They bought a number of intriguing books in the book fair, _____ are those written by Haruki Murakami.
He found the detective novel absolutely _____ and impossible to put down.
_____, modeling is actually a hard job.
Grace couldn't help feeling _____ about missing the championships because of her injury.
You can't bury your head _____ and hope that this problem goes away, you know.
______ to fame at an early age may have a negative influence on children's psychological development.
The early railroads were _____ the existing arteries of transportation: roads, turnpikes, canals, and other waterways.
_____, the company began preparations for the new venture.
Wild animals sometimes come into the suburbs _____ food.
Let's get down to _____. We've got a lot to get through this afternoon.
I find it difficult working for others because I _____ my own business.
The _____ building serves as the city's new cultural center and art museum.
We've checked all the answers _____. I feel confident that the answers are 100%.
This small enterprise is _____ to a much larger one.
The grant will be paid in three equal ______ over the course of the year.
She's a ______ person, even if she doesn't want to admit it, and she thinks that this year will be a bad one due to our bad start.
He would prefer _____ for permission before using the equipment.
According to the _____, the new show is very popular.
Read the passage and choose the best answer to each of the question.
STAYING POWER
The British Museum recently launched a nation-wide search to find the oldest working television set in the country. After whittling down the numerous contenders, a winner has finally been tracked down to a house in London. The set, a 1936 Marconiphone, belongs to Jeff Black, an engineer and collector of antique TVs and radios. He believes that his beloved device is contemporaneous with the launch of the BBC's first television transmissions and could well have received the first-ever TV programme in the UK.
To all intents and purposes resembling a wooden cabinet with its walnut veneer and Art Deco inlays, this 73-year-old TV set looks more like an attractive piece of furniture than an electrical appliance. The technology, very crude by today's standards, is based on a cathode ray tube which is mounted vertically inside the cabinet. The image from the cathode ray appears on a 30cm screen and is reflected onto a viewing mirror fixed to the underside of the cabinet lid. You had to be fairly well-heeled to afford one of these early TV sets with their £60 price tag (about £11,000 in today's money) and even after such an outlay, there were only two hours of broadcasting per day, so it was hardly value for money! The controls were simple, an on/off switch and a volume control and no channel changer as there was only one channel.
Television was such a novelty in the 1930s that the whole neighbourhood would come over to watch and cram into someone's living room, craning their necks to get a glimpse of the tiny black and white screen. Even without the neighbours, watching TV was hardly plain sailing. The new technology was very temperamental and the TV repairman would have been an all-too-frequent visitor. Also, because the cathode ray tube required such a high voltage to function, it could be very dangerous. In fact, these early sets were prone to blow up and even became known as 'widow makers'.
Jeff is longing to restore the electronics in his set to their true 1936 magnificence. Originally, TV screens comprised 405 lines, a system which lasted until 1964 when 625 lines were introduced, but with a bit of electronic wizardry, Jeff can watch modern digital TV on his set. He prefers to watch old movies, just as the original owners did before television became as ubiquitous as it is today.
It's not just ancient televisions that attract such loyalty. Other searches have unearthed a 1931 fridge still going strong, a 1947 gas cooker in daily use and a 1953 vacuum cleaner still hoovering up the dust. Why do people hang onto ancient appliances for so long? Certainly not because they are cheaper to run, as older models are far less energy-efficient than today's versions, and the cost of repairs and spare parts can be prohibitive. Undoubtedly, modern devices are not built to last and fall to pieces while older, more robust models function well beyond their life expectancy. Obviously durability is crucial but for many, the associated memories are more important. Owners not only trust the appliance's performance, but are also reminded of the family member from whom it was inherited. Just think how smaller the world’s rubbish tips would be if everyone copied Jeff and his ilk!
(Đề đề nghị Olympic 30/4 - Trường THPT Chuyên Trần Đại Nghĩa - TP. Hồ Chí Minh)
The oldest TV set in Britain was discovered ______
According to the text, many people in 1936 _____
Owning a TV in the 1930s could be regarded as ______
Jeff’s enjoyment of his TV set comes mostly from ______
The main attraction of older products lies in their _____
The writer seems to regard the owners of these older products as _____
The various characteristics of ancient equipment include all of the following EXCEPT _____.
What does the passage mainly discuss about?
Read the text and do the tasks that follow.
STRIKING BACK AT LIGHTNING WITH LASERS
A. Seldom is the weather more dramatic than when thunderstorms strike. Their electrical fury inflicts death or serious injury on around 500 people each year in the United States alone. As the clouds roll in, a leisurely round of golf can become a terrifying dice with death – out in the open, a lone golfer may be a lightning bolt’s most inviting target. And there is damage to property too. Lightning damage costs American power companies more than $100 million a year.
B. But researchers in the United States and Japan are planning to hit back. Already in laboratory trials, they have tested strategies for neutralizing the power of thunderstorms, and this winter they will brave real storms, equipped with an armory of lasers that they will be pointing towards the heavens to discharge thunderclouds before lightning can strike.
C. The idea of forcing storm clouds to discharge their lightning on command is not new. In the early 1960s, researchers tried firing rockets trailing wires into thunderclouds to set up an easy discharge path for the huge electric charges that these clouds generate. The technique survives to this day at a test site in Florida run by the University of Florida, with support from the Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI), based in California. EPRI, which is funded by power companies, is looking at ways to protect the United States’ power grid from lightning strikes. ‘We can cause the lightning to strike where we want it to using rockets’: says Ralph Bernstein, manager of lightning projects at EPRI. The rocket site is providing precise measurements of lightning voltages and allowing engineers to check how electrical equipment bears up.
D. But while rockets are fine for research, they cannot provide the protection from lightning strikes that everyone is looking for. The rockets cost around $1,200 each, can only be fired at a limited frequency and their failure rate is about 40 percent. And even when they do trigger lightning, things still do not always go according to plan. ‘Lightning is not perfectly well behaved: says Bernstein. ‘Occasionally, it will take a branch and go someplace it wasn’t supposed to go.’
E. And anyway, who would want to fire streams of rockets in a populated area? ‘What goes up must come down,’ points out Jean-Claude Diels of the University of New Mexico. Diels is leading a project, which is backed by EPRI, to try to use lasers to discharge lightning safely– and safety is a basic requirement since no one wants to put themselves or their expensive equipment at risk. With around $500,000 invested so far, a promising system is just emerging from the laboratory.
F. The idea began some 20 years ago, when high-powered lasers were revealing their ability to extract electrons out of atoms and create ions. If a laser could generate a line of ionisation in the air all the way up to a storm cloud, this conducting path could be used to guide lightning to Earth, before the electric field becomes strong enough to break down the air in an uncontrollable surge. To stop the laser itself being struck, it would not be pointed straight at the clouds. Instead it would be directed at a mirror, and from there into the sky. The mirror would be protected by placing lightning conductors close by. Ideally, the cloud-zapper (gun) would be cheap enough to be installed around all key power installations, and portable enough to be taken to international sporting events to beam up at brewing storm clouds.
G. However, there is still a big stumbling block. The laser is no nifty portable: it's a monster that takes up a whole room. Diels is trying to cut down the size and says that a laser around the size of a small table is in the offing. He plans to test this more manageable system on live thunderclouds next summer.
H. Bernstein says that Diels's system is attracting lots of interest from the power companies. But they have not yet come up with the $5 million that EPRI says will be needed to develop a commercial system, by making the lasers yet smaller and cheaper. 'I cannot say I have money yet, but I'm working on it,' says Bernstein. He reckons that the forthcoming field tests will be the turning point - and he's hoping for good news. Bernstein predicts 'an avalanche of interest and support' if all goes well. He expects to see cloud-zappers eventually costing $50,000 to $100,000 each.
I. Other scientists could also benefit. With a lightning 'switch' at their fingertips, materials scientists could find out what happens when mighty currents meet matter. Diels also hopes to see the birth of 'interactive meteorology' - not just forecasting the weather but controlling it. 'If we could discharge clouds, we might affect the weather,' he says.
J. And perhaps, says Diels, we'll be able to confront some other meteorological menaces. 'We think we could prevent hail by inducing lightning,' he says. Thunder, the shock wave that comes from a lightning flash, is thought to be the trigger for the torrential rain that is typical of storms. A laser thunder factory could shake the moisture out of clouds, perhaps preventing the formation of the giant hailstones that threaten crops. With luck, as the storm clouds gather this winter, laser-toting researchers could, for the first time, strike back.
According to the text, every year lightning _____.
Researchers at the University of Florida and at the University of New Mexico _____.
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
EPRI receives financial support from .
The advantage of the technique being developed by Diets is that it can be used .
The main difficulty associated with using the laser equipment is related to its .
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text?
|
YES NO NOT GIVEN |
if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this |
Power companies have given Diels enough money to develop his laser.
Obtaining money to improve the lasers will depend on tests in real storms.
Weather forecasters are intensely interested in Diels's system.
Read the text and choose the best answer to fill in the blanks.
Early Speech Development
If you're the proud parent of a toddler or preschooler, you are probably aware of the of speech development. It seems almost as though virtually overnight those heart-warming gurgles and coos have into words and later, into coherent sentences. According to recent research, language development begins much sooner than any of us had ever suspected. It is now believed that babies can hear while they are in the womb and this explains why babies that are only hour’s old can distinguish between their own mother's voice and the voices of other women. Language development is grounded in imitation. Babies language by listening to those around them and then copying the sounds and speech that they are exposed to. Most child psychologists are of the that babies respond better to ‘baby talk’ - speech that is pitched and melodious. They stress, however, that baby talk should be spoken in and that a combination of baby talk and normal conversation is the ideal way to promote language development. Some parents worry that their toddler is behind its peers when it comes to speech development. Experts are quick to advise them, however, that these starters will gradually catch up with their more communicative counterparts.
Read the following passage and choose the best answer for each blank.
PEER PRESSURE
One of the strongest influences on children today is that of their peers. What their classmates think, how they dress and how they act in class and out of it affect the behaviour of nearly every child at school. In their not to be different, some children go so far as to hide their intelligence and ability in case they are made fun of. Generally, children do not want to stand out from the crowd. They want to in, to be accepted. In psychological the importance of peer pressure cannot be overemphasised. There is a lot of evidence that it has great on all aspects of children’s lives, from the clothes they wear, the music they listen to and their to study to their ambition in life, their relationships and their of self-worth. However, as children grow up into adolescents, individuality becomes more acceptable, even, and in their for their own personal style, the teenager and young adult will begin to experiment and be more willing to the risk of rejection by the group. Concern about intellectual prowess and achieving good exam results can dominate as the atmosphere of competition develops and worries about the future any fears of appearing too brainy.
Fill in each blank with ONE best word.
Journalists gather the news in a number of different . They may get stories from pressure which want to air their views in public. They seek publicity their opinions and may hold press or may issue a press release. A person who especially wishes to attract news will try to a sound bite in what they say. It is particularly hard for journalists to get material the silly season. Journalists also get stories by tapping useful sources by monitoring international news like Reuters. The more important a story is, the more inches it will be given in the newspaper.
Fill in each blank with ONE best word.
When was the last time you had a good night's sleep? By that I mean: you said goodbye to the waking world an hour or two than usual, left your phone in another room, and didn't set an for the next morning. Sounds good, doesn't it? But in reality, it's something few of us ever indulge .
You might even feel like our sleeping hours are threat. Celebs and self-proclaimed lifestyle gurus often boast about how they sleep - productivity comes . And how many of us are guilty of bringing our smartphones into bed, where a few TikToks or tweets quickly turn into hours of lost sleep? And let's not get into how the pandemic has wreaked with our sleeping patterns.
Unfortunately, while we all struggle to get a decent rest, scientists are discovering just important sleep is. Of course, we all know the consequences of an all-nighter, but it seems that even just an hour of lost sleep can have a profound effect our overall health and wellbeing.
Choose the paragraphs A-F to fit into the gaps in the following magazine article.
A. It’s not that I’m suggesting that sailors should go back to enduring every hardship. It’s always been important to me that my boats have a coal stove for warmth and dryness and cosy berths for sleeping. But why go cruising at all if every sail sets and furls itself?
B. Back on land, however, it is a sad fact that the very antiquity of classic boats means that they need a lot of looking after. When I had a bad injury to my back, I realised that my IS-year love affair with her had to end. Searching for a younger replacement produced no credible contenders, so I decided to build a new boat from scratch.
C. In her timeless serenity, she is the living proof that it works; that there is no need to follow current fashions to find satisfaction, and that sometimes it pays to listen to the lessons of history.
D. The next version was nearly right and by the time the final one appeared, the form was perfect. The completed boat has now crossed the North Atlantic and has won four out of her first six racing starts.
E. Perhaps I am, though I doubt it. This boat has benefited from all the magic of old fashioned boat design, but it would have been a much harder job without the advances of modern know-how.
F. For me a boat should always be a boat and not a cottage on the water. When I bought an earlier boat, Hirta, in which I circumnavigated Britain for a TV race series, the previous owner observed that she had every comfort, but no luxury. During my long relationship with her, Hirta taught me how wise he was.
THE BOAT OF MY DREAMS
The best boat design should combine old and new, says Tom Cunliffe. And he put it into practice in his own craft, ‘The Westerman’.
This week, the Summer Boat Show in London is resplendent with fine yachts, bristling with new technology. Nearly all are descendants of the hull-shape revolution that took place 25 years ago. By contrast, my own lies quietly on a tidal creek off the south coast. She was designed last year but, seeing her, you might imagine her to be 100 years old and think that her owner must be some kind of lost-soul romantic.
It has to be said, however, that despite being an indispensable tool in current design methods and boat-building practice, sophisticated technology frequently insulates crews from the harsh realities of maritime life. These are often the very realities they hoped to rediscover by going to sea in the first place.
The occasional battle with flapping canvas is surely part of a seaman’s life. And for what purpose should we abandon common sense and move our steering positions from the security of the aft end to some vulnerable perch halfway to the bow? The sad answer is that this creates a cabin like that of an ocean liner, with space for a bed larger than the one at home.
Her sails were heavy, and she had no pumped water, no electricity to speak of, no fridge, no central heating, no winches, and absolutely no electronics, especially in the navigation department, yet she was the kindest, easiest boat that I have ever sailed at sea.
The Westerman has never disappointed me. Although Nigel Irens, the designer, and Ed Burnett, his right-hand man, are adept with computer-assisted design programs, Irens initially drew this boat on a paper napkin, and only later transferred his ideas to the computer. After this had generated a set of lines, he carved a model, just as boatyards did in the days of sail. Together we considered the primary embryonic vessel, then fed the design back into the electronic box for modification.
Her appearance is ageless, her motion at sea is a pleasure and her accommodation, much of it in reclaimed pitch pine, emanates an atmosphere of deep peace. Maybe this is because she was drawn purely as a sailing craft, without reference to any furniture we might put into her. That is the well-tried method of the sea.
Constructed in timber treated with a penetrating glue, she is totally impervious to water. Thus she has all the benefits of a glass fibre boat yet looks like, feels like and sails like the real thing.
Complete the sentence by changing the form of the word in capitals.
The principal difference between urban growth in Europe and in the North American colonies was the slow (EVOLVE) of cities in the former and their rapid growth in the latter. In North America, they started as wilderness communities and developed to mature urbanism in little more than a century.
In the early (COLONY) days in North America, small cities sprang up along the Atlantic Coastline, mostly in what are now New England and the Middle Atlantic states in the United States and in the lower Saint Lawrence valley in Canada. This was natural because these areas were nearest England and France, particularly England, from which most capital goods (assets such as equipment) and many consumer goods were imported.
Merchandising (ESTABLISH) were, accordingly, (ADVANTAGE) located in port cities from which goods could be readily distributed to interior (SETTLE). Here, too, were the favored locations for processing raw materials prior to export. Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Montreal, and other cities flourished, and as the colonies grew, these cities increased in importance.
This was less true in the colonial South, where life centered around large farms, known as (PLANT), rather than around towns, as was the case in the areas further north along the Atlantic coastline. The local (ISOLATE) and the economic (SUFFICIENT) of the plantations were antagonistic to the development of the towns. The plantations maintained their independence because they were located on navigable streams and each had a/an (ACCESS) wharf to the small shipping of that day. In fact, one of the strongest factors in the selection of plantation land was the desire to have it front on a water (HIGH).
There are 8 mistakes in the following text. The first mistake is corrected as an example numbered (0). Find the other seven mistakes, write and correct them.
Write the mistakes in the order they appeared in the text.
| Line | ISLAND IN THE SUN |
| 1 | Combine an exotic tropic setting, a clever devised plot and an intrigued cast of characters and |
| 2 | one would rightfully expect a page-turner of a novel, especially considering it was written by |
| 3 | acclaimed author, Daniel Bray. The undeniable truth, therefore, is that Bray seems to be lost |
| 4 | his touch, if only in this isolated case. While Bray has added all the necessary literary |
| 5 | ingredients, the book just seems a bit half-cooked. It starts out enough promisingly a |
| 6 | beautiful naive nanny arrives on an isolated island only to discover her employer, the recently |
| 7 | widowed Marquis De Banqueth, conceals a mysterious secrecy. However, it simply doesn't go |
| 8 | anywhere. In a nutshell, Bray leads his readers down an endless, rambling path without ever |
| 9 | providing them with any resolution for the plot. |
Example: 0. Line 1: tropic -> tropical
Line : ->
Line : ->
Line : ->
Line : ->
Line : ->
Line : ->
Line : ->
Complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence, using the word given. Do not make any changes to the word given and write no more than EIGHT words in total.
She was going to leave when the postman arrived. (POINT)
=> She was when the postman arrived.
Complete the second sentence, using the word given so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence. Do NOT change the word given in brackets in any way and write no more than EIGHT words in total.
He didn't expect to receive a phone call from his best friend Michael. (BLUE)
=> A phone call his best friend Michael.
Complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence, using the word given. Do not make any changes to the word given and write no more than EIGHT words in total.
We never imagined that Julian might be planning to resign from his job. (OCCURRED)
=> It never Julian might be planning to resign from his job.
Complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence, using the word given. Do not make any changes to the word given and write no more than EIGHT words in total.
Denise will certainly be late because she didn't leave home until 7 o'clock. (BOUND)
=> Denise late because she didn't leave home until 7 o'clock.
Complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence, using the word given. Do not make any changes to the word given and write no more than EIGHT words in total.
It was the telephonist's fault that they didn't get the message. (BLAME)
=> The telephonist they didn't get the message.
Complete the second sentence using the word given so that it has the same meaning to the first.
If something's worrying you, you should tell me about it now. (CHEST)
=> If you have a problem, why don't you ..........?
Complete the second sentence using the word given so that it has the same meaning to the first.
This house is very different from the little flat we used to live in. (CRY)
=> This house ...........
Complete the second sentence using the word given so that it has the same meaning to the first.
The staff hated his new policies intensely and so went on strike. (HATRED)
=> So intense ..........
Complete the second sentence using the word given so that it has the same meaning to the first.
I've become extremely good at missing the rush hour over the last few weeks. (FINE)
=> I got missing the rush hour ............
Complete the second sentence using the word given so that it has the same meaning to the first.
He tried hard but couldn't compensate for what he had done. (AMENDS)
=> Try .........