Mình mới thi xong còn giữ một số đềthi thử muốn share cho các bạn ạ :3 Reading Passage 1: The "Extinct" Grass in Britain A The British grass interrupted brome was said to be extinct, just like the Dodo. Called interrupted brome because of its gappy seed-head, this unprepossessing grass was found nowhere else in the world, Gardening experts from the Victorian lira were first to record it. In the early 20th century, it grew far and wide across southern England. But it quickly vanished and by 1972 was nowhere to be found. Even the seeds stored at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden as an insurance policy were dead, having been mistakenly kept at room temperature. Fans of the glass were devastated. B However, reports of its decline were not entirely correct. Interrupted brome has enjoyed a revival, one that's not due to science. Because of the work of one gardening enthusiast, interrupted brome is thriving as a pot plant. The relaunching into the wild of Britain's almost extinct plant has excited conservationists everywhere C Originally, Philip Smith didn't know that he had the very unusual grass at his own home. When he heard about the grass becoming extinct, he wanted to do something surprising. He attended a meeting of the British Botanical Society in Manchester in 1979, and seized His opporlunity. He said that it was so disappointing to hear about the demise of the interrupted brome. "What a pity we didn't research it further!" he added. Then. All of a sudden he displayed his pots with so called "extinct grass" lot all to see. D Smith had kept the seeds from the last stronghold of the grass, Pamisford in 1963. It was then when the grass stalled to disappear from the wild. Smith cultivated the grass, year after year. Ultimately, it was his curiosity in the plant that saved it. Not scientific or technological projects that E For now, the bromes future is guaranteed. The seeds front Smith's plants have beet, securely stored in the cutting edge facilities of Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst Place in Sussex. And living plants thrive at the botanic gardens at Kew, Edinburgh and Cambridge. This year, seeds are also saved at sites all across the country and the grass now nourishes at several public gardens too. F The grass will now be reintroduced to the British countryside. As a part of the Species Recovery Project, the organisation English Nature will re-introduce interrupted brome into the agricultural landscape, provided willing farmers are found. Alas, the grass is neither beautiful not practical. It is undoubtedly a weed, a weed that nobody cares for these days. The brome wax probably never widespread enough to annoy farmers and today, no one would appreciate its productivity or nutritious qualities. As a grass, it leaves a lot to be desited by agriculturalists. G Smith's research has attempted to answer the question of where the grass came from. His research points to mutations from other weedy grasses as the most likely source. So close is the relationship that interrupted brome was originally deemed to he a mere variety of soil brome by the great Victorian taxonomist Professor Hackel. A botanist from the 19th century, Druce. Had taken notes on the grass and convinced his peers that the grass deserved its own status as a species. Despite Druce growing up in poverty and his self-taught profession, he became the leading botanist of his time. H Where the grass came from may be clear, but the timing of its birth may be tougher to find out. A clue lies in its penchant for growing as a weed in fields shared with a fodder crop, in particular nitrogen-fixing legumes such as sainfoin, lucerne or clover. According to agricultural historian Joan Thirsk. The humble sainfoin and its company were first noticed in Britain in the early 17th century. Seeds brought in from the Continent were sown in pastures to feed horses and other livestock. However, back then, only a few enthusiastic gentlemen were willing to use the new crops for their prized horses. I Not before too long though, the need to feed the parliamentary armies in Scotland, England and behind was more pressing than ever. Farmers were forced to produce more bread, cheese and beer. And by 1650 the legumes were increasingly introduced into arable rotations, to serve as green nature to boost grain yields. A bestseller of its day, Nathaniel Fiennes's Sainfoin Improved, published in 1671, helped to spread the word. With the advent of sainfoin, clover and lucerne. Britain's very own rogue grass had suddenly at rivet. J Although the credit for the discovery of interrupted brome goes to a Miss A. M. Barnard, who collected the first specimens at Odsey, Bedfordshire, in 1849, the grass had probably lurked undetected in the English countryside for at least a hundred years. Smith thinks the plant- the world's version of the Dodo probably evolved in the late 17th or early 18th century, once sainfoin became established. Due mainly to the development of the motor car and subsequent decline of fodder crops for horses, the brome declined rapidly over the 20th century. Today, sainfoin has almost disappeared from the countryside, though occasionally its colourful flowers are spotted in lowland nature reserves. More recently artificial fertilizers have made legume rotations unnecessary K The close relationship with out-of-fashion crops spells trouble for those seeking to re-establish interrupted brome in today's countryside. Much like the once common arable weeds, such as the corncockle, its seeds cannot survive long in the soil. Each spring, the brome relied on farmers to resow its seeds; in the days before weed killers and advanced seed sieves, an ample supply would have contaminated supplies of crop seed. However fragile seeds are not the brome's only problem: This species is also unwilling to release its seeds as they ripen. According to Smith. The grass will struggle to survive even in optimal conditions. It would be very difficult to thrive amongst its more resilient competitors found in today's improved agricultural landscape L Nonetheless, interrupted brome's reluctance to thrive independently may have some benefits. Any farmer willing to foster this unique contribution to the world's flora can rest assured that the grass will never become an invasive pest. Restoring interrupted brome to its rightful home could bring other benefits too, particularly if this strange species is granted recognition as a national treasure. Thanks to British farmers, interrupted brome was given the chance to evolve in the first place. Conservationists would like to see the grass grow once again in its natural habitat and perhaps, one day, seeing the grass become a badge of honour for a new generation of environmentally conscious farmers. Questions 1-8 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1-8 on you answer sheet, write TRUE if the statement is true FALSE if the statement is false NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage 1. The name of interrupted brome came from the unprepossessing grass disappeared from places in the world for a period. 2. Interrupted brome seeds cannot sprout because they were kept accidentally at unsuitable temperature. 3. Philip Smith works at University of Manchester. 4. Kew Botanic Gardens will operate English Nature. 5. Interrupted brome grew unwantedly at the sides of sainfoin. 6. Legumes were used for feeding livestock and enriching the soil. 7. The spread of seeds of interrupted brome depends on the harvesting of the farmers. 8. Only the weed killers can stop interrupted brome from becoming an invasive pest. Questions 9-13 Look at the following opinions or deeds (Questions 9-13 ) and the list of people below. Match each opinion or deed with the correct person, A-F . Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet. A A. M. Barnard B Philip Smith C George Claridge Druce D Joan Thirsk E Professor Hackel F Nathaniel Fiennes 9 identified interrupted brome as another species of brome. 10 convinced others about the status of interrupted brome in the botanic world. 11 said that sainfoin was first found more than 300 years ago. 12 helped farmers know that sainfoin is useful for enriching the soil. 13 collected the first sample of interrupted brome. Reading Passage 2: Are Artists Liars? A Shortly before his death, Marlon Brando was working on a series of instructional videos about acting, to he called "Lying for a Iiving". On the surviving footage, Brando can he seen dispensing gnomic advice on his craft to a group of enthusiastic, if somewhat bemused, Hollywood stars, including Leonardo Di Caprio and Sean Penn. Brando also recruited random people from the Los Angeles street and persuaded them to improvise (the footage is said to include a memorable scene featuring two dwarves and a giant Samoan). "If you can lie, you can act." Brando told Jod Kaftan, a writer for Rolling Stone and one of the few people to have viewed the footage. "Are you good at lying?" asked Kaftan. "Jesus." said Brando, "I'm fabulous at it". B Brando was not the first person to note that the line between an artist and a liar is a line one. If art is a kind of lying, then lying is a form of art, albeit of a lower order-as Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain have observed. Indeed, lying and artistic storytelling spring from a common neurological root-one that is exposed in the cases of psychiatric patients who suffer from a particular kind of impairment. Both liars and artists refuse to accept the tyranny of reality. Both carefully craft stories that are worthy of belief – a skill requiring intellectual sophistication, emotional sensitivity and physical self-control (liars are writers and performers of their own work). Such parallels are hardly coincidental, as I discovered while researching my book on lying. C A case study published in 1985 by Antonio Damasio, a neurologist, tells the story of a middle-aged woman with brain damage caused by a series of strokes. She retained cognitive abilities, including coherent speech, but what she actually said was rather unpredictable. Checking her knowledge of contemporary events, Damasio asked her about the Falklands War. In the language of psychiatry, this woman was "confabulating". Chronic confabulation is a rare type of memory problem that affects a small proportion of brain damaged people. In the literature it is defined as "the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories about oneself or the world, without the conscious intention to deceive". Whereas amnesiacs make errors of omission, there are gaps in their recollections they find impossible to fill – confabulators make errors of commission: They make tilings up. Rather than forgetting, they are inventing. Confabulating patients are nearly always oblivious to their own condition, and will earnestly give absurdly implausible explanations of why they're in hospital, or talking to a doctor. One patient, asked about his surgical sear, explained that during the Second World War he surprised a teenage girl who shot him three times in the head, killing him, only for surgery to bring him back to life. The same patient, when asked about his family, described how at various times they had died in his arms, or had been killed before his eyes. Others tell yet more fantastical tales, about trips to the moon, fighting alongside Alexander in India or seeing Jesus on the Cross. Confabulators aren't out to deceive. They engage in what Morris Moseovitch, a neuropsychologist, calls "honest lying". Uncertain and obscurely distressed by their uncertainty, they are seized by a "compulsion to narrate" : A deep-seated need to shape, order and explain what they do not understand. Chronic confabulators are often highly inventive at the verbal level, jamming together words in nonsensical but suggestive ways: One patient, when asked what happened to Queen Marie Antoinette of France, answered that she had been "suicided" by her family. In a sense, these patients are like novelists, as described by Henry James: People on whom "nothing is wasted". Unlike writers, however, they have little or no control over their own material. D The wider significance of this condition is what it tells us about ourselves. Evidently, there is a gushing river of verbal creativity in the normal human mind, from which both artistic invention and lying are drawn. We are born storytellers, spinning, narrative out of our experience and imagination, straining against the leash that keeps us tethered to reality. This is a wonderful thing; it is what gives us out ability to conceive of alternative futures and different worlds. And it helps us to understand our own lives through the entertaining stories of others. But it can lead us into trouble, particularly when we try to persuade others that our inventions are real. Most of the time, as our stories bubble up to consciousness, we exercise our cerebral censors, controlling which stories we tell, and to whom. Yet people lie for all sorts of reasons, including the fact that confabulating can be dangerously fun. E During a now-famous libel case in 1996, Jonathan Aitken, a former cabinet minister, recounted a tale to illustrate the horrors he endured after a national newspaper tainted his name. The case, which stretched on for more than two years, involved a series of claims made by the Guardian about Aitken's relationships with Saudi arms dealers, including meetings he allegedly held with them on a trip to Paris while he was a government minister. Whitt amazed many in hindsight was the sheer superfluity of the lies Aitken told during his testimony. Aitken's case collapsed in June 1997, when the defence finally found indisputable evidence about his Paris trip. Until then, Aitken's charm, fluency and flair for theatrical displays of sincerity looked as if they might bring him victory, they revealed that not only was Aitken's daughter not with him that day (when he was indeed doorstepped), but also that the minister had simply got into his car and drove off, with no vehicle in pursuit. F Of course, unlike Aitken, actors, playwrights and novelists are not literally attempting to deceive us, because the rules are laid out in advance: Come to the theatre, or open this book, and we'll lie to you. Perhaps this is why we fell it necessary to invent art in the first place: As a safe space into which our lies can be corralled, and channeled into something socially useful. Given the universal compulsion to tell stories, art is the best way to refine and enjoy the particularly outlandish or insight till ones. But that is not the whole story. The key way in which artistic "lies" differ from normal lies, and from the "honest lying" of chronic confabulators, is that they have a meaning and resonance beyond their creator. The liar lies on behalf of himself; the artist tell lies on behalf of everyone. If writers have a compulsion to narrate, they compel themselves to find insights about the human condition. Mario Vargas Llosa has written that novels "express a curious truth that can only he expressed in a furtive and veiled fashion, masquerading as what it is not." Art is a lie whose secret ingredient is truth. Questions 14-19 Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the correct number, i-viii, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet. List of Headings I Unsuccessful deceit Ii Biological basis between liars and artists Iii How to lie in an artistic way Iv Confabulations and the exemplifiers V The distinction between artists and common liars Vi The fine line between liars and artists Vii The definition of confabulation Viii Creativity when people lie 14 Paragraph A 15 Paragraph B 16 Paragraph C 17 Paragraph D 18 Paragraph E 19 Paragraph F Questions 20-21 Choose TWO letters, A-E. Write the correct letters in boxes 20-21 on your answer sheet. Which TWO of the following statements about people suffering from confabulation are true? A They have lost cognitive abilities. B They do not deliberately tell a lie. C They are normally aware of their condition D They do not have the impetus to explain what they do not understand. E They try to make up stories. Questions 22-23 Choose TWO letters, A-E. Write the correct letters in boxes 22-23 on your answer sheet. Which TWO of the following statements about playwrights and novelists are true? A They give more meaning to the stories. B They tell lies for the benefit of themselves. C They have nothing to do with the truth out there. D We can be misled by them if not careful. E We know there are lies in the content. Questions 24-26 Complete the summary below. hoose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet. A 24.. accused Jonathan Aitken, a former cabinet minister, who was selling and buying with 25.. Aitken's case collapsed in June 1997, when the defence finally found indisputable evidence about his Paris trip. He was deemed to have his 26.. They revealed that not only was Aitken's daughter not with him that day, but also that the minister had simply got into his car and drove off, with no vehicle in pursuit. Reading Passage 3: Why do we respond to words and symbols in the ways we do? Semantics, in general, is the subdivision of linguistics concerned with meaning. Semantics attempts the systematic study of the assignment of meanings to minimal meaning-bearing elements and the combination of these in the production of more complex meaningful expressions. Elementary word groups may be combined in a relationship of content, forming thematic groups and semantic and lexical "fields". For example, all the means of expressing the concept of joy in a given language constitute the lexical-semantic field "joy". Because of the trained patterns of response, people listen more respectfully to the health advice of someone who has "MD" after his name than to that of someone who hasn't. A "pattern of reactions", then, is the sum of the ways we act in response to events, to words, and to symbols. Words and word meanings are one of the most important information cues used in speaking and understanding, as well as in reading. Indeed, a person's life experience and cultural experience (even reading comic strips) are most relevant to the development of linguistic "meaning making" in any language, which is very important in the communication process. Words from a person's native language and culture perspective can carry special associations. For instance, the Spanish words for hammock, tobacco, and potato are derived from Tamo words for these items. Therefore, when people's semantic habits are reasonably similar to those of most people around them, they are regarded as "normal" or perhaps "dull". If their semantic habits are noticeably different from those of others, they are regarded as "individualistic" or "original", or, if the differences are disapproved of or viewed with alarm, as "crazy". A definition states the meaning of a word using other words. It is clear that to define a word, as a dictionary does, is simply to explain the word with more words. However, defining words with more words usually gets people (especially children) at once into what mathematicians call an "infinite regress", an infinite series of occurrences or concepts. For example, it can lead people into the kind of run-around that people sometimes encounter when they look up "impertinence" and find it defined as "impudence", so they look up "impudence" and find it defined as "impertinence". Yet-and here we come to another common reaction pattern- people often act as if words can be explained fully with more words. To a person who asked for a definition of jazz, Louis Armstrong is said to have replied, "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know", proving himself to be an intuitive semanticist as well as a great trumpet player. Semantics, then, seeks the "operational" definition instead of the dictionary Bridgman, the 1946 Nobel Prize winner and physicist, once wrote, "The true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not by what he says about it." He made an enormous contribution to science by showing that the meaning of a scientific term lies in the operations, the things done, that establish its validity, rather than in verbal definitions. An example of operational definition of the term "weight" of an object, operationalized to a degree, would be the following: "Weight is the numbers that appear when that object is placed on a weighing scale". According to it, when one starts reading the numbers on the scale, it would more fully make an operational definition. But if people say-and revolutionists have started uprisings with just this statement "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains!" -what operations could we perform to demonstrate its accuracy or inaccuracy? Next, if this suggestion of "operationalism" is pulled outside the physical sciences where Bridgman applied it, what "operations" are people expected to perform as the result of both the language they use and the language other people use in communicating to them? Here is a personnel manager studying an application form. He comes to the words "Education: Harvard University", and drops the application form in the wastebasket (that's the "operation") because, as he would say if you asked him, "I don't like Harvard men". This is an instance of "meaning" at work-but it is not a meaning that can be found in dictionaries. So far as we know, human beings are the only creatures that have, over and above that biological equipment which we have in common with other creatures, the additional capacity for manufacturing symbols and systems of symbols. When we react to a flag, we are not reacting simply to a piece of cloth, but to the meaning with which it has been symbolically endowed. When we react to a word, we are not reacting to a set of sounds, but to the meaning with which that set of sounds has been symbolically endowed. As a matter of fact, how sound symbolism is processed in our brains has not yet been fully explained in the field. Simply put, the key point of semantics lies in, not the words definition, but our own semantic reactions, which occur when we respond to things the way they "should" be, rather than to the way they are. If a person was to tell a shockingly obscene story in Arabic or Hindustani or Swahili before an audience that understood only English, no one would blush or be angry; the story would be neither shocking nor obscene- indeed, it would not even be a story. Likewise, the value of a dollar bill is not in the bill, but in our social agreement to accept it as a symbol of value. If that agreement were to break down through the collapse of our government, the dollar bill would become only a scrap of paper. We do not understand a dollar bill by staring at it long and hard. We understand it by observing how people act with respect to it. We understand it by understanding the social mechanisms and the loyalties that keep it meaningful. Therefore, semantics belongs to social studies and potentially underpins the integrity of the social sciences. QUESTIONS Questions 27 – 31 Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write your answers in boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet. 27 What point is made in the first paragraph? A. The aim of education is to teach people to read. B. Semantics focuses on the definition of words. C. Printed words only carry meaning to those who have received appropriate ways to respond. D. Writers should ensure their works satisfy a variety of readers. 28 According to the second paragraph, people are judged by A. Their level of education. B. The closely-related people around them. C. How conventional their responses are. D.complex situations. 29 What point is made in the third paragraph? A. Standard ways are incapable of defining words precisely. B. A dictionary often provides clear definitions of words. C. Infinite regress is a common occurrence in a dictionary. D. Mathematicians could define words accurately. 30 What does the writer suggest about Louis Armstrong? A. He is a language expert. B. He demonstrated there are similarities between music and language. C. He provided insights into how words are defined. D. His good skill in music helped him do research in other fields. 31 What does the writer intend to show with the example of the "personnel manager"? A. The manager hates applicants from Harvard University. B. Meaning can be unique to one person. C. The manager has a bad memory of Harvard University. D. People's behaviour usually doesn't agree with their words. Questions 32-35 Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage? In boxes 32-35 on your answer sheet, write YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say that the writer thinks about this 32 Some statements are incapable of being proved or disproved. 33 Meaning that is unique to an individual is less worthy of study than shared meanings. 34 Flags and words are both elicited responses. 35 A story can be entertaining without being understood. Questions 36 – 40 Complete each sentence with the correct ending, below. Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet. 36 A comic strip 37 A dictionary 38 Bridgman 39 A story in a language the audience cannot understand 40 A dollar bill without public acceptance A. Is meaningless. B. Can have a lasting effect on human behaviour. C. Is a symbol that has lost its meaning. D. Can be understood only in its social context. E. Can provide only an inadequate definition of meaning. F. Reflects the variability of human behaviours. G. Emphasizes the importance of analyzing how words were used. H. Suggests that certain types of behaviour carry more meaning than others. Đáp án 1. FALSE 2. TRUE 3. NOT GIVE 4. NOT GIVEN 5. FALSE 6. TRUE 7. FALSE 8. FALSE 9. E 10. C 11. D 12. F 13. A 14. Vi 15. Ii 16. Iv 17. Viii 18. I 19. V 20. B 21. E 22. A 23. E 24. National newspaper 25. Arms dealers 26. Victory 27: C 28 C 29 A 30 C 31 B 32 Yes 33 Not Given 34 Yes 35 No 36 B 37 E 38 G 39 D 40 C
