ĐIỂM Cán bộ chấm thi 1 Số phách

(Do CT Hội đồng

Bằng số Bằng chữ Họ và tên: ..................................
chấm thi ghi)
Chữ ký: ......................................

Cán bộ chấm thi 2

Họ và tên: ..................................
Chữ ký: .......................................

SECTION I. LISTENING (5.0 POINTS)

Introduction
- There are 4 parts of the section.
- You will hear each part twice.
- There is a promting sound at the beginning and the end of each part.

Part 1. For question 1-5, listen to a conversation between a man and his son and decide
whether the following statements are True, False, or Not Given according to what you
hear. Write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.
1.The father thinks that the incident had had a more severe impact on him than he expected.
2. The son opines that his father handled his wife’s emergency in such an admirable way.
3. After the incident, the father became more attentive of his own family.
4. According to the father, he perceived the biggest loss was a lack of an activity to bring
them together.
5. The father confides to his son that he does not possess the ability to cope with any situation
without others’ assistance.
Your answer here
1. ..................... 2. ..................... 3. ..................... 4. ..................... 5. .....................

Part 2. For question 6-10, listen to a girl’s story and answer the questions. Write NO
MORE THAN THREE WORDS taken from the recording for each answer.
6. What type of person does the girl describe herself as?
______________________________________________________________
7. What kind of birth defect has prevented her from living as a normal person?
______________________________________________________________
8. What did she do several times that exacerbated her conditions?
______________________________________________________________
9. What tool had helped the girl in her attempt to walk again?
______________________________________________________________
10. Which three qualities does she cite in reference to her current job?
______________________________________________________________

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Part 3. For question 11-15, listen to a conversation about young generations and choose
the correct answer A, B, C, or D which fits best according to what you hear. Write your
answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.
11. What is the driving force of the perceived apathy displayed by the current generation of
the young?
A. The practice of upbringing nowadays is being more and more slackened than it was in
the bygone past.
B. The availability of advances in the field of technology in today’s world.
C. A short attention span triggered by an ever-changing pattern of trends which young
adults are often exposed to.
D. Endeavors of today’s society to modify youngsters into a more responsible and well-
adjusted model.
12. How does the woman feel with respect to the way her generation is perceived to be?
A. That being spoiled from today’s too lenient upbringing makes youngsters tend to lack
in work ethics.
B. That they are now too high-maintenance due to their more finicky nature in tastes.
C. That being too fixated on one matter that intrigues them makes people mistake for a
lack of interests for others.
D. That their becoming independence in their own way is now a lost ability.
13. What idea does the male speaker give when mentioning financial security through the
eyes of younger generations?
A. He opines that he might do something detrimental to the youth but not out of spite.
B. It is crucial to grant young adults financial security along the path to enter adulthood.
C. He thinks that people have overtly glorified the lesson of youngsters learning the
value of money.
D. In parents' attempts to do good, a young generation without any sense of autonomy
has been engendered.
14. What does the male speaker think in reference to his method of raising his own child?
A. His daughter’s development has been stagnated due to his instinctive way of
upbringing.
B. Those who are like-minded can be assured that the child has his or her own way of
dealing with life.
C. It would be problematic if his child cannot learn any critical lessons from hardships in
life.
D. It is good to see that his daughter can take full advantage of the motivation that he
gave her.
15. When speaking about taking care of a family, what innate factor is mentioned by the
father?
A. How they treat their children may be interfered by the environment they were born to.
B. Not all intuitive attempts to protect the children benefit rather than harm them.
C. It is a need stemming from basic instincts that one’s family is safe and secure.
D. Humans as us are set to behave in some certain ways due to genetic factors.
Your answer here
11. ........... 12. ........... 13. ........... 14. ........... 15. ...........

Part 4. For question 16-25, listen to a recording about Edgar Allan Poe, an American
author, and complete the following summary. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS
taken from the recording for each blank.
16. Edgar Allan Poe was described with disheveled hair, ____________________________,
reflecting his deep wit and deeper weary in such a fashion that was of high notoriety.

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17. Regardless, his ____________________________style of writing gothic horror was
deemed to have an everlasting impact on the literary domain.
18. At his time, Poe had outshone most of his fellows in the field thanks to his own
determination of short story form’s ____________________________.
19. The ____________________________of the whole gamut ofemotions was portrayed by
his capitalization of violence and horror, bucking all unambiguity in message delivery and
interpretations.
20. The relationship between a ____________________________and his victim in Poe’s
story “The Tell-Tale Heart” had unexpectedly evoked a nagging experience for him to
undergo.
21. Another compelling example of his wit in writing was illustrated by a story of an
____________________________, who might have reckoned that the story “Ligeia”
namesake character had reincarnated into her husband’s second wife.
22. Also, Edgar Allan Poe was well-known for his detective series telling the story of C.
Auguste Dupin who always outwitted the police with his commanding
____________________________.
23. From time to time, his works displayed sci-fi elements, exemplified by a balloon voyage
to the moon and an account of a patient in ____________________________.
24. The author also involved himself in different genres, including a
____________________________ and an adventure novel about the southernmost point of
the earth.
25. Accomplished as he might be, Poe was obsessed with his beloved who died of
tuberculosis in their twenties. Then, he grappled with alcoholism and
____________________________ his peer practitioners. And then, all his contributions were
only to be recognized after he died.

SECTION II. LEXICO-GRAMMAR (3.0 POINTS)

Vv Part 1. For questions 26-45, choose the correct answer A, B, C or D to each of the
following questions and write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes
provided.
26. The president’s policy on abortion is regarded as a(n) _______ test of his views on
women’s rights.
A. acidity B. litmus C. alkaline D. ligand
27. I am resentful at the way he plays his favourite song _______.
A. ad nauseam B. ad hominem C. ad valorem D. ad litem
28. His new car has all the _______ , but it doesn’t move through traffic jams any faster.
A. airs and graces B. hooks, lines and sinkers
C. locks, stocks and barrels D. bells and whistles
29. EA-6B Prowler is an excellent _______ aircraft used by the US Marine Corps for aerial
scoutingmissions.
A. recce B. squadron C. tomahawk D. shufti
30. All of this doesn't mean he wasn't stark _______ mad, and just putting on.
A. barking B. raving C. hopping D. starring
31. He's_________, but he really needs to completely overhaul his monthly expenses to keep
from going bankrupt.
A. putting his finger in the dike B. keeping his finger on the pulse
C. playing into their hands D. binding their hand and foot
32. The prospective buyers were devastated when they discovered that the property they had
fallen in love with was subject to ______ by another party.
A. gazundering B. gazumping C. gazetteering D. gazelling
33. However, the hotel's reputation at this time was staid rather than _______
. A. frizzy B. itsy C. bitsy D. ritzy
34. He intends to use his _______ as state superintendent to bring attention to the issue.

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 A. bully pulpit B. marzipan layer C. superiority complex D. class action
35. This graduated by the 1870s to the more sophisticated use of __________ to publicize the
tours of famous clients.
A. librettists B. mackerels C. impresarios D. viragos
36. Staying _______ about a problem doesn't mean the problem doesn't exist.
A. schtum B. shtetl C. shtick D. schlock
37. She'll be _______ of the study group if she carries on being disruptive.
A. pegged out B. turfed out C. farmed out D. slugged out
38. It is known for a unique version of kapusta that includes sheep intestine and ________.
A. kleagle B. kohlrabi C. klebsiella D. kinkajou
39. Such _______ is usually met by some kind of counter-attack, and at the very least a great
deal of biting back.
A. sonority B. oviparity C. molarity D. temerity
40. We must _______ and look after the existing customers if we want to ensure that the
recession does not destroy the industry altogether.
A.cossie B. cosset C. cortisone D. coterie
41. The impossibility of the opera film might ultimately lie in the impossibility of
constructing its ________, in the very impossibility of filmic representation.
A. diaresis B. dieresis C. diegesis D. digenesis
42. She always has a witty _______ to any question.
A. maunder B. asunder C. rejoinder D. blunder
43. Some critics thought the film _______ the book, and it was not commercially successful.
A. cauterized B. pauperized C. mercerized D. bowdlerized
44. The new Secrecy Act will _______ the media and the opposition.
A. guzzle B. nozzle C. razzle D. muzzle
45. With all the tumult and protest that daily lives were experiencing in the 1960s, the
language teaching profession needed some spice and ________.
A. verve B. briar C. grift D. cozen
Your answer here

26. ..... 27. ..... 28. ..... 29. ..... 30. ..... 31. ..... 32. ..... 33. ..... 34. ..... 35. .....

36. ..... 37. ..... 38. ..... 39. ..... 40. ..... 41. ..... 42. ..... 43. ..... 44. ..... 45. .....

Part 2. For questions 46-55, write the correct form of each bracketed word in the blank.
46. Like the menopause, the ____________________________ is triggered by hormonal
changes in the body. (PAUSE)
47. ____________________________ arise when concurrent shocks and interconnected risks
combine to create a crisis even worse than the sum of its parts. (CRISIS)
48. A sum of powers of indeterminate variables multiplied by coefficients constitutes
mathematical impressions called ____________________________ . (NAME).
49. The magician claimed that he was using the word “magical” in its stage - magician sense
of ____________________________ . (DIGITATE)
50. The thought of ____________________________ crossed his mind several times but like
a true solder he continued with the War, against the enemy and against himself.
(TURGUM)
51. ____________________________ occurred if parasites were observed on thin smears
from rats for which clearance was previously noted. (CRUDE)
52. The degree of similarity of the same variables between consecutive time intervals is
referred to as ____________________________ . (RELATE)

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53. Sharing our evidence has been ____________________________ beneficial to everyone
in the class (STEM).
54. The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies states that ____________________________
is “the presumption that most people do, or should, conform to the norms about gender
assignment in their society”. (NORM)
55. The locals were wary of the _________________________ who had just moved to town,
suspecting he had ulterior motives for his sudden interest in their community. (BAG)

SECTION III. READING (6.0 POINTS)

Part 1. For questions 56-65. (1.0 point - 0.1/ each)

Read the passages below and decide which answer A, B, C or D best fits each gap. Write
your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.

One minute (56) ______ , the next a top hat, a fur stole or a(n) (57) ______ . Periods
and costumes come and go, while black-and-white bursts into colour. Suddenly everyone is
speaking French, or coming in through the door marked EXIT. There are (58) ______
fumbling for keys and (59) ______ closeup work with lock picks, as well as a whole lot of
keyhole peeping and spyhole sneaking, listening at the door or hiding behind the (60)
______. The movie was inundated with branching, (61) ______ along with all the stagey
entrances and exits.
An old house door, replete with a knocker, letterbox and house number, has had various
panels chopped off it, and hangs like an inverted medieval (62) ______ from the wall. Others
have been carefully re-carpentered into compressed towers and stacks of (63) ______ joints.
Passage through them is impossible. Another door looks like it has been (64) ______ and
whittled into the most skeletal frame. There is a nice (65) ______ with Marclay’s film, in that
both manipulate found material by way of cutting, compressing and editing, but they lack the
uncontrollable, volatile snatches of human action in the film downstairs.
56. A. figurines B. fedoras C. fracas D. fugues
57. A. penchant B. bouffant C. supernatant D. appellant
58. A. jittery B. chimerical C. facetious D. enthralling
59. A. catatonic B. vicarious C. deft D. gauche
60. A. lobby B. jamb C. nabob D. waffle
61. A. pashmina B. officialese C. schizophrenia D. bifurcation
62. A. crucifix B. reaffix C. transfix D. appendix
63. A. hinge-like B. load-bearing
C. mortise-and-tenon D. flexible-yet-sturdy
64. A. gnawed B. encumbered C. ensorcelled D. freaked
65. A. imbecility B. suavity C. jocularity D. reciprocity

Your answer here

56. .... 57. .... 58. .... 59. .... 60. .... 61. .... 62. .... 63. .... 64. .... 65. ....

Part 2. For questions 66-75. (1.0 point – 0.1/ each)

Fill each of the following numbered blanks with ONE suitable word and write your
answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.
Anyone who wants to learn or use what used to be called ‘(66) ______ English’ is
likely to be disheartened by what has been happening in recent years. In the first place, there
has been the proliferation of (67) _____- terminology devised by the experts to ensure that
only they will grasp what is being said. Its use is of great value to academics, lawyers and

5
economists since the ordinary citizen is obliged to (68) ______ them, usually for a substantial
fee, to find out what they mean.
Far more sinister is the perversion of everyday terms to mean something quite different. This
is favoured by those who regard themselves as ‘politically correct’ - a term that, by implying
that only they know what is right, is (69) ______ a perversion of language. No doubt it (70)
______ off with good intentions. It was only natural that the original inhabitants of North
America should (71) ______ to what they were called, since they are neither ‘red’ nor
‘Indian’, but it is (72) ______ whether they appreciated being renamed as the predecessors
of an obscure Italian navigator. But in their anxiety not to offend anyone, these ‘idealists’ are
making (73)_______ of the language. Those who are (74) ______ of stature may feel happier
to be described as ‘vertically challenged’ but what comfort does it offer the very tall, like
myself, who feel ‘vertically challenged’ every time we (75) ______ our heads?
Your answer here

66. ........................... 67. ........................... 68. ........................... 69. ...........................

. . . .

70. ........................... 71. ........................... 72. ........................... 73. ...........................

. . . .

74. ........................... 75. ...........................

. .

Part 3. For questions 76-85. (1.0 point – 0.1/ each)

For questions 76-85, read an extract from an article on tourism and choose the answer
A, B, C or D that fits best according to the text. Write your answers in the
corresponding numbered boxes provided.

The Vanishing Tourist

One day, there will be no more tourists. There will be adventurers, fieldwork assistants,
volunteers and, of course, travellers. There might still be those who quietly slip away to
foreign lands for nothing more than pure pleasure, but it will be a secretive and frowned upon
pursuit. No one will want to own up to being on of those. It might even be illegal.
Already tourists are discouraged from entering certain areas, and new names are being added
to the list of territories where we should fear to tread. The charitable organisation Tourism
Concern identifies seven countries as having areas that have been adversely affected by
tourism. Tourists only wreak havoc. Tourists only destroy the natural environment. Tourists
only emasculate local cultures. Tourists bring nothing with them but their money. They must
be stopped at any price.
Yet less than 40 years ago, tourism was encouraged as an unquestionable good. With
the arrival of the package holiday and charter flights, tourism could at last be enjoyed by the
masses. By the 1980s, tourism was the largest and fastest-growing industry in the world and,
by the end of the decade, 20 million Britons a year went abroad on holiday.
It won’t be easy to wipe out this massive, ever growing tribe. Today there are more
than 700m ‘tourist arrivals’ each year. The World Tourism Organisation forecasts that, by
2020, there will be 1.56 billion tourists travelling at any one time. The challenge to forcibly
curtail more than a billion tourists from going where they want to go is so immense as to be
impossible. You cannot make so many economically empowered people stop doing
something they want to do unless you argue that it is of such extreme damage to the welfare
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of the world that only the truly malicious, utterly selfish and totally irresponsible would ever
consider doing it. This is clearly absurd; whatever benefits or otherwise may accrue from
tourism, it is not, despite what a tiny minority say, evil. It can cause harm. It can be morally
neutral. And it can, occasionally, be a force for great good.
So the tourist is being attacked by more subtle methods: by being re-branded in the
hope we won’t recognise it as the unattractive entity it once was. The word ‘tourist’ is being
removed from anything that was once called a holiday in the pamphlet that was once called a
holiday brochure. Of course, adventurers, fieldwork assistants, volunteers and travellers don’t
go on holidays. Un-tourists (as I will call them) go on things called ‘cultural experiences’,
‘expeditions’, ‘projects’, ‘mini-ventures’ and, most tellingly, ‘missions’. A Coral Cay
Conservation Expedition flyer says: ‘The mission of any Coral Cay Conservation Volunteer
is to help sustain livelihoods and alleviate poverty.’
The word mission is apposite. While this re-branding is supposed to present a
progressive, modernistic approach to travel, in fact it is firmly rooted in the Victorian
experience. Like Victorian travellers, the modern day un-tourist insists that the main motive
behind their adventure is to help others. Whereas the mass tourist and the area they visit are
condemned as anti-ethical and at loggerheads, the ethos of the un-tourist and the needs of the
area they wander into are presumed to be in tune with each other. Environmental charity
Earthwatch, which organises holidays for ‘volunteers’, assures that they will provide ‘life-
changing’ opportunities for you and the environment ... See the world and give it a future.’
Un-tourists are very concerned about holding the moral high ground. Afraid of being tainted
by association, they avoid identifiably tourist structures, such as hotels. They prefer to stay in
a tent, a cabin, local-style houses such as yurts, thatched huts or, a typical example, ‘a
traditional Malay wooden stilt house’. These, they believe, are somehow more in keeping
with something they call local culture. Local culture is very important to the un-tourist,
whereas the mass tourist is believed to both shun and obliterate it.
Un-tourism relies upon exclusivity; it is all about preventing other people travelling in
order that you might legitimise your own travels. Pretending you are not doing something
that you actually are – going on holiday – is at the heart of the un-tourist endeavour. Every
aspect of the experience has to be disguised. Gone are the glossy brochures. Instead, the
expeditions, projects and adventures are advertised in publications more likely to resemble
magazines with a concern in ecological or cultural issues. The price is usually well hidden, as
if there is a reluctance to admit that this is, in essence, a commercial transaction. There is
something unedifying about having to pay to do good.

76. What does the passage suggest about tourists in the future?
A. They will try to minimize risks of being recognized as tourists.
B. They will assume various responsibilities and fulfill them.
C. They will travel stealthily and follow fixed modes of behaviour.
D. They will eschew tourism as a way of entertaining themselves.
77. The second paragraph is most probably to disprove ______.
A. tourists’ disregard for local cultures B. tourism’s benefits to indigenous people
C. the value of tourism D. the toll tourists leave on visited areas
78. The word “emasculate” in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to ______.
A. denigrate B. vitiate C. malign D. disburse
79. A reason cited by the author for the hardships in stopping tourism is that ________.
A. tourists are not awakened to the lack of morality in their pursuits.
B. financial freedom gives people the right to do things at their pleasure.
C. advocates of stopping tourism are less affluent than mass tourists.
D. arguments against it are unanswerable.
80. What does the writer suggest about tourism?
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 A. Up to the moment of writing, tourism had always been promoted.
B. It involves nefarious people travelling to quench their insatiable thirst for knowledge.
C. Its benefits have intrigued adventurers and laypersons alike.
D. Tourists may have recourse to so-called purposes to disguise their true motives.
81. Which phrase in the sixth paragraph best reflects the nature of the relationship between
un-tourists and local areas?
A. at loggerheads
B. presumed to be in tune
C. rooted in the Victorian experience
D. supposed to present a progressive, modernistic approach
82. The writer demonstrates a point that un-tourists ______.
A. are aesthetically attracted by environmentally-friendly types of accommodation while
travelling
B. attach adequate importance to the development and preservation of local cultures
C. have an inclination to believe that what they do when travelling has beneficial effects
D. represent a positive trend which correlates with the new approach to halting tourism.
83. It can be implied that efforts made by un-tourists are fundamentally aimed at ______.
A. masking their primary purposes for travelling
B. demotivating other people with regard to travelling
C. masquerading as well-meaning travellers
D. promoting local cultures in places they visit
84. The word “unedifying” in the last paragraph can be best replaced by ______.
A. repugnant B. debauched C. disposed D. immutable
85. Which of the following is NOT mentioned as a method used by un-tourists to achieve
their goals?
A. associating travel with purposes different from pure pleasure.
B. publicizing their missions in magazines.
C. concealing the prices involved in their travels.
D. shunning places recognizable as accommodation for tourists.

Your answer here

76. .... 77. .... 78. .... 79. .... 80. .... 81. .... 82. .... 83. .... 84. .... 85. ....

Part 4. For questions 86-92. (1.0 point - 0.1/ each)

You are going to read a newspaper article about superconductivity. Seven paragraphs have
been removed from the article. Choose from the paragraph A-H the one which fits each gap (86-
92). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.

There’s no room-temperature superconductor yet, but the quest continues.

A “possible real solution to the energy crisis” that “could change everything”. That’s how
recent headlines billed the mundane lumps of a dirty-looking material known as LK-99
reported by scientists in South Korea in July. Their findings were described in two papers
posted to the arXiv preprint server – a website where researchers present work that has not
yet been subjected to peer review. They said they had “for the first time in the world” made a
superconductor that worked at room temperature and at everyday pressure.

86.__________

A broad consensus is now emerging that the apparent signatures of superconductivity the
Korean team reported – zero-resistance and a magnetic phenomenon called the Meissner

8
effect – may have more mundane explanations. But even if LK-99 is a blind alley, the quest
for a wonder material that is superconductive under everyday conditions will continue. “It
will happen,” says the physicist Jorge Hirsch of the University of California San Diego,
“although it is hard to tell when.” But when it does, he says, it will result in “all sorts of
incredible applications we haven’t even imagined yet”.

87.__________

Electric currents in metals arise from electrons – the negatively charged fundamental particles
in atoms – that are free to flow through the orderly array of atoms. Occasionally, a mobile
electron will bounce off one of the vibrating atoms, losing some of its energy as heat – that’s
the origin of electrical resistance.

88.__________
For ordinary metals, this effect can happen only at very low temperatures, because the
electron pairs are easily broken up by heat. But in the 1980s, solid-state physics was shaken
by the discovery that a class of materials belonging to the family called cuprates – not metals,
but brittle ceramic substances – could superconduct at higher temperatures than usual. The
first of these did so at just -238℃ (35 Kelvin – absolute zero is -273 ℃, or 0 Kelvin, with the
size of a degree the same on the Celsius and Kelvin scales). Very soon such high-temperature
superconductors were found with much higher superconducting critical temperatures, up to
about 140K. This meant they could be cooled using liquid nitrogen (which boils at 77K), a
much more abundant, cheap and convenient coolant than liquid helium.

89.__________

But without cryogenic cooling, that’s hardly practical, for example, for power cables many
miles long. The holy grail was a superconductor with a T c of room temperature or higher.
Was that even possible, given that the effect relied on electron behaviour usually evident only
at low temperatures? The excitement surrounding cuprate superconductors subsided. There
has been renewed interest in recent years, however, with the discovery that some crystalline
materials containing a lot of hydrogen show surprisingly high superconducting critical
temperatures.

90.__________

The catch was that, to become superconducting, all these materials had to be squeezed
between diamonds to tremendous pressures, comparable with those at the Earth’s core. That
made such materials nonstarters for practical applications. But this March, the Rochester
researchers startled us more with the assertion: superconductivity at approximately 21C in yet
another hydrogen-containing material that required only relatively mild squeezing. Solid-state
physicists had barely recovered from that report – which no one has yet been able to
reproduce – when along came LK-99, which purportedly needed no squeezing at all. LK-99
is decidedly weird for a putative high-temperature superconductor: it’s a greyish-black
phosphate mineral called apatite containing copper and lead. Weirder still, while most
superconductors are pretty good normal electrical conductors before they turn
superconducting, LK-99 is an insulator above its purported Tc of 127C.

91.__________

Others have said the evidence about LK-99 provided by the original South Korean team is
sloppy. Yes, their results showed a sudden drop in resistance below 127C – but experts say
that this too can be produced by effects other than superconductivity. The resistance
measurements are “not at all conclusive”, says Hirsch. The physicist Michael Fuhrer of
Monash University in Australia says the electrical resistance doesn’t actually fall to zero, but
to a value that is more than 1,000 times higher than the resistance of ordinary metals such as

9
copper – it just looks like a huge drop to almost nothing because of the high value it starts
from. “Overall, it doesn’t look like the kind of careful work you’d expect for a report of this
impact,” he says.

Efforts to reproduce the LK-99 results in labs worldwide have instead eroded them. For
example, a team at Southeast University in Nanjing, China, made a sample of LK-99 and
reported on arXiv in August that they saw a drop to zero resistance only below about 110K –
about -160C. “Several labs have now synthesised LK-99 by different methods, and they’ve
found that it’s not a superconductor,” says Fuhrer. He and Hirsch suspect that the large drop
in resistance seen by the original team was caused by an impurity in the material.

92.__________

So it seems the party is over – for now. “There is a lot of evidence by now that it is not
superconductivity,” says Hirsch.

The missing paragraphs

A. Why the opposition to the flow of electric current should suddenly disappear in mercury
and many other metals at a superconducting critical temperature (known as T c) was a
mystery. But in 1957, three scientists explained that superconductivity arises when the mobile
electrons pair up, thanks to the way the movements of one influence those of another. These
“Cooper pairs” have a strange characteristic: they can all move as if they were one gigantic
particle, too massive for any mere vibrating atom to disrupt.
B. If the claims are true, LK-99 would therefore probably have an unprecedented way of
becoming superconducting. The Korean team offered some theoretical arguments for how
this might happen, but “these are not valid, in my opinion”, says Hirsch. The LK-99
Twittersphere (it’s now a thing) was set buzzing when the physicist Sinéad Griffin at the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California reported calculations of how the
electrons in such a material are arranged in “flat bands” (an electronic feature associated with
some high-temperature superconductors), which some interpreted as support for LK-99 as a
superconductor. But Griffin herself says this isn’t necessarily the case. “Flat bands can mean
superconductivity, but can also mean a wealth of other phenomena.”

C. The discovery won a Nobel Prize for physics in 1987 and led to excited speculation about
loss-free power lines and more. Because superconductors can carry high currents that would
fry ordinary metal wires, they can be used to make very powerful electromagnets, generating
strong magnetic fields. Such devices are now used in MRI scanners and in some prototypes
for nuclear fusion reactors, where huge magnetic fields are needed to hold the very hot
plasma. They might also be used for maglev trains, which are magnetically levitated above
their rails to reduce friction and reach very high speeds.

D. But after weeks of feverish speculation and frantic attempts worldwide to make and test
the new material, many experts in the normally recondite field of solid-state physics now
think the claims were almost certainly wrong. There was reason to be sceptical from the
outset: the South Korean scientists, Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim of the Seoul-based startup
company Quantum Energy Research Center had no track record in the field, and LK-99 –
named after them and the year they began studying it – didn’t look much like high-
temperature superconductors seen in the past.

E. But perhaps the real killer applications of such a material have yet to be imagined. After
all, says Hirsch: “Imagine how different the world would be if semiconductors [such as the
silicon used in all today’s microchips] would not work above liquid nitrogen temperature.”

F. In 2015, a team in Germany reported superconductivity in a compound of hydrogen and

sulphur at 203K – that’s just -70C. Four years later the same team described a compound of
hydrogen and the metal lanthanum that showed signs of superconductivity, losing all

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resistance, at -23C, while a group in Washington DC earlier that year found the same material
to be superconductive at just -13C. A team at Rochester University in New York caused great
excitement in 2020 with a publication of superconductivity at almost 15C in a compound of
carbon, hydrogen and sulphur – but they later had to retract the result amid allegations of
misconduct.

G. One of the most compelling signs of superconductivity is that materials will levitate
above magnets, because of the way superconductivity “pushes” a magnetic field out of the
substance itself: the Meissner effect. The Korean researchers said they saw it for LK-99, and
on 3 August sent a video to the New York Times showing a speck of the stuff seemingly
hanging suspended over a magnet. This followed a video posted on Chinese social media on
1 August by a team at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China,
professing to show a sample of magnetically levitated LK-99. But levitation can also be
induced by ordinary magnetism, and another study posted to arXiv suggests that this is
what’s happening with LK-99.

H. Superconductivity was discovered in 1911 by the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh

Onnes, working in Leiden. He used liquid helium (which boils at -269 ℃ [-452 ℉], just four
degrees above absolute zero, the coldest temperature possible) to cool a wire of solid
mercury, and found that at this frigid extreme its electrical resistance vanished. This meant
that an electric current would lose no energy as it moved; theoretically, a current in a loop of
a superconductive material would circulate forever.

Part 5. For questions 93-102. (1.0 point - 0.1/ each)

You are going to read an extract from an article about electronic books and reading.
For questions 93-102, choose from the sections (A-D). The sections may be chosen more
than once. Write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.

THE BOOK IS DEAD - LONG LIVE THE BOOK

(A) A lot of ink has been spilled on the supposed demise of the printed word. Ebooks are
outselling paper books. Newspapers are dying. To quote one expert: 'The days of the
codex as the primary carrier of information are almost over.' This has inspired a lot of
hand-wringing from publishers, librarians, archivists - and me, a writer and lifelong
bibliophile who grew up surrounded by paper books. I've been blogging since high
school, I'm addicted to my smartphone and, in theory, I should be on board with the
digital revolution - but when people mourn the loss of paper books, I sympathise. Are
printed books really going the way of the dodo? And what would we lose if they did?
Some commentators think the rumours of the printed world's imminent demise have been
rather overstated. Printed books will live on as art objects and collector's items, they
argue, rather in the way of vinyl records. People may start buying all their beach novels
and periodicals in ebook formats and curating their physical bookshelves more carefully.
It is not about the medium, they say, it is about people. As long as there are those who
care about books and don't know why, there will be books. It's that simple.

(B) Meanwhile artists are blending print with technology. Between Page and Screen by
Amaranth Borsuk and Brad Bouse is a paper book that can be read only on a computer.
Instead of words, every page has a geometric pattern. If you hold so a printed page up to a
webcam, while visiting the book's related website, your screen displays the text of the
story streaming, spinning and leaping off the page. Printed books may need to become
more multi-faceted incorporating video, music and interactivity. A group at the MIT
Media Lab already builds electronic pop-up books with glowing LEDs that brighten and
dim as you pull paper tabs. and authors have been pushing the boundaries with
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 'augmented reality' books for years. The lines between print and digital books are
blurring, and interesting things are happening at the interface.

(C) Beyond the page, ebooks may someday transform how we read. We are used to being
alone with our thoughts inside a book but what if we could invite friends or favourite
authors to join in? A web tool called SocialBookBook offers a way to make the
experience of reading more collaborative. Readers highlight and comment on text, and
can see and respond to comments that others have left in the same book. 'When you put
text into a dynamic network, a book becomes a place where readers and sometimes
authors can congregate in the margin,' said Bob Stein, founder of the Institute for the
Future of the Book. a think tank in New York. Stein showed how a high-school class is
using SocialBook to read and discuss Don Quixote, how an author could use it to connect
with readers. and how he and his collaborators have started using it instead of email.
Readers can 100 open their books to anyone they want, from close friends to intellectual
heroes. 'For us, SocialBook is not a pizza topping. It's not an add-on,' Stein says. 'It's the
foundational cornerstone of reading and writing going forth into the future.

(D) The tools might be new, but the goal of SocialBook is hardly radical. Books have found
ways to be nodes of human connection ever since their inception. That's why reading a
dog-eared volume painstakingly annotated with thoughts and impressions is unfailingly
delightful - akin to making a new like-minded acquaintance. The MIT Rare i20 Books
collection has kept a copy of John Stuart Mill's 1848 book Principles of Political
Economy, not for its content but for the lines and lines of tiny comments a passionate but
unknown user scrawled in the margins. Maybe ebooks are taking us where print was
trying to go all along.

Which section mentions …….

93. An example of superseded technology that still has a certain appeal?
94. An analogy used to emphasise how seriously an idea is taken?
95. An anxiety she shares with other like-minded people?
96. A development that questions our assumptions about what reading actually entails?
97. The willingness of writers to experiment with new ideas?
98. The idea that books have always been part of an ongoing interactive process?
99. A seeming contradiction in her own attitudes?
100. A belief that the fundamental nature of reading will change?
101. Finding pleasure in another readers' reactions to a book?
102. A view that a prediction is somewhat exaggerated?
Your answer here
93. .... 94. .... 95. .... 96. .... 97. .... 98. .... 99. .... 100. ... 101. ... 102. ...
. . .

VV Part 6. For questions 103-115. (1.3 points - 0.1/ each)

Read the following passage and do the tasks that follow. Write your answers in the
corresponding numbered boxes provided.
Company innovation
A. In a scruffy office in midtown Manhattan, a team of 30 artificial-intelligence programmers
is trying to simulate the brains of an eminent sexologist, a well-known dietician, a celebrity
fitness trainer and several other experts. Umagic Systems is a young firm, setting up websites
that will allow clients to consult the virtual versions of these personalities. Subscribers will

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feed in details about themselves and their goals; Umagic’s software will come up with the
advice that the star expert would give. Although few people have lost money betting on the
neuroses of the American consumer, Umagic’s prospects are hard to gauge (in ten years’
time, consulting a computer about your sex life might seem natural, or it might seem absurd).
But the company and others like it are beginning to spook large American firms, because they
see such half-barmy “innovative” ideas as the key to their own future success.
B. Innovation has become the buzz-word of American management. Firms have found that
most of the things that can be outsourced or re-engineered have been (worryingly, by their
competitors as well). The stars of American business tend today to be innovators such as
Dell, Amazon and Wal-Mart, which have produced ideas or products that changed their
industries.
C. A new book by two consultants from Arthur D. Little records that, over the past 15 years,
the top 20% of firms in an annual innovation poll by Fortune magazine have achieved double
the shareholder returns of their peers. Much of today’s merger boom is driven by a desperate
search for new ideas. So is the fortune now spent on licensing and buying others’ intellectual
property. According to the Pasadena-based Patent & Licence Exchange, trading in intangible
assets in the United States has risen from $15 billion in 1990 to $100 billion in 1998, with an
increasing proportion of the rewards going to small firms and individuals.
D. And therein lies the terror for big companies: that innovation seems to work best outside
them. Several big established “ideas factories”, including 3M, Procter & Gamble and
Rubbermaid, have had dry spells recently. Gillette spent ten years and $1 billion developing
its new Mach 3 razor; it took a British supermarket only a year or so to produce a reasonable
imitation. “In the management of creativity, size is your enemy,” argues Peter Chemin, who
runs the Fox TV and film empire for News Corporation. One person managing 20 movies is
never going to be as involved as one doing five movies. He has thus tried to break down the
studio into smaller units—even at the risk of incurring higher costs.
E. It is easier for ideas to thrive outside big firms these days. In the past, if a clever scientist
had an idea he wanted to commercialise, he would take it first to a big company. Now, with
plenty of cheap venture capital, he is more likely to set up on his own. Umagic has already
raised $5m and is about to raise $25m more. Even in capital-intensive businesses such as
pharmaceuticals, entrepreneurs can conduct early-stage research, selling out to the big firms
when they reach expensive, risky clinical trials. Around a third of drug firms’ total revenue
now comes from licensed-in technology.
F. Some giants, including General Electric and Cisco, have been remarkably successful at
snapping up and integrating scores of small companies. But many others worry about the
prices they have to pay and the difficulty in hanging on to the talent that dreamt up the idea.
Everybody would like to develop more ideas in-house. Procter & Gamble is now shifting its
entire business focus from countries to products; one aim is to get innovations accepted
across the company. Elsewhere, the search for innovation has led to a craze for
“intrapreneurship”—devolving power and setting up internal ideas-factories and tracking
stocks so that talented staff will not leave.
G. Some people think that such restructuring is not enough. In a new book Clayton
Christensen argues that many things which established firms do well, such as looking after
their current customers, can hinder the sort of innovative behaviour needed to deal with
disruptive technologies. Hence the fashion for cannibalisation—setting up businesses that
will actually fight your existing ones. Bank One, for instance, has established Wingspan, an
Internet bank that competes with its real branches (see article). Jack Welch’s Internet
initiative at General Electric is called “Destroyyourbusiness.com”.
H. Nobody could doubt that innovation matters. But need large firms be quite so pessimistic?
A recent survey of the top 50 innovations in America, by Industry Week, a journal, suggested
that ideas are as likely to come from big firms as from small ones. Another skeptical note is
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sounded by Amar Bhidé, a colleague of Mr Christensen’s at the Harvard Business School and
the author of another book on entrepreneurship. Rather than having to reinvent themselves,
big companies, he believes, should concentrate on projects with high costs and low
uncertainty, leaving those with low costs and high uncertainty to small entrepreneurs. As
ideas mature and the risks and rewards become more quantifiable, big companies can adopt
them.
I. At Kimberly-Clark, Mr Sanders had to discredit the view that jobs working on new
products were for “those who couldn’t hack it in the real business.” He has tried to change the
culture not just by preaching fuzzy concepts but also by introducing hard incentives, such as
increasing the rewards for those who come up with successful new ideas and, particularly, not
punishing those whose experiments fail. The genesis of one of the firm’s current hits,
Depend, a more dignified incontinence garment, lay in a previous miss, Kotex Personals, a
form of disposable underwear for menstruating women.
J. Will all this creative destruction, cannibalisation and culture tweaking make big firms
more creative? David Post, the founder of Umagic, is sceptical: “The only successful
intrapreneurs are ones who leave and become entrepreneurs.” He also recalls with glee the
looks of total incomprehension when he tried to hawk his “virtual experts” idea three years
ago to the idea labs of firms such as IBM though, as he cheerfully adds, “of course, they
could have been right.” Innovation unlike, apparently, sex, parenting and fitness is one area
where a computer cannot tell you what to do.

Questions 103 - 108

Which section contains the following information?
Write the correct number on the given boxes.
I. The unpredictability of the public’s viewpoints about a certain topic in the future
II. A list of certain institutions that are having fewer business activities
III. A type of firms that are resorted to compulsive consumption for new ideas
IV. The insatiable thirst for outstanding innovations being an impetus to big impacts on the
market.
V. Some moguls which expressed financial concerns when investing in the acquisition of
smaller companies.
VI. The reason why American business trends are highlighting the importance of initiatives
VII. A company that is able to going through economic falters itself.
VIII. Small firms that can make certain impacts on bigger ones when the former possesses
more potential ideas.
IX. Example of three famous American companies’ innovation
X. A type of firms that are regarded fly-by-night when investing in entrepreneurship.
103. Section A
104. Section B
105. Section C
106. Section D
107. Section E
108. Section F
Your answer here

103. .......... 104. .......... 105. .......... 106. .......... 107. .......... 108. ..........

Questions 109-115
In boxes 109-115, write:
Yes if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
No if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

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 Not Given if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
109. Peter doesn’t enunciate his alacrity for a larger capital infusion to restructure his
organization in return for an enhanced oversight of inventive processes.
110. Some small organizations have a craving for ideas that are regarded as an admixture of
“innovative” and “strange”.
111. Umagic is head and shoulders above other competitors in such a new field.
112. A new trend that has already superseded “entrepreneurship” in one area may directly
impact living organizations.
113. Big giants should prioritize innovations with low certainty on the understanding that big
risks are parallel to big profits.
114. It takes many years for Mr Sanders to successfully ditch preconceived ideas in his
organization.
115. The author expressed a positive attitude towards the development of innovations at the
end of the passage.
Your answer here

109. ........ 110. ........ 111. ........ 112. ........ 113. ........ 114. ........ 115. ........

SECTION IV. WRITING (6.0 POINTS)

Part 1. (1.0 point)
Read the following extract and use your own words to summarize it . Your summary
should be between 100 and 120 words.
You MUST NOT copy or re-write the original.

More than 40 years ago, the ethologist Konrad Lorenz wrote that ‘the stratified structure of
the whole world of organisms absolutely forbids the conceptualization of living systems or
life processes in terms of ‘disjunctive’—that is to say, mutually exclusive—concepts. It is
nonsense to oppose to each other—‘animal’ and ‘man’, ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, ‘innate
programming’ and ‘learning’—as if the old logical diagram of alpha and non-alpha were
applicable to them…human nature persists in and is the basis of culture; and all learning is
very specifically innately programmed’. Nonsense indeed. Four decades on, few would now
argue against the notion that the natural place for humans is in culture, and culture is the
quintessence of human nature because it is our biology that enables us to enter into culture.
The challenge is to find a theoretical framework that provides the causal linkage between the
biological and social sciences. Evolution, along with recent important theoretical additions,
such as niche construction and ecological inheritance, is the undisputed central theory of
biology. Lorenz's assertion that the biological and social sciences can be, and must be,
married within a single theoretical structure can only be realized within an expanded theory
of evolution.

However, if any attempt to extend evolution to culture is to gain credibility among social
scientists, then it must grasp the most complex features of human culture and not be reliant
upon some simple-minded extension of evolution to incorporate only the most basic forms of
culture such as the imitation of motor acts or to aim at some form of atomization of culture
within the incorrect assumption that cultural traits are particulate. Human culture, the most
complex phenomenon on the planet, comprises many entities, some of which are indeed
simple motor behaviours, but others are complex higher order knowledge structures (HOKS)
such as the concepts of schools or shops, and yet others embody beliefs and values within
social constructions like patriotism and marriage, which only exist because individual
humans believe in such things. Belief is a complex set of psychological states caused by
currently poorly understood psychological mechanisms and serving as yet unknown
evolutionary ends. Nonetheless, social constructions have enormous causal force in human
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 affairs and are one of the most potent engines of human diversity. If social constructions can
be incorporated into some form of evolutionary analysis, then we begin to approach a true
theoretical amalgam of the biological and the social. We are not yet able to do this, but what
follows points to what must be done if we are ever to achieve such a synthesis, a synthesis
that when it comes would have equal importance to the synthesis of natural selection and
genetics that occurred in the 1920s. (452 words)
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Part 2. The chart shows the proportion of women married at different age points by
year of birth, and the table shows the distribution of marital statuses across birth
cohorts in Ingushetia,
Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main points and make comparisons
where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.
Proportions of ever married women before 20, 22, 24 and 26 years of age, by generation

The proportion of women married at different age points

0.9

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20 22 24 26

1973-1977 1978-1982 1983-1987 1988-1992 1993-1997 1998-2002

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Years Unmarried and Married, % Divorced, % Widowed, % Number

of birth never married, % of respondents

1973−1977 14.1 72.9 5.9 7.1 85

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 1978−1982 7.6 76.6 9.0 6.9 145

1983−1987 15.9 74.1 8.8 1.2 170

1988−1992 24.6 69.6 4.7 1.2 171

1993−1997 47.4 49.4 3.2 0.0 154

1998−2002 84.6 12.8 2.6 0.0 117

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Part 3. Essay writing (3.0 points)

Write an essay of at least 350 words on the following topic:
Just Stop Oil, a group of British environmental activists, exercises citizen rights to exert
influence on the government to impose a ban on fossil fuels. Its actions should be
encouraged to save the Earth.
Discuss the statement and give your opinion. Give reasons for your answer and include any
relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

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