Tài liệu đề thi chọn đội tuyển chính thức dự thi HSG Quốc gia môn Tiếng Anh năm học 2020-2021 của tỉnhVĩnh Long đang được chia sẻ miễn phí trên website Tài liệu diệu kỳ. Bộ tài liệu bao gồm bài thi có audio và đáp án, giúp các em học sinh lớp 12 có thể ôn tập và rèn luyện kỹ năng làm bài thi đạt hiệu quả cao.
Trang web Tài liệu diệu kỳ là nơi cung cấp các tài liệu, tài nguyên học tập và ôn luyện Tiếng Anh chất lượng, phù hợp với nhiều đối tượng học sinh từ trung học cơ sở và trung học phổ thông. Với đề thi chọn đội tuyển dự thi HSG Quốc gia môn Tiếng Anh năm học 2020-2021 của tỉnh Vĩnh Long, Tài liệu diệu kỳ đã cập nhật đầy đủ các thông tin và kèm theo đáp án chi tiết để giúp các em có thể tự kiểm tra và đánh giá năng lực của mình.
Trích dẫn nội dung tài liệu "Đề thi chọn đội tuyển học sinh giỏi THPT môn Tiếng Anh tỉnh Vĩnh Long năm 2021-2022":
SECTION I. LISTENING (5.0 POINTS)
INTRODUCTION:
∙ There are 4 parts of the section.
∙ You'll hear each part twice.
∙ There is a prompting sound at the beginning and end of each part.
Part 1. Questions 1–5. (1.0 point - 0.2/each)
You will hear part of an interview with a dance critic about a modern ballet production involving animals. For questions 1- 5, listen and decide whether the statements are TRUE (T) or FALSE (F). Write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.
Part 2. Questions 6–10. (1.0 point - 0.2/each)
Listen to a speech and supply the blanks with the missing information. Write NO MORE THAN FOUR WORDS taken from the recording for each answer in the space provided.
6. What does Brett want to take advantage of when photographing near water?
_________________________________________________________________________________ 7. In bad weather, what should students think carefully about when it comes to photography? _________________________________________________________________________________ 8. According to the tutor and Brett, whose works or paintings should they use to generate ideas? _________________________________________________________________________________ 9. What can they avoid when they use a piece of equipment called an “angle finder”? _________________________________________________________________________________ 10. What issues should they think about when deciding on what to photograph?
_________________________________________________________________________________
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Part 3. Questions 11–15. (1.0 point - 0.2/each)
For questions 11-15, you will hear a talk about Erin O'Connor and choose the answers A, B, C, or D which fits best according to what you hear. Write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.
11. At first glance the real Erin O'Connor appears ______
A. incredibly tall.
B. strikingly unusual.
C. extremely attractive.
D. surprisingly ordinary.
12. How did Erin react to the writer's first comment?
A. She revealed her embarrassment.
B. She kept her feelings to herself.
C. She accepted the compliment.
D. She showed her amusement.
13. What did the writer realise about Erin from the documentary 'This Model life'? A. How uncompetitive she is.
B. How easily hurt she is.
C. How shy she really is.
D. How sensible she is.
14. As a schoolgirl, Erin ______
A. did some training that was later to prove useful.
B. overcame feelings of self-consciousness about her height.
C. was not studying with a view to following any particular career. D. decided to change her appearance in order to get herself noticed. 15. How does Erin feel when she's on the catwalk?
A. proud of her physical appearance.
B. aware that she's giving a performance.
C. unconcerned about what people think of her.
D. able to express her own feelings. about the clothes.
Part 4. Questions 16–25. (2.0 points - 0.2/each)
11 ……. 12 ……. 13 …….
14 ……. 15 …….
Listen to part of a news reports and answer the questions. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS taken from the recording for each answer.
∙ While the condom has made some strides since the Bronze Age, men still don‟t have a much better option all these millennia later, besides a (16) ___________.
∙ A research was conducted in 2000 among men into whether they‟d be willing to use birth-control capable of preventing (17) ___________.
∙ Although the number of male cells can be reduced over 90%, it is (18) ___________. ∙ In the past, researchers tried decreasing testosterone to (19) ________________, but the problem is you don't have any (20) ___________, so it really wasn't ever going to be a (21) ___________. ∙ There are many (22)___________ studies to try and actually attack the germ cell to stop it from working. But the (23) ___________ isn‟t the only problem.
∙ There are also other problems such as funding or (24) ___________.
∙ Two big pharmaceutical companies funded a (25) ___________, offering hope that a pill backed by Big Pharma might be on the horizon.
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SECTION II. LEXICO-GRAMMAR (3.0 POINTS)
Part 1. For questions 26-45. (2.0 points - 0.1/each)
Choose the best answer (A, B, C, D) to each of the following questions and write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.
26. The knights were executed immediately after being convicted of ______.
A. matricide B. parricide C. fratricide D. regicide 27. The material of the blouse Mrs Teng had bought was ______ and she wanted to make an exchange. A. diaphanous B. ravenous C. heterogeneous D. homologous 28. At one point Albert sits at a piano and sings “ Love is a many-splendored thing” as a ______ lament. A. mendacious B. triumphant C. maudlin D. austere 29. It was a ______ that I could effortlessly catch sight of an old friend that I had not met since our graduation.
A. contretemps B. contravention C. diaphaneity D. serendipity 30. His hasty, ______ action resulted in his being failed the final test last year.
A. preposterous B. spasmodic C. precipitous D. despicable 31. It takes a fair amount of concentration to follow the movie's ______ plot.
A. inexpedient B. labyrinthine C. arbitrary D. clairvoyant 32. Plans for a 40-acre shopping center section remain so ______ that the project has been shelved. A. amorphous B. luscious C. dexterous D. parsimonious 33. Some of the children sat firmly down on the tiny chair, whereas others perched ______ on top. A. eerily B. forlornly C. deftly D. gingerly 34. The evil son hatched a ______ plot to trick his old and senile mother of her wealth. A. unbecoming B. nefarious C. irreproachable D. decorous 35. It is very difficult to drive in ______.
A. rush houred slow-moving traffic B. slow moving traffic of rush hour C. rush-hour slow moving traffic D. slow moving rush hour traffic 36. The footballer ______ in agony on the pitch, and it was clear that his knee had been broken A. squirmed B. writhed C. wriggled D. twisted 37. The company managed to ______ the last economic depression by cutting its workforce A. override B. surmount C. float out D. weather 38. The real test of your relationship will come when you start to see your new boyfriend ______ and all. A. spots B. faults C. warts D. moles 39. The old lady was becoming increasingly affected by ______.
A. audacity B. senility C. virility D. masculinity 40. The answer is no. That‟s all ______.
A. there is to it B. how it is C. there is at it D. there it is to 41. “It is one thing to simply tell a white lie, James, but you have been downright ______. I‟ll never be able to trust you again.”
A. meticulous B. reclusive C. precipitous D. mendacious 42. Our hotel room was surprisingly ______, especially taking into consideration that it was very reasonably priced.
A. languid B. vivacious C. commodious D. decadent 43. An international medical conference was immediately ______ after the outbreak of Ebola. A. convoked B. conversed C. assembled D. converged 44. Journalists reported ______ outbreaks of violence, but no sustained warfare.
A. symptomatic B. sporadic C. sprawling D. slackening
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45. We‟ll have to wait and see if there‟s a ______ after this temporary peace agreement. A. backhand B. backlash C. backdrop D. backlog
Your answer here:
Part 2. For questions 46-55. (1.0 point - 0.1/each)
a. Word-form Passage. Write the correct form of each bracketed word in the numbered space provided in the column on the right.
Why does one town become a (0)______(BOOM) Second City while another fails? The answer hinges on whether a community has the (46) ______ (WITH) to exploit the forces pushing people and businesses out of the (47) ______ (CITY). One key is excellent transport links, especially to the biggest commercial centres. Though barely a decade old, Goyang is South Korea‟s fastest-growing city in part because it is 30 minutes by subway from Seoul. Another growth driver for Second Cities is the (48) ______ (CENTRE) of work, driven in large part by new technologies. While more financial deals are done now in big capitals like New York and London than ever before, it is also clear that plenty of booming service industries are leaving for „Rising Urban Stars‟ like Dubai, Montpellier and Cape Town. These places have not only improved their Internet backbones, but often have technical institutes and universities that turn out the kinds of talent that populate growth industries. All this means that Second Cities won‟t stay small. Indeed some countries are actively promoting their growth. Italy, for example, is trying to create tourists hubs of towns close to each other with distinctive buildings and offering different yet complementary cultural activities. (49) ______ (EVOLVE) of policymaking power is leaving many (50) ______(LITTLE) cities more free than ever to shape their destinies. To them all: this is your era. Don‟t blow it.
0. booming
46. __________________ 47. __________________
48. __________________
49. __________________ 50. __________________
b. Word-form Sentence. Write the correct form of each bracketed word in the numbered space provided in the column on the right.
51. He accused the BBC of ______ in its handling of the story.
(EDIT)
52. At the audition, the actors were asked to give a ______ performance. (TEMPORARY)
53. He lay quiet, ______ after the day‟s exertions.
51. __________________ 52. __________________
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(INSOMNIA)
54. Some ______ commentators poured scorn on this decision, claiming that an actor would not have the right credentials to present an arts programme on TV. (NOSE)
55. He was discovered to have been ______ company funds. (PROPERTY)
SECTION III. READING (6.0 POINTS)
Part 1. For questions 56-65. (1.0 point - 0.1/each)
53. __________________
54. __________________ 55. __________________
Read the text below and decide which answer A, B, C or D best fits each gap. Write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.
FASHIONS IN SIGHTSEEING
The questions of what makes an entertaining sightseeing excursion is just as to the (56) ______ of fashion as any other activity. A trip around the spectacular coastal scenery of Western Scotland is now a highly attractive option but a couple of centuries ago that same landscape was regarded as a wild and scary wasteland. (57) ______, in western Europe, safely (58) ______ mines and other (59) ______of the region‟s industrial heritage are now being reinvented as visitor attractions, whilst (60) ______factories and power stations get a lease of life as shopping centres and art galleries. This (61) ______the question: if (62) ______industrial sites can attract tourists, then why not (63) ______ones?
The Yokohama Factory Scenery Night Cruise is just one of several industrial sightseeing tours now available in Japan. These are part of an emerging niche tourist trade, (64) ______by a craze amongst young urbanites to reconnect with the country‟s industrial base. Seeing the oil refineries and steelwork at night, when lights and flares are more visible, (65) ______adds to the aesthetic charm of the experience.
56. A. trends B. whims C. fad D. vogue
57. A. Increasingly B. Progressively C. Consequently D. subsequently 58. A. desolated B. decomposed C. decommissioned D. defragmented 59. A. remainders B. inheritances C. leftovers D. legacies
60. A. precedent B. redundant C. relinquished D. distinctive 61. A. begs B. arouses C. pops D. brings
62. A. dynamic B. vitalising C. defunct D. bygone
63. A. dismantling B. operating C. functioning D. mentoring 64. A. demanded B. powered C. pushed D. fuelled
65. A. obviously B. apparently C. certainly D. assuredly Your answer here:
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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.
Rap has some literary roots - such as Sixties radicals The Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron, writer of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, who began his career as a novelist - but rap artists tend not to wear their (66)______ on their sleeve in the way that Bob Dylan's generation of coffee house wordsmiths did. There was two-way traffic between the literary and musical (67)______, which began with the Beat Poets in the previous decade. Leonard Cohen, a published poet, (68)______ effortlessly into the role of folk balladeer. John Lennon published a volume of nonsense verse In His Own Write. Song words began to be printed on gatefold album sleeves, allowing the audience - educated young people desperate for the music they loved to have some depth and meaning - the opportunity to pore (69)______ them as if they were great works of literature. Big-selling artists such as the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, taking their cue from Dylan, began to expand their lyrical palette and tackle more serious (70)______ matter. "The difference is that Dylan was always effortlessly serious, he wasn't (71)______," writes Dylan biographer Howard Sounes. "He was serious just because he had a great mind." (72)______ of whether it's right to call them poetry, his songs are highly poetic and highly literary - intricate and subtle and clever and funny and profound and sad: everything you can want writing to be. There's no one who deserves the Nobel Prize more." Dylan himself has rarely expressed any great literary pretensions, despite taking his stage (73)______from revered Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (he was born Robert Zimmerman). Although the 1965 Dylan quote that has often been (74)______ up as an example of his brilliant insouciance when he described Smokey Robinson as "America's greatest living poet" was recently revealed to have been invented by a Motown records press officer. "Why bother even telling Bob?," Al Abrams the press officer in question (75)______ saying, in a 2011 book on the Motown publicity machine.
Part 3. For questions 76-85. (1.0 point – 0.1/each)
Read the passage and choose the best answer for each of the questions that follow it.
During a decade in which the British publishing industry was finally obliged to make watchful friends with business, biography has line-managed the cultural transition beautifully. The best biographies still brim with scholarship but they also sell in their thousands. Readers - ordinary ones with birthday presents to get, book vouchers to spend and rainy holidays to fill - love buying books about the life and times of their favorite people. Every year before Christmas, a lorry load of brick-thick biographies appears on the suggestion table in bookshops.
That biography has done so well is thanks to fiction's vacation of middle-ground, that place where authorial and readerly desire just about match. Novels in the last ten years, unable to claim the attention of the common reader, have dispersed across several registers, with the high ground still occupied by those literary novels which continue to play with post-modern concerns about the narrator's impotence, the narrator's fibs and the hero's failure to actually exist.
Biography, by contrast, has until recently shown no such unsettling humility. At its heart lies the biological plot, the birth-to-death arc with triumphs and children, perhaps a middle-aged slump or late-flowering dotted along the way. Pages of footnotes peg this central story, this actual life, into a solid, teeming context. Here was a man or woman who wrote letters, had friends, ate breakfast and smelt a certain way. The process of being written about rematerialises the subject on the page. Writing a life becomes a way of reaffirming that life itself endures.
Until now, that is. Recently biography has started to display all the quivering self-scrutiny which changed
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the face of fiction twenty years ago. Exhaustion now characterises the genre. All the great lives have been done. But there are ways of proceeding. Ian Hamilton was the pioneer who failed to find J.D. Salinger. Five years later, Janet Malcolm's study of Sylvia Plath, The Silent Woman, brilliantly exposed the way in which academics and biographers stalk and hunt one another around the globe in a bid to possess and devour their subject.
The latest in this tradition of books about writing - or not writing - biography is Geoff Dyer's Out of Sheer Range, in which he plots his failure to get started on a study of D.H. Lawrence. Dyer describes every delaying trick familiar to biographers: lugging heavy editions of letters on holiday and then not bothering to unpack; having a motorcycle accident (an extreme prevarication, but preferable to staring at a blank screen); and finally forcing himself to reread the subject's novels without any pleasure. 'Footstepping' is the new word to describe this approach; „life-writing' has become the favoured term on university courses. In the wrong hands, it can become 'so-whatish'. Writers less accomplished then Dyer, Hamilton or Malcolm could be accused of annexing some of their subjects' clout to get mediocre work into print.
The second approach is to write a partial biography, to take a moment or a strand in the subject‟s life and follow it through without any claims for completeness. This year Ian Hamilton entered the biographical arena again with a slim, sharp examination of why Mathew Arnold stopped writing good poetry once he took up his job as a school inspector. Earlier, Lyndall Gordon's A Private Life of Henry Jams tracked the great man through his odd relationship with two of his female muses. Far from claiming to displace Leon Edel's 'definitive' biography of James, Gordon's book hovered over it, reconfiguring the material into a new and crisper pattern.
The final tack is to move away from a single, life altogether, and look at the places where it encounters other events. Dava Sobel's best-selling Longitude puts a cultural puzzle at the heart of her story and read human lives against it. Sebastien Junger‟s The Perfect Storm, meanwhile, makes the weather its subject, placing the seamen who encounter it into second place. No longer able to demonstrate a human life shaping its destiny, biographers have been obliged to subordinate their subjects to an increasingly detailed context.
Biography will survive its jitters, but it will emerge looking and sounding different. Instead of the huge doorstops of the early 1990s, which claimed to be 'definitive' while actually being undiscriminating, we will see a series of pared-down, sharpened up 'studies‟. Instead of speaking in a booming, pedagogic voice, the new biography will ask the reader to decide. Consuming this new biography may not be such a cosy experience, but it will bring us closer than ever to the real feeling of being alive.
76. What is the 'cultural transition' referred to?
A. the scholarship exemplified in the best biographies.
B. the change in taste among ordinary readers.
C. the rising importance of sales figures in publishing.
D. the range of books available for purchase.
77. According to the passage, what explanation is given for the current interest in biography? A. the range of subject matter in novels.
B. the failure of fiction to appeal to the average reader.
C. the choice of unsuitable main characters in novels.
D. the lack of skill of certain novelists.
78. The word “impotence” in paragraph 2 could best be replaced by _______ .
A. feebleness B. infantilism C. coarseness D. Inventiveness
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79. What contrast does the writer draw between literary novels and biography?
A. Biography has dealt with more straightforward issues.
B. Literary novels have presented a different type of truth.
C. Biography has described a longer period in a person's life.
D. Literary novels have been written in a more universal style,
80. In describing the work of Dyer, the writer _______ .
A. overrates his prevarication B. makes fun of his efforts
C. acknowledges his expertise D. is inspired by his achievements
81. The word “annexing” in paragraph 5 could best be replaced by _______.
A. franchising B. seizing C. pirating D. converting
82. What is the writer‟s opinion of „partial biography‟?
A. It can provide new insights.
B. It tends to remain inconclusive
C. It works when the subject is sufficiently interesting.
D. It can detract from fuller studies.
83. What trend is exemplified by Longitude and The Perfect Storm?
A. the fact that readers like complex puzzles.
B. the lack of interest generated by single lives.
C. the continuing sympathy towards human struggle.
D. the need to take account of the wider environment.
84. What does the word “definitive” in the passage mostly mean?
A. tentative B. perfect C. prolific D. testified
85. Considering the future of biography, the writer anticipates ________.
A. a decline in the standard of biographical investigation.
B. a greater challenge to the reading public.
C. an improvement in the tone adopted by biographers.
D. the growth of a new readership for biography.
Part 4. For questions 86-95. (1.0 point - 0.1/each)
You are going to read an extract from an article about the Greek philosopher Socrates. For questions 86-95, choose from the sections (A-E). The sections may be chosen more than once.
SEEKING SOCRATES
It may be more than 2,400 years since his death, but the Greek philosopher can still teach us a thing or two about leading 'the good life'. Bettany Hughes digs deeper.
A. Sharing breakfast with an award-winning author in an Edinburgh hotel a few years back, the conversation came round to what I was writing next. 'A book on Socrates,‟ I mumbled through my muesli. „Socrates!' he exclaimed. „What a brilliant doughnut subject. Really rich and succulent with a great hole in the middle where the central character should be.‟ I felt my smile fade because, of course, he was right. Socrates, the Creek philosopher, might be one of the most famous thinkers of all time, but, as far as we know, he wrote not a single word down. Born in Athens in 469BC, condemned to death by a democratic Athenian court in 399BC, Socrates philosophized freely for close on half a century. Then he was found guilty of corrupting the young and of disrespecting the city‟s traditional gods. His punishment? Lethal hemlock poison in a small prison cell. We don‟t have Socrates‟ personal archive; and we don‟t even know where he was buried. So, for many, he has come to seem aloof and nebulous - a daunting intellectual figure - always just out of reach.
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B. But that is a crying shame. Put simply, we think the way we do because Socrates thought the way he did. His famous aphorism, „the unexamined life is not worth living‟, is a central tenet for modern times. His philosophies - 24 centuries old - are also remarkably relevant today. Socrates was acutely aware of the dangers of excess and overindulgence. He berated his peers for a selfish pursuit of material gain. He questioned the value of going to fight under an ideological banner of „democracy‟. What is the point of city walls, warships and glittering statues, he asked, if we are not happy? The pursuit of happiness is one of the political pillars of the West. We are entering what has been described as „an age of empathy‟. So Socrates‟ forensic, practical investigation of how to lead 'the good life‟ is more illuminating, more necessary than ever.
C. Rather than being some kind of remote, tunic-clad beardy who wandered around classical columns, Socrates was a man of the streets. The philosopher tore through Athens like a tornado, drinking, partying, sweating in the gym as hard as, if not harder than the next man. For him, philosophy was essential to human life. His mission: to find the best way to live on earth. As Cicero, the Roman author, perceptively put it: 'Socrates brought philosophy down from the skies.' And so to try to put him back on to the streets he loved and where his philosophy belonged, I have spent 10 years investigating the eastern Mediterranean landscape to find clues of his life and the „Golden Age of Athens‟. Using the latest archaeology, newly discovered historical sources, and the accounts of his key followers, Plato and Xenophon. I have endeavoured to create a Socrates-shaped space, in the glittering city of 500BC Athens - ready for the philosopher to inhabit.
D. The street jargon used to describe the Athens of Socrates' day gives us a sense of its character. His hometown was known as 'sleek', 'oily', „violet-crowned‟. „busybody‟ Athens. Lead curse tablets left in drains, scribbled down by those in the world's first true democracy, show that however progressive fifth-century Athenians were, their radical political experiment - allowing the demos (the people) to have kratos (power) - did not do away with personal rivalries and grudges. Far from it. In fact, in the city where every full citizen was a potent politician, backbiting and cliquey came to take on epic proportions. By the time of his death, Socrates was caught up in this crossfire.
E. His life story is a reminder that the word 'democracy‟ is not a magic wand. It does not automatically vaporize all ills. This was Socrates‟ beef, too - a society can only be good not because of the powerful words it bandies around, but thanks to the moral backbone of each and every individual within it. But Athenians became greedy, they overreached themselves, and lived to see their city walls torn down by their Spartan enemies, and their radical democracy democratically voted out of existence. The city state needed someone to blame. High-profile, maddening, eccentric, freethinking, free-speaking Socrates was a good target. Socrates seems to me to be democracy‟s scapegoat. He was condemned because, in fragile times, anxious political masses want certainties - not the eternal questions that Socrates asked of the world around him.
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Part 5. For questions 96-108. (1.3 points - 0.1/each)
Read the following passage and do the tasks that follow.
A. The oceans of Earth cover more than 70 percent of the planet‟s surface, yet, until quite recently, we knew less about their depths than we did about the surface of the Moon. Distant as it is, the Moon has been far more accessible to study because astronomers long have been able to look at its surface, first with the naked eye and then with the telescope-both instruments that focus light. And, with telescopes tuned to different wavelengths of light, modem astronomers can not only analyze Earth‟s atmosphere, but also determine the temperature and composition of the Sun or other stars many hundreds of light-years away. Until the twentieth century, however, no analogous instruments were available for the study of Earth‟s oceans: Light, which can travel trillions of miles through the vast vacuum of space, cannot penetrate very far in seawater
B. Curious investigators long have been fascinated by sound and the way it tavels in water. As early as 1490, Leonardo da Vinci observed: “If you cause your ship to stop and place the head of a long tube in the water and place the outer extremity to your ear, you will hear ships at a great distance from you.” In 1687, the first mathematical theory of sound propagation was published by Sir Isaac Newton in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, Investigators were measuring the speed of sound in air beginning in the mid-seventeenth century, but it was not until 1826 that Daniel Colladon, a Swiss physicist, and Charles Sturm, a French mathematician, accurately measured its speed in water. Using a long tube to listen underwater (as da Vinci had suggested), they recorded how fast the sound of a submerged bell traveled across Lake Geneva. Their result-1,435 meters (1,569 yards) per second in water of 1.8 degrees Celsius (35 degrees Fahrenheit)- was only 3 meters per second off from the speed accepted today. What these investigators demonstrated was that water – whether fresh or salt- is an excellent medium for sound, transmitting it almost five times faster than its speed in air
C. In 1877 and 1878，the British scientist John William Strutt, third Baron Rayleigh, published his two volume seminal work, The Theory of Sound, often regarded as marking the beginning of the modem study of acoustics. The recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1904 for his successful isolation of the element argon, Lord Rayleigh made key discoveries in the fields of acoustics and optics that are critical to the theory of wave propagation in fluids. Among other things, Lord Rayleigh was the first to describe a sound wave as a mathematical equation (the basis of all theoretical work on acoustics) and the first to describe
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how small particles in the atmosphere scatter certain wavelengths of sunlight, a principle that also applies to the behavior of sound waves in water.
D. A number of factors influence how far travels sound underwater and how long it lasts. For one, particles in seawater can reflect, scatter, and absorb certain frequencies of sound – just as certain wavelengths of light may be reflected, scattered, and absorbed by specific types of particles in the atmosphere. Seawater absorbs 30 times the amount of sound absorbed by distilled water, with specific chemicals (such as magnesium sulfate and boric acid) damping out certain frequencies of sound. Researchers also learned that low-frequency sounds, whose long wavelengths generally pass over tiny particles, tend to travel farther without loss through absorption or scattering. Further work on the effects of salinity, temperature, and pressure on the speed of sound has yielded fascinating insights into the structure of the ocean. Speaking generally, the ocean is divided into horizontal layers in which sound speed is influenced more greatly by temperature in the upper regions and by pressure in the lower depths. At the surface is a sun-warmed upper layer, the actual temperature and thickness of which varies with the season. At mid-latitudes, this layer tends to be isothermal, that is， the temperature tends to be uniform throughout the layer because the water is well mixed by the action of waves, winds, and convection currents; a sound signal moving down through this layer tends to travel at an almost constant speed. Next comes a transitional layer called the thermocline, in which temperature drops steadily with depth; as the temperature falls, so does the speed of sound.
E. The U.S. Navy was quick to appreciate the usefulness of low-frequency sound and the deep sound channel in extending the range at which it could detect submarines. In great secrecy during the 1950s，the U.S. Navy launched a project that went by the code name Jezebel; it would later come to be known as the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). The system involved arrays of underwater microphones, called hydrophones, that were placed on the ocean bottom and connected by cables to onshore processing centers. With SOSUS deployed in both deep and shallow waters along both coasts of North America and the British West Indies, the U.S. Navy not only could detect submarines in much of the northern hemisphere, it also could distinguish how many propellers a submarine had, whether it was conventional or nuclear, and sometimes even the class of sub.
F. The realization that SOSUS could be used to listen to whales also was made by Christopher Clark, a biological acoustician at Cornell University, when he first visited a SOSUS station in 1992. When Clark looked at the graphic representations of sound, scrolling 24 hours day, every day, he saw the voice patterns of blue, finback, mink, and humpback whales. He also could hear the sounds. Using a SOSUS receiver in the West Indies, he could hear whales that were 1,770 kilometers (1,100 miles) away. Whales are the biggest of Earth‟s creatures. The blue whale, for example, can be 100 feet long and weigh as many tons. Yet these animals also are remarkably elusive. Scientists wish to observe blue time and position them on a map. Moreover, they can track not just one whale at a time, but many creatures simultaneously throughout the North Atlantic and the eastern North Pacific. They also can learn to distinguish whale calls. For example, Fox and colleagues have detected changes in the calls of finback whales during different seasons and have found that blue whales in different regions of the Pacific Ocean have different calls. Whales firsthand must wait in their ships for the whales to surface. A few whales have been tracked briefly in the wild this way but not for very great distances, and much about them remains unknown. Using the SOSUS stations, scientists can track the whales in real time and position them on a map. Moreover, they can track not just one whale at a time, but many creatures simultaneously throughout the North Atlantic and the eastern North Pacific. They also can learn to distinguish whale calls. For example, Fox and colleagues have
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detected changes in the calls of finback whales during different seasons and have found that blue whales in different regions of the Pacific Ocean have different calls.
G. SOSUS, with its vast reach, also has proved instrumental in obtaining information crucial to our understanding of Earth‟s weather and climate. Specifically, the system has enabled researchers to begin making ocean temperature measurements on a global scale – measurements that are keys to puzzling out the workings of heat transfer between the ocean and the atmosphere. The ocean plays an enormous role in determining air temperature the heat capacity in only the upper few meters of ocean is thought to be equal to all of the heat in the entire atmosphere. For sound waves traveling horizontally in the ocean, speed is largely a function of temperature. Thus, the travel time of a wave of sound between two points is a sensitive indicator of the average temperature along its path. Transmitting sound in numerous directions through the deep sound channel can give scientists measurements spanning vast areas of the globe. Thousands of sound paths in the ocean could be pieced together into a map of global ocean temperatures and, by repeating measurements along the same paths overtimes, scientists could track changes in temperature over months or years.
H. Researchers also are using other acoustic techniques to monitor climate. Oceanographer Jeff Nystuen at the University of Washington, for example, has explored the use of sound to measure rainfall over the ocean. Monitoring changing global rainfall patterns undoubtedly will contribute to understanding major climate change as well as the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. Since 1985, Nystuen has used hydrophones to listen to rain over the ocean, acoustically measuring not only the rainfall rate but also the rainfall type, from drizzle to thunderstorms. By using the sound of rain underwater as a “natural” rain gauge, the measurement of rainfall over the oceans will become available to climatologists.
Questions 96-99
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage? In boxes 96-99 on your answer sheet, write:
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information.
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information.
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage.
96. In the past, difficulties of research carried out on Moon were much easier than that of now. 97. The same light technology used in the investigation of the moon can be employed in the field of the ocean.
98. Research on the depth of ocean by the method of the sound-wave is more time-consuming. 99. Hydrophones technology is able to detect the category of precipitation.
Your answer here:
Questions 100-103
The reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-H. Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-H, in boxes 100-103 on your answer sheet. NB: You may use any letter more than onc
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100. Elements affect sound transmission in the ocean.
101. Relationship between global climate and ocean temperature.
102. Examples of how sound technology help people research ocean and creatures in it. 103. Sound transmission underwater is similar to that of light in any condition.
Your answer here:
Questions 104-108
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D for each question:
104. Who of the followings is dedicated to the research of rate of sound?
A. Leonardo da Vinci
B. Isaac Newton
C. John William Strutt
D. Charles Sturm
105. Who explained that the theory of light or sound wavelength is significant in water? A. Lord Rayleigh
B. John William Strutt
C. Charles Sturm
D. Christopher Clark
106. According to Fox and colleagues, in what pattern does the change of finback whale calls happen? A. Change in various seasons
B. Change in various days
C. Change in different months
D. Change in different years
107. In which way does the SOSUS technology inspect whales?
A. Track all kinds of whales in the ocean
B. Track bunches of whales at the same time
C. Track only finback whale in the ocean
D. Track whales by using multiple appliances or devices
108. what could scientists inspect via monitoring along a repeated route?
A. Temperature of the surface passed
B. Temperature of the deepest ocean floor
C. Variation of temperature
D. Fixed data of temperature
Your answer here:
Part 6. For questions 109 – 115. (0.7 point - 0.1/ each)
Read the article below. Seven paragraphs have been removed from the article. Choose from the paragraphs A-H below the one which fits each gap (109-115). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.
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VALUES FOR A GODLESS AGE
When the Berlin Wall came tumbling down in 1989 so did the plaster cast which had kept the idea of human rights in limbo. It was now free to evolve in response to the changing conditions of the late twentieth century.
Of course, in one sense, the quest for universal human rights standards after the Second World War was an early attempt to communicate across national boundaries, albeit a rather faltering endeavour, with its claims to universality challenged both in terms of authorship and content. More recently, a loosening of the reins of the human rights dialogue has ushered in wider debate.
Perhaps the best known of these is Amnesty International, established in 1961. Before Amnesty, there were very few organizations like it, yet now there are thousands operating all over the world. Whether campaigning for the protection of the environment or third-world debt relief, any such organization is engaged in the debate about fundamental human rights. And it is no longer just a soft sideshow.
The fact that strangers from different countries can communicate with each other through the worldwide web is having a similar effect in dealing a blow to misinformation. During one recent major human rights trial over sixty websites sprang up to cover the proceedings, while sales of the government controlled newspaper in that country plummeted.
The effect of increased responsibility at this highest level has been to continually extend the consideration of who is legally liable, directly or indirectly, under international human rights law. In part, this is an acknowledgement that even individuals need to be held responsible for flagrant breaches of others' rights, whether these are preventing protesters from peacefully demonstrating or abusing the rights of children.
It has been noted that paradoxically, in such circumstances, it may be in the interests of human rights organizations to seek to reinforce the legitimacy and authority of the state, within a regulated global framework.
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Part of the new trend in human rights thinking is therefore to include powerful private bodies within its remit. The International commission of Jurists has recently explored ways in which international human rights standards could be directly applied to transnational corporations.
Whatever the way ahead, the lessons of the past must be learnt. Any world view or set of values which is presented as self-evident is ultimately doomed to failure. The case for human rights always needs to be made and remade. In a world where globalization too often seems like a modernized version of old fashioned cultural imperialism, it is important to query the claim that human rights are universally accepted.
The missing paragraphs
A. This is, after all, a uniquely propitious time, as the values and language of human rights are becoming familiar to more and more people, who judge the merits or otherwise of political and economic decisions increasingly in human rights terms. Arguments seem fresh and appealing in many quarters where once they sounded weak and stale.
B. On a global scale, it is not strong states that are the problem here but weak ones, as they fail to protect their citizens from private power -whether it is paramilitaries committing murder and torture or transnational corporations spreading contamination and pollution.
C. The problem is that the growth of globalization makes the protection of nation states a pointless goal in certain circumstances. Transnational corporations with multiple subsidiaries operating in a number of countries simultaneously wield significant economic and political power and it is often extremely difficult for the state - both home and host governments - to exercise effective legal control over them.
D. If the proliferation of pressure groups has raised the profile of the human rights debate, satellite television has reinforced much of the content of their campaigns. The fact that from our armchairs we can all see live what is happening to others around the world has had an enormous impact on the way the struggle for human rights is viewed. It would not be remotely believable to plead ignorance nowadays, for 24-hour news coverage from the world's hotspots reaches us all.
E. The results of its investigations were published in 1999 in a unique pamphlet on Globalization, Human Rights and the Rule of Law. The issue to be faced is whether to treat these and other corporations as 'large para-state entities to be held accountable under the same sort of regime as states', or whether to look for different approaches to accountability 'that are promulgated by consumer groups and the corporations themselves'.
F. No longer the preserve of representatives of nation states meeting under the auspices of the United Nations, a developing conversation is taking place on a global scale and involving a growing cast of
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people - for an increasing range of pressure groups now frame their aspirations in human rights terms.
G. One of the most significant of these is what has come to be called 'globalization', the collapsing of national boundaries in economic, political and cultural life. From the expanding role of the world's financial markets and the spread of transnational corporations to the revolution in communications and information technology, more and more areas of people's lives are affected by regional, international or transnational developments, whether they are aware of this or not.
H. Not only must states not infringe rights, and enforce those rights which fall within their direct sphere (like providing a criminal justice system or holding fair elections), but they also have 'positive obligations' to uphold rights enshrined in human rights treaties, even when it is private parties which have violated them.
SECTION IV. WRITING (6.0 POINTS)
Part 1. (1.0 point)
Read the two texts below.
Write an essay summarizing and evaluating the key points from the text. Use your own words throughout as far as possible, and include your own ideas in your answer.
Write your answer at least 100 - 120 words.
Ever seen Indians spitting out red substances from their mouths and having their lips conspicuously stained red? Those red substances are actually chewed betel nuts. The betel nuts are chewed mainly by the Indians and Malays, from countries like India, Malaysia and Thailand.
The nuts are usually removed from the betel or areca palm fruits. Softened by boiling, the nuts are then sliced, dried in the sun before being grated into fine, thin shreds. To enjoy betel chewing, one must spread lime on the betel leaf, then sprinkle some grated betel nuts on it, fold up the leaf and chew in the mouth. The gums, teeth and lips will then be stained red and later turn black if the habit is continued with no proper cleansing methods.
Long ago in the past, betel nuts had already proven their usefulness. Before the emergence of cosmetics, women used to color their lips red with betel nuts. It was only after the invention of lipsticks that betel nuts were used as nerve soothing medicine instead.
In India, betel nuts are chewed during important occasions like births, marriages and death ceremonies. It was believed that Emperors long ago sent betel nuts as tributes to other foreign kings. Before carrying out capital punishment, prisoners were also given betel nuts, probably as "farewell gifts". Even in some countries now, betel nuts are offered as gifts of apology or as hints from hosts to their guests about their overstay.
The preparation and serving of betel nuts are also viewed significantly in India. The skills are used to gauge and choose ideal daughter-in-laws. The more skilful the lady is, the better the family background she has and of course, the more ideal she is. To bless a bride with good fortune, betel leaves are often used to cover her lap during the wedding ceremony. By pouring the juice of betel leaves upon the expecting mother's navel and observing the direction of the liquid flow, the sex of the foetus could be predicted too.
In more developed countries, doctors have claimed that betel leaves are rich in vitamin C. They are also good for relieving patients with breathing difficulties. On the other hand, there are some medical experts
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who discovered that the betel-chewing may lead to mouth cancer. Whatever the conclusion is, I am sure that the traditional chewing of betel leaves and nuts will still be practiced by Indians in India and other parts of the world.
Your summary here:
Part 2. Graph description (2.0 points)
The graphs below estimate the annual expenditure of students of three universities in Ho Chi Minh City in 2019.
Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. You should write at least 200 words.
Part 3. Essay writing (3.0 points)
Write at least 300-350 words on the following topic:
Some people who have been successful in the society do not attribute their success to the theoretical knowledge they learned at university. What is your opinion on the factors contributing to one’s achievement?
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience. Your essay writing here:
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