to organize and express ideas in writing and in speaking. This means that your success as an employee will depend on your ability to communicate, with people and to present your own thoughts and ideas to them so they will (2) ________ understand what you are driving at and be persuaded. Of course, skill in expression is not enough (3) _______ itself. You must have something to say in the first place. The effectiveness of your job depends (4) _______ your ability to make other people understand your work as they do on the quality of the work itself. Expressing one's thoughts is one skill that the school can really teach. The foundations for skill in expression have to be laid early: an interest in and an ear for language; experience in organizing ideas and data, in brushing aside the irrelevant, and above all the habit of verbal expression. If you do not lay these foundations (5) ________ your school years, you may never have an opportunity again.