MIXED EXERCISES 3

Ex 1:
Our DNA has special protective tips at the end of strands that 1) form/build our chromosomes. These are called
telomeres and as we age they shorten, causing our cells to 2) degenerate/dissipate and die. The things that we
experience such as our lifestyle, environment or 3) infectious/noxious diseases can modify our DNA! These are called
epigenetic mechanisms, and occur when methyl groups 4) trigger/provoke change in our genes. The effects can even be
5) transmitted/conducted across generations, in the form of genetic memories! Scientists think they can slow down the
aging process by 6) manipulating/handling telomeres to extend 7) longevity/duration! Altering methyl groups might be
able to help cure mental illness or 8) genetic/historic risk to certain diseases!
2. The points raised about the exercise technique are not to this presentation.
A. pertinent B. opportune C. admissible D. acceptable
3. My doctor is very of herbal supplements and doesn’t believe that they work.
A. dismaying B. discouraging C. disbelieving D. dismissive
4. Work most of my life and I don’t have much time to play sports.
A. organizes B. occupies C. engages D. compiles
5. The healthy eating movement has been gathering momentum/thrust/force/motion over the past few years, with many
people switch to vegan or vegetarian diets.
6. Minute/Trivial/Minor/Insignificant bacteria are essential for maintaining a healthy gut.
Spoil/impair/decay
7. Waste food is put in the compost, where it DECAYS and can be used to grow plants.
8. Food left outside of the fridge for a long time will quickly SPOIL and become inedible.
9. Overcooking food can IMPAIR the flavor and it won’t taste as good.
Puckish/parched/famished PUCKISH: PLAYFUL/MISCHIEVOUS
10. You look PARCHED ; I’ll get you something to drink.
11. After walking all day, they were absolutely FAMISHED and ate a huge meal.
12. I’m a little bit PECKISH , I think I’ll eat an apple.
13. Jack is in a terrible mood so let’s let him stew in his own juice.
A. to be left alone with your negative emotions B. to be punished
14. Grace says she didn’t want the prize anyway but that’s just sour grapes.
A. a jealous, negative attitude B. a false statement
15. Jack imagined California as the land of milk and honey where he could realize his dreams.
A. a lively place B. a place of opportunity LOCUM: NG THAY THE TAM THOI
16. The surgery hired a practitioner/provider/locum/physician to cover the patients while the doctor was on holiday.
17. The doctor gave Amy a(n) diagnosis/prescription/examination/treatment for antibiotics to treat her infection.
18. Joe made a(n) speedy/acute/rash/superficial recovery and left hospital just two days after he was admitted.
19. The new consultant is still feeling her bones/pinch/way/weather in the hospital.
20. The clinic experienced an outbreak/overflowing/outbursting/outpouring of support from the community when they
were threatened with closure.
21. The new motorway transit across the country while also avoiding small towns.
A. serves B. resists C. inserts D. facilitates
22. The contract was signed and the record deal became official.
A. mainly B. duly (correctly) C. regularly D. categorically
23. Peter was between going to the opera or the ballet performance.
A. drawn B. split C. divided D. torn
24. Arts Council money provides a significant of funding for theatres and concert halls.
A. precaution B. income C. proportion D. resource
25. She was hired for her excellent mediation skills.
A. substantially B. essentially C. respectively D. marginally
26. Ben was with guilt for cheating on his exam.
A. exhumed B. consumed C. engulfed D. obsessed
27. The professor is a supporter of teaching research methods in the classroom.
A. settled B. reliable C. steady D. staunch
28. The use of social media in society is quite concerning.
A. pervasive B. overwhelming C. enormous D. extravagant
29. The children are by this new app, they can’t stop using it.
A. revitalized B. hypnotized C. mesmerized D. capitalized
30. I have such a deep for all that he has done for us; I’m very grateful.
A. gratification B. appreciation C. admiration D. recognition
31. The evidence the hacker in several cases of identity theft.
A. implanted B. consumed C. implemented D. implicated
32. The dog became an Internet when his video went viral.
A. marvel B. sensation C. miracle D. wonder
33. Current opinion has in support of many self-help therapies.
A. reached B. swung C. wavered D. motioned
34. Sue was asked to keep a diary of her day to see if there was a(n) in her behavior.
A. pattern B. outline C. program D. path
35. The recycling workshop starts at 8 am but we should be there by 7:30 _ for registration.
A. no later B. at the latest C. the later D. no latest
36. Recent climate data shows the of the problem of global warming.
A. magnitude B. bulk C. weight D. matter
37. The city council is under pressure to designate the land as a nature reserve.
A. rigorous B. intense C. drastic D. harsh
38. The animal rights activists the practices of the local hunting society.
A. condemned B. convicted C. condoned D. confounded
39. An increase in industrial pollution could have serious for the local ecosystem.
A. backlash B. aftermath C. repercussions D. outcomes
40. The executives agreed that it was clear that the show would have to be cancelled; sadly, it just wasn’t
profitable enough.
A. deeply B. abundantly C. highly D. fully
41. Most films that are made today are digitally to make them more impressive.
A. reinforced B. improved C. boosted D. enhanced
42. She is a theater actress with over 15 years of experience on Broadway.
A. well-rehearsed B. well-prepared C. well-schooled D. well-seasoned
43. The book is a reminder of the struggle of women in the late 19th century.
A. pungent B. pathetic C. poignant D. pervasive
Poignant: arousing sadness but in a beautiful and meaningful manner / (taste) pungent
Pathetic: arousing pity through vulnerability or hardships…  negative connotation.
44. After around in the back of the car for an hour, I found my missing keys.
A. ransacking B. rooting C. inspecting D. examining
45. The facilities at many high schools today are still inadequate.
A. sadly B. woefully C. regrettably D. grimly
46. Our team was dispirited and did not want to carry on when
A. the leaves were turned over B. it rained cats and dogs
C. the chips were down in a desperate situation D. the days were gone
47. Try to be aware of external factors which may influence your judgment.
A. unduly B. primarily C. obviously D. doubtfully
48. Mary is quite - I don’t know she manages to fit everything in.
A. inexhaustible B. tiresome C. indefatigable D. inexorable unstoppable
49. He is such a hard man to as he’s always flitting from one site to another.
A. pin in B. lock in C. narrow down D. nail down
50. The characters motives were completely impenetrable/uninspiring/transparent/challenging and you could see right
through them.
51. Mindless/Wry/Incoherent/Arresting violence is not needed if the story is good enough. Gratuitous violence
52. The play was a success in spite of its indistinct/augmented/supplemented/incoherent plot.
53. The director uses the rehearsals to reveal/manifest/structure/reshape and play out each scene.
Choose the unsuitable answer.
1. The main character of the play was totally exciting/convincing/compelling.
2. The plot is quite wooden/complicated/convoluted and hard to follow.
3. The atmospheric/authentic/relentless setting made the program interesting despite the stilted unnatural
/amateurish/dead- end performances.
4. The film was made all the more effective by the spellbinding/talented/evocative lead actor.
5. The script was rather contrived/forced/absorbing engrossing in places, relying rather too heavily on clichéd
phrases.
6. The special effects were spectacularly portrayed/professionally done/well-executed.
Ex 2:
For years experts have been telling us to switch off our mobile devices before going to bed, so it’s odd that they
would now be giving us the SAME advice! It seems that using devices such as sleep trackers and smart beds will
actually become part of our--DAILY ritual in order for us to have a more restful slumber. If you are constantly feeling
exhausted, this new technology can DISRUPT your sleep and tell you why you look pale and tired after a bad night’s
sleep. It might also be able to explain why you have a STITCH in your neck or back. The trackers do this by
analyzing your movement and sleep PATTERN during the night and the smart can react to this data, to adjust
themselves to the SLEEPING shape to help you avoid pain. With these amazing developments it’s easy to see
WHY doctors advise trying smart beds. If you do, there’s little POSSIBILITY of you waking up on the wrong side of
bed ever again!

You may well have heard tales about people becoming Internet superstars from the COUCH of their living
rooms, but how common is it really? While this path to stardom is FAR from traditional, a definite change is
ON the horizon as it’s actually becoming increasingly commonplace. Nowadays, video sharing websites are full of
young people whose claim to FAME is playing video games or making tutorials about FASHION . And why not?
After all, the vast majority of us have access to webcams. In fact, it seems likely that at some point Internet stars will
become even bigger than Hollywood actors, who are already TAKING up fewer and fewer of the names on lists of the
most influential celebrities. Surveys have revealed that young people find Internet stars more genuine, relatable and
interesting than those carefully ADORNED/PROMOTED by PR agencies. Yet, having said that, traditional
celebrities still
GAIN the upper hand in terms of widespread appeal. Internet star PewDiePie may have over 42 million followers
online, but few people in the street would recognize him. Looking further AFIELD however, this could all change as the
Internet has the potential to make stars of us all!
 Suburban jungle!
For many people Los Angeles is the city of dreams; after all it is the home of Hollywood! However, while the image
often (1) is elegant and stylish, LA isn’t just famous for its glamor and warm climate. Sadly, it’s also known for
its urban sprawl. In a world rushing towards growth, where objections to development can be (2) as a barrier to
progress, cities like Los Angeles with their relentless expansion have swallowed up hundreds of square miles of
countryside. This desire of residents to move out of the inner city to outlying areas has led to a(n) (3) of cars on
the road, causing huge environmental damage. Faced with (4) conditions, lots of new schemes were
introduced to control LA’s urban sprawl problem. Light rail and transit development in (5) with incentives for
building high-density housing have provided rapid movements. Such programs mean that the city, residents and the
environmental all (6) . If these (7) initiatives succeed and continue, then a better future is surely in (8)
for the residents of LA.
1. A. symbolized B. illustrated C. projected D. delineated
2. A. displaced B. disbanded C. disapproved D. dismissed
3. A. proliferation B. escalation C. multiplication D. amplification
4. A. decreasing B. devolving C. deteriorating D. depreciating
5. A. unanimity B. assistance C. relationship C. conjunction
6. A. assist B. benefit C. improve D. advance
7. A. avant-garde (literature/art) B. innocuous C. prolific D. innovative
8. A. supply B. store C. order D. wait
(1) in intimate social interactions and relationships has an important influence on well-being. However,
recent advances in Internet and mobile communication technologies have led to a major (2) in the mode of
human social interactions, raising the question of how these technologies are impacting the experience of (3)
intimacy and its relationship with well-being. Although the study of intimacy in online social interactions is still in its early
stages, there is general (4) that a form of online intimacy can be (5) in this context. However, research into
the relationship between online intimacy and well-being is critically limited. Our aim is to begin to address this research
(6) by providing an operative perspective on this emerging field. After considering the (7) _ of online
intimacy, its multimodal components and its caveats, we present an analysis of existing evidence for the potential impact
of online intimacy on well-being. We suggest that studies thus far have focused on online social interactions in a general
sense, shedding little light (8) how the level of intimacy in these interactions may affect well-being (9) . We
then consider findings from studies of different components of intimacy in online social interactions, specifically self-
disclosure and social support, to indirectly explore the potential contribution of online intimacy to health and well-being.
Based on this analysis, we propose future directions for (10) and practical research in this important new area of
investigation.
1. A. Consensus B. Combination C. Engagement D. Harmony
2. A. reversal B. metamorphosis C. modification D. shift
3. A. interpersonal B. reciprocal C. unanimous D. changeable
4. A. agreement B. proclamation C. point D. decision
5. A. inferred B. indicated C. experienced D. expanded
6. A. blank B. void C. gap D. lack
7. A. features B. specifics C. criteria D. characteristics
8. A. for B. on C. with D. beyond
9. A. outputs B. outbursts C. outgrowths D. outcomes
10. A. fundamental B. reputable C. abnormal D. plausible

LISTENING PRACTICE
Ex 1:
1. What happens in the Amazon has a MASSIVE IMPACT on the planet as a whole.
2. In the 10 years up to 2009, over a thousand NEW SPECIES of plants and animals were discovered.
3. The plants and animals are in danger because the Amazon’s ECOSYSTEMS are at risk.
4. The region is using its vital resources to place itself in the GLOBAL MARKET.
5. The CONSEQUENCES of allowing even a small percentage of the carbon to escape would be disastrous.
6. HASTY ACTION, thanks to plans put forward by the government, has resulted in forest clearances.
7. The demand for livestock means farming offers substantial FINANCIAL REWARDS.
8. Activity to obtain MINERALS and other natural resources are also problematic.
9. To safeguard the water requirements of farming, the RAINFOREST VAPOR needs to be protected.
Ex 2:
1. Deterioration of living standards in some areas has led to a drop in people’s levels of .
2. Not dealing with all the issues can result in the not working.
3. Emphasis should be placed on the in the area that need help.
4. Previously, the authorities looked for to give the community a boost.
5. The of local people throughout the project is of the utmost importance.
6. Looking to communities for solutions can reveal people’s hidden .
7. It is necessary to create a(n) to support the process.
8. In order to facilitate equality, both parties involved in the process require .
9. Dolores felt of what her liaison group achieved.
Ex 3:
- The 1)_ governor of Maine is one of the last people you'd expect to be soft on crime.
- Governor Paul LePage supports 2) for drug traffickers and once joked they should be
publicly executed by guillotine.
- It's not that the conservative Republican governor has had a sudden change of heart about
3) or giving 4) a second chance.
- Governor Paul LePage released 17 prison inmates early because the 5) is struggling.
- The governor stated that trying to put people back to work is what the 6) is all
about.
- According to State officials, Maine's 3 percent unemployment rate combined with 7)
of foreign workers, an aging population and a booming tourism industry have exacerbated the labor gap.
- 8) are everywhere, and it's not just hotels and restaurants who need it.
 - Companies like AtWork Personnel, a 9) , also need help, and recently sent recruiter
Pamela Holt to a job fair.
- Pamela Holt said that her company is 10) _ because we don't have enough staff to staff
them.
- Holt says that while some in the tourist industry are reluctant to hire someone with 11)
and other employers just won't do it, Holt says her company will.
- The belief that prisoners who have served time deserve a new life is also the sentiment of prisoner advocates
who don't normally 12) with the governor on criminal justice matters.
- Meagan Sway, from the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, says that if the governor is really serious about
13) , then he should do more.
- Sway recommends looking at immigrants who come to this country 14) , who would
very much like to work in this country.
- Governor LePage hasn't exactly 15) _ to Maine’s immigrant community, despite the fact
that population economists say Maine needs to replace its aging workforce.
- While releasing 17 prisoners early won’t 16) , Steve Hewins of the Maine Restaurant
Association says it's a start.
- Steve Hewins believes that this step is part of the 17) .
- Hewins says his association is considering bringing specialized training for 18) into
the Maine state prison system so that prisoners are prepared to fill jobs when they get out.
- Governor LePage has recently said he plans to commute the sentences of women prisoners next and possibly
some inmates from 19)
Ex 4:
- Our race and 1) affect what happens in the workplace. Most African-Americans who
participated in a poll said they had 2) at work in pay, in hiring, and in getting promotions.
- Sonari Glinton, a reporter for NPR, found that when AA faced those barriers and obstacles, many people choose
to get out and 3) .
- Dennis Jackson, an entrepreneur, said that he chose his field of work -landscape and solar – because 4)
in the industry.
- Jackson and the few other black landscapers see each other as 5) because there aren’t
many of them.
- Jackson’s very small operation consists of five employees and 6) .
- Jackson claims that his entrepreneurial spirit is his way of avoiding the 7) .
- He insists that he is going to 8) “ ” to avoid having to face discrimination.
- NPR and Harvard’s survey found that 9) of African-Americans say they've been
discriminated against in the workplace.
- Marc Morial, the head of the National Urban League, says discrimination can deter African-Americans from 10)
.
- The 11) for black men has improved significantly since the Great Recession.
- However, Marc Morial says the fact that many black men have simply 12) is hidden in
these low jobless numbers.
- A whole 13) lead to giving up; race affects networking, education, mobility.
- Steven Pitts, who studies labor at UC Berkeley, states that the issue isn't really 14) --
there's real evidence of discrimination against African-American men in the workplace.
- Due to the reality of discrimination, black men especially look for alternatives outside of the
15) .
- Pitts states that having someone fix a car or paint a house are forms of 16) .
- The 17) is not just the idea of on-the-corner drug stuff. It's a 18) of
economic activity that simply isn't governed by 19) .
- According to Pitts, black men face real barriers, whether it's a 20) _ or the need for a
license to get a particular job.
Ex 5:
- Google's been the leader in getting the world 1) with virtual reality.
- The company's going 2) now and partnering with HTC and Lenovo on a standalone
headset made of tougher stuff than Cardboard.
- Google is the first major company to release a 3)_ VR headset. Facebook's Oculus Rift and
Sony VR have to be 4) to expensive computers or gaming consoles.
- Google's also 5)_ its augmented reality technology. It announced what it's calling visual
positioning service, or VPS.
- Bavor says the company actually sees a continuum between its VR and AR technology. It's all part of a future
where the virtual and real worlds blur. Google is calling it 6) computing.
- There's a lot of competition among the big tech companies to advance these immersive technologies. Facebook,
Microsoft and Sony are competitors, and Apple is likely to jump into the fray. But Google has some advantages,
like its dominance in search.
- Google has a massive 7) and brand, and it's got all this data and
8) . And really, none of the other players have all those pieces.
- An example of how this advantage works is that you could point your augmented reality-enabled phone at a
restaurant, and a 9) would just pop up on the screen from Google search.
Ex 6:
 - Facebook says it wants to keep from being used by extremists. The company, used by billions of people, is
under pressure not to be a 1) __. Terrorists have 2) to ISIS on
Facebook or won new recruits there.
- We're focused on real-world harm, so harm in the physical world. That means that - you know, for things like
terrorism 3) or terrorism 4) , we want to make sure that it's not on the
site because we think that that could lead to real-world harm.
- It's a vast challenge and delicate. Facebook wants to block dangerous content without blocking
5) . Its techniques include hiring more human monitors of 6) .
- Bickert also hopes to block some offensive images before they're published by using
7) software.
- There is software that can be used to create what's called a hash, or a 8) of that video,
so that if somebody else tries to upload a similarly harmful video in the future, it would be recognized even
before the video hits the site.
- Bickert wants to point out that it doesn't necessarily mean that we would take 9) action.
There are times where we need people to actually review the content that this software is flagging for us.
- Since you have a background in law enforcement, I know you're familiar with the phrase 10)
which is something that the U.S. government is never supposed to do when it comes to free speech.
- There may be speech that can be punished in some way, but there should not be prior restraint of
11) . What are the specific instances when you think it is OK for you to do that?
- Well, I mean, first I want to point out that, as a social media company, we set the 12) and
let our people know what they are for when they come to Facebook.
Ex 7:
- In the hours after the massacre in Las Vegas, 1)_ about it started showing up on Google and
Facebook. A man was falsely accused of being the shooter. His name bubbled up on a Facebook safety check
site and at the top of Google search results. And all of that was 2) .
- His name first appeared on a message board on a site called 4chan. 4chan is known as this gathering spot for
3) in the alt-right. Everyone who posts is 4)
- Marilou Danley’s ex-husband’s FB page indicated he was a liberal, and the far-right 5) on /pol/
went to work to spread the word.
- On Google, the top searches linked to places that said he was the shooter. This was because Google has not
had the time to really 6)_ the search results yet.
- In a statement, Google said it will "continue to make 7) improvements to prevent this from
happening in the future."
- One improvement that contributing editor Greg Sterling thinks Google should make is putting less weight on
certain websites, like 4chan, and putting more weight on sites deemed more 8) . This would
give some sites more preference over others.
- Benkler, a law professor at Harvard University, thinks if Facebook and Google were to block sites like 4chan, it
would not solve the problem; this is because he believes that if another situation similar to this arose, someone
will find some other 9) .
Ex 8:
- When Apple announced the new iPhone can use 1)__ technology to unlock the device, the
response may not have been what Apple had hoped for.
- Clare Garvey is concerned about face recognition technology becoming 2) ; we are going to
get very comfortable with it.
- We forget that it's used by any number of actors in ways we may not know about that is both
3) and more 4) than the way that Apple has chosen to use it.
- In Russia, face recognition has been used to scan anti-government or anti-corruption protests, identify and then
5) the people at those anti-government protests.
- What this means is these people will be subject to 6) , if not arrest, for their political beliefs.
The fact remains in the U.S., it's very much a 7) when it comes to face recognition.
- 8) across the country use this technology in various ways without any laws governing its
use.
- It looks like face recognition was used on social media posts that protesters were posting from
9) .
- Law enforcement agents on the ground could, in almost 10) , get the identities, the names
of the people at those protests. We're a country where we do not necessarily need to show our
11) every time we walk down the street, but now our faces will do that work for us.
- Sounds to me that your concern isn't so much this particular technology but that - what? - that it
12) to a broader use? Is that really Apple's fault or responsibility?
- The real concern is that we may stop worrying about the very real concerns that we should be worrying about as
we increasingly are subjected to face recognition that we can’t 13) of.
Ex 9:
- Japan‘s corporate culture is driven by the so – called 1)
- The nation’s work ethnic dates back to Japan’s economic miracle which 2) it to become the
world’s second – largest economy
- According to a study, more than 60% of Japanese felt guilty for taking 3)
- Japan has the lowest productivity among the 4)
- Some people believe that karoshi cases are 5)
- The death of an employee in 2015 generated widespread attention and 6) to change the
long working hours and illegal unpaid overtime
 - To deal with overtime work, Japan’s government introduced a new public holiday called
7)
- Despite initiatives, a cultural challenge still 8) for several reasons
- The population is expected to shrink approximately one third over a period of 9)
- In farming, robots are even used to 10)
Ex 10:
- McDonald’s has 36,000 locations in over 100 nations, including one in a 1)_ in New Zealand
and one in Vatican city.
- There was a lof of 2) with McDonald’s first open its door in Vietnam in 2014
- Failure to capure the attention of the Vietnamese market was considered 3)
- Burger King has grown its 4) in Japan from 12 restaurants to 98
- Vietnamese people can be served foods faster if they go to street vendors, which defeats the
5) of fast food in Vietnam
- Fast food giants seem to underestimate local rivals as Vietnamese diners are 6) in top-tier
cities
- Sandwiches are sold on the streets at 7) compared to McDonald’s and Burger King
- 78% of Vietnamese consumers’ cash went to local vendors, street stalls and 8)_
- Fast – food chains are so outnumbered in Vietnam partly because of the 9) between the
US and Vietnam
- KFC introduced chicken rice and 10) to better fit local tastes
- The 11) for KFC seems to be worth it for customers
In recent years, more and more urban areas in inner cities have become gentrified, with young professionals
moving into these districts. Experts believe that this will have a lasting effect on the areas in question, changing
their character and forcing poorer communities to move to other parts of cities. In your opinion, what factors
might explain this? Discuss your ideas with examples.
Gentrification is a process that is taking place in big cities all over the world. While it results in inner-city areas
being cleaned up and looking more attractive superficially, it comes at a very high social cost. People with lower
incomes, some of whom have lived in these areas for generations, are forced to move. Cafes and galleries are forced to
close. But what are the causes of this widespread phenomenon?
Firstly, economic factors can contribute greatly to gentrification. As property values increase, rents also
increase, which leads to poorer people being priced out. Also, investors move in and buy up properties to develop and
rent at high prices or resell. Even worse, if prices are thought to be on an upward trajectory, some wealthy individuals
might simply buy property and leave it sitting empty while they wait for it to increase in value, which is particularly sad
when so many people need homes in cities.
Social factors can also contribute to gentrification of inner city neighborhoods. Often, students and artists move
in to poor areas because it is all they can afford. Cafes, restaurants and venues follow, and the area gradually becomes
trendy and popular. The area acquires a good reputation. As a result, professionals and richer individuals start to move
in and the competition for accommodation raises rents and property values, which forces out the trendy venues and the
students and artists along with them. It could be said that these neighborhoods’ very popularity is what destroys them.
Finally, migration from the countryside into cities also causes problems. Following the laws of supply and
demand, housing prices increase when there are more people needing housing than there is housing available. This
makes every house in every neighborhood valuable, however run-down and undesirable it may be, and therefore
attracts investors and developers. The final result is a city with no cheap neighborhoods, and city workers being forced
to live in ever-expanding suburbs and to commute long distances.
Clearly, there are many different and intractable forces contributing to gentrification. People are likely to keep
migrating to the cities, property values are sure to keep increasing, and we cannot blame everyone for wanting to live in
the coolest neighborhoods. Upon consideration, gentrification causes a lot of suffering and something ought to be done
to address the problem.
WORD FORMATION
1. After defeating Robert in the tournament, Tia was able to SUPPLANT Robert as the top player in the chess club.
(PLANT)
2. Adolescents are faced with a(n) ONSLAUGHT of changes that result in changes in their physical development,
cognitive capacities, social relations, and emotionality. (SLAUGHTER)
3. He was UNCEREMONIOUSLY removed from the list of candidates due to his inept speeches. (CEREMONY)
4. The introduction of park-and-ride facilities and the opening up of greenways for buses place the city in the
VANGUARD of 21st-century urban development. (GUARD)
5. Students in the middle school were required to be UNDEVIATING in their adherence to the dress code.
(DEVIATION)
6. Police officers COUNTERACT the crime in an attempt to get witnesses to come forward. (ACT)
7. We might have to employ someone temporarily as a(n) STOPGAP measure until we can hire someone
permanently. (STOP)
8. CONSANGUINE marriage is a marriage between two individuals who are related as second cousins or closer.
(SANGUINE)
9. Signed languages were only recently recognised as FULL-FLEDGED languages as complex as spoken
languages. (FLEDGED)
10. Our expansion plans will have to be BACKBUNERED in the current economic crisis. (BURN)
Human vision, like that of other primates, has evolved in an arboreal environment. In the dense, complex world
of a tropical forest, it is more important to see well than to develop an acute sense of smell. In the course of evolution,
members of the primate line have acquired large eyes while the snout has shrunk to give the eye a(n) (1. IMPEDE)
UNIMPEDED view. Of mammals, only humans and some primates enjoy color vision. The red flag is black to the
bull. Horses live in a(n) (2. CHROME) ACHROMATIC world. Light visible to human eyes, however, occupies only a
narrow band in the whole (3. MAGNET) PHOTOMAGNETIC spectrum. Ultraviolet rays are invisible to humans,
though
ants and honeybees are (4. SENSE) SENSITIVE to them. Humans have no direct (5. PERCEIVE)
PERCEPTION of infrared rays, unlike the rattlesnake, which has (6. RECEIVE) RECEPTIVELY tuned in to (7.
LONG) WAVELENGHTS longer than 0.7 micron. The world would look eerily different if human eyes were sensitive to
infrared radiation. Then, instead of the darkness of night, we would be able to move easily in a strange, (8. SHADOW)
SHADOWY world where objects glowed with varying degrees of intensity. But human eyes excel in other ways. They
are, in fact, remarkably discerning in color (9. GRADE) GRADIENT . The color sensitivity of normal human vision is
rarely (10. PASS) SURPASSED even by sophisticated technical devices.
OPEN CLOZE
PASSAGE 1
There are few things greater than the thrill of traveling and seeing the landscapes and natural wonders of the
world has to offer. With cheap flights around the world, now it’s easy for tourists to visit areas of natural beauty that were
once (1) VIRTUALLY/MADE inaccessible. But this huge increase in visitor numbers is beginning to have a disastrous
impact on the environment. Unfortunately, the most popular destinations often also have the most delicate
ecosystems and (2) WITHOUT careful management, tourists risk destroying the very thing that they come to see.
Thousands of cruise ships and millions of tourists visit the picturesque Caribbean (3) ANNUALLY/REGION. But what
they leave behind is less scenic. Every year, cruise ships in the Caribbean produce over 6,350,000 kilos of waste. All
this waste not only destroys the beaches, but also kills wildlife and releases chemicals into the water, destroying the
coral reefs that are essential for all life in the tropics. Moreover, the expansion of global tourism has led to greater
expectations of luxury and comfort when we arrive at our (4) DESTINATIONS . We want our five-star hotels to be (5)
RIGHT next to the beach or the ski slopes. But developments like this often (6) CAUSES the destruction of essential
wildlife habitats. Large tourist developments also use huge amounts of resources – water, in particular. The average
tourist in Spain uses 440 liters of water a day – twice the amount used by local people. Demand for local food and
products by wealthy tourists can also inflate prices for (7) WORSE , exacerbating social issues and creating poverty.
Perhaps the most damaging effect of worldwide tourism, however, is air pollution. A (8) TYPICAL transatlantic flight
procedures as much CO2 as powering a house for 17 years. If or when you factor in the trains, buses and cars that
transport tourists around countries and cities, this adds up to a huge carbon (9) FOOTPRINT for the planet.
Perhaps the only way to really reduce our impact on the environment is by cutting down on the amount we travel. A lot of
people are choosing to spend their holidays exploring interesting places (10) CLOSE to home. This not only protects
ecosystems for future generations to enjoy, but also makes economic sense.
PASSAGE 2
Who said adventure and travel are only for people? One traveler, in (1) PARTICULAR, would highly disagree, if
he could talk! This traveler, who likes to take a walk on the wild side, is called Aspen and he is an adorable golden
retriever who definitely proves travel can be for all sorts of (2) PURPOSES . Along with his human partner,
photographer Hunter Lawrence, Aspen has hiked though some of the most spectacular scenery in the USA and Canada.
Aspen takes advantage of his travels by swimming, snow-sledging and canoeing, and like most tourists, (3) CRAVING
for a photo in front of his favorite spots! Hunter photographs Aspen basking in nature in a way that doesn’t take away
from the natural environment (4) SURROUNDING. The results are striking and heartwarming images that have made
Aspen more popular on social media than many (5) ----OTHER travelers! Whether he’s at home in Colorado or on
the road, Aspen doesn’t plan to stop exploring anytime soon!
PASSAGE 3
We have seen it in films and some have even experienced it first (1) HAND . Virtual reality is not just a
gimmick. It is (2) DRAWING the line between technology and daily life. VR has an experiential quality that grabs your
attention and allows you to interact with the (3) VIRTUAL world, which is extremely attractive to
children. The question is, though, what role should VR play in the classroom? Besides overcoming the potential (4)
CHALLENGE to incorporating VR into the classroom, it is necessary to discern how VR can be (5)
MADE useful as an education tool. It is an appealing teaching method as
many children (6) REACT better to seeing and experiencing things rather than having them explained (7) VAGUELY.
Through VR, students are surrounded by the subject and they can, for example, examine the inside of a single-celled
organism or discuss (8) INTERNATIONAL events with students around the world in VR social spaces. VR also
opens up a world of opportunities in the areas of product design, electronics and engineering. It’s a virtual goldmine!
PASSAGE 4
Technology has opened up a whole new world of social networking. It is now easier than ever to stay (1)
INFORMED of what’s happening with friends and family any time, no matter where they are in the world. But is that
really a good thing? Take photo-sharing applications. They are a place where people can share pictures and videos with
like-minded individuals or, at (2) LEAST , that’s how they started out. Now, it would seem, they have mutated into
something completely different. They have become online (3) PLATFORMS for people to market themselves. The
snaps uploaded may appear spontaneous and innocuous but some take hours to plan and execute and they are taken
for the single (4) PURPOSE of getting exposure. But in order to reach the heady (5) DREAM of success
through this means, users have to keep an unceasing vigil on their accounts, staying constantly on the (6) BALL
for an opportunity. And the result of these picture-perfect images is a false reality that is available for all the world to see.
PASSAGE 5
Most sports fans celebrate and praise their teams in the conventional way, (1) EITHER adoring the star
players or the club’s history and success. However, nowadays, the coaches of teams are getting every (2) TIME as
much attention as the superstars under their watch. One factor that plays a huge part in the success of a coach is the
strength of their communication skills. Successful coaches realize that they have to (3) EARN the trust of their
players as well as their respect. Contrary to popular belief, good leadership isn’t just about being (4) __ AUTHORITATIV
E/
INTIMIDATING . Smart
coaches are under no illusion about their responsibilities. They understand that reading the feelings of your players is a
delicate skill that needs to be (5) SHARPENED until it becomes second nature. Successfully motivating athletes
requires
the ability to (6) EXERT an influence on people in a positive way and has little to do with intimidation.
Encouragement, a kind word or sometimes even saying nothing at all can be the most effective way to (7) ELICIT a
response from a person. Considering their need to be a drill instructor and a psychologist at the same time, maybe it’s
only fair that sports coaches are getting more (8) _ PRESSURE after all!
PASSAGE 6
The motivation for deep-space travel is shifting from discovery to economics. The past year has seen a flurry of
proposals aimed at bringing celestial (1) _ TOURISM down to Earth. No doubt this will make a few billionaires even
wealthier, but we all (2) GET to gain: the mineral bounty and spin-off technologies could enrich us all. But before the
miners start firing up their rockets, we should pause for thought. At first glance, space mining seems to sidestep most
environmental (3)CONCERNS: there is (probably!) no life on asteroids, and thus no habitats to trash. But its
consequences —both here on Earth and in space—merit careful consideration. Part of this is about principles. Some will
argue that space’s “magnificent desolation” is not ours to despoil, just as they argue that our own planet’s poles should
remain (4) UNSPOILED . Others will suggest that glutting ourselves (5) WITH space’s riches is not an
acceptable alternative to developing more sustainable ways of (6) MODERN life. History suggests that those will be
hard (7) to hold, and it may be difficult to persuade the
public that such barren environments are (8) _ WORTH preserving. After all, they exist in (9) _ EXTREME abundance,
and even fewer people will experience them than have walked through Antarctica’s icy landscapes. There’s also the
emerging off-world economy to consider. The resources that are valuable in orbit and (10) SOME may be very
different to those we prize on Earth. Questions of their stewardship have barely been broached—and the relevant legal
and (11) BUSINESS framework is fragmentary, to put it mildly. Space miners, like their earthly (12)
COUNTERPARTS, are often reluctant to engage with such questions. One speaker at last week’s space-mining forum in
Sydney, Australia, concluded with a plea that regulation should be avoided. But miners have much to gain from a broad
agreement on the for-profit exploitation of space. Without consensus, claims will be disputed, investments risky,
and the gains (13)
RENDERED insecure. It is in all of our long-term (14) SOLUTIONS to seek one out.
PASSAGE 7
Life has certainly changed in 300 years, and sociology was (1) BORN out of a concern with this rapidly
changing character of the modern, industrial world: with where we have come from and where we are heading. For
sociologists, the term society means "all the people who (2) LIVE in a defined space and share culture." In this (3)
SENSE , both a continent like Europe and specific (4) countries such as Norway or Japan may be seen as societies.
Even humans living thousands of years ago were members of early human societies. (5) ONE of this comes from the
discovery of the Iceman. Examining the Iceman's clothes, scientists were astonished at how advanced this "caveman's"
society was. The Iceman's hair was neatly cut, and his body had numerous tattoos that probably (6)
DEMONSTRATED his standing in the community. He wore a skillfully sewn leather coat over which a grass cape
provided even greater protection from the weather. His shoes, also made of leather, were stuffed with grass for comfort
and warmth. He carried with him an axe, a wood-handled knife, and a bow that shot feathered arrows with stone points.
A primitive backpack held additional tools and personal items, including natural medicines made from plants. It is
estimated that he died some 5,300 years ago-before a great empire existed in Egypt, before the flowering of culture in
ancient Greece, and before any society in Europe built a (7) SIZEABLE city. As people who take for granted rapid
transportation and instant global communication, we can (8) RELY /BANK on this ancestor as a connection to our
distant past. Sociologists have identified great differences among societies that have flourished and (9)
DECLINED throughout human history. They have observed how societies change over centuries as the people in them
gain greater ability to manipulate their natural environment. Societies with basic technology can support only a small
number of people who enjoy few choices about how to live. Technologically complex societies – (10) WHILE not
necessarily "better" in any absolute sense - develop large populations; people in these societies are likely to lead
diverse, highly specialized lives. The greater the amount of technological skill and knowledge a society has, the faster
the (11) RATE at which the society changes. Technologically simple societies, then, change very slowly. Take, for
example, some of the clothing worn by the Austrian Iceman. It differs only slightly from clothes used by shepherds in the
same area of the world early in the twentieth century. In (12) CONTRAST to simpler societies, industrial,
technologically advanced societies change so quickly that people witness remarkable transformations within their (13) .
Again, consider some familiar elements of contemporary culture that would probably puzzle, delight, and possibly
frighten people who lived just a few generations ago: fast food, faxes, mobile phones, computer games, (14)
ARTIFICIAL hearts, fiber optics, test-tube babies, and many, many others. Indeed, it is a strange modern world we live in
– even when compared with the world of the (15) DISTANT past.
PASSAGE 8
They are often (1) REFERRED to as Europe’s largest minority and, (2) NUMBERING some six million, can be
found in almost every country here. Their numbers are highest in Romania and the rest of the Balkans, but they can also
be found as far (3) WEST as Ireland. They have (4) DENIED/BEEN changing their lifestyle for over six hundred years,
but since the end of the First World War, the gypsies, or the Roma, as many call themselves, have increasingly been
forced to give up their (5) TRADITIONAL lifestyles and settle into some bare resemblance of modern European life. Yet,
despite this, they are still seen as outsiders. They see nothing unusual in that; it has been that way for as long as they
remember. Indeed, they admit to being partly responsible, in the sense that they think of themselves as a people (6)
ALTOGETHER ; you are either Roma or what they call ‘gadje’ (non-Roma). It is due to this insularity, (7) PERHAPS,
that they have managed to retain their identity in the hundreds of years since they arrived in Europe. Where they came
from was for many years (8)
LINKED to rumour and legend; they have no
written or (9) ORAL history, and had in the past a tendency to create a history that (10) WAS to their best
advantage in Europe. Thus the old practice of calling themselves pilgrims (to justify their traveling ways) and also ‘the
lost tribe of Israel’ still looking for Zion. It is also responsible for the name they are known by, ‘gypsy’ coming from the
word ‘Egyptian’; with their dark skin and strange ways they were mistaken for (11) RECOGNIZED by Christian Europe.
It was not until the nineteenth century that the resemblance was noted between their language and that of many Indo-
Iranian
(12) LIVING in north-west India. It is thought that they were originally a tribe that left the strictly hierarchical caste
system that was (and still is) part of Indian system, travelling through Persia and Asia Minor and into Europe. In this
respect, they are like a lost tribe, always on the (13) MOVE, looking for a home. No promised land, however, awaited
them. Despite an (14) welcome, laws were soon being put in place to ban their music and practices, and
generally attack their wandering ways. In the Balkans, (15) ONCE the auspices of the Ottoman Empire, they were
enslaved. Still, most managed to keep to their travelling life, adapting slightly to the country they (16) IMMIGRATE to
find themselves in while keeping their own ways (17) REMAINED. So it is that they have tended to (18) on the
religion of the religion they have settled in (a wise (19) MOVE against the widespread religious persecution they must
have witnessed in their early years in Europe). They take words from the local language into their own, or use the
language but (20) WRITE it with gypsy words.
GUIDED CLOZE
PASSAGE 1
The founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, has achieved (1) METEORITE/PHENOMENAL success as a computer
programmer, inventor and entrepreneur. His path to that point, however, was anything but typical. While attending
Harvard University in the 1970s, he made a (2) DARING move and left university before graduating to start his own
company. His parents didn’t like the idea at first, but Gates (3) down and worked hard to get their support. He
founded Microsoft in 1975, which after a few short years caused a(n) (4) in personal computing. During the time
that Gates was at the head of the company, some of his employees regarded him as (5) and arrogant.
He would sometimes (6)
in on presentations, expressing his dislikes for certain ideas and proposals. He was often described as being
(7) : he did whatever he liked and was often hard to reach either in or out of the office. But whatever anyone
may have thought of these minor shortcomings, Gates was a (8) competitor in the computer software industry
who often (9) the competition. In his years as CEO of the company, he laboured hard at (10)
Microsoft’s range of software products, and whenever he (11) success in a particular area of computing, Gates
guarded the position with all his might. Since then, he has won international (12) as one of the greatest
computer software inventors of all time.
1. A. grueling B. cunning C. crushing D. staggering
2. A. gutsy B. virtuous C. candid D. noble
3. A. broke B. knuckled C. fell D. got
4. A. evolution B. discrimination C. generation D. revolution
5. A. impartial B. modest C. mediocre D. conceited
6. A. cut B. break C. put D. come
7. A. considerate B. candid C. noble D. impetuous
8. A. ruthless B. reckless C. worthless D. selfless
9. A. executed B. crushed C. snatched D. pocketed
10. A. growing B. broadening C. lengthening D. elongating
11. A. achieved B. defeated C. accomplished D. resolved
12. A. acceptance B. approval C. acclaim D. applause
PASSAGE 2
Despite the bad publicity surrounding ‘Mad Cow Disease’ in the 1990s, the hamburger remains an icon for the
twentieth century. In its (1) , preparation, purchase and very place of consumption, it tells in (2) the
history of the century. In each decade its character and its image subtly reflected the shifting fashions and
preoccupations of the era.
Its origins are (3) in an uncertainty that only assists its status as a characterless object to which each
generation may add whatever (4) it chooses. Its connections with the German city of Hamburg are unclear.
Although every (5) civilization has had some form of ground meat patty, most food historians do accept a link
with the eponymous Baltic port. Thus the hamburger enters history as the plain but honest food of poor but ambitious
immigrants to the United States. Indeed, according to one food expert, it had its origins in the fare of a German owned
shipping line on (6) vessels in the 1880s Hamburg beef was minced and then mixed with breadcrumbs, eggs
and onions and served with bread.
But it was at the World Fair in St Louis in 1904 that it first became a symbol of mass-produced cuisine. It was there that
the bun was first introduced and the result was (7) popular. Soon after, in 1921, the first hamburger chain was
established. But generally, the burger remained a wholesome home-made dish. Older Americans still (8)
childhood memories of Mom grinding good fresh steak
and, after adding onion and seasoning, taking the result out to the charcoal grill in the garden, but like all things
American, when exported it has been debased and (9) . The
hamburger first entered British consciousness as part of the post-Second World War spending (10) , when beef
became a symbol of the new prosperity. When, in the late 1950s, the frozen beefburger was introduced (renamed to
avoid unnecessary questions about why it did not taste of ham), the thin little cake of bland rubbery meat was a glamour
product. It was somehow foreign and, of course, frozen, which was then the height of new technology.
Provenance: beginning spree: unrestrained activity
In microcosm: (tóm gọn trong đó)
1. A. foundation B. provenance C. cradle D. descent
2. A. microcosm B. miniature C. diminution D. pocket
3. A. dipped B. cloaked C. dwarfed D. misted
4. A. dressing B. savour C. relish D. gusto
5. A. culinary B. gastronomical C. pedigree D. mosaic
6. A. which B. that C. what D. whose
7. A. amply B. frantically C. profusely D. wildly
8. A. yearn B. endear C. cherish D. relish
9. A. deflected B. perverted C. depraved D. garbled
10. A. spree B. thrift C. flux D. binge
 PASSAGE 3:
Except perhaps for learning a foreign language and getting your teeth properly sorted out (1) and for
all, there is nothing more rewarding than learning a musical instrument. It provides a sense of accomplishment,
creative outlet and an absorbing pastime to (2) away the tedious hours between being born and dying. Musical
“At Homes” can be a fine way of entertaining friends, especially if you (3) a bitter grudge against them.
Instrumental tuition is widely available publicly, privately and by post. Before choosing an instrument to learn you should
ask yourself five questions. How much does it cost? How easy is it to play? How much does it weigh? Will playing it make
me a more attractive human being? How much does it hurt? All musical instruments, if (4) properly, hurt. The least
you can expect is low back pain and shoulder (5) _ , in some cases there may also be bleeding and unsightly swelling.
Various relaxation methods such as meditation can help. The most popular instrument for beginners is the piano though I
don’t know why this should be so. The piano is expensive, it’s (6) difficult to play, it weighs a ton
and it hasn’t been sexy since Liszt died. If you sit at the keyboard in the approved position for more than a few minutes, the
pain is such that you are (7) to break down and betray the secrets of your closest friends. The
only good thing you can say about the piano is that it provides you with a bit of extra shelf space around the house. Being
difficult to play means that learning the piano could make you vulnerable to syndrome known as Lipchitz’s Dilemma.
Lipchitz was an Austrian behavioural psychologist who observed that setting (8) _ to acquire a difficult
skill leads to one of just two alternative results. Either, because of lack of talent or lack of application, you reach only to a
low average level of attainment, which leads to general dissatisfaction and maudlin sessions of (9) _ about the
house, gently kicking the furniture and muttering, “I’m hopeless at everything.” Or you reach a very high attainment level
but, because you spend anything up to 18 hours a day reaching and maintaining this level, other (10) of your
personality do not develop properly, which leads to general dissatisfaction and maudlin sessions of wandering aimlessly
about the house, gently kicking the furniture and muttering, “Up the Villa.”
1. A. first B. once C. one D. foremost
2. A. spend B. kill C. while D. brush
3. A. maintain B. nurture C. harbour D. lodge
4. A. to be played B. playing C. having played D. played
5. A. strain B. tension C. wrench D. sprain
6. A. acutely B. fiendishly C. roughly D. savagely
7. A. liable B. prone C. susceptible D. subject
8. A. out B. about C. down D. off
9. A. skating B. lounging C. moping D. brooding
10. A. respects B. shades C. facets D. aspects
PASSAGE 4
That the cheetah is the fastest of the big cats is beyond (1) and common knowledge, with it having
reportedly been (2) at speeds in excess of 70 mph. However, whilst it has impressive acceleration over short
distances, it could not (3) sustain such speeds for any significant length of time. Therefore, when hunting, it
relies largely on the (4) of surprise to use its speed to good advantage. Otherwise, in a prolonged hunt, it will
(5) wanting in the stamina department and generally have to abandon the chase. Still on the (6) of
running, incredibly, a sprinting cheetah is actually completely airborne more than fifty percent of the time. Indeed, at full
(7) , its single stride length is an impressive seven metres. Cheetahs are peculiar amongst big cats, though,
because, aside from their breath-taking speed, their performance in other areas actually leaves a lot to be (8) .
For instance, their nocturnal
vision is little better than our own. Uncharacteristically for a big cat, too, females are (9) to be loners, whilst it is
males that are more likely to (10) , frequently in groups up to five. The collective noun for a group of male
cheetahs is a coalition.
1. A. contention B. dispute C. conflict D. debate
2. A. mounted B. reached C. struck D. clocked
3. A. conceivably B. perceivably C. comprehensively D. predictably
4. A. segment B. feature C. portion D. element
5. A. show B. prove C. confirm D. disclose
6. A. course B. field C. subject D. content
7. A. rate B. throttle C. rush D. scurry
8. A. desired B. required C. craved D. fancied
9. A. tended B. disposed C. prompted D. inclined
10. A. conjoin B. convene C. congregate D. converge
GAPPED-TEXT
PASSAGE 1
ARCTIC ADVENTURES
I wanted to experience life under the midday moon. A heated log cabin and maybe a sauna, in Sweden's far north,
meditating on the loss of light and the loneliness, in a drawn-out, snowy, winter world. And that’s what I said to my editor,
so I was packed off to Ovre Soppero with photographer Mark. 'Oh, it's never dark up here,' our host Per-Nils Paivio
insisted when we met him and his wife, Britt-Marie, who was preparing a reindeer, stew.
1C
The next two days and nights in the warmth of the cabin and the traditional circular hut covered in turf, with wood-
burning stoves - and a sauna- were cosy. Informative, too, as- over breakfast with pancakes- I was given a thorough
education in the ancient and barely altered life of the reindeer-herding Sami people of northern Sweden. Just as I was
beginning to relax, I was introduced to 'my' reindeer. I was handed the reins along with some sparse instructions: pull left
for faster, right for stop.
2F
Tonight Per-Nils was taking us by snowmobile to the huts where the families lived over the three-day round-up. But he,
Mark and I were spending the night in a 'lavvu', guarding the reindeer. Back home I had discovered that this word, which
had appeared on my itinerary, meant a tent. I imagined a warm tourist tent. But now alarm bells began to ring.
3 E
Somehow, I survived the lack of sleep. Then the roundup began. Everyone revved up their snowmobiles and spread out,
surrounding the reindeer. Dogs barked, people shouted, and 7,000 reindeer ran in the desired direction: into a large
corral, where they were then herded by people on foot towards the narrow passage; then about 70 animals were
funnelled through a small circular space with gates to 'family' paddocks.
4G
I declined to wrestle with a reindeer, but Mark put down his camera and grabbed one shouting, 'It's ours', as he was
dragged across the corral floor. I simply begged for a bed with walls that night, and maybe even a jacuzzi.
We had another magical ride back on the snowmobile and then a car to Kiruna, the home of the Sami parliament and
the Swedish iron ore mine, which has utterly changed the traditional herding land and threatens the Sami way of life.
5A
After a day off, I visited a local school. The Sami pupils take lessons in their own language and study skills and traditions
that are rapidly being forgotten. The youngsters were looking to the future and making plans for their lives beyond
reindeer herding.
6D
Even I know how privileged I was to participate in that. And the extra hands can certainly be useful: Mark apparently was
an asset, and me? Well, now I've warmed up a bit, I am grateful for the experience. I just hope I didn't make life too
difficult for my hosts.
The missing paragraphs:
A But for me, the best thing was that it had the Hotel Ralleran, a wooden building devotedly restored, and a shrine
to simplicity. It had beautiful, pale-timbered walls, wooden floors, light, space, a comfortable bed and a jacuzzi!
B I sat in the family paddock by a log fire and choked on wood smoke. 'Ah', a fur-encased elderly lady laughed.
'The smoke follows you. It means you'll be rich.' Or so her daughter translated. What she probably said was: 'Who is this
stranger?'
C Dinner was delicious and marked our introduction to Swedish Lapland as guests of the Sami, the indigenous
people who were here long before anyone else arrived. 'Snow. Northern lights. And you can go into the forest in
December and you hardly need a torch', he commented. Despite my reservations, I was intrigued and actually keen to
start our 'adventure'.
D Yet they showed a demonstrable desire to keep their heritage alive. That's why the Sami are inviting visitors to
experience their traditions and so try to sustain their reindeer-herding life.
E My fears turned out to be justified. The Sami tepee had a layer of reindeer skins over the bare, snow-covered,
lumpy earth. The gap around the bottom let plenty of fresh air in. I spent most of the time perched on my elbows, staring
at the embers of the fire.
F The reindeer took over immediately, either sauntering along or racing his mate. My performance lost the respect
of the guides, but they were kind and excitedly started talking about tomorrow's agenda. They had brought together the
7,000 reindeer of the district, and tomorrow we would participate in the annual separation of the herds into family groups.
This is done according to the signs on the ears of the calves to allocate the winter grazing.
G My job was to head off stragglers and escapees. This is done by flapping the arms up and down and hooting.
Even the most desultory flap, I discovered, persuades a wayward reindeer to rejoin the crowd.
PASSAGE 2
FOUR LEGS BETTER?
It is not clear that the global boom in pet-keeping is doing humans much good.
Martin Salomón has brought his dog, Manolo, to the “canine area” of a public park in Condesa, a wealthy district of
Mexico City. As he watches the happy, free-running animals, he reflects on how dogs’ lives have changed. Mr Salomón,
who was born in the northern state of Sonora, recalls that his grandmother had two dogs—a black one called Negro and
a white one called Güero, meaning pale. They were seldom allowed in the house. And today? Recently he attended a
birthday party for a friend’s dog, with a cake, candles and a party hat for the pooch.
1G
Keeping pets is hardly novel; nor is pampering them. Archaeologists have discovered graves from more than 10,000
years ago containing the skeletons of humans and dogs. Some of the dogs suffered from diseases, and were
presumably cared for by their owners. Eighteenth-century portraits are full of wellgroomed animals. But never have so
many people kept pets, nor have they fawned over them as much as they do now. For better or worse, an almost global
pet culture is emerging.
2A
As people grow better-off, their attitudes to domestic animals change. Surveys by Euromonitor, a marketresearch firm,
show that in emerging markets wealthy people are more likely than poorer people to describe pets as “beloved members
of the family”, as opposed to merely well-treated animals. In 2015 a Harris poll of American pet owners found that 95%
deemed their animals part of the family—up from 88% in 2007. Americans behave accordingly. More than two-thirds
allow pets to sleep on their beds, and almost half have bought them birthday presents.
3C
In countries with long traditions of pet-keeping, these changes may be visible only with hindsight. Sami Tanner, the head
of strategy at Musti Group, which owns almost 300 pet-supplies shops in Finland, Norway and Sweden, points to the
Irish setters that his family has kept. In the late 1960s his mother’s dog, Cimi, was fed cheap dog food and table scraps,
and had just two accoutrements: a blanket and a leash. In 2009 Mr Tanner’s dog Break became the first canine in the
family to have his teeth brushed, and the first to acquire a raincoat and a bed. His current dog, Red, has several jackets,
attends dog school, and is a model.
4F
Some animals are easier to see as family members than others. As the expectation that pets should provide
companionship and emotional support has grown, the range of favoured species has narrowed. In 1949 Konrad Lorenz,
an Austrian biologist, recommended fish, hamsters, bullfinches and starlings as excellent pets. Five years later, Marlon
Brando’s character in “On the Waterfront” kept pigeons. Today just two species dominate: Canis familiaris and Felis
catus. Sales of dog and cat food are rising in Britain. Rabbit, rodent, fish and bird food are all in decline, according to the
Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association.
5H
Some of the most popular dogs are roughly cat-sized. Early last year the French bulldog overtook the Labrador retriever
as Britain’s most popular pedigree dog; pugs were not far behind. In America, the French bulldog has risen from the 58th
most popular pedigree dog to fourth since 2002, according to the American Kennel Club. French bulldogs and pugs
have something in common besides size. If you ignore their ears, they look a little like human babies. Their eyes are
large and their noses squashed—so much so that many of them suffer from breathing problems.
6E
Still, pets are undoubtedly treated better than they were. Mr. Romano of Nestlé says that Latin American ones used to
subsist largely on table scraps, but no longer. Across the continent, he says, dogs now get about 40% of their calories
from pet food, whereas cats get a little more. And pet owners are buying posher nibbles. Euromonitor estimates that
dog-food sales in Mexico have grown by 25% in real terms since 2013. Premium therapeutic foods, which are
supposedly good for dogs and are definitely heavy on wallets, are selling especially well.
7B
It is unclear that pets are benefiting from the extra attention to their diets. Julie Churchill, a veterinary nutritionist at the
University of Minnesota, says that some specialist pet foods are useful. Animals with diabetes need special diets, as do
extremely large dogs. But the rapid growth of natural, unprocessed pet food strikes her as an example of people
extrapolating from their own dietary concerns. Unlike its human equivalent, pet food is processed with the aim of
creating a more balanced diet. As for grain-free food (another human fad that has transferred to pets), Ms Churchill
suspects it could be linked to a kind of heart disease in dogs.
The missing paragraphs:
A Some parts of the world are keener than others on pets. Argentines are much more likely to keep animals than
are Japanese people; in mostly Muslim countries people tend not to have dogs. But in general, the wealthier a country
is, the more people have pets. As a rule of thumb, says Carlos Romano, the head of Nestlé’s pet-food operations in
Latin America, the animal instinct kicks in when household incomes exceed about $5,000 a year.
B Musti ja Mirri’s shop in Tammisto, a suburb of Helsinki, suggests how far this process can run. The shop not only
sells a huge range of prepared pet foods, including ice cream for dogs, grain-free foods and foods for moggies with a
wide variety of conditions including old age, urinary problems and “sensitive digestions”. It also has two large freezers of
fresh meat. The assistants say that a growing number of dog owners add this meat to prepared food, believing it to be
more natural and healthy. Elsewhere dog owners can order food tailored to their pets’ specific requirements, from outfits
like Tails.com in Britain and Feed My Furbaby in New Zealand.
C People in the pet industry use the word “humanisation” to describe many of the changes they see. It does not
imply that people think their pets are actually human (although sometimes you wonder: many cats and dogs have
Instagram accounts, and a few people have symbolically married their pets). Rather, more pet owners have come to
believe that their animals can do humanlike things, such as understand them, calm them and love them. They have also
come to believe that pets should be treated more like humans.
D However, a still trickier question is whether pets are good for people. John Bradshaw, the author of “The
Animals Among Us”, argues that pets seem to calm people down and help them create bonds with other people. Only
some people, though. Anecdotal evidence that some people are disposed to adore pets, whereas others fear or loathe
them, has been borne out by studies. Statistical research on Swedish twins by Tove Fall of Uppsala University and
others suggests that more than half of the propensity to own dogs is heritable.
E It has even been suggested that young people are substituting pets for children. Millennials, who are getting
around to having kids later than any generation before, reinforce that impression by doting on their “fur babies”. For all
that, it is probably wrong. Birth rates plunged in countries like China and Korea long before the pet boom. In America,
pet ownership is linked to having children (not a surprise to anyone who has been on the receiving end of a multi-year
lobbying campaign to get one). And the things that pet parents claim to get from their furry charges, such as love,
companionship and understanding, sound less like the things we expect from children and more what we want from a
spouse or lover.
F Elsewhere, the changes are head-snappingly fast. In parts of East Asia, dogs have long been valued as food.
Cats may be made into tonics. Western journalists in South Korea for the 2018 Winter Olympics went in search of dog
meat; they found it, even though officials offered to pay restaurants to remove it while the visitors were around. As the
culture of pet-keeping spreads, though, a domestic lobby has emerged. In 2017 the Korean president, Moon Jae-in,
acquired a dog from a shelter; earlier this year the mayor of Seoul vowed to close all dog butchers. Chinese animal
lovers hound the dog-meat festival held each year in the province of Guangxi.
G In South Korea, some people who keep cats refer to themselves not as “owners” or even “parents”—a more
condescending term that appeared in America in the 1990s and has spread. Instead they are “butlers”. Some take their
feline masters to a cat hotel in the Gangnam district of Seoul. It resembles a beauty studio, with plump cushions and
pastel colours. The rooms and suites, costing $35-50 for a day, are equipped with ridges and tunnels for the cats to play
in, as well as cameras and microphones. “It’s so the cats can hear their butlers’ voices,” explains the owner, Cho Hanna.
H Of the two privileged species, cats have a slight advantage. Euromonitor expects the number of pet cats
worldwide to grow by 22% between 2018 and 2024, compared with 18% for dogs. Cats are better suited to apartment
living than dogs, so they are more at home in the densely populated, fast-growing cities of Asia. They are also more
tolerant of their owners’—sorry, butlers’—erratic working hours.
MULTIPLE MATCHING
PASSAGE 1
WE’VE SEEN IT ALL BEFORE!
Just how many of the technological advances we take for granted today were actually predicted in science fiction years
ago? Karen Smith checks out four influential works.
A. R.U.R
Originally a word that appeared solely in science fiction, the term robot has now become commonplace as developments
in technology have allowed scientists to design even more complex machines that can perform tasks to assist us at work
or home. But how did the word originate and when? To answer this, we have to go back nearly 100 years to a play
written in 1920 by a Czech playwright, Karel Capek, called R.U.R – Rossum’s Universal Robots. The word is a
derivation from the Czech robota, meaning ‘forced labour’, or rab, meaning ‘slave’. Capek’s robots are biological
machines which are uncannily similar to what we today refer to as ‘clones’ or ‘androids’ but are assembled from various
parts rather than being genetically ‘grown’. The play eerily predicts problems that concern people today regarding
machines that can think independently. Rossum’s robots plan a rebellion against their creator, a man who is in his own
words, wants to ‘play God’. The famous science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was unimpressed by the literary value of
Capek’s play but believed it had enormous significance because it introduced the word robot to the world.
B Ralph 124C41+
If you’re a science aficionado, you’ll definitely have heard of Hugo Gernsback. Considered by many to be the founding
father of science fiction back in 1926 with the publication of his magazine Amazing Stories, his name has been
immortalised in the annual science fiction awards, the ‘Hugos’. However, the quality of his writing is questionable and his
stories are more highly regarded for their content rather than plot or character development. Gernsback was deeply
interested in the world of electronics and, believing that science-fiction should inspire future scientists, he filled his
stories with ideas for numerous gadgets and electronic devices. An extraordinary number of his predictions have actually
come true. Today we have television, televised phone calls, sliding doors and remote controls, to name only a few, and
the precursors of many of these can be found in just one novel: Ralph 124C41+. The mystifying title is itself a prediction
of language used in text talk today: ‘one to foresee for all (1+)’! Gernsback’s prophetic stories included other predictions
which currently remain unfulfilled, such as complete weather control, thought records and aircabs. Watch this space!
C From the London Town of 1904
Mark Twain is a familiar name to most of us as the author of magnificent books such as Huckleberry Finn and Tom
Sawyer. He is less well-known, however, for his science fiction but to avid readers of that genre, he is considered one of
the best writers of all time. It is also quite possible that he predicted one of the most influential scientific inventions the
world has ever seen – something that we all use and rely on every day: the internet! It is in a little-known short story
called From the London Town of 1904 that a character invents a device called a ‘telectroscope’. This is a machine that
uses telephone line links across the world to enable him to see and hear what is going on in any place on the globe at a
given time. How familiar does that sound? The character, while on death row for a murder that he did not commit, uses
his machine to ‘call up’ different places in the world and the narrator of the story comments that although in a prison cell,
the man is ‘almost as free as the birds’.
D Star Trek
These days mobile phones have become such an integral part of our daily lives that we would be lost without them but
there was a time when we had to communicate using landlines or – horror of horrors – by writing letters! Viewers
watching the birth of a new TV science fiction series in the 1960s would have been amazed at the thought that the
‘communicator’ used by Star Trek’s Captain Kirk would one day become an everyday form of communication available
to us all. Kirk’s ‘communicator’ was a small device he used to flip open and, in retrospect, it seems surprisingly similar to
a mobile phone that became popular in the late 90s. The long-running series also featured several other devices that
have since moved from fiction to the real world. However, the famous Star Trek ‘Transporter’, through which people can
immediately materialise in different places, still remains the Holy Grail for many in the world of science. Now, that really
would make a difference to our lives. ‘Beam us up, Scottie,’ please?
Which science fiction work
1. B served a different purpose other than pure entertainment?
2. A presented a concept that is familiar today but through a different process?
3. C was written by an author who has more famous fictional creations?
4. A features machines that threaten to cause the downfall of man?
5. D mentions a device that would have a great bearing on us if it existed?
6. B was created by a writer whose name will be engraved on readers’ minds?
7. B was entitled in a way that might be more decipherable to today’s generations than the past ones?
8. C centres around a character using a device to escape from the reality of a situation?
9. D delighted people over a period of many years?
10. A foresaw something that is controversial today?
11. b was more acknowledged for what it reflected rather than its storyline?
12. a was considered to be flawed from a literary perspective but have a considerable impact?
13. c shows the subject envisioned by the author was slightly different from modern concepts?
14. d might have transfixed its audience for one of its aspects being realised?
PASSAGE 2
A. Each day as we prepare to meet our world we perform a very popular ritual: getting dressed. This may mean
only adding a daub of war paint or freshening a grass girdle. Or it may be the painstaking ceremonious robing of a
monarch. For most of us, however, it means the exchange of nightwear for day clothes. Although nakedness does still
exist in some isolated communities, there appears to be no society that is entirely composed of totally unadorned human
beings. The desire to alter or add to the original natural state is so prevalent in the human species that we must assume
it has become an inborn human trait. When did it begin? It certainly precedes recorded history. Bodily covering was
probably the first manmade shelter and the human skin the earliest canvas. Standing erect with his arms and hands free
to function creatively, man must have soon discovered that his anatomical frame could accommodate a wide variety of
physical self-improvements. His shoulders could support a mantle to protect him from the elements. To stand out above
his peers and indicate his superior position, he found his head could be an excellent foundation for adding stature and
importance. Intertwined with these motivating factors and building on them was the human instinct for creative
expression, an outlet for the aesthetic spirit.
B. Changes in needs and outlooks often blur the purposes that originally gave articles of human raiment a raison
d'être. Vestiges are relegated to tradition; others undergo a kind of mutation. The sheltering mantle, for example, can
become a magnificent but cumbersome robe of state. Amulets, their symbolism lost or forgotten, became objects of
decoration to show off the wearer’s wealth. Man is a gregarious creature. And although innovations and changes may be
initiated by individuals, the inspiration that triggers them grows out of the innovator’s environment, and their acceptance
or rejection is determined by his society. Nothing so graphically reflects social and cultural patterns as the manner in
which individuals within a society alter their original appearance.
C. Fashion can be a powerful force. Societies evolve for themselves a set of rules, and most people, consciously or
subconsciously, do their best to conform. The nonconformists, those who do not wish to join in this game, must either
sever their relationship and go it alone or suffer the consequences. These regulations are hardly capricious. Their roots
are in the foundation of a society which, although composed of individuals, develops an identity of its own and an instinct
for self-preservation. A homogeneity in dress is a manifest catalyst, a visible unifier of a social group. Because this is so,
costume if read properly can give us an insight not only into the class structure of a social organisation but also into its
religion and aesthetics, its fears, hopes and goals. Today our clothes continue to reflect our anxieties and how we try to
cope with them. Our society is rapidly becoming global. The recent worldwide rage for jeans is an example of this new
universality and the wholesale movement to break down past barriers – geographical and social.
D. ‘Fashion is the mirror of history,’ King Louis XIV of France correctly observed. But if one were to transpose a
fashion into another era, it would be unlikely to make sense. How, for example, could an Amazonian Indian or a Roman
senator rationalise a hoop skirt, a starched ruff, or a powdered wig? Yet scrutinised through the specialist’s lens, such
vagaries of dress can help chart the course of social mores, moral codes, the march of science and the progress of the
arts. This would explain why the genealogy of clothes receives the rapt attention of the psychologist, sociologist,
economist, anthropologist and art historian, each posing the same question: ‘Why do people wear what they wear?’
Why, indeed, have human beings chosen to transform themselves so astonishingly? For the sake of the flesh or the
spirit? For themselves and their own inquisitive nature or for the eyes of beholders? What has driven them? Ambition?
Fear? Humility? There is and can be no single adequate response.
1. explains why non-mainstream fashion risks the possibility of social disapproval?
2. suggests that man’s evolution is concomitant with his emerging knowledge of clothing?
3. makes the point that fashion cannot be taken out of its historical context?
4. suggests a temporal link between wearing clothes and painting the body?
5. explains that certain clothes eventually become recognised as merely of historical interest?
6. suggests that a fashion trend is validated by social judgment?
7. suggests that someone might dress in a particular way in order not to attract attention?
8. suggests that clothes could be used to assert social standing?
9. mentions a factor contributing to the constancy of dress codes?
10. suggests that fashion changes can prove valuable for research into multiple social aspects?
11. mentions clothes being put on in a very elaborate manner?
12. mentions the need to express one’s sense of beauty as a purpose of creating fashion?
13. mentions satisfying one’s own curiosity as a possible motive for dressing in unusual ways?
14. offers an explanation for the way in which dress codes originate?
15. mentions a fashion item which reflects a trend in the society?
LISTENING PRACTICE
Ex 1:
- VAR is used for specific incidents involving 1)
- There is a support team who works in a 2) located at the international broadcast center
- There are four 3) which provide the best angles from all relevant broadcast cameras
- The VAR team supports the decision making process in 4 scenarios: goals, penalties, red cards and
4)
- By signalling the outline of a TV screen the referee would initiate an 5)
- 6) is responsible for generating official VAR review information
7) display VAR official review details
- The broadcast productions teams will implement a 8) to help explain the complete story
- 9) will explain which of the four decisions is under review
- Once the referee has made the final decision, a 10) explaining the outcome of the
review will be inserted
Ex 2:
- Robert Lee runs an organisation that specialises in the recruitment of 1)
- According to Robert, more people will use the Internet to work freelance as companies 2)_
- Employers of e-lancers benefit from the 3) because it gives them an international
selection of candidates
- Robert says that the desire and ability to learn, rather than 4)_ , will be most in demand in
the future
- Research has shown that increased 5)_ can ensure better learning choices
- According to Robert, it is not the subject, but the actual 6)_ of learning that is important
- Managing e-lancers and e-commuters isn’t the same as managing people whose hours and responsibilities are
7)
- Nowadays, the amount of time employees spend on their work is less important than their 8)
Ex 3:
- Judith Nixon is the manager of the Farthington Gallery in Russell Square, where an exhibition of
1) is taking place
 - What particularly impresses Judith about many forms of long-distance communication is the degree of
2) shown by people who devised them
- Ancient civilisations were not ignorant of the fact that an effective communication network was a fundamental
part of 3)
- The Roman 4) was the most advanced of its time
- The Romans relied on a 5) of messengers for speed of delivery
- A boom in international trade in the Middle Ages brought about an increase in 6)_
- These reforms were later improved upon as a result of the invention of the 7)
- The Thurn and Taxis family created an extensive network of 8) covering the majority of
Europe
- The failure of the Pony Express was attributed to the 9) of the telegraph
- Carrier pigeons proved them to be invaluable as 10)
Ex 4:
- University applicants can choose from ten of thousands of 1)
- Students may take A-levels or 2) or a mixture of both
- Others may study full-time or two years to obtain a(n) 3)
- Students with poor A-level results may do 4)
- The new 5)_ combines academic study with work-based training
- Mature students should contact 6) directly
- 7) courses are available at further education colleges
- Sponsorship is a way of obtaining 8) and work experience
- To sum up, studying to degree level is a 9)_
Ex 5:
- One of the main reasons why an increasing number of teachers in Western countries leave their job is the
1) on standardized testing
- Pisa is an international assessment of reading, mathematics and 2)
- This year’s ranking saw East Asian countries surpass 3) to dominate the list
- In these countries, succeeding in school is 4)_ as a priority
- Singapore is exemplified as one of the countries offering 5) and to teachers
- At the other end of the scale, 6) had the lowest PISA scores
- It is believed that uneducated population equates to 7)
- Some point to an emphasis on 8)_ , rather than actual education
Ex 6:
- Trump pulled the U.S. out of a 1)_ at the last minute
- What we saw at the G-7 was actually stronger than that. That was, you know, kind of a 2)_ to
undermine relationships and tell these people that he does not really respect them as people
- That was just kind of a throwaway line that was meant to 3) going to bethat
and show ableyou're
to not
manage me
- Some analysts have said this is 4)_ the world order or ending the 20th century global
power
- And he's doing it by undermining the alliances that should really be close, especially in the context of a world
order that is much more dangerous, much more 5)
- And so a new president can rebuild the 6) with American allies. But what you can't do
is rebuild the global order
- As founder and president of the Eurasia Group, you are what Trump supporters would 7)
call a globalist
- But the fact is that in the developed world, in the United States and the U.K., continental Europe, even Canada,
you see that a majority of the population does not feel like they benefited. That's why you saw
8)
Ex 7:
- U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres praised the pair today as 1)_
- This year's winners are Dr. Denis Mukwege, who is renowned for his treatment of 2) in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nadia Murad, a former ISIS sex slave from the Yazidi religious minority in
Iraq who campaigns for survivors like herself
- We want to send out a message of awareness that women, who constitute half of the population in most
communities, actually are used as a weapon of war, and that they need protection, and that the
3) have to be prosecuted and held responsible for their actions. We believe that this is a
4) for lasting peace to also include the rights and the awareness of women
- Mukwege has treated thousands of survivors of 5)
- Most of the time, they're rejected by their families. They're rejected by the community. Of course they're
6)
- Two years ago, at the age of 23, she was named the U.N.'s first 7)_ for the dignity
survivors of
of human
trafficking
- You've got a very 8)_ here of a woman who has survived the most appalling atrocity
and of a man who works to help women survive most appalling atrocities
Ex 8:
- Jim Allison says he's always had a personal interest in cancer. His mother died of 1) when
he was 10, and an uncle died of lung cancer
- T cells are a 2) of the human immune system
 - In the 1990s, Allison was working at UC Berkeley when he discovered a vital element of T cells. They had
what's essentially a 3) to keep them from going too crazy
- Meanwhile at Kyoto University in Japan, Dr. Tasuku Honjo was independently at work on the same
4)
- From this science has emerged a 5) to develop market and improve checkpoint inhibitors.
- Former President Jimmy Carter was diagnosed with advanced melanoma which had spread to his brain, but a
checkpoint inhibitor 6)_ his cancer. Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, president of the American
Society for Clinical Oncology, says checkpoint inhibitors have generated 7) because of
remarkable stories like this
- Jim Allison, now at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, says now that they understand the basic rules,
they can set to 8)
Ex 9:
- Trade war is a bad situation which occurs when a country becomes more 1) , imposing tariffs
on the other country. The other country 2) instead of backing down
- While Trump believes trade wars are good and easy to win, recent history 3)
- The Hawley – Smoot Act in 1930 resulted in the 4)
- The World Trade Organization used The Hawley – Smoot Act as a 5)
- Geogre Bush imposed tariffs on steel in an attempt to revive the industry, but it 6) __
- Some of the biggest victims of a trade war are 7) , factory workers and farmers
- As a result of protectionism, domestic companies can raise prices without fear of 8)_ to
foreign competitors. How do you win, it all matters to which country has the most 9)
- Perhaps the worst side effect of a trade war is that it 10) between allied countries.
Ex 10: Listen to an interview in which a scientist talks about how stars in space may have been responsible for
a number of environmental catastrophes on Earth, and choose the correct answer.
1. What convinced Arnon Dar that collapsing neutron stars have been the cause of massive extinction of life on Earth?
A. Nothing else would be powerful enough. B. There is no evidence for volcanic activity.
C. Supernova explosions are far too rare. D. The two events happen with the same frequency.
2. According to Dar, muon particles cause .
A. much heavier rain than normal. B. cosmic rays to be created.
C. the death of animals and plants. D. showers of high energy particles.
3. Why does Dar consider the evidence about marine life to be significant?
A. It shows how rich marine life was at that time. B. It suggests his theory is correct.
C. It produced a valuable fossil record for scientists. D. Scientists have always ignored it.
4. How does Dar explain the survival of many insects?
A. Radiation does not affect insects.
B. They can survive any environmental disaster.
C. The environment was ideal for insects 251 million years ago.
D. They are more resistant to radiation than large animals.
5. When Dar talks about the possibility of another large mass extinction happening, his attitude is .
A. optimistic B. sarcastic C. indifferent D. slightly concerned
Ex 11: Listen to a radio discussion about the introduction of a new law and fill in the missing information. Write
NO MORE THAN FIVE WORDS taken from the recording for each answer provided in the space.
- Steven points out that, according to (1) , speeding is to blame for
approximately a third of accidents.
- Many crashes that involve bicycles or people on foot are caused by (2) of the
speed limit.
- Andrew is generally opposed to (3) when it comes to punishing drivers for
speeding.
- Andrew argues that inadequate signing may lead a driver to unconsciously (4)
above the speed limit.
- Steven points out that the number of (5) _ has fallen steadily over the last decade.
- Steven emphasises that imprisonment should be considered as a last resort for (6) .
- Andrew dismisses investments in speeding cameras and increased speeding fines as a(n) (7)
approach.
PASSAGE 1
The world of fashion is not easy to comprehend. With its haute couture designers, its catwalks, its sylph-like
models and glitzy clothes that most of us would not be (1)............................dead in – even if we could afford them – it is
hard to believe that it has (2).............................to do with the real world. It is difficult to understand the motives behind
fashion, and to fathom what it has got to do with us in our everyday lives. The (3) …………………. majority of us,
however, are affected to varying degrees by fashion and, on reflection, we can conclude that this is because of a basic
desire to possess to conform (4).............................our social group. Ever since people started to cover their bodies, they
have tended to conform in the way they do (5).............................., and thus it would be logical to say that fashion has
existed from the (6)............................go. Most of us live and socialise in groups made up of our peers, and we dress (7)
…………………… to the rules of the group. Looking the same as our peer group could (8) ………………….. be a
remnant of a survival strategy which guaranteed solidarity and protection for look-alikes. This tendency (9)
……………………. conformity consequently makes it possible to date paintings and photographs with great accuracy
just by looking at the garments the (10)...........................is wearing. We can place a portrait of a lady in a particular era
simply because her clothes and hairstyle reflect the fashion of the day.
PASSAGE 2
 In seeking to describe the origins of theater, one must rely primarily on speculation, since there is little concrete
evidence on which to draw. The most widely accepted theory, championed by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, envisions theater as emerging out of myth and ritual. the process perceived by these
anthropologists may be summarized briefly. During the early stages of its development, a society becomes aware of
forces that appear to influence or control its food supply and well-being. Having little understanding of natural causes, it
attributes both desirable and undesirable occurrences to supernatural or magical forces, and it searches for means to
win the favor of these forces. Perceiving an apparent connection between certain actions performed by the group and
the result it desires, the group repeats, refines and formalizes those actions into fixed ceremonies, or rituals.
Stories (myths) may then grow up around a ritual. Frequently the myths include representatives of those
supernatural forces that the rites celebrate or hope to influence. performers may wear costumes and masks to represent
the mythical characters or supernatural forces in the rituals or in accompanying celebrations. As a person becomes
more sophisticated, its conceptions of supernatural forces and causal relationships may change. As a result, it may
abandon or modify some rites. but the myths that have grown up around the rites may continue as part of the group’s
oral tradition and may even come to be acted out under conditions divorced from these rites. When this occurs, the first
step has been taken toward theater as an autonomous activity, and thereafter entertainment and aesthetic values may
gradually replace the former mystical and socially efficacious concerns.
[1] Although origin in ritual has long been the most popular, it is by no means the only theory about how the
theater came into being. [2] Storytelling has been proposed as one alternative. [3] Under this theory, relating and
listening to stories are seen as fundamental human pleasures. [4] Thus, the recalling of an event (a hunt, battle, or other
feat) is elaborated through the narrator’s pantomime and impersonation and eventually through each role being
assumed by a different person.
A closely related theory sees theater as evolving out of dances that are primarily pantomimic, rhythmical or
gymnastic, or from imitations of animal noises and sounds. Admiration for the performer’s skill, virtuosity, and grace are
seen as motivation for elaborating the activities into fully realized theatrical performances.
In addition to exploring the possible antecedents of theater, scholars have also theorized about the motives that
led people to develop theater. why did theater develop, and why was it valued after it ceased to fulfill the function of
ritual? Most answers fall back on the theories about the human mind and basic human needs. one, set forth by aristotle
in the fourth century B.C., sees humans as naturally imitative—as taking pleasure in imitating persons, things, and
actions and in seeing such imitations. Another, advanced in the twentieth century, suggests that humans have a gift for
fantasy, through which they seek to reshape reality into more satisfying forms than those encountered in daily life. Thus,
fantasy or fiction (of which drama is one form) permits people to objectify their anxieties and fears, confront them, and
fulfill their hopes in fiction if not fact. the
theater, then, is one tool whereby people define and understand their world or escape from unpleasant realities.
But neither the human imitative instinct nor a penchant for fantasy by itself leads to an autonomous theater.
Therefore, additional explanations are needed. one necessary condition seems to be a somewhat detached view of
human problems. For example, one sign of this condition is the appearance of the comic vision, since comedy requires
sufficient detachment to view some deviations from social norms as ridiculous rather than as serious threats to the
welfare of the entire
group. another condition that contributes to the development of autonomous theater is the emergence of the aesthetic
sense. For example, some early societies ceased to consider certain rites essential to their well-being and abandoned
them, nevertheless, they retained as parts of their oral tradition the myths that had grown up around the rites and
admired them for their artistic qualities rather than for their religious usefulness.
1. The word “championed” in the passage is closest in meaning to .
A. changed B. debated C. created D. supported
2. According to paragraph 1, why did some societies develop and repeat ceremonial actions?
A. to establish a positive connection between the members of the society
B. to help society members better understand the forces controlling their food supply
C. to distinguish their beliefs from those of other societies
D. to increase the society’s prosperity
3. The word “this” in the passage refers to .
A. the acting out of rites B. the divorce of ritual performers from the rest of society
C. the separation of myths from rites D. the celebration of supernatural forces
4. According to paragraph 2, what may cause societies to abandon certain rites?
A. emphasizing theater as entertainment
B. developing a new understanding of why events occur.
C. finding a more sophisticated way of representing mythical characters
D. moving from a primarily oral tradition to a more written tradition
5. All of following are mentioned in paragraph 5 as possible reasons that led societies to develop theater except .
A. theater allows people to face that they are afraid of.
B. theater gives an opportunity to imagine a better reality.
C. theater is a way to enjoy imitating other people.
D. theater provides people the opportunity to better understand the human mind.
6. Which of the following best describes the organization of paragraph 5?
A. the author presents two theories for a historical phenomenon.
B. the author argues against theories expressed earlier in the passage.
C. the author argues for replacing older theories with a new one.
D. the author points out problems with two popular theories.
7. The word “penchant” in the passage is closest in meaning to .
A. compromise B. inclination C. tradition D. respect
8. Why does the author mention “comedy”?
A. to give an example of early types of theater
B. to explain how theater helps a society respond to threats to its welfare
C. to help explain why detachment is needed for the development of theater
D. to show how theatrical performers become detached from other members of society.
9. Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage?
A. A society’s rites were more likely to be retained in the oral tradition if its myths were admired for artistic qualities.
B. The artistic quality of a myth was sometimes an essential reason for a society to abandon it from the oral tradition.
C. Some early societies stopped using myths in their religious practices when rites ceased to be seen as useful for
social well-being.
D. Myths sometimes survived in a society’s tradition because of their artistic qualities even after they were no longer
deemed religiously beneficial.
10. Indicate where the following sentence could be added to paragraph 3.
To enhance their listener’s enjoyment, storytellers continually make their stores more engaging and memorable.
A. [1] B. [2] C. [3] D. [4]
PASSAGE 3
Before Laura Gilpin (1891-1979), few women in the history of photography had so devoted themselves to
chronicling the landscape. Other women had photographed the land, but none can be regarded as a landscape
photographer with a sustained body of work documenting the physical terrain. Anne Brigman often photographed
woodlands and coastal areas, but they were generally settings for her artfully placed subjects. Dorothea Lange’s
landscapes were always conceived of as counterparts to her portraits of rural women.
At the same time that Gilpin’s interest in landscape work distinguished her from most other women
photographers, her approach to landscape photography set her apart from men photographers who, like Gilpin,
documented the western United States. Western American landscape photography grew out of a male tradition,
pioneered by photographers attached to government and commercial survey teams that went west in the 1860’s and
1870’s. These explorer-photographers documented the West that their employers wanted to see: an exotic and majestic
land shaped by awesome natural forces, unpopulated and ready for American settlement. The next generation of male
photographers, represented by Ansel Adams and Eliot Porter, often worked with conservationist groups rather than
government agencies or commercial companies, but they nonetheless preserved the “heroic” style and maintained the
role of respectful outsider peering in with reverence at a fragile natural world.
For Gilpin, by contrast, the landscape was neither an empty vista awaiting human settlement nor a jewel-like
scene resisting human intrusion, but a peopled landscape with a rich history and tradition of its own, an environment that
shaped and molded the lives of its inhabitants. Her photographs of the Rio Grande, for example, consistently depict the
river in terms of its significance to human culture: as a source of irrigation water, a source of food for livestock, and a
provider of town sites. Also instructive is Gilpin’s general avoidance of extreme close-ups of her natural subjects: for her,
emblematic details could never suggest the intricacies of the interrelationship between people and nature that made the
landscape a compelling subject. While it is dangerous to draw conclusions about a “feminine” way of seeing from the
work of one woman, it can nonetheless be argued that Gilpin’s unique approach to landscape photography was
analogous to the work of many women writers who, far more than their male counterparts, described the landscape in
terms of its potential to sustain human life.
Gilpin never spoke of herself as a photographer with a feminine perspective: she eschewed any discussion of
gender as it related to her work and maintained little interest in interpretations that relied on the concept of a “woman’s
eye.” Thus it is ironic that her photographic evocation of a historical landscape should so clearly present a distinctively
feminine approach to landscape photography.
1. Which of the following best expresses the main idea of the passage?
A. Gilpin’s style of landscape photography substantially influenced the heroic style practiced by her male counterparts.
B. The labeling of Gilpin’s style of landscape photography as feminine ignores important ties between it and the heroic
style.
C. Gilpin’s work exemplifies an arguably feminine style of landscape photography that contrasts with the style used by
her male predecessors.
D. Gilpin’s style was strongly influenced by the work of women writers who described the landscape in terms of its
relationship to people.
2. It can be inferred from the passage that the teams were most interested in which of the following aspects of the land
in the western United States?
A. Its fragility in the face of increased human intrusion B. Its potential for sustaining future settlements
C. Its importance as an environment for rare plants and animals D. Its unusual vulnerability to extreme natural forces
3. The passage suggests that a photographer who practiced the heroic style would be most likely to emphasize which of
the following in a photographic series focusing on the Rio Grande?
A. Indigenous people and their ancient customs relating to the river
B. The exploits of navigators and explorers
C. Unpopulated, pristine parts of the river and its surroundings
D. The dams and other monumental engineering structures built on the river
4. It can be inferred from the passage that the first two generations of landscape photographers in the western United
States had which of the following in common?
A. They photographed the land as an entity that had little interaction with human culture.
B. They were convinced that the pristine condition of the land needed to be preserved by government action.
C. They photographed the land as a place ready for increased settlement.
D. They photographed only those locations where humans had settled.
5. The author of the passage mentions women writers most likely in order to .
A. counter a widely held criticism of her argument
B. bolster her argument that Gilpin’s style can be characterized as a feminine style
C. clarify the interrelationship between human culture and the land that Gilpin was attempting to capture.
D. offer an analogy between photographic close-ups and literary descriptions of small details
PASSAGE 4
THE ORIGIN OF THE PACIFIC ISLAND PEOPLE
The greater Pacific region, traditionally called Oceania, consists of three cultural areas: Melanesia, Micronesia,
and Polynesia. Melanesia, in the southwest Pacific, contains the large islands of New Guinea, the Solomons, Vanuatu,
and New Caledonia. Micronesia, the area north of Melanesia, consists primarily of small scattered islands. Polynesia is
the central Pacific area in the great triangle defined by Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand. Before the arrival of
Europeans, the islands in the two largest cultural areas, Polynesia and Micronesia, together contained a population
estimated at 700,000.
Speculation on the origin of these Pacific islanders began as soon as outsiders encountered them, in the
absence of solid linguistic, archaeological, and biological data, many fanciful and mutually exclusive theories were
devised. [1] Pacific islanders are variously thought to have come from North America, South America, Egypt, Israel, and
India, as well as Southeast Asia. Many older theories implicitly deprecated the navigational abilities and overall cultural
creativity of the Pacific Islanders. For example, British anthropologists G. Elliot Smith and W. J. Perry assumed that only
Egyptians would have been skilled enough to navigate and colonize the Pacific. [2] They inferred that the Egyptians
even crossed the pacific to found the great civilizations of the New World (North and South America). [3] In 1947
Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl drifted on a balsa-log raft westward with the winds and currents across the pacific
from South America to prove his theory that Pacific islanders were Native Americans (also called American Indians).
Later, Heyerdahl suggested that the Pacific was peopled by three migrations: by Native Americans from the Pacific
Northwest of North America drifting to Hawaii, by Peruvians drifting to Easter Island, and by Melanesians. In 1969 he
crossed the Atlantic in an Egyptian style reed boat to prove Egyptian influences in the Americas. Contrary to these
theorists, the overwhelming evidence of physical anthropology, linguistics, and archaeology shows that the Pacific
islanders came from Southeast Asia and were skilled enough as navigators to sail against the prevailing winds and
currents [4].
The basic cultural requirements for the successful colonization of the Pacific islands include the appropriate
boat-building, sailing, and navigation skills to get to the islands in the first place, domesticated plants and gardening
skills suited to often marginal conditions, and a varied inventory of fishing implements and techniques. it is now
generally believed that these prerequisites originated with peoples speaking Austronesian languages (a group of several
hundred related languages) and began to emerge in Southeast Asia by about 5000 B.C.E. The culture of that time,
based on archaeology and linguistic reconstruction, is assumed to have had a broad inventory of cultivated plants
including taro, yarns, banana, sugarcane, breadfruit, coconut, sago, and rice. Just as important, the culture also
possessed the basic foundation for an effective maritime adaptation, including outrigger canoes and a variety of fishing
techniques that could be effective for overseas voyaging.
Contrary to the arguments of some that much of the Pacific was settled by Polynesians accidentally
marooned after being lost and adrift, it seems reasonable that this feat was accomplished by deliberate
colonization expeditions that set out fully stocked with food and domesticated plants and animals. Detailed
studies of the winds and currents using computer simulations suggest that drifting canoes would have been a most
unlikely means of colonizing the pacific. These expeditions were likely driven by population growth and political
dynamics on the home islands, as well as the challenge and excitement of exploring unknown waters. Because all
Polynesians, Micronesians, and many Melanesians speak Austronesian languages and grow crops derived from
Southeast Asia, all these peoples most certainly derived from that region and not the New World or elsewhere. The
undisputed pre-Columbian presence in Oceania of the sweet potato, which is a New World domesticate, has
sometimes been used to support Heyerdahl’s “American Indians in the Pacific” theories. However, this is one plant out of
a long list of Southeast Asian domesticates. As Patrick Kirch, an American anthropologist, points out, rather than being
brought by rafting South Americans, sweet potatoes might just have easily been brought back by returning Polynesian
navigators who could have reached the west coast of South America.
1. According to paragraph 1, all of the following are true statements about Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia
EXCEPT
A. Collectively, these regions are traditionally known as Oceania.
B. These islands of Micronesia are small and spread out.
C. Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand mark the boundaries of Polynesia.
D. Melanesia is situated to the north of Micronesia.
2. By stating that the theories are mutually exclusive the author means that
A. if one of the theories is true, then all the others must be false.
B. the differences between the theories are unimportant.
C. taken together; the theories cover all possibilities.
D. the theories support each other.
3. Which of the following can be inferred from paragraph 2 about early theories of where the first inhabitants of the
Pacific islands came from?
A. They were generally based on solid evidence.
B. They tried to account for the origin of the characteristic features of the languages spoken by Pacific islanders.
C. They assumed that the peoples living in Southeast Asia did not have the skills needed to sail to the Pacific islands.
D. They questioned the ideas of G. Elliot Smith and W. J. Perry.
4. The word implements in the passage is closest in meaning to .
A. skills B. tools C. opportunities D. practices
5. In paragraph 3, why does the author provide information about the types of crops grown and boats used in Southeast
Asia during the period around 5000 B. C. E.?
A. To evaluate the relative importance of agriculture and fishing to early Austronesian peoples.
B. To illustrate the effectiveness of archaeological and linguistic methods in discovering details about life in ancient
times.
C. To contrast living conditions on the continent of Asia with living conditions on the Pacific islands.
D. To demonstrate that people from this region had the skills and resources necessary to travel to and survive on the
Pacific islands.
6. Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage?
A. Some people have argued that the Pacific was settled by traders who became lost while transporting domesticated
plants and animals.
B. The original Polynesian settlers were probably marooned on the islands, but they may have been joined later by
carefully prepared colonization expeditions.
C. Although it seems reasonable to believe that colonization expeditions would set out fully stocked, this is contradicted
by much of the evidence.
D. The settlement of the Pacific islands was probably intentional and well planned rather than accidental as some people
have proposed.
7. The word undisputed in the passage is closest in meaning to .
A. mysterious B. unexpected C. acknowledged D. significant
8. According to paragraph 4, which of the following is NOT an explanation for why a group of people might have wanted
to colonize the Pacific islands?
A. As their numbers increased, they needed additional territory.
B. The winds and currents made the islands easy to reach.
C. The political situation at home made emigration desirable,
D. They found exploration challenging and exciting.
9. Why does the author mention the views of Patrick Kirch?
A. To present evidence in favor of Heyerdahl’s idea about American Indians reaching Oceania
B. To emphasize the familiarity of Pacific islanders with crops from many different regions of the world
C. To indicate that supposed proof for Heyerdahl’s theory has an alternative explanation.
D. To demonstrate that some of the same crops were cultivated in both South America and Oceania.
10. Look at the four numbered brackets that indicate where the following sentence could be added to the passage:
“Later theories concentrate on journeys in the other direction”. Where could the sentence best fit?
A. [1] B. [2] C. [3] D. [4]
PASSAGE 5
Cities develop as a result of functions that they can perform. Some functions result directly from the ingenuity of
the citizenry, but most functions result from the needs of the local area and of the surrounding hinterland (the region that
supplies goods to the city and to which the city furnishes services and other goods). Geographers often make a
distinction between the situation and the site of a city. Situation refers to the general position in relation to the
surrounding region, whereas site involves physical characteristics of the specific location. Situation is normally much
more important to the continuing prosperity of a city. if a city is well situated in regard to its hinterland, its development is
much more likely to continue. Chicago, for example, possesses an almost unparalleled situation: it is located at the
southern end of a huge lake that forces east-west transportation lines to be compressed into its vicinity, and at a meeting
of significant land and water transport routes. It also overlooks what is one of the world’s finest large farming regions.
These factors ensured that Chicago would become a great city regardless of the disadvantageous characteristics of
the available site, such as being prone to flooding during thunderstorm activity. Similarly, it can be argued that much of
New York City’s importance stems from its early and continuing advantage of situation. Philadephia and Boston both
originated at about the same time as New York and shared New York’s location at the western end of one of the world’s
most important oceanic trade routes, but only New York possesses an easy-access functional connection (the Hudson-
Mohawk lowland) to the vast Midwestern hinterland. This account does not alone explain New York’s primacy, but it
does include several important factors. Among the many aspects of situation that help to explain why some cities grow
and others do not, original location on a navigable waterway seems particularly applicable. Of course, such
characteristic as slope, drainage, power resources, river crossings, coastal shapes, and other physical characteristics
help to determine city location, but such factors are normally more significant in early stages of city development than
later.
1. What does the passage mainly discuss?
A. The development of trade routes through United States cities.
B. Contrasts in settlement patterns in United States.
C. Historical differences among three large United States cities.
D. The importance of geographical situation in the growth of United States cities.
2. The word ‘ingenuity’ in line 2 is closest in meaning to .
A. wealth B. resourcefulness C. traditions D. organization
3. The passage suggests that a geographer would consider a city’s soil type part of its .
A. hinterland B. situation C. site D. function
4. According to the passage, a city’s situation is more important than its site in regard to the city’s .
A. long-term growth and prosperity B. ability to protect its citizenry
C. possession of favorable weather conditions D. need to import food supplies
5. The author mentions each of the following as ad advantage of Chicago’s location EXCEPT its .
A. hinterland B. nearness to a large lake
C. position in regard to transport routes D. flat terrain
6. The bold word “characteristics” is closest in meaning to .
A. choices B. attitudes C. qualities D. inhabitants
7. The primary purpose of paragraph 1 is to .
A. summarize past research and introduce a new study. B. describe a historical period.
C. emphasize the advantages of one theory over another. D. define a term and illustrate it with an example.
8. According to the passage, Philadelphia and Boston are similar to New York City in .
A. size of population B. age C. site D. availability of rail transportation
9. The word “functional” is closest in meaning to .
A. alternate B. unknown C. original D. usable
10. The word “it” refers to .
A. account B. primacy C. connection D. hinterland
PASSAGE 6
Chartism: a people’s petition to Parliament
The early decades of the 1800s are well known as a period of discontent and social unrest. The Industrial Revolution
meant to decline of traditional rural communities and the growth of a working-class urban population, particularly in the
new industrial towns of the Norths such as Manchester. Living and working condition for the urban factory workers were
frequently appalling and gave rise to a number of movements aimed at bettering working-class conditions. One such
movement was Chartism, which aimed to present a people’s charter, or petition for reform, to parliament. It had a
number of aims, but first and foremost among them was the granting of universal suffrage, or the vote for all men over
the age of 21.
There had been several previous attempts in the early 1800s to build a solid working-class movement, most
notably the attempt to establish a universal trade union known as the Grand National Consolidated Trade union or
GNCTU. In 1830, however, this trade union collapsed the subsequent disillusionment led to a growth of interest in other
possible ways of giving voice to founded, led by William Lovett. Its aim was to reform parliament, and in 1838 it issued a
charter demanding six political reforms, including universal suffrage. Most of these demands were to be taken up by the
Chartist petitioners.
So began the Chartist movement. Other centers of this movement were located in Birmingham, and in the north
of England. In Birmingham, the movement was championed by Thomas Attwood, a banker who was interested in
leading the movement for parliament reform in the Midlands, and Joseph Sturge, a wealthy corn merchant. The key
feature in the north of England was Fergus O’Connor, at that time the editor of the newspaper The Northern Star. In
1839, a ‘sacred month’ or general strike, and collected signature for a great petition. This petition was presented to
parliament but it was rejected in the Commons by 235 voted to 46. Thereupon the National Convention proclaimed a
general strike, but a week later canceled the proclamation and ignominiously dismissed itself. The government
meanwhile had taken action and additional troops had been sent to those areas where Chartism was strongest.
Disturbances in Birmingham were crushed, and William Lovett was arrested. The only other Chartist rising occurred in
Monmouthshire where a group of miners marched in Newport. Again, this Newport Rising was quickly crushed and its
leader transported for life.
In 1842, a second petition was presented to parliament but was again rejected by 278 votes to 46. A series of
riots and strikes followed, most notably the Lancashire Plug Plot, where strikers went around the mills removing the
plugs from boilers. Again, the government troops moved in to crush all such disturbances and many Chartists were
arrested. William Lovett subsequently abandoned the cause, and Fergus O’Connor rose to prominence as the main
Chartist leader
In 1848, under the leadership of O’Connor, a third Chartist petition was drawn up known as the ‘Monster
Petition’. It was intended to be taken to parliament in a large procession, but the government took elaborate military
precautions, and the procession was forbidden to cross the Thames. It was therefore taken to parliament in three cabs
instead. O’Connor had claimed that the petition contained five million signatures, in the event it was found to contain less
than two million, and a great many of these were false. The parliament refused to discuss it, and the Chartist movement
was discredited.
Despite the fiasco of the third petition, the Chartist movement gave expression to a number of proposals which
were later adopted to produce a reformed parliamentary system. Universal manhood suffrage, the abolition property
qualification and a secret ballot all featured among the Chartist’s demands and all of them were eventually granted, but
the process of reform was slow and was not fully achieved until the early 20th century. In essence, the demands of the
Chartist were too far ahead of the times, and consequently the government took very resolute action to control and
suppress their actions. Doubtless the essayist Thomas Carlyle, writing in the mid 19th century, expressed the fear of
many MPs when he wrote. ‘These chartisms are our French Revolution. God grant that we, with our better methods,
may be able to transact it by argument alone’.
Questions 1-7: Correct each sentence with the correct ending A-H
1. The GNCTU C
2. The London Working Men’s Association
3. The Chartist National Convention F
4. The first Chartist petition G
5. The Newport Rising D
6. The Lancashire Plug Plot B
7. The third Chartist petition A
A. was not debated in parliament.
B. was the response to the government’s rejection of the 1842 Chartist petition.
C. was a failed attempt to establish a universal workers’ movement.
D. was an example of the unrest following the rejection of the 1839 petition.
E. was a response to the transportation of a number of Chartist leaders.
F. made an empty threat of industrial action.
G. was rejected in parliament by a large majority.
H. anticipated many of the demands of later Chartist petitions.
Questions 8-10: Decide if the following statements are T, F or NG.
8. The 1848 Chartist procession was halted due to the government intervention T
9. The third Chartist petition contained more signatures than the 1842 petition. NG
10. All of the Chartist’s demands had been granted by 1900 NG
PASSAGE 7
Bryon Richardson greeted me warmly, and ushered me into his modest office, somewhat larger than the others along
the corridor, but without pretensions of any kind. He returned to his desk, which had two phones and a mobile on it, and
a lot of apparently unsorted papers, offered me a chair and said it was nice to see me again. I rather doubt he
remembered me at all, but it had the effect of making me feel a little less anxious.
1. G
‘I want to talk to you about an idea I have,’ I said. ‘I have supported this club since the 1970s, and I’m starting to get
frustrated by watching so much and knowing so little.’ He gazed at me with a degree of interest mixed with
incomprehension. ‘What I mean,’ I added, ‘is that every football fan is dying to know what it is really like, what’s actually
going on, yet all we get to see is what happens on the field.’
2. E__
And I didn’t want to be fobbed off. ‘They all make it worse, not better.’ They all purvey gossip and rumors, and most of
what they say turns out to be either uninteresting or incorrect. You average supporters end up in the dark all the time.’
3. D
‘Now that,’ I said, ‘is just the sort of thing I want to know about. I’d like to write a book about the club this coming season,
to know about the deals, the comings and goings, all the factors involved. To get to know how a Premiership football
club actually works.’ As I said this, I feared that I was a futile request, I’d drawn a little hope from the fact that he had just
been so open, as if he had already decided to consider the project. ‘I want to know about buying and selling players,
how the finances work, to go down to the training ground, travel with the team, talk to the players and the manager.’
4. H
So I continued with it. ‘Let me tell you a little about myself.’ He leaned back to make himself comfortable, sensing that it
might take a while. ‘By training I am an academic. I came here from America in the 1960s, and got a doctorate in English
at Oxford, and then taught in the English Department at Warwick University for fifteen years. Now I run my own
business, dealing in rare books and manuscripts in London, and do some freelance writing. But I’m not a journalist.’
5. C
I was staring to babble now, and as I spoke I was aware of how foolish all this must be sounding to him. At one point he
put his hands quietly on his lap, under the desk, and I had the distinct, if paranoid, impression that he was ringing some
sort of hidden alarm, and that three orange-shirted stewards would shortly come in and escort me from the ground (By
Order of the Chairman).
6. F
‘But a book is certainly a good idea,’ he said. ‘Let me think it over and I’ll get back to you.’ He stood up and we shook
hands. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said. And a few weeks later, in mid-August, he was. ‘There is a great story here,’ he said. ‘Go
ahead and do it next season. I’ll introduce you to the people here at the club. Go everywhere, talk to everybody, and
you’ll find it fascinating.’ I was surprised, and delighted, but tried not to gush. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘ It was very open-
minded of you.’ ‘Yes, sure.’, he said. ‘But I mean something more than that, something more complicated.’ ‘What’s
that?’, I asked. He smiled. ‘You’ll see.’
A. The disappointment must have registered on my face, because he quickly added: ‘I came to all this relatively
late in my career, and it’s a fascinating business. I find it more so all the time, and I don’t have any doubt that people
would not be interested to read an account of it.’
B. ‘We’ve got nothing to hide,’ he said, ‘but you’ll be surprised by what you learn. It’s an amazingly emotional
business.’ ‘It must be,’ I said, ‘the supporters can see that. So many of the games are like an emotional roller-coasters.
Sometimes the whole season is.’
C. He nodded gently. ‘Good,’ he said firmly. ‘That’s part of the point,’ I went on. ‘I want to write about the club from
the point of view of the supporters, a sort of fan’s eye view. Getting behind the scene is every fan’ dream – whether it’s
here or somewhere else. I’ve never written anything like this, although I’ve written a couple of books. And I am trained,
as an academic, in habits of analysis, in trying to figure out how things work. And I’m a supporter of the club, so I don’t
think there is anything to fear.’
D. As I was speaking, the mobile phone rang, and he answered it with an apologetic shrug. A brief and cryptic one-
sided conversation ensued, with obscure references to hotels and phone numbers. When he hung up, he explained: ‘We
are trying to sign a full-back. Good player. But there are three agents involved, and two continental sides want to sign
him, so we’ve got him hidden in a hotel. If we can keep them away from him for another couple of days, he’ll sign.’
E. He considered this for a moment. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there is the ClubCall line, the match-day programmes, and the
articles in the local and national papers. There’s lots of information about.’ He sounded like a politician trying to claim for
his party the moral authority of open government, while at the same time giving nothing away.
F. Not at all. ‘It’s funny you should ask,’ he said, ‘because you are the second person this week who has come in
with a request to write a book about the club. And I’ve just been approached by the BBC with a proposal to do a six-part
documentary about the club. ‘Are you going to let them do it?’ I asked. ‘I don’t think,’ he said wryly, ‘that a six-part series
on what a nice club Conventry City
is would make good television.’
G. ‘So, what can I do for you?’ He made it sound as if he were interested. Poised and well dressed, though without
foppishness, he had that indefinable polish that one often observes in people of wealthy and celebrity. By polish I do not
mean good manners, though that frequently accompanies it, but something more tangible: a kind of glow, as if the rich
and famous applied some mysterious ointment (available only to themselves) every morning, and then buffed their faces
to a healthy sheen.
PASSAGE 8
What Cafés Did for Liberalism
They were essential social institutions of political modernity—caffeinated pathways out of clan society and into a
cosmopolitan world.
Shachar Pinsker’s “A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture” (New York University) might seem, at a
glance, like one of those “Bagels of Our Fathers” books that a Leo Rosten could have written back when Jewishness, as
a cultural subject, still struck Americans as fresh and mostly funny. The book itself is hugely entertaining and
intimidatingly well researched, with scarcely a café in which a Jewish writer raised a cup of coffee from Warsaw to New
York left undocumented. Yet it’s really a close empirical study of an abstract political theory. The theory is that the
coffeehouses and salons of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries helped lay the foundation for the liberal
Enlightenment—a caffeinated pathway out of clan society into cosmopolitan society. Democracy was not made in the
streets but among the saucers.
1B
There was a time—astonishing to a contemporary New Yorker, shuffling ratlike to a precarious lunchtime perch at a Hale
and Hearty Soups—when the places you’d go for a nosh and a cup were genuinely splendid, spacious and rich in an
overcharge of luxury. The Israeli Nobel laureate Shmuel Agnon wrote of his first experience as a kid from a town in
Galicia visiting a big-city café in Lviv: “Gilded chandeliers suspended from the ceiling and lamps shining from every
single wall and electric lights turned on in the daytime and marble tables gleaming, and people of stately mien wearing
distinguished clothes sitting on plush chairs, reading big newspapers. And above them, waiters dressed like dignitaries.”
All that for the price of a coffee.
2D
A famous story had Leopold Berchtold, the Foreign Minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, being warned that a great
war might spark a revolution in Russia. “And who will lead this revolution?” he scoffed. “Perhaps Mr. Bronshtein sitting
over there at the Café Central?” Mr. Bronshtein took the name Leon Trotsky, and did. For Jews, Pinsker argues, the
investment in the café as a social institution was, across Europe through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
particularly intense. The great cafés were “thirdspaces,” neither entirely public nor entirely private; they were escape
zones where, contrary to the theme from “Cheers,” people often didn’t know your name, or what shtetl you hailed from. A
patriotic Polish writer could meet other Polish patriots at a Warsaw café, read the papers, make plans, share poems, or
just decide to flee to Paris. A Jewish writer in the same café had first to decide just how Polish to appear, and just how
Jewish to remain. This affected how he dressed and whom he sat with, but also which language he wrote in, Yiddish or
Polish, and what he chose to write about as he sat there.
3H
The cafés of the various European cities that Pinsker focusses on—Warsaw, Vienna, and Berlin—reflected, with startling
specificity, the Jewish reality around them. In Warsaw, which had Europe’s largest concentration of Jews (and a vast
hinterland of orthodoxy), the struggle for Jews to be both Poles and Jews, or neither Poles nor Jews, takes on particular
pathos. The Warsaw café beats out a theme of “Otherness” and “Difference.” Many Jews were at once proud to be
different and conscious of being readily “Othered,” even when they felt most at home. In the nineteen-twenties, the poet
Antoni Slonimski wrote, in Polish, a poem in which he asserted his dual love of a still gestating Israel and of Poland,
merged into the image of a single idealized woman. Polish nationalists saw betrayal in his preference for pluralism.
Later, Slonimski was assaulted in his café by an indignant right-wing Pole.
4G
The talk and arguments that went on in the cafés covered every imaginable subject under the Jewish sun, and the
Gentile ones, too. Emigration, Zionism, assimilation, the flight to America, the urge to stay home. The cafés “are the
meeting place of the likeminded,” a journalist wrote in the early years of Berlin’s café culture. “The merchant who wants
to consider his affairs and the status of his stocks with someone; the journalist who must hear the latest and must catch
up on the day’s events from the newspaper; the man of private means who does nothing and yet wishes to appear as
something; officers, students, in short, everyone who has any kind of interest at all in public life.”
5C
Each café town had its own character. In Vienna, the café city par excellence, the Jewish cafégoer wanted to seem not
Austrian but, instead, a sophisticated cosmopolitan. City pride was the keynote. The patron writer-saint of the Viennese
café in the first third of the twentieth century was Karl Kraus, who was at once Jewish and anti-Semitic, a satirist of the
cafés and a
habitué of them. In Berlin, you had a smaller Jewish population and a simpler problem: the choice seemed more
narrowly poised between being Jewish and being German.
6A
Pinsker, lovingly attentive to the habitués of his cafés, leaves the economics of the cafés quite shadowy. The rule, still in
place in much of Europe, was that you need buy only a cup of coffee to occupy a seat indefinitely. Customer loyalty is
the commercial principle here. Better to sell the same writer a hundred cups of coffee than to sell a hundred writers one
cup of coffee, since the hundred-cup man is almost certain to return for the next hundred, and the hundred after that.
7E
In one of the greatest of café comedies, Charlie Chaplin’s “The Immigrant,” the tramp, newly arrived in America from an
unnamed but clearly Eastern European place of origin, tries to put off the arrival of a check he can’t foot simply by
ordering more coffee. And it mattered that what café habitués were habituated to was drinking coffee. Pinsker is oddly
reticent about how the coffee was made and dispensed. For coffee is in itself a kind of wonder drug—a stimulant that
seems to ease attention-based tasks. The cafés were training playgrounds in attentiveness. They made the town alert.
A. And finally, in New York, as café culture was exported, the model of the central café in which all kinds come
together often gave way to the neighborhood café that belonged to a subsect, usually on the political left. Emma
Goldman, as a young Russian immigrant, found herself at home in New York when she arrived at a Lower East Side
café that was well known as an anarchist hangout. The melting pot of New York, curiously, produced the most distinct
and separate crucibles, each annealing the complexities of identity into political causes. In every case, you could see
your life in a single commercial space.
B. When social spaces were created outside the direct control of the state (including commercial ones, run for
profit), civil society could start to flourish in unexpected ways. This was visible in the spread of café life through
European cities, Pinsker observes, in the nineteenth century and afterward. It wasn’t that the conversations in the café
were necessarily intellectually productive; it was that the practice of free exchange itself—the ability to interact on equal
terms with someone not of your clan or club—generated social habits of self-expression that abetted the appetite for
self-government. For Jews, with their constant habit of self-expression and their distant dream of self-government, the
café was an especially inviting space.
C. The cafés became theatres of flirtation and romance as well, especially in interwar Vienna. “The presence of so
many women in the cafés,” Pinsker notes, “is described in literary texts by mostly male Jewish writers.” One of them,
Melech Chmelnitzki, wrote a Yiddish poem titled “Beautiful, Strange Woman in a Noisy Café.” The cafés remained,
though, largely a male preserve.
D. One of the pleasures of Pinsker’s book, for anyone with a longing for a lost era of public splendor, is to be
introduced to the locales where people shared that splendor. In Vienna, the Café Griensteidl proved a magnet for
“malcontents and raisonneurs,” with bentwood chairs and plenty of reading light and newspapers on sticks. The still
extant Café Central had an interior like a miniaturized San Marco, with hallucinatory Byzantine columns and swooping
enclosing spandrels and squinches. Yet in its prime it was a “place of politics,” and crowded with émigré revolutionaries.
E. Recent scholarship has made the case that repeat business is worth much more to a small enterprise than new
business, given the stability of “recurring revenue.” The one proviso would seem to be that there has to be enough room
for new customers to find a place. The café can’t become too exclusive a club and remain profitable. This may be why
the adjective regularly applied to the café is “grand,” or why so many cafés in Europe were exceptionally large spaces,
even if, to
judge by contemporary drawings and photographs, they were seldom close to being fully occupied.
F. Yet all those lonely and alienated Jewish writers were elsewhere, too—lost in books and newspapers, which
were the true pastime of the café. What matters is not the words of the person at the next table but the feeling of
nearness—the sense of being able to carve out an identity among other identities, of being potentially private in a public
space and casually public even while lost in private reveries. Mere silent proximity of social kinds seems an ignoble and
inadequate social ideal. But it remains the first principle of the more potable forms of pluralism.
G. The milieu of the Warsaw café can even be seen as the basis of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s entire œuvre. Singer
eventually transposed the complexities of that space— the habit of argument and the uncertainty of origin, the pensive
love stories shared and the brave assertions never quite backed up—into the humbler cafeterias of the Upper West
Side.
H. Pinsker, who teaches Judaic studies at the University of Michigan, tells the story of how, in Warsaw in the
nineteen-thirties, a group of Jewish actors came into a café, dressed, as a comic provocation, as “Jews”—in caftans and
fake beards—and were urged by the manager to go elsewhere. It was the Jewish regulars who were made most
uncomfortable by the practical joke. Not because they were ashamed—as writers, they often wrote unabashedly as
Jews—but because they were suddenly made aware of the ambiguities that they relied upon.
PASSAGE 9
LIVING IN THE MOON’S SHADOW
More than forty years on, why the moon landings are still having an impact today
A On December 19, 1972, a sonic boom above the South Pacific signaled the completion of the Apollo program,
as a tiny space capsule burst back through the blue sky. On board were the last three astronauts to visit the moon. The
space race has changed the course of human history far more profoundly than anyone could have predicted in 1961,
when a new president challenged America to land a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth. No one
present knew how to make it happen. But that wasn't going to stop them rising to President Kennedy's dare.
B As progress in human space flight sped up through the 1960s, Ph.D. intake at American universities, particularly
in the field of physics, increased almost threefold. Apollo was making America cleverer. Within weeks of Kennedy's
speech, the Massachusetts lInstitute of Technology (MIT) was asked to work out the small matter of helping astronauts
make a soft landing on a moving target hurtling through space 250,000 miles from Earth. To assist them in this, a small,
lightweight computer was proposed by MIT. In the early '60s, computers often took up entire rooms. To miniaturize one
enough to pack it into a modestly-sized craft they’d need new technology, so they turned to a brand new arrival on the
technology scene: the integrated circuit.
C Only a few companies were experimenting with these new micro-electronic components at the time; keen to help
them perfect the performance of these novel miniature circuits, NASA ordered one million of them. The agency really
only needed a few hundred, but, aware that they would be betting the lives of their astronauts on them, they were keen
to make sure the manufacturers could make them as reliable as possible. Such a financial kickstart to a fledgling
industry, coupled with another gift of Apollo — inspiration - would prove to be powerful drivers for technological change
in the decades that followed. Those graduating across the world in the ‘70s and ‘80s had watched Apollos engineers
dream the impossible and then build it. As an act of human ingenuity, Apollo made them giddy, intoxicated on admiration
and inspiration. As William Bainbridge put it in his book “The Spaceflight Revolution, Apollo was ‘a grand attempt to
reach beyond the world of mundane life and transcend the ordinary limits of human existence through accomplishment
of the miraculous — a story of engineers who tried to reach the heavens'.
D Many of the people who have built the new tools of the Internet and the technological infrastructure that
underpins it cite Apollo as their motivator. Professor Sir Martin Sweeting founded the world-renowned small satellite
company SSTL, which revolutionized the industry. Apollo started me on this whole pathway of getting involved in space,’
says Sweeting. ‘The idea of being able to participate in something as exciting as a lunar landing, it stimulated an
ambition, the dream of building my own satellite with my friends. The idea of a small private enterprise launching a
satellite was considered pretty crazy at the time, he points out,’ After building the first one, I had a lot of advice to go out
and get a proper job. I’m sure that without Apollo I would have followed a more conventional career’.
E Former NASA flight director Glynn Lunney witnessed the trickle-down straight from Apollo to the rest of us. We
were asking people to do things 10 or 20 years ahead of when they would otherwise have done them. And they knew it.
They stepped up to it and succeeded. Today's cell phones, wireless equipment, tablet computers and so on are a result
of the fact that the country did this high-tech thing and made this large portfolio of technologies available.' Today's
population, over half of whom weren’t born when those last astronauts returned from the moon, use these inventions to
communicate with each other freely and Without a thought for geographical and cultural differences. The gifts of Apollo
continue to ripple down the decades, and still have the power to unite and inspire us.
1. a tribute to the ambitions of the space programme
2. the accelerated development of technology
3. a lack of encouragement to continue with a project
4. various factors which made a task particularly challenging
5. an individual example of the inspiring effects of Apollo
6. an event marking the end of an era
7. a spirited response to a seemingly impossible provocation
8. the effects of the space programme on attitudes to sharing information
9. a radical alteration of existing technology
10. an influential combination of factors affecting the space programme
LISTENING PRACTICE
Ex 1: For questions 1 – 5, you will hear a man telephoning the service to complain about his problem. Listen
carefully and decide whether the statements below are True (T) or False (F).
1. Jackie was astonished that David had issues placing his order.
2. David needs to order the software for his office.
3. Jackie gives him the 25% discount even though he's not ordering online.
4. Jackie tells David that the free microphones are usually not of very good quality.
5. David purchases both versions of the software.
Ex 2: You will hear a student, Sophie Reece, giving a short talk about a conservation project.
1. The state of the planet is the result of people’s need to make .
2. Sophie doesn’t want to delve into the subject of .
3. The volunteers offer the group whatever they can spare.
4. The generosity of the public allows the group to take care of their .
5. Recently the group have been working on a(n) involving local businesses.
6. The group discovered that in the way companies conduct themselves can cut down on
their environmental impact.
7. After the group left, the publishing company were almost a(n) .
8. Volunteering to help the environment can help alleviate one’s .
9. Sophie believes everyone’s is to do something positive.
Ex 3: For questions 11 – 15, you will hear an interview with an author called Rachel White. Listen carefully and
choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which fits best according to what you hear.
11. What does Rachel particularly recall about her school days?
A. She was only really interested in the subject of Literature.
B. She was aware that she was brighter than other classmates.
C. She was preferentially treated by a certain teacher.
D. She hated being considered hard working by the peers.
12. Which of the following added to Rachel’s negative feelings about her essay?
A. It was not her own work. B. Her classmates badly criticized it.
C. Some of the content was misleading. D. There was an insufficient amount of material.
13. What attitude do people have toward Jane Austen’s book, in accordance with Rachel?
A. They lose their interest in them at an early age. B. They read it as they feel they should.
C. They believe they suit a certain type of personality. D. They feel they should be read in certain situations.
14. Why did Rachel write the essay “Literature and The Young Mind”?
A. so as to express a commonly-held view.
B. in order to encourage young people to read Literature.
C. because she wanted to express her gratitude to writers like Austen.
D. because she wanted to recommend certain writers to young readers.
15. When discussing her essay, Rachel highlights its .
A. Contemporary relevance. B. Standard development.
C. Emotional content. D. Essential complexity.
Ex 4: For questions 16 – 25, listen to six pieces of BBC News and complete the summary using NO MORE THAN
THREE WORDS for each gap.
- The oil cartel OPEC’s decision to (16.) ……………………………. has led to a period of abnormally low prices
that has (17.)................................................of manufacturing countries.
- Stephen O’Brien, a UN envoy, made a plea to help residents in the (18.) …………………………… .
- The US president elect undertook to leave his business to avoid any (19.) …………………………...
- The plane crash might have been caused by a(n) (20.)................................................, not electricity blackout as
reported, prior to the (21.) ……………………………………………...
- Ukrainian missile tests by Russian (22.).....................................................would be conducted as planned in the
peninsula (23.)...................................................two years ago.
- Researchers believe the possibility that many families (24.).........................................................The birth of girls
may distort the commonly cited figures of (25.)................................................in China.
SUMMARY
With obesity having shot up across the globe to dangerously high levels in recent years, it is little wonder that
people have started to ask why. True, diets have changed; we all know that we live in a McWorld, hunting and gathering
our food from fast-food outlets and supermarket aisles, but it can’t all be down to diet, can it?
Technology has changed modern life to such an extent that few aspects of life today bear any resemblance to
lives only a couple of generations ago. Just taking jobs as an example, how many of us today spend twelve hours a day
on our feet physically slogging ourselves into the ground? Or how many families could you imagine living without a car?
Kids walking to school, parents going half a dozen local shops, on foot, to buy the week’s food, family holidays by bus to
the nearest seaside town. Take Tina Jameson, a mother of two who has to juggle home and a part time job. She says ‘I
haven’t got time to walk anywhere. But I’d have even less time without a washing machine or dishwasher.’ We now have
so many conveniences in our lives that allow us such drastically better lifestyle choices that at times it can be difficult to
picture these in a negative way.
Without doubt there are positives to these changes. The number of people who suffer debilitating injuries at work
is miniscule in comparison to the past. Fewer hours working and more efficient transport are all to our benefit in allowing
us a greater amount of leisure time. At what cost though? We may save a few hours a day travelling and enjoy less
physically demanding working conditions, but is this really worth it when the cost to our health and life expectancy is so
high? Modern lifestyles have become shockingly sedentary and in combination with the deterioration in diet this is surely
creating a ticking time bomb for modern humanity.
TABLE
The given tables compare the foothold measured in million euros that Fairtrade-marked tea and pineapples
possessed across five European markets between 2010 and 2015.
In 2010, the turnover that tea obtained/ gained from French market stood at 2.5 million euros. This figure
subsequently skyrocketed to a high of 21 million euros, leaving an impressive surge of 18.5 million euros. This degree of
growth far surpassed that of the first runner-up - Austria by over fourfold. Meanwhile, that in all other surveyed contexts
merely ranged somewhere between 0.2 and 0.7 million euros over the same timeframe.
Turning to pineapples, Austrian residents in 2010 allocated a handsome budgeting 16 million euros for this
product. This got swollen to a whopping high of 48 million euros five years later, making an almost threefold increase
over the whole surveyed time. This holds true for the case of the first and second runner-up - France and Netherlands.
Norway and Germanyz however, both witnessed a decline in their purchase capacity for the commodity at around 1
million euros on average.
Taken together, both tea and pineapples managed to expand their market shares in almost all surveyed
markets. In addition, France and Austria took turns to be the most lucrative markets for these products.
ESSAY
There are compelling reasons that Beijing can be held accountable for the catastrophic spread of the
coronavirus. First and foremost, ignorance of initial warning about the novelty, the complexity and the fatality of the virus
is worth international criticism and condemnation. Indeed, the Chinese government, though forewarned, failed to take
early precautions to avert the unprecedented health crisis. Additionally, the government was unwilling to disclose
information even after the outbreak. To specify, lack of data about the death rate and positive cases in China rendered
other nations unaware of the severity and unprepared for the disaster.
That being said, Western countries are also responsible for the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed,
many governments have underestimated the deadliness of this virus, as they even likened it to seasonal influenza that
could be neutralized by herd immunity. Even when they already acknowledged the seriousness of the outbreak, some
nations still compromised their endeavors to contain the virus for economic development. Such countries as Sweden
and Germany, in fact, still maintained their international flights and transactions for a continuous supply chain, which, in
turn, eventuates in surging virus proliferation within their populations.

During the summer 2020, storm number 8, 9 and 10, in a straight roll, have struck the central region of Vietnam,
causing a total number of 192 deaths, thousands of people missing, millions of houses uproofed and other damages
worth 7 trillion VND. It comes as no surprise to see a rise in the number of private organizations who launch several
charity initiatives at their own will. Such support can give those in need some food to eat, clothes to warm, and more
importantly, cultivate the culture of sharing among the community. Skeptics, however, cast doubt over the underlying
motives for these endeavors as well as the transparency of their operation and therefore suggest the centralization of
these activities into the hand of the government for better accountability and efficacy. From my perspective, I strongly
support this suggestion on the following grounds.
First and foremost, the government often possesses at their disposal a far more natural, capital and human
resources than almost any individuals and private organizations. In addition, it also had the capacity to further mobilize
support from the latter to amplify its existing assets. In this premise, it has more to offer the underprivileged compared to
individual- or private-organization-based charity initiatives.
Opponents may lean towards the idea that corruption, such as the misappropriation of funds, can transpire
among high-ranking officials and local authorities, which may eventuate in immense consequences on the society as a
whole. Although there have been recorded cases of embezzlement and paper falsification among the bureaucrats, it is
worth mentioning that the government possesses two powerful weapons in its combat against corrupt misdemeanors.
This first is the National or State Audit Company, which can detect actions of intransparency through validating financial
statements. Another factor is the system of laws and regulations, on which the court can base on in order to issue
relevant prosecution for unscrupulous officials and organizations when evidence is substantiated.
In conclusion, despite recorded case of corruption among high-ranking officials in governmental charity
activities, I hold a firm belief that that charity works should be centralized in governmental control. From the discussion
above, it is crystal clear that a pertinent question is not whether such centralization should be enacted, but how to
involve the masses in implementing and supervising state-led charity work in order to enhance the accountability, the
efficacy as well as to cultivate the culture of sharing and empathy among human beings.