In the UK, "athletics" is used to refer to the collection of sports that in the US is typically called "track and field"--so things like track races and relays, hurdles (but not marathons, usually), long jump, discus, pole vaulting, etc. You might see "side" used more outside of the US to mean "team", for example in a sentence like "The player joined the side in 2009 and plans to stay many more seasons," referring to a player who joined a new professional sports team. Here is an example from a recent Sky Sports article (UK): "Former Swansea forward Michu has joined Spanish fourth division side Langreo."

The second one sounds best to me, although the first doesn't sound too bad to me. In writing, I would definitely only use the second.

In the UK (and possibly some other countries), when a person finishes their undergraduate degree they are awarded a classification (1, 2:1, 2:2, 3) with that degree. You can google degree classification equivalents between the UK classification and the classification system used in the country where you received your undergraduate degree. There are usually tables online to help you convert between different grading systems.

I agree it really depends on your level. If you are A1-A2, then a graded reader with English and your native language is probably most appropriate. After that, you might look at chapter books that target young English-speaking children (age 6-8), such as books by Roald Dahl or the Nancy Drew mystery series, if you aren't at the level of The Hunger Games yet

You can say something like "aren't you?" "don't/didn't you?" or, most commonly, just "right?" eg: "You're going home now, aren't you?" "You went to Spain last summer, isn't that right?" "You bought that coat at the mall, didn't you?" "You have a test tomorrow, don't you?" In all of these examples, you could use "right?". eg: "You're going home now, right?"

I'd recommend NPR http://www.npr.org/ It's the national public radio station in the US and has a huge variety of the kinds of programs you're interested in. Good luck with the TOEFL! You might also be interested in listening to the podcast Serial (available in iTunes or on the Serial website http://serialpodcast.org/). It was a huge hit in the US and you can find many websites discussing it. So you could listen to an episode and then find extra commentary on many different websites online. I think it would be good practice for the TOEFL because some of the dialogue is taken from phone calls and old recordings, so it isn't perfect studio quality audio. Very good to help train your ear!

can you provide the sentence or paragraph where you heard this phrase for context?

Tú - 2nd person singular. It's the equivalent of "you" in English when used among friends, family, and people younger than you (as a rough guideline) Usted (Ud)- 2nd person singular for formal use-the equivalent of "you" when you are talking to someone older than you, someone in a position of respect, or a stranger Ustedes (Uds.) 2nd person plural--the same use as Ud but when you are talking to two or more people, if you'd use Ud with at least one of them. Uds is also used widely in Latin America for all cases of the 2nd person plural instead of vosotros/as, which is commonly used in Spain as the plural of "tú". So the different between tú and usted boils down to how well you know someone or what your status is relative to theirs (a kid would use Ud with most adults, most adults will use tú with a kid). The difference between using both vosotros/as and ustedes or just ustedes depends on where you are speaking Spanish :) Nosotros is the first person plural ("we") if even one person in that "we" is a man. For groups of only women, it is "nosotras". Somos is just the 1st person plural present conjugation of "ser" eg Nosotros somos. Nosotras somos.