IELTS Reading Practice Samples - Tổng hợp mẫu đề IELTS Reading miễn phí

1. Hướng dẫn cách sử dụng bài test

Hẳn là có rất nhiều bạn vẫn còn đang hoang mang trong việc làm thế nào để khai thác những đề Practice IELTS Reading hiệu quả. Liệu các bạn có biết rằng chỉ giải đề và tra đáp án thì không thể nào tận dụng được hết những tiềm năng mà bài đọc IELTS Reading Practice mang lại.

Sau đây, DOL sẽ đề xuất cho bạn cách khai thác triệt để những đề bài Reading IELTS mẫu nhé.

1.1 Giải đề theo nhiều cách khác nhau 

Có rất nhiều cách để giải đề IELTS Reading Sample Test trong quá trình ôn luyện. Và cách mà các bạn thí sinh sử dụng phổ biến nhất là làm đề và canh thời gian đúng 60 phút làm bài. Ngoài cách này ra, DOL sẽ gợi ý thêm cho các bạn những phương pháp giải đề cực kỳ hiệu quả khác như sau:

• Canh giờ làm bài cho từng đoạn văn (passage): Các bạn không nhất thiết phải đặt giờ đúng 60 phút và làm hết 60 phút 3 bài. Có thể đặt 15 phút làm bài đọc số 1, 20 phút làm bài đọc số 2 và 30 phút để làm bài đọc số 3 (vì 3 bài đọc có độ khó tăng dần).

• Canh giờ làm bài cho từng dạng bài đọc: Ngoài canh giờ làm bài theo passage, các bạn cũng có thể canh giờ làm bài cho từng dạng bài đọc. Cách này là rất hiệu quả với những bạn không có nhiều thời gian để ôn luyện.

• Đọc qua bài Test vài lần trước khi làm: Để việc luyện IELTS Reading Sample Test được hiệu quả hơn, bạn hãy đọc qua vài lần trước khi làm. Đồng thời kết hợp hẹn giờ ít hơn 60 phút để ôn luyện. Vì khi đã đọc và hiểu đề bài rồi thì tốc độ làm bài đọc sẽ nhanh hơn.

1.2 Kiểm tra lại lỗi sai của mình sau khi giải xong đề

Việc xem lại lỗi sai của bản thân là cực kỳ quan trọng. Vì nếu không kiểm tra những lỗi này, khi vào phòng thi gặp dạng bài, câu hỏi hoặc chủ đề tương tự là tỉ lệ thi rớt của các bạn rất cao. Do đó, luôn nhớ xem lại lỗi sai của mình trong những câu trả lời và tìm đáp án đúng cho câu đó nhé.

1.3 Chọn lọc từ mới, cấu trúc ngữ pháp mới trong bài đọc để học

Những bài test luôn chứa rất nhiều từ vựng cho hàng loạt chủ đề khác nhau. Đây là một nguồn tài nguyên quý giá đối với bất kỳ sĩ tử IELTS nào. Bởi vậy, hãy cố gắng khai thác từ vựng hết sức có thể.

Đừng bỏ qua bất kỳ từ vựng nào xuất hiện trong câu hỏi hoặc câu trả lời, và những từ hoặc cụm từ lặp đi lặp lại trong bài đọc nữa nhé. Vì khả năng gặp lại những từ vựng này trong bài thi là rất cao.

2. IELTS Academic Reading

Cấu trúc bài thi IELTS Academic Reading bao gồm 2 phần: Phần đọc và Phần câu hỏi. Trong đó:

• Phần đọc: 3 bài đọc học thuật dài làm trong tổng thời gian 60 phút.

• Phần câu hỏi: Có khoảng 14 dạng câu hỏi xuất hiện trong IELTS Academic Reading.

Chi tiết hơn nữa, mời bạn xem hình ảnh dưới đây:

Để giúp bạn đọc làm quen với dạng đề IELTS Academic Reading, sau đây DOL sẽ chia sẻ đến bạn 10 đề thi IELTS Reading Exercises Academic. Hãy cùng khám phá ngay nhé!

2.1 Đề thi số 1

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 1 – 13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. 

Aphantasia: A life without mental images

Close your eyes and imagine walking along a sandy beach and then gazing over the horizon as the Sun rises. How clear is the image that springs to mind?

Most people can readily conjure images inside their head - known as their mind's eye. But this year scientists have described a condition, aphantasia, in which some people are unable to visualise mental images. 

Niel Kenmuir, from Lancaster, has always had a blind mind's eye. He knew he was different even in childhood. "My stepfather, when I couldn't sleep, told me to count sheep, and he explained what he meant, I tried to do it and I couldn't," he says. "I couldn't see any sheep jumping over fences, there was nothing to count."

Our memories are often tied up in images, think back to a wedding or first day at school. As a result, Niel admits, some aspects of his memory are "terrible", but he is very good at remembering facts. And, like others with aphantasia, he struggles to recognise faces. Yet he does not see aphantasia as a disability, but simply a different way of experiencing life. 

Mind's eye blind

Ironically, Niel now works in a bookshop, although he largely sticks to the non - fiction aisles. His condition begs the question what is going on inside his picture - less mind. I asked him what happens when he tries to picture his fiancee. "This is the hardest thing to describe, what happens in my head when I think about things," he says. "When I think about my fiancee there is no image, but I am definitely thinking about her, I know today she has her hair up at the back, she's brunette. But I'm not describing an image I am looking at, I'm remembering features about her, that's the strangest thing and maybe that is a source of some regret."

The response from his mates is a very sympathetic: "You're weird." But while Niel is very relaxed about his inability to picture things, it is often a cause of distress for others. One person who took part in a study into aphantasia said he had started to feel "isolated" and "alone" after discovering that other people could see images in their heads. Being unable to reminisce about his mother years after her death led to him being "extremely distraught".

The Super - Visualiser

At the other end of the spectrum is children's book illustrator, Lauren Beard, whose work on the Fairytale Hairdresser series will be familiar to many six - year - olds. Her career relies on the vivid images that leap into her mind's eye when she reads text from her author. When I met her in her box - room studio in Manchester, she was working on a dramatic scene in the next book. The text describes a baby perilously climbing onto a chandelier.

"Straightaway I can visualise this grand glass chandelier in some sort of French kind of ballroom, and the little baby just swinging off it and really heavy thick curtains," she says. "I think I have a strong imagination, so I can create the world and then keep adding to it so it gets sort of bigger and bigger in my mind and the characters too they sort of evolve. I couldn't really imagine what it's like to not imagine, I think it must be a bit of a shame really."

Not many people have mental imagery as vibrant as Lauren or as blank as Niel. They are the two extremes of visualisation. Adam Zeman, a professor of cognitive and behavioural neurology, wants to compare the lives and experiences of people with aphantasia and its polar - opposite hyperphantasia. His team, based at the University of Exeter, coined the term aphantasia this year in a study in the journal Cortex. 

Prof Zeman tells the BBC: "People who have contacted us say they are really delighted that this has been recognised and has been given a name, because they have been trying to explain to people for years that there is this oddity that they find hard to convey to others." How we imagine is clearly very subjective - one person's vivid scene could be another's grainy picture. But Prof Zeman is certain that aphantasia is real. People often report being able to dream in pictures, and there have been reported cases of people losing the ability to think in images after a brain injury. 

He is adamant that aphantasia is "not a disorder" and says it may affect up to one in 50 people. But he adds: "I think it makes quite an important difference to their experience of life because many of us spend our lives with imagery hovering somewhere in the mind's eye which we inspect from time to time, it's a variability of human experience." 

Questions 1 – 8:

Do the following statements agree with the information in the IELTS reading text? In boxes 1 - 8 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

1. Aphantasia is a condition, which describes people, for whom it is hard to visualise mental images.     

2. Niel Kenmuir was unable to count sheep in his head.                    

3. People with aphantasia struggle to remember personal traits and clothes of different people.           

4. Niel regrets that he cannot portray an image of his fiancee in his mind.          

5. Inability to picture things in someone's head is often a cause of distress for a person.               

6. All people with aphantasia start to feel 'isolated' or 'alone' at some point of their lives.                 

7. Lauren Beard's career depends on her imagination.           

8. The author met Lauren Beard when she was working on a comedy scene in her next book.              

Questions 9 – 13:

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 9 - 13 on your answer sheet.

9. Only a small fraction of people have imagination as  as Lauren does. 

10. Hyperphantasia is to aphantasia. 

11.There are a lot of subjectivity in comparing people's imagination - somebody's vivid scene could be another person's . 

12. Prof Zeman is  that aphantasia is not an illness. 

13. Many people spend their lives with  somewhere in the mind's eye.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 14 – 26, which are based on reading passage 2 below.

Life lessons from villains, crooks and gangsters

(A) A notorious Mexican drug baron’s audacious escape from prison in July doesn’t, at first, appear to have much to teach corporate boards. But some in the business world suggest otherwise. Beyond the morally reprehensible side of criminals' work, some business gurus say organised crime syndicates, computer hackers, pirates and others operating outside the law could teach legitimate corporations a thing or two about how to hustle and respond to rapid change.

(B) Far from encouraging illegality, these gurus argue that – in the same way big corporations sometimes emulate start - ups – business leaders could learn from the underworld about flexibility, innovation and the ability to pivot quickly. “There is a nimbleness to criminal organisations that legacy corporations [with large, complex layers of management] don’t have,” said Marc Goodman, head of the Future Crimes Institute and global cyber-crime advisor. While traditional businesses focus on rules they have to follow, criminals look to circumvent them. “For criminals, the sky is the limit and that creates the opportunity to think much, much bigger.”

(C) Joaquin Guzman, the head of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel, for instance, slipped out of his prison cell through a tiny hole in his shower that led to a mile - long tunnel fitted with lights and ventilation. Making a break for it required creative thinking, long -term planning and perseverance – essential skills similar to those needed to achieve success in big business.

(D) While Devin Liddell, who heads brand strategy for Seattle - based design consultancy, Teague, condemns the violence and other illegal activities he became curious as to how criminal groups endure. Some cartels stay in business despite multiple efforts by law enforcement on both sides of the US border and millions of dollars from international agencies to shut them down. Liddell genuinely believes there’s a lesson in longevity here. One strategy he underlined was how the bad guys respond to change. In order to bypass the border between Mexico and the US, for example, the Sinaloa cartel went to great lengths. It built a vast underground tunnel, hired family members as border agents and even used a catapult to circumvent a high-tech fence.

(E) By contrast, many legitimate businesses fail because they hesitate to adapt quickly to changing market winds. One high - profile example is movie and game rental company Blockbuster, which didn’t keep up with the market and lost business to mail order video rentals and streaming technologies. The brand has all but faded from view. Liddell argues the difference between the two groups is that criminal organisations often have improvisation encoded into their daily behaviour, while larger companies think of innovation as a set process. “This is a leadership challenge,” said Liddell. “How well companies innovate and organise is a reflection of leadership.” 

Left - Field thinking

(F) Cash - strapped start - ups also use unorthodox strategies to problem solve and build their businesses up from scratch. This creativity and innovation is often borne out of necessity, such as tight budgets. Both criminals and start - up founders “question authority, act outside the system and see new and clever ways of doing things,” said Goodman. “Either they become Elon Musk or El Chapo.” And, some entrepreneurs aren’t even afraid to operate in legal grey areas in their effort to disrupt the marketplace. The Co - Founders of music streaming service Napster, for example, knowingly broke music copyright rules with their first online file sharing service, but their technology paved the way for legal innovation as regulators caught up.

(G) Goodman and others believe thinking hard about problem solving before worrying about restrictions could prevent established companies falling victim to rivals less constrained by tradition. In their book The Misfit Economy, Alexa Clay and Kyra Maya Phillips examine how individuals can apply that mindset to become more innovative and entrepreneurial within corporate structures. They studied not just violent criminals like Somali pirates, but others who break the rules in order to find creative solutions to their business problems, such as people living in the slums of Mumbai or computer hackers. They picked out five common traits among this group: the ability to hustle, pivot, provoke, hack and copycat.

(H) Clay gives a Saudi entrepreneur named Walid Abdul - Wahab as a prime example. Abdul - Wahab worked with Amish farmers to bring camel milk to American consumers even before US regulators approved it. Through perseverance, he eventually found a network of Amish camel milk farmers and started selling the product via social media. Now his company, Desert Farms, sells to giant mainstream retailers like Whole Foods Market. Those on the fringe don’t always have the option of traditional, corporate jobs and that forces them to think more creatively about how to make a living, Clay said. They must develop grit and resilience in order to last outside the cushy confines of cubicle life. “In many cases scarcity is the mother of invention,” Clay said.

Questions 14 - 21:

Reading Passage 2 has eight paragraphs A. - H. Match the headings below with the paragraphs. Write the correct letter, A - H, in boxes 14 - 21 on your answer sheet.

14. Jailbreak with creative thinking 

15. Five common traits among rule - breakers 

16. Comparison between criminals and traditional businessmen 

17. Can drug baron's espace teach legitimate corporations?  

18. Great entrepreneur 

19. How criminal groups deceive the law 

20. The difference between legal and illegal organisations  

21. Similarity between criminals and start - up founders 

Questions 22 – 25:

Complete the sentences below. Write ONLY ONE WORD from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes. 22 – 25 on your answer sheet.

22. To escape from a prison, Joaquin Guzman had to use such traits as creative thinking, long - term planning and . 

23. The Sinaloa cartel built a grand underground tunnel and even used a  to avoid the fence. 

24. The main difference between two groups is that criminals, unlike large corporations, often have  encoded into their daily life. 

25. Due to being persuasive, Walid Abdul - Wahab found a  of Amish camel milk farmers.

Question 26:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

26. The main goal of this article is to: 

A. Show different ways of illegal activity.

B. Give an overview of various criminals and their gangs.

C. Draw a comparison between legal and illegal business, providing examples.

D. Justify criminals with creative thinking.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 27 – 40, which are based on reading passage 3 below.

Britain needs strong TV industry

Comedy writer Armando Iannucci has called for an industry - wide defence of the BBC and British programme - makers. "The Thick of It" creator made his remarks in the annual MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival.

"It's more important than ever that we have more strong, popular channels... that act as beacons, drawing audiences to the best content," he said. Speaking earlier, Culture Secretary John Whittingdale rejected suggestions that he wanted to dismantle the BBC.

'Champion supporters'

Iannucci co - wrote "I'm Alan Partridge", wrote the movie "In the Loop" and created and wrote the hit "HBO" and "Sky Atlantic show Veep". He delivered the 40th annual MacTaggart Lecture, which has previously been given by Oscar winner Kevin Spacey, former BBC director general Greg Dyke, Jeremy Paxman and Rupert Murdoch. Iannucci said: "Faced with a global audience, British television needs its champion supporters."

He continued his praise for British programming by saying the global success of American TV shows had come about because they were emulating British television. "The best US shows are modelling themselves on what used to make British TV so world - beating," he said. "US prime - time schedules are now littered with those quirky formats from the UK - the "Who Do You Think You Are"'s and the variants on "Strictly Come Dancing" - as well as the single-camera non-audience sitcom, which we brought into the mainstream first. We have changed international viewing for the better."

With the renewal of the BBC's royal charter approaching, Iannucci also praised the corporation. He said: "If public service broadcasting - one of the best things we've ever done creatively as a country - if it was a car industry, our ministers would be out championing it overseas, trying to win contracts, boasting of the British jobs that would bring." In July, the government issued a green paper setting out issues that will be explored during negotiations over the future of the BBC, including the broadcaster's size, its funding and governance.

Primarily Mr Whittingdale wanted to appoint a panel of five people, but finally he invited two more people to advise on the channer renewal, namely former Channel 4 boss Dawn Airey and journalism professor Stewart Purvis, a former editor - in - chief of ITN. Iannucci bemoaned the lack of "creatives" involved in the discussions. 

"When the media, communications and information industries make up nearly 8% our GDP, larger than the car and oil and gas industries put together, we need to be heard, as those industries are heard. But when I see the panel of experts who've been asked by the culture secretary to take a root and branch look at the BBC, I don't see anyone who is a part of that cast and crew list. I see executives, media owners, industry gurus, all talented people - but not a single person who's made a classic and enduring television show."

'Don't be modest'

Iannucci suggested one way of easing the strain on the licence fee was "by pushing ourselves more commercially abroad". 

"Use the BBC's name, one of the most recognised brands in the world," he said. "And use the reputation of British television across all networks, to capitalise financially oversees. Be more aggressive in selling our shows, through advertising, through proper international subscription channels, freeing up BBC Worldwide to be fully commercial, whatever it takes.

"Frankly, don't be icky and modest about making money, let's monetise the bezeesus Mary and Joseph out of our programmes abroad so that money can come back, take some pressure off the licence fee at home and be invested in even more ambitious quality shows, that can only add to our value."

Mr Whittingdale, who was interviewed by ITV News' Alastair Stewart at the festival, said he wanted an open debate about whether the corporation should do everything it has done in the past.  He said he had a slight sense that people who rushed to defend the BBC were "trying to have an argument that's never been started".

"Whatever my view is, I don't determine what programmes the BBC should show," he added. "That's the job of the BBC." Mr Whittingdale said any speculation that the Conservative Party had always wanted to change the BBC due to issues such as its editorial line was "absolute nonsense".

Questions 27 – 31:

Do the following statements agree with the information in the IELTS reading text? In boxes 27 – 31 on your answer sheet, write 

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

27. Armando Iannucci expressed a need of having more popular channels.                   

28. John Whittingdale wanted to dismantle the BBC.            

29. Iannucci delivered the 30th annual MacTaggart Lecture.              

30. Ianucci believes that British television has contributed to the success of American TV - Shows.              

31. There have been negotiations over the future of the BBC in July.                     

Questions 32 – 35:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 32 - 35 on your answer sheet. 

32. Ianucci praised everything EXCEPT:

A. US shows

B. British shows 

C. Corporation

D. British programming

33. To advise on the charter renewal Mr Whittingdale appointed a panel of 

A. Five people

B. Two people

C. Seven people

D. Four people

34. Who of these people was NOT invited to the discussion concerning BBC renewal?

A. Armando Iannucci

B. Dawn Airey

C. John Whittingdale

D. Stewart Purvis

35. There panel of experts lacks:

A. Media owners

B. People who make enduring TV - Shows

C. Gurus of Television industry

D. Top executives

Questions 36 – 40:

Complete the summary below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 37 – 40 on your answer sheet.

Easing the strain on the licence fees:

Iannucci recommended increasing BBC's profit by pushing ourselves more 36……… He suggests being more aggressive in selling British shows, through advertising and proper international 37……... Also, he invokes producers to stop being 38……...  and modest about making money and invest into even 39……...  quality shows. However, Mr Whittingdale denied any 40………. that the Conservative Party had always wanted to change the BBC because of its editorial line.

2.2 Đề thi số 2

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on. Questions 1 – 16, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

Sea monsters are the stuff of Legend - Lurking not just in the depths of the oceans, but also the darker corners of our minds. What is it that draws us to these creatures?

"This inhuman place makes human monsters," wrote Stephen King in his novel The Shining. Many academics agree that monsters lurk in the deepest recesses, they prowl through our ancestral minds appearing in the half - light, under the bed - or at the bottom of the sea.

"They don't really exist, but they play a huge role in our mindscapes, in our dreams, stories, nightmares, myths and so on," says Matthias Classen, assistant professor of literature and media at Aarhus University in Denmark, who studies monsters in literature. "Monsters say something about human psychology, not the world."

One Norse legend talks of the Kraken, a deep sea creature that was the curse of fishermen. If sailors found a place with many fish, most likely it was the monster that was driving them to the surface. If it saw the ship it would pluck the hapless sailors from the boat and drag them to a watery grave. 

This terrifying legend occupied the mind and pen of the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson too. In his short 1830 poem The Kraken he wrote: "Below the thunders of the upper deep/ Far far beneath in the abysmal sea/ His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep/ The Kraken sleepeth." 

The deeper we travel into the ocean, the deeper we delve into our own psyche. And when we can go no further - there lurks the Kraken. 

Most likely the Kraken is based on a real creature - the giant squid. The huge mollusc takes pride of place as the personification of the terrors of the deep sea. Sailors would have encountered it at the surface, dying, and probably thrashing about. It would have made a weird sight, "about the most alien thing you can imagine," says Edith Widder, CEO at the Ocean Research and Conservation Association. 

"It has eight lashing arms and two slashing tentacles growing straight out of its head and it's got serrated suckers that can latch on to the slimiest of prey and it's got a parrot beak that can rip flesh. It's got an eye the size of your head, it's got a jet propulsion system and three hearts that pump blue blood."

The giant squid continued to dominate stories of sea monsters with the famous 1870 novel, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne. Verne's submarine fantasy is a classic story of puny man against a gigantic squid. 

The monster needed no embellishment - this creature was scary enough, and Verne incorporated as much fact as possible into the story, says Emily Alder from Edinburgh Napier University. "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and another contemporaneous book, Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea, both tried to represent the giant squid as they might have been actual zoological animals, much more taking the squid as a biological creature than a mythical creature." It was a given that the squid was vicious and would readily attack humans given the chance. 

That myth wasn't busted until 2012, when Edith Widder and her colleagues were the first people to successfully film giant squid under water and see first - hand the true character of the monster of the deep. They realised previous attempts to film squid had failed because the bright lights and noisy thrusters on submersibles had frightened them away. 

By quietening down the engines and using bioluminescence to attract it, they managed to see this most extraordinary animal in its natural habitat. It serenely glided into view, its body rippled with metallic colours of bronze and silver. Its huge, intelligent eye watched the submarine warily as it delicately picked at the bait with its beak. It was balletic and mesmeric. It could not have been further from the gnashing, human - destroying creature of myth and literature. In reality this is a gentle giant that is easily scared and pecks at its food.

Another giant squid lies peacefully in the Natural History Museum in London, in the Spirit Room, where it is preserved in a huge glass case. In 2004 it was caught in a fishing net off the Falkland Islands and died at the surface. The crew immediately froze its body and it was sent to be preserved in the museum by the Curator of Molluscs, Jon Ablett. It is called Archie, an affectionate short version of its Latin name Architeuthis dux. It is the longest preserved specimen of a giant squid in the world.

"It really has brought science to life for many people," says Ablett. "Sometimes I feel a bit overshadowed by Archie, most of my work is on slugs and snails but unfortunately most people don't want to talk about that!"

And so today we can watch Archie's graceful relative on film and stare Archie herself (she is a female) eye - to - eye in a museum. But have we finally slain the monster of the deep? Now we know there is nothing to be afraid of, can the Kraken finally be laid to rest? Probably not says Classen. "We humans are afraid of the strangest things. They don't need to be realistic. There's no indication that enlightenment and scientific progress has banished the monsters from the shadows of our imaginations. We will continue to be afraid of very strange things, including probably sea monsters." 

Indeed we are. The Kraken made a fearsome appearance in the blockbuster series Pirates of the Caribbean. It forced Captain Jack Sparrow to face his demons in a terrifying face - to - face encounter. Pirates needed the monstrous Kraken, nothing else would do. Or, as the German film director Werner Herzog put it, "What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams."

Questions 1 – 7:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in reading passage 1? In boxes 1 – 7 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

1. Matthias Classen is unsure about the possibility of monster's existence.

2. Kraken is probably based on an imaginary animal.

3. Previous attempts on filming the squid had failed due to the fact that the creature was scared.

4. Giant squid was caught alive in 2004 and brought to the museum.

5. Jon Ablett admits that he likes Archie.

6. According to Classen, people can be scared both by imaginary and real monsters.

7. Werner Herzog suggests that Kraken is essential to the ocean.            

Questions 8 – 12:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 8 – 12 on your answer sheet.

8. Who wrote a novel about a giant squid? 

A. Emily Alder

B. Stephen King

C. Alfred Lord Tennyson

D. Jules Verne

9. What, of the featuring body parts, mollusc DOESN'T have? 

A. Two tentacles

B. Serrated suckers

C. Beak

D. Smooth suckers

10. Which of the following applies to the bookish Kraken? 

A. Notorious

B. Scary

C. Weird

D. Harmless

11. Where can we see a giant squid? 

A. At the museum

B. At a seaside

C. On TV

D. In supermarkets

12. The main purpose of the text is to: 

A. Help us to understand more about both mythical and biological creatures of the deep

B. Illustrate the difference between Kraken and squid

C. Shed the light on the mythical creatures of the ocean

D. Compare Kraken to its real relative

Questions 13 – 16:

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 13 – 16 on your answer sheet.

13. According to the Victor Hugo's novel, the squid would  if he had such opportunity. 

14. The real squid appeared to be and.

15. Archie must be the of its kind on Earth. 

16. We are able to encounter the Kraken's in a movie franchise.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 17 – 27, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. 

The atom bomb was one of the defining inventions of the 20th Century. So how did science fiction writer HG Wells predict its invention three decades before the first detonations?

(A) Imagine you're the greatest fantasy writer of your age. One day you dream up the idea of a bomb of infinite power. You call it the "atomic bomb". HG Wells first imagined a uranium - based hand grenade that "would continue to explode indefinitely" in his 1914 novel The World Set Free. He even thought it would be dropped from planes. What he couldn't predict was how a strange conjunction of his friends and acquaintances - notably Winston Churchill, who'd read all Wells's novels twice, and the physicist Leo Szilard - would turn the idea from fantasy to reality, leaving them deeply tormented by the scale of destructive power that it unleashed.

(B) The story of the atom bomb starts in the Edwardian age, when scientists such as Ernest Rutherford were grappling with a new way of conceiving the physical world. The idea was that solid elements might be made up of tiny particles in atoms. "When it became apparent that the Rutherford atom had a dense nucleus, there was a sense that it was like a coiled spring," says Andrew Nahum, curator of the Science Museum's Churchill's Scientists exhibition. Wells was fascinated with the new discoveries. He had a track record of predicting technological innovations. Winston Churchill credited Wells for coming up with the idea of using aeroplanes and tanks in combat ahead of World War One. 

(C) The two men met and discussed ideas over the decades, especially as Churchill, a highly popular writer himself, spent the interwar years out of political power, contemplating the rising instability of Europe. Churchill grasped the danger of technology running ahead of human maturity, penning a 1924 article in the Pall Mall Gazette called "Shall we all commit suicide?". In the article, Churchill wrote: "Might a bomb no bigger than an orange be found to possess a secret power to destroy a whole block of buildings - nay to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of cordite and blast a township at a stroke?" This idea of the orange - sized bomb is credited by Graham Farmelo, author of Churchill's Bomb, directly to the imagery of The World Set Free.

(D) By 1932 British scientists had succeeded in splitting the atom for the first time by artificial means, although some believed it couldn't produce huge amounts of energy. But the same year the Hungarian emigre physicist Leo Szilard read The World Set Free. Szilard believed that the splitting of the atom could produce vast energy. He later wrote that Wells showed him "what the liberation of atomic energy on a large scale would mean". Szilard suddenly came up with the answer in September 1933 - the chain reaction - while watching the traffic lights turn green in Russell Square in London. He wrote: "It suddenly occurred to me that if we could find an element which is split by neutrons and which would emit two neutrons when it absorbed one neutron, such an element, if assembled in sufficiently large mass, could sustain a nuclear chain reaction."

(E) In that eureka moment, Szilard also felt great fear - of how a bustling city like London and all its inhabitants could be destroyed in an instant as he reflected in his memoir published in 1968:

"Knowing what it would mean - and I knew because I had read HG Wells - I did not want this patent to become public." The Nazis were on the rise and Szilard was deeply anxious about who else might be working on the chain reaction theory and an atomic Bomb. Wells's novel Things To Come, turned into a 1936 film, The Shape of Things to Come, accurately predicted aerial bombardment and an imminent devastating world war. In 1939 Szilard drafted the letter Albert Einstein sent to President Roosevelt warning America that Germany was stockpiling uranium. The Manhattan Project was born.

(F) Szilard and several British scientists worked on it with the US military's massive financial backing. Britons and Americans worked alongside each other in "silos" - each team unaware of how their work fitted together. They ended up moving on from the original enriched uranium "gun" method, which had been conceived in Britain, to create a plutonium implosion weapon instead. Szilard campaigned for a demonstration bomb test in front of the Japanese ambassador to give them a chance to surrender. He was horrified that it was instead dropped on a city. In 1945 Churchill was beaten in the general election and in another shock, the US government passed the 1946 McMahon Act, shutting Britain out of access to the atomic technology it had helped create. William Penney, one of the returning Los Alamos physicists, led the team charged by Prime Minister Clement Atlee with somehow putting together their individual pieces of the puzzle to create a British bomb on a fraction of the American budget.

(G) "It was a huge intellectual feat," Andrew Nahum observes. "Essentially they reworked the calculations that they'd been doing in Los Alamos. They had the services of Klaus Fuchs, who [later] turned out to be an atom spy passing information to the Soviet Union, but he also had a phenomenal memory." Another British physicist, Patrick Blackett, who discussed the Bomb after the war with a German scientist in captivity, observed that there were no real secrets. According to Nahum he said: "It's a bit like making an omelette. Not everyone can make a good one."When Churchill was re - elected in 1951 he "found an almost complete weapon ready to test and was puzzled and fascinated by how Atlee had buried the costs in the budget", says Nahum. "He was very conflicted about whether to go ahead with the test and wrote about whether we should have 'the art and not the article'. Meaning should it be enough to have the capability… [rather] than to have a dangerous weapon in the armoury." 

(H) Churchill was convinced to go ahead with the test, but the much more powerful hydrogen bomb developed three years later worried him greatly.HG Wells died in 1946. He had been working on a film sequel to The Shape of Things To Come that was to include his concerns about the now - realised atomic bomb he'd first imagined. But it was never made. Towards the end of his life, says Nahum, Wells's friendship with Churchill "cooled a little". "Wells considered Churchill as an enlightened but tarnished member of the ruling classes." And Churchill had little time for Wells's increasingly fanciful socialist utopian ideas.

(I) Wells believed technocrats and scientists would ultimately run a peaceful new world order like in The Shape of Things To Come, even if global war destroyed the world as we knew it first. Churchill, a former soldier, believed in the lessons of history and saw diplomacy as the only way to keep mankind from self - destruction in the atomic age. Wells's scientist acquaintance Leo Szilard stayed in America and campaigned for civilian control of atomic energy, equally pessimistic about Wells's idea of a bold new scientist - led world order. If anything Szilard was tormented by the power he had helped unleash. In 1950, he predicted a cobalt bomb that would destroy all life on the planet. In Britain, the legacy of the Bomb was a remarkable period of elite scientific innovation as the many scientists who had worked on weaponry or radar returned to their civilian labs. They gave us the first commercial jet airliner, the Comet, near-supersonic aircraft and rockets, highly engineered computers, and the Jodrell Bank giant moveable radio telescope.

(J) The latter had nearly ended the career of its champion, physicist Bernard Lovell, with its huge costs, until the 1957 launch of Sputnik, when it emerged that Jodrell Bank had the only device in the West that could track it. Nahum says Lovell reflected that "during the war the question was never what will something cost. The question was only can you do it and how soon can we have it? And that was the spirit he took into his peacetime science." Austerity and the tiny size of the British market, compared with America, were to scupper those dreams. But though the Bomb created a new terror, for a few years at least, Britain saw a vision of a benign atomic future, too and believed it could be the shape of things to come. 

Questions 17 – 25:

Reading passage 2 has ten paragraphs, A – J. Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter, A – J, in boxes 17–25 on your answer sheet. Note that one paragraph is not used.

17. Scientific success  

18. Worsening relations 

19. The dawn of the new project 

20. Churchill's confusion 

21. Different perspectives 

22. Horrifying prediction 

23. Leaving Britain behind the project 

24. Long - Term discussion 

25. New idea 

Questions 26 – 27:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 26 – 27 on your answer sheet.

26. How can you describe the relations between Churchill and Wells throughout the years? 

A. Passionate → Friendly → Adverse 

B. Curious → Friendly 

C. Respectful → Friendly → Inhospitable 

D. Friendly → Respectful → Hostile 

27. What is the type of this text? 

A. Science - fiction story 

B. Article from the magazine 

C. Historical text 

D. Wells autobiography

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 28 – 40, which are based on reading passage 3 below. 

As More Tech Start - Ups Stay Private, So Does the Money

Not long ago, if you were a young, brash technologist with a world - conquering start - up idea, there was a good chance you spent much of your waking life working toward a single business milestone: taking your company public.

Though luminaries of the tech industry have always expressed skepticism and even hostility toward the finance industry, tech’s dirty secret was that it looked to Wall Street and the ritual of a public offering for affirmation - not to mention wealth.

But something strange has happened in the last couple of years: The initial public offering of stock has become déclassé. For start - up entrepreneurs and their employees across Silicon Valley, an initial public offering is no longer a main goal. Instead, many founders talk about going public as a necessary evil to be postponed as long as possible because it comes with more problems than benefits.

“If you can get $200 million from private sources, then yeah, I don’t want my company under the scrutiny of the unwashed masses who don’t understand my business,” said Danielle Morrill, the chief executive of Mattermark, a start - up that organizes and sells information about the start - up market. “That’s actually terrifying to me. 

Silicon Valley’s sudden distaste for the I.P.O. – rooted in part in Wall Street’s skepticism of new tech stocks – may be the single most important psychological shift underlying the current tech boom. Staying private affords start - up executives the luxury of not worrying what outsiders think and helps them avoid the quarterly earnings treadmill.

It also means Wall Street is doing what it failed to do in the last tech boom: using traditional metrics like growth and profitability to price companies. Investors have been tough on Twitter, for example, because its user growth has slowed. They have been tough on Box, the cloud - storage company that went public last year, because it remains unprofitable. And the e - commerce company Zulily, which went public last year, was likewise punished when it cut its guidance for future sales.

Scott Kupor, the managing partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and his colleagues said in a recent report that despite all the attention start - ups have received in recent years, tech stocks are not seeing unusually high valuations. In fact, their share of the overall market has remained stable for 14 years, and far off the peak of the late 1990s.

That unwillingness to cut much slack to young tech companies limits risk for regular investors. If the bubble pops, the unwashed masses, if that’s what we are, aren’t as likely to get washed out.

Private investors, on the other hand, are making big bets on so - called unicorns – the Silicon Valley jargon for start - up companies valued at more than a billion dollars. If many of those unicorns flop, most Americans will escape unharmed, because losses will be confined to venture capitalists and hedge funds that have begun to buy into tech start - ups, as well as tech founders and their employees.

The reluctance – and sometimes inability – to go public is spurring the unicorns. By relying on private investors for a longer period of time, start - ups get more runway to figure out sustainable business models. To delay their entrance into the public markets, firms like Airbnb, Dropbox, Palantir, Pinterest, Uber and several other large start - ups are raising hundreds of millions, and in some cases billions, that they would otherwise have gained through an initial public offering.

“These companies are going public, just in the private market,” Dan Levitan, the managing partner of the venture capital firm Maveron, told me recently. He means that in many cases, hedge funds and other global investors that would have bought shares in these firms after an I.P.O. are deciding to go into late - stage private rounds. There is even an oxymoronic term for the act of obtaining private money in place of a public offering: It’s called a “private I.P.O.”

The delay in I.P.O.s has altered how some venture capital firms do business. Rather than waiting for an initial offering, Maveron, for instance, says it now sells its stake in a start - up to other, larger private investors once it has made about 100 times its initial investment. It is the sort of return that once was only possible after an I.P.O.

But there is also a downside to the new aversion to initial offerings. When the unicorns do eventually go public and begin to soar – or whatever it is that fantastical horned beasts tend to do when they’re healthy – the biggest winners will be the private investors that are now bearing most of the risk.

It used to be that public investors who got in on the ground floor of an initial offering could earn historic gains. If you invested $1,000 in Amazon at its I.P.O. in 1997, you would now have nearly $250,000. If you had invested $1,000 in Microsoft in 1986, you would have close to half a million. Public investors today are unlikely to get anywhere near such gains from tech I.P.O.s. By the time tech companies come to the market, the biggest gains have already been extracted by private backers.

Just 53 technology companies went public in 2014, which is around the median since 1980, but far fewer than during the boom of the late 1990s and 2000, when hundreds of tech companies went public annually, according to statistics maintained by Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida. Today’s companies are also waiting longer. In 2014, the typical tech company hitting the markets was 11 years old, compared with a median age of seven years for tech I.P.O.s since 1980.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve asked several founders and investors why they’re waiting; few were willing to speak on the record about their own companies, but their answers all amounted to “What’s the point?”

Initial public offerings were also ways to compensate employees and founders who owned lots of stock, but there are now novel mechanisms – such as selling shares on a secondary market – for insiders to cash in on some of their shares in private companies. Still, some observers cautioned that the new trend may be a bad deal for employees who aren’t given much information about the company’s performance.

“One thing employees may be confused about is when companies tell them, ‘We’re basically doing a private I.P.O.,’ it might make them feel like there’s less risk than there really is,” said Ms. Morrill of Mattermark. But she said it was hard to persuade people that their paper gains may never materialize. “The Kool - Aid is really strong,” she said.

If the delay in I.P.O.s becomes a normal condition for Silicon Valley, some observers say tech companies may need to consider new forms of compensation for workers. “We probably need to fundamentally rethink how do private companies compensate employees, because that’s going to be an issue,” said Mr. Kupor, of Andreessen Horowitz.

During a recent presentation for Andreessen Horowitz’s limited partners – the institutions that give money to the venture firm – Marc Andreessen, the firm’s Co - Founder, told the journalist Dan Primack that he had never seen a sharper divergence in how investors treat public - and private - company chief executives. “They tell the public C.E.O., ‘Give us the money back this quarter,’ and they tell the private C.E.O., ‘No problem, go for 10 years,’ ” Mr. Andreessen said.

At some point this tension will be resolved. “Private valuations will not forever be higher than public valuations,” said Mr. Levitan, of Maveron. “So the question is, Will private markets capitulate and go down or will public markets go up?”

If the private investors are wrong, employees, founders and a lot of hedge funds could be in for a reckoning. But if they’re right, it will be you and me wearing the frown – the public investors who missed out on the next big thing. 

Questions 28 – 31:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 28 – 31 on your answer sheet.

28. How much funds would you gain by now, if you had invested 1000$ in the Amazon in 1997? 

A. 250,000$

B. Close to 500,000$

C. It is not stated in the text

D. No funds

29. Nowadays founders talk about going public as a: 

A. Necessity

B. Benefit

C. Possibility

D. Profit

30. In which time period was the biggest number of companies going public? 

A. Early 1990s

B. Late 1900s and 2000s

C. 1980s

D. Late 1990s

31. According to the text, which of the following is true? 

A. Private valuations may be forever higher than public ones.

B. Public valuations eventually will become even less valuable.

C. The main question is whether the public market increase or the private market decrease.

D. The pressure might last for a long time.

Questions 32 – 36:

Complete the sentences below. Write ONLY ONE WORD from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 32 – 36 on your answer sheet.

32. Skepticism was always expected by the……….. of tech industry. 

33. The new aversion to initial offerings has its……...

34. Selling shares on a secondary market is considered a……….. mechanism. 

35. Workers' compensation might be an………..

36. The public investors who failed to participate in the next big thing might be the ones wearing the……….. 

Questions 37 – 40:

Do the following statements agree with the information in the IELTS reading text? In boxes 37 – 40 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

37. Private investors are bearing most of the risk.               

38. Not many investors were willing to speak on the record.             

39. The typical tech company hitting the markets in 1990s was 5 years old.         

40. Marc Andreessen, the firm's Co - Founder, expressed amazement with divergency in how investors treat public. 

2.3 Đề thi số 3

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 1 – 14, which are based on reading passage 1 below. 

The students’ problem

(A) The college and university accommodation crisis in Ireland has become ‘so chronic’ that students are being forced to sleep rough, share a bed with strangers – or give up on studying altogether.

(B) The deputy president of the Union of Students in Ireland, Kevin Donoghue, said the problem has become particularly acute in Dublin. He told the Irish Mirror: “Students are so desperate, they’re not just paying through the nose to share rooms – they’re paying to share a bed with complete strangers. It reached crisis point last year and it’s only getting worse. “We’ve heard of students sleeping rough; on sofas, floors and in their cars and I have to stress there’s no student in the country that hasn’t been touched by this crisis. “Commutes – which would once have been considered ridiculous – are now normal, whether that’s by bus, train or car and those who drive often end up sleeping in their car if they’ve an early start the next morning.”

(C) Worry is increasing over the problems facing Ireland's 200,000 students as the number increases over the next 15 years. With 165,000 full - time students in Ireland – and that figure expected to increase to around 200,000 within the next 15 years – fears remain that there aren’t enough properties to accommodate current numbers.

(D) Mr. Donoghue added: “The lack of places to live is actually forcing school - leavers out of college altogether. Either they don’t go in the first place or end up having to drop out because they can’t get a room and commuting is just too expensive, stressful and difficult.”

(E) Claims have emerged from the country that some students have been forced to sleep in cars, or out on the streets, because of the enormous increases to rent in the capital. Those who have been lucky enough to find a place to live have had to do so ‘blind’ by paying for accommodation, months in advance, they haven’t even seen just so they will have a roof over their head over the coming year.

(F) According to the Irish Independent, it’s the ‘Google effect’ which is to blame. As Google and other blue - chip companies open offices in and around Dublin’s docklands area, which are ‘on the doorstep of the city’, international professionals have been flocking to the area which will boast 2,600 more apartments, on 50 acres of undeveloped land, over the next three to 10 years.

(G) Rent in the area soared by 15 per cent last year and a two - bedroom apartment overlooking the Grand Canal costs €2,100 (£1,500) per month to rent. Another two - bedroom apartment at Hanover Dock costs €2,350 (almost £1,700) with a three - bedroom penthouse – measuring some 136 square metres – sits at €4,500 (£3,200) per month in rent.

(H) Ireland’s Higher Education Authority admitted this was the first time they had seen circumstances ‘so extreme’ and the Fianna Fáil party leader, Michael Martin, urged on the Government to intervene. He said: “It is very worrying that all of the progress in opening up access to higher education in the last decade – particularly for the working poor – is being derailed because of an entirely foreseeable accommodation crisis.

Questions 1 – 8:

Reading Passage 1 has eight paragraphs, A – H. Choose the most suitable paragraph headings from the list of headings and write the correct letter, A – H, in boxes 1 – 8 on your answer sheet.

1. Cons of the commuting 

2. Thing that students have to go through 

3. Commutes have become common in Ireland nowadays 

4. Danger of the overflow 

5. Cause of the problems 

6. Pricing data 

7. Regression 

8. Eyeless choice 

Questions 9 – 14:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 9 – 14 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. The accommodation problem in Ireland is especially bad in Dublin.           

10. Commutes are considered ridiculous.                  

11. The number of students in Ireland is not likely to increase in the future.                  

12. Due to the opening of the new offices around Dublin, the number of local restaurants will go up significantly over the next 3 to 10 years.                

13. The rent price went up by 15% last year.                 

14. Michael Martin stated that crisis could have been omitted if the government reacted properly. 

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 15 – 30, which are based on reading passage 2 below. 

The science of sleep

We spend a third of our lives doing it. Napoleon, Florence Nightingale and Margaret Thatcher got by on four hours a night. Thomas Edison claimed it was waste of time.

So why do we sleep? This is a question that has baffled scientists for centuries and the answer is, no one is really sure. Some believe that sleep gives the body a chance to recuperate from the day's activities but in reality, the amount of energy saved by sleeping for even eight hours is miniscule - about 50 kCal, the same amount of energy in a piece of toast.

With continued lack of sufficient sleep, the part of the brain that controls language, memory, planning and sense of time is severely affected, practically shutting down. In fact, 17 hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.05% (two glasses of wine). This is the legal drink driving limit in the UK.

Research also shows that sleep - deprived individuals often have difficulty in responding to rapidly changing situations and making rational judgements. In real life situations, the consequences are grave and lack of sleep is said to have been be a contributory factor to a number of international disasters such as Exxon Valdez, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and the Challenger shuttle explosion.

Sleep deprivation not only has a major impact on cognitive functioning but also on emotional and physical health. Disorders such as sleep apnoea which result in excessive daytime sleepiness have been linked to stress and high blood pressure. Research has also suggested that sleep loss may increase the risk of obesity because chemicals and hormones that play a key role in controlling appetite and weight gain are released during sleep.

What happens when we sleep?

What happens every time we get a bit of shut eye? Sleep occurs in a recurring cycle of 90 to 110 minutes and is divided into two categories: Non - REM (which is further split into four stages) and REM sleep.

Non - REM sleep

Stage one: Light Sleep

During the first stage of sleep, we're half awake and half asleep. Our muscle activity slows down and slight twitching may occur. This is a period of light sleep, meaning we can be awakened easily at this stage.

Stage two: True Sleep

Within ten minutes of light sleep, we enter stage two, which lasts around 20 minutes. The breathing pattern and heart rate start to slow down. This period accounts for the largest part of human sleep. 

Stages three and four: Deep Sleep

During stage three, the brain begins to produce delta waves, a type of wave that is large (high amplitude) and slow (low frequency). Breathing and heart rate are at their lowest levels.

Stage four is characterised by rhythmic breathing and limited muscle activity. If we are awakened during deep sleep we do not adjust immediately and often feel groggy and disoriented for several minutes after waking up. Some children experience bed - wetting, night terrors, or sleepwalking during this stage.

REM sleep

The first rapid eye movement (REM) period usually begins about 70 to 90 minutes after we fall asleep. We have around three to five REM episodes a night.

Although we are not conscious, the brain is very active - often more so than when we are awake. This is the period when most dreams occur. Our eyes dart around (hence the name), our breathing rate and blood pressure rise. However, our bodies are effectively paralysed, said to be nature's way of preventing us from acting out our dreams.

After REM sleep, the whole cycle begins again.

How much sleep is required?

There is no set amount of time that everyone needs to sleep, since it varies from person to person. Results from the sleep profiler indicate that people like to sleep anywhere between 5 and 11 hours, with the average being 7.75 hours.

Jim Horne from Loughborough University's Sleep Research Centre has a simple answer though: "The amount of sleep we require is what we need not to be sleepy in the daytime."

Even animals require varied amounts of sleep:

The current world record for the longest period without sleep is 11 days, set by Randy Gardner in 1965. Four days into the research, he began hallucinating. This was followed by a delusion where he thought he was a famous footballer. Surprisingly, Randy was actually functioning quite well at the end of his research and he could still beat the scientist at pinball.

Questions 15 – 22:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in reading passage 1? In boxes 15 – 22 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

15. Thomas Edison slept 4 hours a night.                

16. Scientists don't have a certain answer for why we have to sleep.                    

17. Lack of sleep might cause various problems.                

18. Sleep - deprivation may be the cause of anorexia.               

19. There are four stages of the REM sleep.            

20. According to Jim Horne, we need to sleep as much as it takes to not be sleepy during the day.                       

21. Giraffes require less sleep than dogs.                 

22. After four sleepless days, Randy had a delusion about him being a football celebrity.                      

Questions 23 – 27:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 23 – 27 on your answer sheet.

23. During the Light Sleep stage: 

A. Muscle activity increases 

B. Jiggling might occur  

C. It is not easy to be woken up

D. After waking up, one may experience slight disorientation 

24. Heart rate is at the lowest level during: 

A. Light Sleep stage

B. Rem Sleep 

C. True Sleep stage

D. Third Sleep stage

25. The brain activity is really high: 

A. During REM sleep

B. During the stage of True Sleep 

C. When we are awake

D. During the Deep sleep stage 

26. Humans require at least: 

A. 7.75 hours of sleep

B. 5 hours of sleep 

C. 8 hours

D. There is no set amount of time 

27. Pythons need: 

A. Less sleep than tigers

B. Twice as much sleep as cats 

C. Almost ten times more sleep than giraffes

D. More sleep than any other animal in the world

Questions 28 – 30:

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 28 – 30 on your answer sheet.

28. If we continually lack sleep, the specific part of our brain that controls language, is………... 

29. True Sleep lasts approximately………….. 

30. Although during REM sleep our breathing rate and blood pressure rise, our bodies……………. 

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 31 – 40, which are based on reading passage 3 below.

A new study finds that half of human cultures don't practice romantic lip - on - lip kissing. Animals don't tend to bother either. So how did it evolve?

When you think about it, kissing is strange and a bit icky. You share saliva with someone, sometimes for a prolonged period of time. One kiss could pass on 80 million bacteria, not all of them good.

Yet everyone surely remembers their first kiss, in all its embarrassing or delightful detail, and kissing continues to play a big role in new romances.  

At least, it does in some societies. People in western societies may assume that romantic kissing is a universal human behaviour, but a new analysis suggests that less than half of all cultures actually do it. Kissing is also extremely rare in the animal kingdom.

So what's really behind this odd behaviour? If it is useful, why don't all animals do it – and all humans too? It turns out that the very fact that most animals don't kiss helps explain why some do.

According to a new study of kissing preferences, which looked at 168 cultures from around the world, only 46% of cultures kiss in the romantic sense.

Previous estimates had put the figure at 90%. The new study excluded parents kissing their children, and focused solely on romantic lip - on - lip action between couples.

Many hunter - gatherer groups showed no evidence of kissing or desire to do so. Some even considered it revolting. The Mehinaku tribe in Brazil reportedly said it was "gross". Given that hunter-gatherer groups are the closest modern humans get to living our ancestral lifestyle, our ancestors may not have been kissing either.

The study overturns the belief that romantic kissing is a near - universal human behaviour, says lead author William Jankowiak of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. Instead it seems to be a product of western societies, passed on from one generation to the next, he says. There is some historical evidence to back that up.

Kissing as we do it today seems to be a fairly recent invention, says Rafael Wlodarski of the University of Oxford in the UK. He has trawled through records to find evidence of how kissing has changed. The oldest evidence of a kissing - type behaviour comes from Hindu Vedic Sanskrit texts from over 3,500 years ago. Kissing was described as inhaling each other's soul.

In contrast, Egyptian hieroglyphics picture people close to each other rather than pressing their lips together.

So what is going on? Is kissing something we do naturally, but that some cultures have suppressed? Or is it something modern humans have invented?

We can find some insight by looking at animals.

Our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, do kiss. Primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has seen many instances of chimps kissing and hugging after conflict.

For chimpanzees, kissing is a form of reconciliation. It is more common among males than females. In other words, it is not a romantic behaviour.

Their cousins the bonobos kiss more often, and they often use tongues while doing so. That's perhaps not surprising, because bonobos are highly sexual beings.

When two humans meet, we might shake hands. Bonobos have sex: The so - called bonobo handshake. They also use sex for many other kinds of bonding. So their kisses are not particularly romantic, either.

These two apes are exceptions. As far as we know, other animals do not kiss at all. They may nuzzle or touch their faces together, but even those that have lips don't share saliva or purse and smack their lips together. They don't need to.

Take wild boars. Males produce a pungent smell that females find extremely attractive. The key chemical is a pheromone called androstenone that triggers the females' desire to mate.

From a female's point of view this is a good thing, because males with the most androstonene are also the most fertile. Her sense of smell is so acute, she doesn't need to get close enough to kiss the male. 

The same is true of many other mammals. For example, female hamsters emit a pheromone that gets males very excited. Mice follow similar chemical traces to help them find partners that are genetically different, minimising the risk of accidental incest.

Animals often release these pheromones in their urine. "Their urine is much more pungent," says Wlodarski. "If there's urine present in the environment they can assess compatibility through that."

It's not just mammals that have a great sense of smell. A male black widow spider can smell pheromones produced by a female that tell him if she has recently eaten. To minimise the risk of being eaten, he will only mate with her if she is not hungry.

The point is, animals do not need to get close to each other to smell out a good potential mate.

On the other hand, humans have an atrocious sense of smell, so we benefit from getting close. Smell isn't the only cue we use to assess each other's fitness, but studies have shown that it plays an important role in mate choice.

A study published in 1995 showed that women, just like mice, prefer the smell of men who are genetically different from them. This makes sense, as mating with someone with different genes is likely to produce healthy offspring. Kissing is a great way to get close enough to sniff out your partner's genes.

In 2013, Wlodarski examined kissing preferences in detail. He asked several hundred people what was most important when kissing someone. How they smelled featured highly, and the importance of smell increased when women were most fertile.

It turns out that men also make a version of the pheromone that female boars find attractive. It is present in male sweat, and when women are exposed to it their arousal levels increase slightly.

Pheromones are a big part of how mammals chose a mate, says Wlodarski, and we share some of them. "We've inherited all of our biology from mammals, we've just added extra things through evolutionary time."

On that view, kissing is just a culturally acceptable way to get close enough to another person to detect their pheromones.

In some cultures, this sniffing behaviour turned into physical lip contact. It's hard to pinpoint when this happened, but both serve the same purpose, says Wlodarski.

So if you want to find a perfect match, you could forego kissing and start smelling people instead. You'll find just as good a partner, and you won't get half as many germs. Be prepared for some funny looks, though.

Questions 31 – 35:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 31 – 35 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

31. Both Easter and Wester societies presume that kissing is essential for any part of the world.                        

32. Our ancestors were not likely to kiss.               

33. Chimpanzees and bonbons kiss not for the romance.                       

34. There are other animal, rather than apes, that kiss.                   

35. Scent might be important in choosing your partner.                       

Questions 36 – 39:

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 35 – 39 on your answer sheet. 

36. According to the Mehinaku tribe, kissing is..........

37. Human tradition is to when they meet..........

38. A male black widow will mate with the female if only she is..........

39. Humans benefit from getting close due to the fact that we have an of smell..........

Question 40:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

40. Passage 3 can be described as: 

A. Strictly scientific text 

B. Historical article 

C. Article from a magazine 

D. Dystopian sketch

2.4 Đề thi số 4

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 1 – 12, which are based on reading passage 1 below. 

The potential to sniff out disease

The fact diseases have a smell comes as no surprise - but finding someone or something that can detect them at an early stage could hold huge potential for medicine.

Breath, bodily odours and urine are all amazingly revealing about general health. Even the humble cold can give off an odour, thanks to the thick bacteria - ridden mucus that ends up in the back of the throat. The signs are not apparent to everyone - but some super - smellers are very sensitive to the odours. Joy Milne, for example, noticed her husband's smell had changed shortly before he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

Humans can detect nearly 10,000 different smells. Formed by chemicals in the air, they are absorbed by little hairs, made of extremely sensitive nerve fibres, hanging from the nose's olfactory receptors. And the human sense of smell is 10,000 times more sensitive than the sense of taste. But dogs, as the old joke might have had it, smell even better.

Their ability to detect four times as many odours as humans makes them a potential early warning system for a range of diseases. Research suggesting dogs' could sniff out cancers, for example, was first published about 10 years ago. And there have been many tales of dogs repeatedly sniffing an area of their owner's body, only for it to turn out to be hiding a tumour.

What they are smelling are the "volatile molecules" given off by cells when they become cancerous. Some studies suggest dogs can be 93% accurate. Others suggest they can detect very small tumours before clinical tests can. And yet more studies have produced mixed results.

Does cancer smell?

At Milton Keynes University Hospital, a small team has recently begun to collect human urine samples to test dogs' ability to detect the smell of prostate cancer. The patients had symptoms such as difficulty urinating or a change in flow, which could turn out to be prostate, bladder or liver cancer.

Rowena Fletcher, head of research and development at the hospital, says the role of the dogs - which have been trained by Medical Detection Dogs - is to pick out samples that smell of cancer. Further down the line, a clinical test will show if the dogs' diagnosis is correct. She says the potential for using dogs in this way is far - reaching - even if it is not practical to have a dog in every surgery.

"We hope one day that there could be an electronic machine on every GP's desk which could test a urine sample for diseases by smelling it," she says. "But first we need to pick up the pattern of what the dogs are smelling."

And that's the key. Dogs can't tell us what their noses are detecting, but scientists believe that different cancers could produce different smells, although some might also be very similar.

Electronic noses

Lab tests to understand what these highly - trained dogs are smelling could then inform the development of 'electronic noses' to detect the same molecules. These might then give rise to better diagnostic tests in the future. The potential for using smell to test for a wide range of diseases is huge, Ms Fletcher says.

Bacteria, cancers and chronic diseases could all have their own odour - which may be imperceptible to only the most sensitive humans, but obvious to dogs. It may be possible in the future to use disease odours as the basis for a national screening programme or to test everybody at risk of a certain cancer in a particular age group.

However, there are fewer than 20 dogs in the UK trained to detect cancer at present. Training more will take more funding and time. On the positive side, all dogs are eligible to be trained provided they are keen on searching and hunting. Whatever their breed or size, it's our four - legged friend's astounding sense of smell which could unlock a whole new way of detecting human diseases.

Questions 1 – 5:

Do the following statements agree with the information in the IELTS reading text? In boxes 1 – 5 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

1. You can have a specific smell even due to simple cold.                

2. Human sense of taste is 10,000 less sensetive than human sense of smell.        

3. Dogs and cats can sniff out different diseases.          

4. Doctors believe that different cancers might have the same specific smell.          

5. There are more than 20 dogs in the UK trained to detect cancer.            

Questions 6 – 9:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 6 – 9 on your answer sheet. 

6. All the studies suggest that dogs: 

A. Can be 93% accurate.

B. Can detect very small tumours.

C. Can't detect tumours at all.

D. Different studies have shown different results.

7. What scientists give dogs to detect cancer? 

A. Urine samples

B. Bacterias 

C. Different odours

D. Nothing 

8. What's an electronic nose? 

A. A specific tool for dogs

B. A gadget to diagnose diseases

C. A recovery tool for ill patients 

D. An artificial nose 

9. The main objective of this passage is to: 

A. Bring awareness to the cancer problem 

B. Show us how good dogs are at detecting cancer 

C. Show us how important it can be to be able to diagnose a disease by an odour

D. Tell us about new technologies

Questions 10 – 12:

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 10 – 12 on your answer sheet.

10. Scientists hope that one day an will be on every desk.

11. Electronic nose would help to detect the .

12. Dogs can  a new way of diagnosing diseases.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 13 – 26, which are based on reading passage 2 below.

Trash Talk

Sorting through a mountain of pottery to track the Roman oil trade.

(A) In the middle of Rome’s trendiest neighborhood, surrounded by sushi restaurants and nightclubs with names like Rodeo Steakhouse and Love Story, sits the ancient world’s biggest garbage dump – a 150 - foot - tall mountain of discarded Roman amphoras, the shipping drums of the ancient world. It takes about 20 minutes to walk around Monte Testaccio, from the Latin testa and Italian cocci, both meaning “potsherd.” But despite its size – almost a mile in circumference – it’s easy to walk by and not really notice unless you are headed for some excellent pizza at Velavevodetto, a restaurant literally stuck into the mountain’s side. Most local residents don’t know what’s underneath the grass, dust, and scattering of trees. Monte Testaccio looks like a big hill, and in Rome people are accustomed to hills.

(B) Although a garbage dump may lack the attraction of the Forum or Colosseum, I have come to Rome to meet the team excavating Monte Testaccio and to learn how scholars are using its evidence to understand the ancient Roman economy. As the modern global economy depends on light sweet crude, so too the ancient Romans depended on oil – olive oil. And for more than 250 years, from at least the first century A.D, an enormous number of amphoras filled with olive oil came by ship from the Roman provinces into the city itself, where they were unloaded, emptied, and then taken to Monte Testaccio and thrown away. In the absence of written records or literature on the subject, studying these amphoras is the best way to answer some of the most vexing questions concerning the Roman economy – How did it operate? How much control did the emperor exert over it? Which sectors were supported by the state and which operated in a free market environment or in the private sector?

(C) Monte Testaccio stands near the Tiber River in what was ancient Rome’s commercial district. Many types of imported foodstuffs, including oil, were brought into the city and then stored for later distribution in the large warehouses that lined the river. So, professor, just how many amphoras are there?” I ask José Remesal of the University of Barcelona, Co - director of the Monte Testaccio excavations. It’s the same question that must occur to everyone who visits the site when they realize that the crunching sounds their footfalls make are not from walking on fallen leaves, but on pieces of amphoras. (Don’t worry, even the small pieces are very sturdy.) Remesal replies in his deep baritone, “Something like 25 million complete ones. Of course, it’s difficult to be exact,” he adds with a typical Mediterranean shrug. I, for one, find it hard to believe that the whole mountain is made of amphoras without any soil or rubble. Seeing the incredulous look on my face as I peer down into a 10-foot-deep trench, Remesal says, “Yes, it’s really only amphoras.” I can’t imagine another site in the world where archaeologists find so much – about a ton of pottery every day. On most Mediterranean excavations, pottery washing is an activity reserved for blisteringly hot afternoons when digging is impossible. Here, it is the only activity for most of Remesal’s team, an international group of specialists and students from Spain and the United States. During each year’s two-week field season, they wash and sort thousands of amphoras handles, bodies, shoulders, necks, and tops, counting and cataloguing, and always looking for stamped names, painted names, and numbers that tell each amphora’s story.

(D) Although scholars worked at Monte Testaccio beginning in the late 19th century, it’s only within the past 30 years that they have embraced the role amphoras can play in understanding the nature of the Roman imperial economy. According to Remesal, the main challenge archaeologists and economic historians face is the lack of “serial documentation,” that is, documents for consecutive years that reflect a true chronology. This is what makes Monte Testaccio a unique record of Roman commerce and provides a vast amount of datable evidence in a clear and unambiguous sequence. “There’s no other place where you can study economic history, food production and distribution, and how the state controlled the transport of a product,” Remesal says. “It’s really remarkable.”

Questions 13 – 16:

Reading passage 2 has four paragraphs A – D. Which paragraph contains what information? Write the correct letter, A – D, in boxes 13 – 16 on your answer sheet.

13. Questions about the Roman economy 

14. A unique feature 

15. Description of the dump 

16. Dialogue with a professor 

Questions 17 – 21:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 17 – 21 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

17. World’s biggest garbage dump is surrounded by restaurants and nightclubs.                               

18. The garbage dump is as popular as the Colosseum in Rome.                

19. Ancient Roman economy depended on oil.                 

20. There is no information on how many amphoras are there.                  

21. Remesal says that Monte Testaccio is a great place to study economics.                

Questions 22 – 26:

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 22 – 26 on your answer sheet.

22. It is unknown for……….. what’s underneath the grass, dust, and scattering of trees. 

23. Monte Testaccio stands near the ancient Rome’s………..

24. Remesal doesn't believe that the whole mountain is made of……….. without any soil or rubble.

25. Remesal’s team washes and sorts thousands of amphoras each year’s two - week ……….. 

26. ……….. started working at Monte Testaccio in the late 19th century.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 27 – 40, which are based on reading passage 3 below. 

Mysterious dark matter may not always have been dark

Dark matter particles may have interacted extensively with normal matter long ago, when the universe was very hot, a new study suggests. The nature of dark matter is currently one of the greatest mysteries in science. The invisible substance – which is detectable via its gravitational influence on "normal" matter - is thought to make up five - sixths of all matter in the universe.

Astronomers began suspecting the existence of dark matter when they noticed the cosmos seemed to possess more mass than stars could account for. For example, stars circle the center of the Milky Way so fast that they should overcome the gravitational pull of the galaxy's core and zoom into the intergalactic void. Most scientists think dark matter provides the gravity that helps hold these stars back. Astronomers know more about what dark matter is not than what it actually is. 

Scientists have mostly ruled out all known ordinary materials as candidates for dark matter. The consensus so far is that this missing mass is made up of new species of particles that interact only very weakly with ordinary matter. One potential clue about the nature of dark matter has to do with the fact that it's five times more abundant than normal matter, researchers said.

"This may seem a lot, and it is, but if dark and ordinary matter were generated in a completely independent way, then this number is puzzling," said study Co - Author Pavlos Vranas, a particle physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. "Instead of five, it could have been a million or a billion. Why five?" The researchers suggest a possible solution to this puzzle: Dark matter particles once interacted often with normal matter, even though they barely do so now. "This may have happened in the early universe, when the temperature was very high – so high that both ordinary and dark matter were 'melted' in a plasma state made up of their ingredients".

The protons and neutrons making up atomic nuclei are themselves each made up of a trio of particles known as quarks. The researchers suggest dark matter is also made of a composite "stealth" particle, which is composed of a quartet of component particles and is difficult to detect (like a stealth airplane). The scientists' supercomputer simulations suggest these composite particles may have masses ranging up to more than 200 billion electron - volts, which is about 213 times a proton's mass. Quarks each possess fractional electrical charges of positive or negative one - third or two - thirds. In protons, these add up to a positive charge, while in neutrons, the result is a neutral charge. Quarks are confined within protons and neutrons by the so-called "strong interaction."

The researchers suggest that the component particles making up stealth dark matter particles each have a fractional charge of positive or negative one - half, held together by a "dark form" of the strong interaction. Stealth dark matter particles themselves would only have a neutral charge, leading them to interact very weakly at best with ordinary matter, light, electric fields and magnetic fields. The researchers suggest that at the extremely high temperatures seen in the newborn universe, the electrically charged components of stealth dark matter particles could have interacted with ordinary matter. However, once the universe cooled, a new, powerful and as yet unknown force might have bound these component particles together tightly to form electrically neutral composites. Stealth dark matter particles should be stable – not decaying over eons, if at all, much like protons. However, the researchers suggest the components making up stealth dark matter particles can form different unstable composites that decay shortly after their creation. "For example, one could have composite particles made out of just two component particles," Vranas said.

These unstable particles might have masses of about 100 billion electron - volts or more, and could be created by particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) beneath the France - Switzerland border. They could also have an electric charge and be visible to particle detectors, Vranas said. Experiments at the LHC, or sensors designed to spot rare instances of dark matter colliding with ordinary matter, "may soon find evidence of, or rule out, this new stealth dark matter theory," Vranas said in a statement. If stealth dark matter exists, future research can investigate whether there are any effects it might have on the cosmos.

"Are there any signals in the sky that telescopes may find?" Vranas said. "In order to answer these questions, our calculations will require larger supercomputing resources. Fortunately, supercomputing development is progressing fast towards higher computational speeds." The scientists, the Lattice Strong Dynamics Collaboration, will detail their findings in an upcoming issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

Questions 27 – 34:

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 27 – 34 on your answer sheet.

27. One of the greatest mysteries in science is the nature of the. 

28. All known material have been mostly  as candidates for dark matter. 

29. Dark matter is a lot more  than normal matter. 

30. Due to high temperature, both ordinary and dark matter were 'melted' in a.

31. It is confirmed that quarks are within protons and neutrons by. 

32. It is suggested that stealth dark matter particle would only have a.

33. Experiments at the LHC may soon find of the new stealth dark matter theory.

34. To answer questions we require resources.

Questions 35 – 39:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 35 – 39 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

35. The nature of dark matter is a mystery.              

36. It is likely that dark matter consists of ordinary materials.             

37. Quarks have neither positive nor negative charge.                 

38. Protons are not stable.              

39. Dark matter has a serious impact on the cosmos.                 

Question 40:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

40. Passage 3 is: 

A. a scientific article

B. a sci - fi article

C. a short sketch

D. an article from a magazine

2.5 Đề thi số 5

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 1 – 12, which are based on reading passage 1 below. 

Scientists are mapping the world's largest volcano

(A) After 36 days of battling sharks that kept biting their equipment, scientists have returned from the remote Pacific Ocean with a new way of looking at the world’s largest - and possibly most mysterious - volcano, Tamu Massif.

(B) The team has begun making 3 - D maps that offer the clearest look yet at the underwater mountain, which covers an area the size of New Mexico. In the coming months, the maps will be refined and the data analyzed, with the ultimate goal of figuring out how the mountain was formed.

(C) It's possible that the western edge of Tamu Massif is actually a separate mountain that formed at a different time, says William Sager, a geologist at the University of Houston who led the expedition. That would explain some differences between the western part of the mountain and the main body. 

(D) The team also found that the massif (as such a massive mountain is known) is highly pockmarked with craters and cliffs. Magnetic analysis provides some insight into the mountain’s genesis, suggesting that part of it formed through steady releases of lava along the intersection of three mid - ocean ridges, while part of it is harder to explain. A working theory is that a large plume of hot mantle rock may have contributed additional heat and material, a fairly novel idea.

(E) Tamu Massif lies about 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) east of Japan. It is a rounded dome, or shield volcano, measuring 280 by 400 miles (450 by 650 kilometers). Its top lies more than a mile (about 2,000 meters) below the ocean surface and is 50 times larger than the biggest active volcano on Earth, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa. Sager published a paper in 2013 that said the main rise of Tamu Massif is most likely a single volcano, instead of a complex of multiple volcanoes that smashed together. But he couldn’t explain how something so big formed. 

(F) The team used sonar and magnetometers (which measure magnetic fields) to map more than a million square kilometers of the ocean floor in great detail. Sager and students teamed up with Masao Nakanishi of Japan’s Chiba University, with Sager receiving funding support from the National Geographic Society and the Schmidt Ocean Institute.

(G) Since sharks are attracted to magnetic fields, the toothy fish “were all over our magnetometer, and it got pretty chomped up,” says Sager. When the team replaced the device with a spare, that unit was nearly ripped off by more sharks. The magnetic field research suggests the mountain formed relatively quickly, sometime around 145 million years ago. Part of the volcano sports magnetic "stripes," or bands with different magnetic properties, suggesting that lava flowed out evenly from the mid - ocean ridges over time and changed in polarity each time Earth's magnetic field reversed direction. The central part of the peak is more jumbled, so it may have formed more quickly or through a different process. 

(H) Sager isn’t sure what caused the magnetic anomalies yet, but suspects more complex forces were at work than simply eruptions from the ridges. It’s possible a deep plume of hot rock from the mantle also contributed to the volcano’s formation, he says. Sager hopes the analysis will also help explain about a dozen other similar features on the ocean floor, as well as add to the overall understanding of plate tectonics.

Questions 1 – 8:

Reading Passage 1 has eight paragraphs, A – H. What paragraph has the following information? Write the correct letter, A – H, in boxes 1 – 8 on your answer sheet.

1. Possible explanation of the differences between parts of the mountain 

2. Size data 

3. A new way of looking 

4. Problem with sharks 

5. Uncertainty of the anomalies 

6. Equipment which measures magnetic fields 

7. The start of making maps 

8. A working theory 

Questions 9 – 12:

Complete the sentences using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage. Write your answers in boxes 9 – 12 on your answer sheet. 

9. A large plume of ………… rock may have contributed additional heat and material. 

10.Tamu Massif is a…………, or shield volcano. 

11. Replacing the device with a ………… didn't help, as that unit was nearly ripped off by more sharks. 

12. Sager believes that the magnetic anomalies were caused by something more than ………… from the ridges.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 13 – 28, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. 

We know the city where HIV first emerged

It is easy to see why AIDS seemed so mysterious and frightening when US medics first encountered it 35 years ago. The condition robbed young, healthy people of their strong immune system, leaving them weak and vulnerable. And it seemed to come out of nowhere.

Today we know much more how and why HIV – the virus that leads to AIDS – has become a global pandemic. Unsurprisingly, sex workers unwittingly played a part. But no less important were the roles of trade, the collapse of colonialism, and 20th Century sociopolitical reform.

HIV did not really appear out of nowhere, of course. It probably began as a virus affecting monkeys and apes in west central Africa.

From there it jumped species into humans on several occasions, perhaps because people ate infected bushmeat. Some people carry a version of HIV closely related to that seen in sooty mangabey monkeys, for instance. But HIV that came from monkeys has not become a global problem.

We are more closely related to apes, like gorillas and chimpanzees, than we are to monkeys. But even when HIV has passed into human populations from these apes, it has not necessarily turned into a widespread health issue.

HIV originating from apes typically belongs to a type of virus called HIV - 1. One is called HIV - 1 group O, and human cases are largely confined to west Africa.

In fact, only one form of HIV has spread far and wide after jumping to humans. This version, which probably originated from chimpanzees, is called HIV - 1 group M (for "major"). More than 90% of HIV infections belong in group M. Which raises an obvious question: what's so special about HIV - 1 group M?

A study published in 2014 suggests a surprising answer: there might be nothing particularly special about group M.

It is not especially infectious, as you might expect. Instead, it seems that this form of HIV simply took advantage of events. "Ecological rather than evolutionary factors drove its rapid spread," says Nuno Faria at the University of Oxford in the UK.

Faria and his colleagues built a family tree of HIV, by looking at a diverse array of HIV genomes collected from about 800 infected people from central Africa.

Genomes pick up new mutations at a fairly steady rate, so by comparing two genome sequences and counting the differences they could work out when the two last shared a common ancestor. This technique is widely used, for example to establish that our common ancestor with chimpanzees lived at least 7 million years ago.

"RNA viruses such as HIV evolve approximately 1 million times faster than human DNA," says Faria. This means the HIV "molecular clock" ticks very fast indeed.

It ticks so fast, Faria and his colleagues found that the HIV genomes all shared a common ancestor that existed no more than 100 years ago. The HIV - 1 group M pandemic probably first began in the 1920s.

Then the team went further. Because they knew where each of the HIV samples had been collected, they could place the origin of the pandemic in a specific city: Kinshasa, now the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

At this point, the researchers changed tack. They turned to historical records to work out why HIV infections in an African city in the 1920s could ultimately spark a pandemic.

A likely sequence of events quickly became obvious. In the 1920s, DR Congo was a Belgian colony and Kinshasa – then known as Leopoldville – had just been made the capital. The city became a very attractive destination for young working men seeking their fortunes, and for sex workers only too willing to help them spend their earnings. The virus spread quickly through the population.

It did not remain confined to the city. The researchers discovered that the capital of the Belgian Congo was, in the 1920s, one of the best connected cities in Africa. Taking full advantage of an extensive rail network used by hundreds of thousands of people each year, the virus spread to cities 900 miles (1500km) away in just 20 years.

Everything was in place for an explosion in infection rates in the 1960s. The beginning of that decade brought another change.

Belgian Congo gained its independence, and became an attractive source of employment to French speakers elsewhere in the world, including Haiti. When these young Haitians returned home a few years later they took a particular form of HIV - 1 group M, called "subtype B", to the western side of the Atlantic.

It arrived in the US in the 1970s, just as sexual liberation and homophobic attitudes were leading to concentrations of gay men in cosmopolitan cities like New York and San Francisco. Once more, HIV took advantage of the sociopolitical situation to spread quickly through the US and Europe.

"There is no reason to believe that other subtypes would not have spread as quickly as subtype B, given similar ecological circumstances," says Faria.

The story of the spread of HIV is not over yet.

For instance, in 2015 there was an outbreak in the US state of Indiana, associated with drug injecting.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been analyzing the HIV genome sequences and data about location and time of infection, says Yonatan Grad at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. "These data help to understand the extent of the outbreak, and will further help to understand when public health interventions have worked."

This approach can work for other pathogens. In 2014, Grad and his colleague Marc Lipsitch published an investigation into the spread of drug - resistant gonorrhoea across the US.

"Because we had representative sequences from individuals in different cities at different times and with different sexual orientations, we could show the spread was from the west of the country to the east," says Lipsitch.

What's more, they could confirm that the drug - resistant form of gonorrhoea appeared to have circulated predominantly in men who have sex with men. That could prompt increased screening in these at-risk populations, in an effort to reduce further spread.

In other words, there is real power to studying pathogens like HIV and gonorrhoea through the prism of human society.

Questions 13 – 20:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 13 – 20 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

13. AIDS were first encountered 35 years ago.                

14. The most important role in developing AIDS as a pandemia was played by sex workers.                    

15. It is believed that HIV appeared out of nowhere.                

16. Humans are not closely related to monkey.              

17. HIV – 1 group O originated in 1920s.                

18. HIV – 1 group M has something special.                

19. Human DNA evolves approximately 1 million times slower than HIV.       

20. Scientists believe that HIV already existed in 1920s.                

Questions 21 – 28:

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 21 – 28 on your answer sheet.

21. Scientists can place the origin of  in a specific city. 

22. Kinshasa was a very  for young working men and many others willing to spend their money. 

23. In just 20 years virus managed to  to cities 900 miles away. 

24. Belgian Congo became an attractive source of employment to French speakers when it gained. 

25. HIV has spread quickly through the US and Europe because of the.

26. It is said that outbreak in Indiana was associated with. 

27. The same approach as for HIV can work for. 

28. The form of gonorrhoea that is drug – resistant appeared to have  in men who have sex with men.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 29 – 40, which are based on reading passage 3 below.

Penguins' anti - ice trick revealed

Scientists studying penguins’ feathers have revealed how the birds stay ice free when hopping in and out of below zero waters in the Antarctic. A combination of nano - sized pores and an extra water repelling preening oil the birds secrete is thought to give Antarctic penguins’ feathers superhydrophobic properties. Researchers in the US made the discovery using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to study penguin feathers in extreme detail. Antarctic penguins live in one of Earth’s most extreme environments, facing temperatures that drop to - 40C, winds with speeds of 40 metres per second and water that stays around - 2.2C. But even in these sub - zero conditions, the birds manage to prevent ice from coating their feathers.

“They are an amazing species, living in extreme conditions, and great swimmers. Basically they are living engineering marvels,” says research team member Dr Pirouz Kavehpour, professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Birds’ feathers are known to have hydrophobic, or non - wetting, properties. But scientists from UCLA, University of Massachusetts Amherst and SeaWorld, wanted to know what makes Antarctic penguins’ feathers extra ice repelling.

“What we learn here is how penguins combine oil and nano - structures on the feathers to produce this effect to perfection,” explains Kavehpour. By analysing feathers from different penguin species, the researchers discovered Antarctic species the gentoo penguin (Pygoscelis papua) was more superhydrophobic compared with a species found in warmer climes – the Magellanic penguin (Spheniscus magellanicus) – whose breeding sites include Argentinian desert.

Gentoo penguins’ feathers contained tiny pores which trapped air, making the surface hydrophobic. And they were smothered with a special preening oil, produced by a gland near the base of the tail, with which the birds cover themselves. Together, these properties mean that in the wild, droplets of water on Antarctic penguins’ superhydrophobic feathers bead up on the surface like spheres – formations that, according to the team, could provide geometry that delays ice formation, since heat cannot easily flow out of the water if the droplet only has minimal contact with the surface of the feather.

“The shape of the droplet on the surface dictates the delay in freezing,” explains Kavehpour. The water droplets roll off the penguin's feathers before they have time to freeze, the researchers propose. Penguins living in the Antarctic are highly evolved to cope with harsh conditions: their short outer feathers overlap to make a thick protective layer over fluffier feathers which keep them warm. Under their skin, a thick layer of fat keeps them insulated. The flightless birds spend a lot of time in the sea and are extremely agile and graceful swimmers, appearing much more awkward on land.

Kavehpour was inspired to study Antarctic penguins’ feathers after watching the birds in a nature documentary: “I saw these birds moving in and out of water, splashing everywhere. Yet there is no single drop of frozen ice sticking to them,” he tells BBC Earth. His team now hopes its work could aid design of better man - made surfaces which minimise frost formation.

“I would love to see biomimicking of these surfaces for important applications, for example, de - icing of aircrafts,” says Kavehpour. Currently, airlines spend a lot of time and money using chemical de - icers on aeroplanes, as ice can alter the vehicles’ aerodynamic properties and can even cause them to crash.

Questions 29 – 33:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 29 – 33 on your answer sheet. 

29. Penguins stay ice free due to: 

A. A combination of nano - sized pores

B. An extra water repelling preening oil

C. A combination of nano - sized pores and an extra water repelling preening oil

D. A combination of various factors

30. Antarctic penguins experience extreme weather conditions, including:

A. Low temperature, that can drop to - 40

B. Severe wind, up to 40 metres per second

C. Below zero water temperature

D. All of the above

31. In line 5 words engineering marvels mean: 

A. That penguins are very intelligent

B. That penguins are good swimmers

C. That penguis are well prepared to living in severe conditions

D. Both B and C

32. Penguis feather has everything, EXCEPT:

A. Hydrophobic properties

B. Extra ice repelling

C. Soft structures

D. Oil structures

33. The gentoo penguin:

A. Is less superhydrophobic compared to the Magellanic penguin

B. Has feathers that contain tiny pores

C. Can't swim

D. Lives in Argentinian desert

Questions 34 – 40:

Complete the sentences below. Write ONLY ONE WORD from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes. 34 – 40 on your answer sheet.

34. Formations like………….. could provide geometry that delays ice formation. 

35. The delay in freezing is dictated by the …………..  of the droplet. 

36. Penguins in Antarctic are highly evolved to be able to cope with………….. conditions. 

37. Penguins are insulated by a………….. layer of fat. 

38. On the land, penguins appear much more ………….. than in the sea. 

39. The inspiration came to Kavehpour after watching a…………..  about penguins. 

40. Kavehpour would like to see…………..  surfaces which minimise frost formation.

2.6 Đề thi số 6

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 1–16, which are based on reading passage 1 below.

Why are Americans so angry?

Americans are generally known for having a positive outlook on life, but with the countdown for November's presidential election now well under way, polls show voters are angry. This may explain the success of non - mainstream candidates such as Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Bernie Sanders. But what is fuelling the frustration? 

A CNN/ ORC poll carried out in December 2015 suggests 69% of Americans are either "very angry" or "somewhat angry" about "the way things are going" in the US. And the same proportion - 69% - are angry because the political system "seems to only be working for the insiders with money and power, like those on Wall Street or in Washington," according to a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll from November. Many people are not only angry, they are angrier than they were a year ago, according to an NBC/Esquire survey last month - particularly Republicans (61%), somewhat white people (54%), but also 42% of Democrats, 43% of Latinos and 33% of African Americans.

Candidates have sensed the mood and are adopting the rhetoric. Donald Trump, who has arguably tapped into voters' frustration better than any other candidate, says he is "very, very angry" and will "gladly accept the mantle of anger" while rival Republican Ben Carson says he has encountered "many Americans who are discouraged and angry as they watch the American dream slipping away". Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders says: "I am angry and millions of Americans are angry," while Hillary Clinton says she "understands why people get angry". Here are five reasons why some voters feel the American dream is in tatters.

1. Economy 

"The failure of the economy to deliver real progress to middle - class and working - class Americans over the past 15 years is the most fundamental source of public anger and disaffection in the US," says William Galston, an expert in governance studies at the Brookings Institution think tank. Although the country may have recovered from the recession - economic output has rebounded and unemployment rates have fallen from 10% in 2009 to 5% in 2015 - Americans are still feeling the pinch in their wallets. Household incomes have, generally speaking, been stagnant for 15 years. In 2014, the median household income was $53,657, according to the US Census Bureau - compared with $57,357 in 2007 and $57,843 in 1999 (adjusted for inflation). There is also a sense that many jobs are of lower quality and opportunity is dwindling, says Galston. "The search for explanations can very quickly degenerate into the identification of villains in American politics. On the left it is the billionaires, the banks, and Wall Street. On the right it is immigrants, other countries taking advantage of us and the international economy - they are two sides of the same political coin." 

2. Immigration

America's demographics are changing - nearly 59 million immigrants have arrived in the US since 1965, not all of whom entered the country legally. Forty years ago, 84% of the American population was made up of non - Hispanic white people - by last year the figure was 62%, according to Pew Research. It projects this trend will continue, and by 2055 non - Hispanic white people will make up less than half the population. Pew expects them to account for only 46% of the population by 2065. By 2055, more Asians than any other ethnic group are expected to move to US. 

"It's been an era of huge demographic, racial, cultural, religious and generational change," says Paul Taylor, author of The Next America. "While some celebrate these changes, others deplore them. Some older, whiter voters do not recognise the country they grew up in. There is a sense of alien tribes," he says. 

The US currently has 11.3 million illegal immigrants. Migrants often become a target of anger, says Roberto Suro, an immigration expert at the University of Southern California. "There is a displacement of anxiety and they become the face of larger sources of tensions, such as terrorism, jobs and dissatisfaction. We saw that very clearly when Donald Trump switched from [complaining about] Mexicans to Muslims without skipping a beat after San Bernardino," he says, referring to the shooting in California in December that left 14 people dead.

3. Washington

"When asked if they trust the government, 89% of Republicans and 72% of Democrats say "only sometimes" or "never", according to Pew Research. Six out of 10 Americans think the government has too much power, a survey by Gallup suggests, while the government has been named as the top problem in the US for two years in a row - above issues such as the economy, jobs and immigration, according to the organisation. 

The gridlock on Capitol Hill and the perceived impotence of elected officials has led to resentment among 20 to 30% of voters, says polling expert Karlyn Bowman, from the American Enterprise Institute. "People see politicians fighting and things not getting done - plus the responsibilities of Congress have grown significantly since the 1970s and there is simply more to criticise. People feel more distant from their government and sour on it," she says. 

William Galston thinks part of the appeal of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is down to frustration with what some see as a failing system. "So on the right you have someone who is running as a 'strong man', a Berlusconi and Putin, who will get things done, and on the left you have someone who is rejecting incrementalism and calling for a political revolution," he says. 

Ted Cruz, who won the Republican caucuses in Iowa, is also running as an anti - establishment candidate. "Tonight is a victory for every American who's watched in dismay as career politicians in Washington in both parties refuse to listen and too often fail to keep their commitments to the people," he said on Monday night.

4. America's place in the world

America is used to being seen as a superpower but the number of Americans that think the US "stands above all other countries in the world" went from 38% in 2012 to 28% in 2014, Pew Research suggests. Seventy percent of Americans also think the US is losing respect internationally, according to a 2013 poll by the centre. 

"For a country that is used to being on top of the world, the last 15 years haven't been great in terms of foreign policy. There's a feeling of having been at war since 9/11 that's never really gone away, a sense America doesn't know what it wants and that things aren't going our way," says Roberto Suro. The rise of China, the failure to defeat the Taliban and the slow progress in the fight against the so - called Islamic State group has contributed to the anxiety. 

Americans are also more afraid of the prospect of terrorist attacks than at any time since 9/11, according to a New York Times/CBS poll. The American reaction to the San Bernardino shooting was different to the French reaction to the Paris attacks, says Galston. "Whereas the French rallied around the government, Americans rallied against it. There is an impression that the US government is failing in its most basic obligation to keep country and people safe."

5. Divided nation

Democrats and Republicans have become more ideologically polarised than ever. The typical (median), Republican is now more conservative in his or her core social, economic and political views than 94% of Democrats, compared with 70% in 1994, according to Pew Research. The median Democrat, meanwhile, is more liberal than 92% of Republicans, up from 64%. 

The study also found that the share of Americans with a highly negative view of the opposing party has doubled, and that the animosity is so deep, many would be unhappy if a close relative married someone of a different political persuasion. 

This polarisation makes reaching common ground on big issues such as immigration, healthcare and gun control more complicated. The deadlock is, in turn, angering another part of the electorate. "Despite this rise in polarisation in America, a large mass in the middle are pragmatic. They aren't totally disengaged, they don't want to see Washington gridlocked, but they roll their eyes at the nature of this discourse," says Paul Taylor. This group includes a lot of young people and tends to eschew party labels. "If they voted," he says, "they could play an important part of the election." 

Questions 1 – 8:

Complete the sentences below using ONLY ONE WORD for each answer.

1. Conducted poll in December says that most Americans are  with the way that hing are going. 

2. Many people are angrier than a year ago, particulary.

3.The economical rates are decreasing, even though the country has recovered from the.

4. Billionaires and immigrants are the two sides of one political.

5. It is expected that the  will be the biggest ethnic group to move in the USA by the year 2055. 

6. It has been an era of demographic, racial, cultural, religious and  change. 

7. Roberto Suro says that migrants might become a  of anger. 

8. Six to ten Americans believe that government has too much. 

Questions 9 – 16:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 9 – 16 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. The Congress has more responsibilities now than in 1970s.              

10. William Galston believes that the appeal of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is growing bigger each day.                 

11. Ted Cruz is running as an anti - establishment candidate.              

12. The number of Americans who think that the US "stands above all other countries in the world" increased by 10% in 2014 compared to 2012.            

13. Since 9/11 there's been a feeling of war in America and it's still here.               

14. The Americans had the same reaction to the San Bernardino shooting as French to the Paris attacks.              

15. The ideological diversity between the Democrats and the Republicans is stronger than ever now.              

16. The pragmatic mass consists of a lot of young people. 

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 17 – 28, which are based on reading passage 2 below. 

Do E - Cigarettes make it harder to stop smoking?

(A) People trying to give up smoking often use E - Cigarettes to help wean themselves off tobacco. Most experts think they are safer than cigarettes but a surprising paper was published recently - it suggests that people who use e-cigarettes are less successful at giving up smoking than those who don't. "E - Cigarettes WON'T help you quit," reported the Daily Mail. "Smokers using vapers are '28% less likely to ditch traditional cigarettes,'" read the paper's headline. The story was reported on many other websites around the world, including CBS: "Study: E - Cigarettes don't help smokers quit," it said.

(B) The study causing the fuss was written by researchers at the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, and published in one of the Lancet's sister journals, Lancet Respiratory Medicine. It is a meta - analysis, which means the authors reviewed the academic literature already available on the topic. They sifted out the weaker papers - ones that didn't have control groups, for example - and were left with 20. 

(C) The conclusion? Smokers who use E - Cigarettes have a 28% lower chance of quitting than smokers who don't use them, according to Prof Stanton Glantz, one of the authors. But while the conclusion is surprising, so is the number of academics who have criticised the paper. One was Ann McNeill, professor of tobacco addiction at Kings College London, whose own research is included in Glantz's analysis. "This review is not scientific," she wrote on the Science Media Centre website. "The information… about two studies that I co-authored is either inaccurate or misleading… I believe the findings should therefore be dismissed.

(D) "I am concerned at the huge damage this publication may have - many more smokers may continue smoking and die if they take from this piece of work that all evidence suggests E - cigarettes do not help you quit smoking; that is not the case." Prof Peter Hajek, director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit at the Wolfson Institute also called the findings "grossly misleading". 

(E) The critics are making three main points. First, the definition of E - cigarettes is a bit loose. There are many different types - some look like cigarettes, others have tanks for the vaping liquid, some are disposable and other are multi-use. They all deliver different doses of nicotine. Many of the papers included in the analysis don't specify which type people are using, according to Linda Bauld, professor of health policy at the University of Stirling. Another point is that the studies vary in the way they measure how often people use e-cigarettes. "Some only assessed whether a person had ever tried an e-cigarette or if they had tried one recently, not whether they were using it regularly or frequently," Bauld says.

(F) Even the paper's author admits it's possible that in some of the studies E - cigarettes may only have been used once, which he says would not be a good predictor of whether they had affected people's ability to stop smoking. And there is another problem. You might expect, if you were going to draw conclusions about how useful E - cigarettes are in helping people quit, to focus on studies looking at people who are trying to give up. Prof Robert West, who heads a team at University College London researching ways to help people stop smoking, says this analysis mashed together some very different studies - only some of which include people using e-cigarettes to help them quit.

(G) "To mix them in with studies where you've got people using an E - cigarette and are not particularly trying to stop smoking is mixing apples and oranges," he says. Some of the studies track smokers who use e-cigarettes for other reasons - perhaps because smoking a cigarette in a bar or an office is illegal and they want a nicotine hit. "With the studies where people are using electronic cigarettes specifically in a quit attempt the evidence is consistent," says West, referring to two randomised control trials. 

(H) Both are quite small and one was funded by the E - cigarette industry. They took two groups of smokers, and gave one real E - cigarettes, and the other a placebo. The studies reach a broadly similar conclusion to a large, real-world study called the Smoking Toolkit run by West. West's investigation follows people in their daily lives and assesses how successful various methods of giving up smoking are - this includes nicotine patches, medicines and going cold turkey. These studies suggest that people using e-cigarettes to help them quit are 50% to 100% more successful than those who use no aids at all. 

(I) In his paper, Glantz acknowledges there are limitations to the research that he analysed. He agrees there are problems with the way the use of E - Cigarettes is measured and accepts it's not clear which devices people are using. But he is sticking by his analysis because he believes he has taken these factors into account. The editor of Lancet Respiratory Medicine, Emma Grainger, defends the article too. She says she does not see a problem with the paper and that it has been through the normal peer - review process. 

Questions 17 – 25:

Reading Passage 2 has nine paragraphs, A – I. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A – I, in boxes 17 – 25 on your answer sheet.

17. Possible damage  

18. Shocking news 

19. Mix of different studies 

20. Misleading information 

21. Types of E - Cigarettes 

22. A place where the controversial research was written 

23. The defence of the article 

24. A research by an E - Cigarette industry 

25. The consistent evidence 

Questions 26 – 28:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 26 – 27 on your answer sheet.

26. New controversial research suggests that E - cigarettes: 

A. Make it easier to quit smoking

B. Make it harder to quit smoking

C. Don't play a major role in quitting smoking

D. The research doen't answer this question

27. Ann McNeill critisized the research because: 

A. The majority of other researches disagree with this review

B. The definition of E - cigarettes is a bit loose

C. Some information is either inaccurate or misleading

D. The analysis mashed together some very different studies

28. This article aims at: 

A. Finding the truth about E - Cigarettes, providing facts

B. Showing that the E - Cigarettes are worthless 

C. Promoting the use of E - Cigarettes

D. Analyzing different scientific researches

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 29 – 40, which are based on reading passage 3 below. 

The battle over the gender price gap

Boots has reduced the price of "feminine" razors to bring them in line with men's. The chemist chain says it's just an isolated incident, but campaigners say its part of a "pink tax" that discriminates against women. Who's right and what's the bigger story, ask Jessica McCallin and Claire Bates.

Campaigners against what's been dubbed the "pink tax" - where retailers charge women more than men for similar products - are celebrating after Boots said it would change the price of some of its goods. A Change.org petition has already gathered more than 43,000 signatures. The issue has been raised in Parliament. Paula Sherriff, Labour MP for Dewsbury, called a debate on the issue on Tuesday. She wants the government to commission independent research to quantify the extent of the problem, arguing that it amounts to women paying thousands of pounds more over the course of their lives. 

Stevie Wise, who launched the petition, was driven by a Times investigation which claimed that women and girls are charged, on average, 37% more for clothes, beauty products and toys. The investigation was inspired by research in the US which found that women's products are routinely more expensive than men's. The New York Department of Consumer Affairs had compared the prices of 800 products with male and female versions and concluded that, after controlling for quality, women's versions were, on average, 7% more expensive than men's. 

Boots says the two examples highlighted in the Change.org petition are exceptional cases, but campaigners are not so sure. "This is a very exciting response," says Wise. "We are delighted with Boots' decision, but we now need to get them to look at all of their products, not just the ones highlighted in the petition. We hope this decision is just the first of many and we may broaden our campaign to focus on other retailers as well." Wise says that women have been getting in touch with examples of other price discrepancies from lots of companies and says there seems to be a particular problem with toys and clothes. Argos has been criticised for identical scooters that cost £5 more if they were pink rather than blue. Argos said it was an error that had already been rectified and that it would never indulge in differential pricing. 

Among the examples sent to Wise was Boots selling identical child car seats that cost more in pink. Another retailer was selling children's balance bikes which cost more for a flowery print aimed at girls than a pirate print aimed at boys. But the latter example already appears to have been tweaked on the retailer's website, albeit by applying a £10 discount to the flowery version. With many retailers indulging in complicated algorithms to calculate price, or frequently changing prices around promotions, it's easy for them to argue that what appears to be a gender price gap is in fact an innocent mistake. 

One of the main things that retailers consider when deciding what to charge is what the customer is willing to pay, argues Mark Billige, UK managing partner at Simon - Kucher, a management consultancy that advises companies on things like pricing. "They have to consider what it costs to make the product and what their competitors are charging, but in a world where consumers have lots of choices, willingness to pay becomes very important as people will vote with their wallets if they don't like the price of a product. There is something in the fact that women are willing to pay more. Why, I don't know, but it will probably have something to do with psychology."

When challenged over sexist pricing, both Levi's and Tesco argued that different versions of things could have different production costs even if appearing fairly similar. Prof Nancy Puccinelli, a consumer psychologist at Oxford University says that her research suggests that women are actually much more careful shoppers than men, better able to scrutinise adverts and pricing gimmicks. She wonders if women are perceiving more value in the more expensive products. "For men, razors are functional, whereas women may perceive hair removal as more hedonistic, more about self - care, and be more willing to pay more. But there could also be environmental factors hindering their choices, like product placement in the store. If products are separated into male and female sections far away from each other it's harder to scrutinise prices." Such a situation could either be deliberate or accidental but the campaigners are not convinced. 

"It's just the tip of the iceberg," says the Fawcett Society's head of policy, Jemima Olchawski. "It's been happening in plain sight and, to me, it shows that bias against women is ingrained across our society. The worst thing about it is that women are getting ripped off twice. They are paid less than men and are also charged more for similar products." The campaign may lead to further changes, but the perennial advice to shop around remains the same. "There are quite a few comparison websites you can use to see if there's a price difference," says Sally Francis, senior writer at moneysavingexpert.com. If, as Tesco claim, there are "additional design and performance features" testing the male and female versions at home should settle whether they are worth it. 

There is an opportunity for some companies, argues Olchawski. "The finding shows the power of marketing in our lives, how it shapes our perception of what it means to be a man or a women. Some companies could choose not to play into this, not to play into the stereotypes and rip women off, but launch products more in tune with moves toward gender equality." 

Questions 29 – 35:

Who's responsible for what? Choose A, B, C or D and write your answers in boxes 29 – 35 on your answer sheet.

A. Stevie Wise.

B. Mark Billige.

C. Jemima Olchawski.

D. Nobody from the above.

29. Called a debate on the issue.

30. Launched the petition.

31. States that women are willing to pay more.

32. Says that women are more careful shoppers than men.

33. Says that companies should keep in mind gender equality while making products.

34. Was told that there are many problems with prices, especially with toys and clothes.

35. States that women are getting ripped off twice. 

Questions 36 – 40:

Do the following statements agree with the information in the IELTS reading text? In boxes 36 – 40 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

36. "Pink tax" means that women are being charged more than men for the same products. (Choose)            

37. Due to the fact that the petition gathered more than 43,000 signatures the issue has been raised in Parliament.                     

38. After comparing the prices of 800 products, it was concluded that women's versions were 7% more expensive than men's.           

39. It is hard for the retailers to pretend that the gender price gap is an innocent mistake. (Choose)

40. If male and female products are situated in different sections, it makes it harder to examine the prices. 

2.7 Đề thi số 7

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 1 – 16, which are based on reading passage 1 below.

How bacteria invented gene editing

This week the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority okayed a proposal to modify human embryos through gene editing. The research, which will be carried out at the Francis Crick Institute in London, should improve our understanding of human development. It will also undoubtedly attract controversy - particularly with claims that manipulating embryonic genomes is a first step towards designer babies. Those concerns shouldn't be ignored. After all, gene editing of the kind that will soon be undertaken at the Francis Crick Institute doesn't occur naturally in humans or other animals. 

It is, however, a lot more common in nature than you might think, and it's been going on for a surprisingly long time - revelations that have challenged what biologists thought they knew about the way evolution works. We're talking here about one particular gene editing technique called CRISPR - Cas, or just CRISPR. It's relatively fast, cheap and easy to edit genes with CRISPR - factors that explain why the technique has exploded in popularity in the last few years. But CRISPR wasn't dreamed up from scratch in a laboratory. This gene editing tool actually evolved in single - celled microbes.

CRISPR went unnoticed by biologists for decades. It was only at the tail end of the 1980s that researchers studying Escherichia coli noticed that there were some odd repetitive sequences at the end of one of the bacterial genes. Later, these sequences would be named Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats - CRISPRs. For several years the significance of these CRISPRs was a mystery, even when researchers noticed that they were always separated from one another by equally odd 'spacer' gene sequences.

Then, a little over a decade ago, scientists made an important discovery. Those 'spacer' sequences look odd because they aren't bacterial in origin. Many are actually snippets of DNA from viruses that are known to attack bacteria. In 2005, three research groups independently reached the same conclusion: CRISPR and its associated genetic sequences were acting as a bacterial immune system. In simple terms, this is how it works. A bacterial cell generates special proteins from genes associated with the CRISPR repeats (these are called CRISPR associated - Cas - proteins). If a virus invades the cell, these Cas proteins bind to the viral DNA and help cut out a chunk. Then, that chunk of viral DNA gets carried back to the bacterial cell's genome where it is inserted - becoming a spacer. From now on, the bacterial cell can use the spacer to recognise that particular virus and attack it more effectively. 

These findings were a revelation. Geneticists quickly realised that the CRISPR system effectively involves microbes deliberately editing their own genomes - suggesting the system could form the basis of a brand new type of genetic engineering technology. They worked out the mechanics of the CRISPR system and got it working in their lab experiments. It was a breakthrough that paved the way for this week's announcement by the HFEA. Exactly who took the key steps to turn CRISPR into a useful genetic tool is, however, the subject of a huge controversy. Perhaps that's inevitable - credit for developing CRISPR gene editing will probably guarantee both scientific fame and financial wealth.

Beyond these very important practical applications, though, there's another CRISPR story. It's the account of how the discovery of CRISPR has influenced evolutionary biology. Sometimes overlooked is the fact that it wasn't just geneticists who were excited by CRISPR's discovery - so too were biologists. They realised CRISPR was evidence of a completely unexpected parallel between the way humans and bacteria fight infections. We've known for a long time that part of our immune system "learns" about the pathogens it has seen before so it can adapt and fight infections better in future. Vertebrate animals were thought to be the only organisms with such a sophisticated adaptive immune system. In light of the discovery of CRISPR, it seemed some bacteria had their own version. In fact, it turned out that lots of bacteria have their own version. At the last count, the CRISPR adaptive immune system was estimated to be present in about 40% of bacteria. Among the other major group of single - celled microbes - the archaea - CRISPR is even more common. It's seen in about 90% of them. If it's that common today, CRISPR must have a history stretching back over millions - possibly even billions - of years. "It's clearly been around for a while," says Darren Griffin at the University of Kent.

The animal adaptive immune system, then, isn't nearly as unique as we thought. And there's one feature of CRISPR that makes it arguably even better than our adaptive immune system: CRISPR is heritable. When we are infected by a pathogen, our adaptive immune system learns from the experience, making our next encounter with that pathogen less of an ordeal. This is why vaccination is so effective: it involves priming us with a weakened version of a pathogen to train our adaptive immune system. Your children, though, won't benefit from the wealth of experience locked away in your adaptive immune system. They have to experience an infection - or be vaccinated - first hand before they can learn to deal with a given pathogen. 

CRISPR is different. When a microbe with CRISPR is attacked by a virus, the record of the encounter is hardwired into the microbe's DNA as a new spacer. This is then automatically passed on when the cell divides into daughter cells, which means those daughter cells know how to fight the virus even before they've seen it. We don't know for sure why the CRISPR adaptive immune system works in a way that seems, at least superficially, superior to ours. But perhaps our biological complexity is the problem, says Griffin. "In complex organisms any minor [genetic] changes cause profound effects on the organism," he says. Microbes might be sturdy enough to constantly edit their genomes during their lives and cope with the consequences - but animals probably aren't. The discovery of this heritable immune system was, however, a biologically astonishing one. It means that some microbes write their lifetime experiences of their environment into their genome and then pass the information to their offspring – and that is something that evolutionary biologists did not think happened.

Darwin's theory of evolution is based on the idea that natural selection acts on the naturally occurring random variation in a population. Some organisms are better adapted to the environment than others, and more likely to survive and reproduce, but this is largely because they just happened to be born that way. But before Darwin, other scientists had suggested different mechanisms through which evolution might work. One of the most famous ideas was proposed by a French scientist called Jean - Bapteste Lamarck. He thought organisms actually changed during their life, acquiring useful new adaptations non - randomly in response to their environmental experiences. They then passed on these changes to their offspring. 

People often use giraffes to illustrate Lamarck's hypothesis. The idea is that even deep in prehistory, the giraffe's ancestor had a penchant for leaves at the top of trees. This early giraffe had a relatively short neck, but during its life it spent so much time stretching to reach leaves that its neck lengthened slightly. The crucial point, said Lamarck, was that this slightly longer neck was somehow inherited by the giraffe's offspring. These giraffes also stretched to reach high leaves during their lives, meaning their necks lengthened just a little bit more, and so on. Once Darwin's ideas gained traction, Lamarck's ideas became deeply unpopular. But the CRISPR immune system - in which specific lifetime experiences of the environment are passed on to the next generation - is one of a tiny handful of natural phenomena that arguably obeys Lamarckian principles.

"The realisation that Lamarckian type of evolution does occur and is common enough, was as startling to biologists as it seems to a layperson," says Eugene Koonin at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, who explored the idea with his colleagues in 2009, and does so again in a paper due to be published later this year. This isn't to say that all of Lamarck's thoughts on evolution are back in vogue. "Lamarck had additional ideas that were important to him, such as the inherent drive to perfection that to him was a key feature of evolution," says Koonin. No modern evolutionary biologist goes along with that idea. But the discovery of the CRISPR system still implies that evolution isn't purely the result of Darwinian random natural selection. It can sometimes involve elements of non - random Lamarckism too – a "continuum", as Koonin puts it. In other words, the CRISPR story has had a profound scientific impact far beyond the doors of the genetic engineering lab. It truly was a transformative discovery.

Questions 1 – 5:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 1 – 5 on your answer sheet, write: 

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

The research carried out at the Francis Crick Institute in London is likely to be controversial. Gene editing, like the one in the upcoming research, can happen naturally in humans or other animals.             

CRISPR - Cas is a gene editing technique. CRISPR was noticed when the researchers saw some odd repetitive sequences at the ends of all bacterial genes.  

A group of American researchers made an important revelation about the CRISPR.

Questions 6 – 9:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 6 – 9 on your answer sheet.

6. 'Spacer' sequences look odd because: 

A. They are a bacterial immune system

B. They are DNA from viruses 

C. They aren't bacterial in origin

D. All of the above

7. The ones, who were excited about the CRISPR's discovery, were: 

A. Biologists

B. Geneticists

C. Physicists

D. A and B

8. Word "learns" in the line 44, 6th paragraph means: 

A. Determines

B. Gains awarness

C. Adapts

D. studies

9. What makes CRISPR better than even our adaptive immune system? 

A. Long history of existence

B. immortality

C. heritability

D. adaptiveness 

Questions 10 – 16:

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 10 – 16 on your answer sheet.

10. Vaccination is so effective, because it involves  with a weakened version of a pathogen. 

11. CRISPR adaptive immune system works in a way that seems, at least superficially, superior to ours. But perhaps our  is the problem, according to Griffin. 

12. Some microbes write their experience into the genome and pass the information to their.

13. Before Darwin, one of the most famous idea was proposed by a  scientist, Lamarck. 

14. Are often used to demonstrate Lamarck's hypothesis. 

15. Lamarck's ideas became deeply unpopular as soon as Darwin's ideas.

16. No biologist agrees with Lamarck's idea that inherent drive to perfection is the key feature of evolution.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 17 – 28, which are based on reading passage 2 below. 

Museum of Lost Objects: The Lion of al - Lat

(A) Two thousand years ago a statue of a lion watched over a temple in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra. More recently, after being excavated in the 1970s, it became an emblem of the city and a favourite with tourists. But it was one of the first things destroyed during military fightings in the country. It's said that there are more than 300 words for lion in Arabic. That's a measure of the importance of the lion in the history of the Middle East. For Bedouin tribes, the lion represented the biggest danger in the wild - until the last one in the region died, some time in the 19th Century.

(B) The animal was feared and admired and this must explain why a statue of a lion twice as high as a human being, weighing 15 tonnes, was fashioned by artists in ancient Palmyra. With spiralling, somewhat loopy eyes, and thick whiskers swept back angrily along its cheek bones, the lion was clearly a fighter, but it was also a lover. In between its legs, it held a horned antelope. The antelope stretched a delicate hoof over the lion's monstrous paws, and perhaps it was safe. The lion was a symbol of protection - it was both marking and protecting the entrance to the temple. But no - one could protect the lion when *IS arrived and wrecked it in May 2015. "It was a real shock, because you know, in a way, it was our lion," says Polish archaeologist Michal Gawlikowski, whose team unearthed it in 1977. 

(C) For well over 1,000 years, the statue had lain buried in the ruins of the ancient city, though parts had been used as foundations stones in other buildings. "You could hardly see what it was. I could see it was a sculpture and an old one for Palmyra, so we decided it was necessary to put it together immediately. It wasn't apparent from the beginning what this was - and then we found the head, and it became obvious." 

(D) Here are 30 of the approximately 300 Arabic words for "lion": Ghazhanfar, haidera, laith, malik al - ghaab (king of the jungle), qasha'am, asumsum, hatam, abu libdeh, hamza, nebras, basel, jasaas, assad, shujaa, rihab, seba'a, mayyas, khunafis, aabas, aafras, abu firas, qaswarah, ward, raheeb, ghadi, abu harith, dargham, hammam, usama, jaifer, qasqas... Most describe different moods of the lion. For example, hatam the destroyer, rihab the fearsome, ghazhanfar the warrior, abu libdeh the one with the fur, or the mane. As luck would have it, Michal had on his team that year the sculptor Jozef Gazy, who enthusiastically took on the job of restoring the lion. By 2005, though, the lion had become unbalanced and another restoration job - again led by a Polish team - rebuilt the statue to resemble as closely as possible what is thought to be the ancient design, with the lion appearing to leap out of the temple wall. After this it was placed in front of the Palmyra museum.

(E) Across the left paw of the lion is a Palmyrene inscription: "May al - Lat bless whoever does not spill blood on this sanctuary." The goddess al - Lat was a pre - Islamic female deity popular throughout Arabia, the descendant of earlier Mesopotamian goddesses such as Ishtar Inanna. "Ishtar Inanna is goddess of warfare and also love and sex, particularly sex outside marriage," says Augusta McMahon, lecturer of archaeology at Cambridge University. Al-Lat shared most of these attributes, and like Ishtar Inanna she was associated with lions. "It's very interesting to find a lion and a female figure in such close association, and no male deities have the lion - so this is something which is unique to her," says McMahon.

(F) The region's kings, however, were keen to be associated with lions, even if male deities weren't. Some of the earliest known representations of Mesopotamian leaders, from around 3,500 BC, depict them engaged in combat with the creatures. "They're not shown fighting or killing other people because that's almost demeaning," says Augusta McMahon. "They have to have a lion who is the not - quite - equal - but - near rival - because they're incredibly powerful and sort of unpredictable." This tradition continues right up to the medieval and early modern period, when Islamic miniatures would often show scenes of the hunt, of brave princes struggling with lions. The lion was both regal and untameable, the quintessence of strength and man's ultimate opponent. And today, fathers still love to name their sons and heirs after this fearsome predator - Osama for example. 

(G) The family of Syria's current ruling dynasty went even further. Al - Assad means "the lion" and different stories are told about how, a few generations ago, they adopted this name. One version says that Sulayman, great - grandfather of current president Bashar al - Assad, had been given the name al - Wahhish, or "the wild beast", because of his exploits while waging war on the Ottomans. This had negative connotations, though - so Sulayman swapped al - Wahhish for al - Assad "the lion". In neighbouring Iraq, Saddam Hussein even more directly channelled the rulers of times gone by. Some of his fanciful propaganda - often seen in newspapers or even city billboards - would show him posing as an Assyrian king, trampling on lions while shooting at American missiles with a bow and arrow. 

(H) But Saddam didn't have full control over his lion symbolism. One of the many words referring to lion in Arabic can connote "brazenness" and "audacity", and it was this lion - word that many Iraqis applied to him. "The lion has several names and one of them is seba'a," says the Iraqi archaeologist Lamia al - Gailani. "It was considered one the worst things in the culture of the Iraqis this word seba'a because it gives license to be corrupt. When Saddam did things, people said [they were] seba'a and what he did was so wrong, so illegal, but he was able to get away with it."

(I) For most people who went to Palmyra, the Lion of al - Lat provided a key photo opportunity. For London - based Syrian sculptor Zahed Tajeddin, it also provided artistic inspiration. In the early 1990s Tajeddin held an exhibition in Germany where he produced miniature sculptures of his favourite archaeological monuments from Syria - including the lion - but by 2015 all had been sold. Fatefully, though, during the week in May 2015 when IS took Palmyra and destroyed the Lion of al-Lat, he found the moulds.

(J) "And I thought, OK, that's a message," he says. "And so I reproduced three and put them next to each other and I painted them in white, red and black to represent the Syrian flag." The lion was often a symbol of vanity and masculine power. It was the badge of self - aggrandising kings and presidents. But in Tajeddin's reproductions of the lion of al - Lat, the lion becomes something else - a protest against the devastation engulfing his country and its ancient heritage. 

*IS - Islamic State (of Iraq and the Levant), a terrorist organisation. 

Questions 17 – 25:

Reading Passage 2 has ten paragraphs, A – J. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A – J, in boxes 17 – 25 on your answer sheet. Note that one paragraph is not used.

17. Goddess, associated with lions  

18. One of the worst words 

19. An emblem of the city 

20. History of the family name 

21. Art exhibition 

22. The description of the lion statue 

23. Symbolic meaning of the lion's reproduction by Tajeddin 

24. Synonyms for word lion 

25. Representations of leaders 

Questions 26 – 28:

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 26 – 28 on your answer sheet.

26.  Most words for the lion describe different…………. of the animal. 

27. You could often see…………. struggling with lions in Islamic miniatures. 

28. The Lion of al - Lat provided an…………. for sculptor Zahed Tajeddin.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 29 – 40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below. 

The truth about ART

Modern art has had something of a bad press recently - or, to be more precise, it has always had a bad press in certain newspapers and amongst certain sectors of the public. In the public mind, it seems, art (that is, graphic art - pictures - and spatial art - sculpture) is divided into two broad categories. The first is 'classic' art, by which is meant representational painting, drawing and sculpture; the second is 'modern' art, also known as abstract or non - representational. British popular taste runs decidedly in favour of the former, if one believes a recent survey conducted by Charlie Moore, owner of the Loft Gallery and Workshops in Kent, and one of Britain's most influential artistic commentators. He found that the man (or woman) in the street has a distrust of cubism, abstracts, sculptures made of bricks and all types of so - called 'found' art, He likes Turner and Constable, the great representatives of British watercolour and oil painting respectively, or the French Impressionists, and his taste for statues is limited to the realistic figures of the great and good that litter the British landscape - Robin Hood in Nottingham and Oliver Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament. This everyman does not believe in primary colours, abstraction and geometry in nature - the most common comment is that such - and - such a painting is "something a child could have done". 

Lewis Williams, director of the Beaconsfield Galleries in Hampshire, which specialises in modern painting, agrees. "Look around you at what art is available every day," he says. "Our great museums and galleries specialise in work which is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It may be representational, it may be 'realistic' in one sense, but a lot of it wouldn't make it into the great European galleries. Britain has had maybe two or three major world painters in the last 1000 years, so we make up the space with a lot of second - rate material." 

Williams believes that our ignorance of what modern art is has been caused by this lack of exposure to truly great art. He compares the experience of the average British city - dweller with that of a citizen of Italy, France or Spain. 

"Of course, we don't appreciate any kind of art in the same way because of the paucity of good art in Britain. We don't have galleries of the quality of those in Madrid, Paris, Versailles, Florence, New York or even some places in Russia. We distrust good art - by which I mean both modern and traditional artistic forms - because we don't have enough of it to learn about it. In other countries, people are surrounded by it from birth. Indeed they take it as a birthright, and are proud of it. The British tend to be suspicious of it. It's not valued here." 

Not everyone agrees. Emily Cope, who runs the Osborne Art House, believes that while the British do not have the same history of artistic experience as many European countries, their senses are as finely attuned to art as anyone else's.

"Look at what sells - in the great art auction houses, in greetings cards, in posters. Look at what's going on in local amateur art classes up and down the country. Of course, the British are not the same as other countries, but that's true of all nationalities. The French artistic experience and outlook is not the same as the Italian. In Britain, we have artistic influences from all over the world. There's the Irish, Welsh, and Scottish influences, as well as Caribbean, African and European. We also have strong links with the Far East, in particular the Indian subcontinent. All these influences come to bear in creating a British artistic outlook. There's this tendency to say that British people only want garish pictures of clowns crying or ships sailing into battle, and that anything new or different is misunderstood. That's not my experience at all. The British public is poorly educated in art, but that's not the same as being uninterested in it."

Cope points to Britain's long tradition of visionary artists such as William Blake, the London engraver and poet who died in 1827. Artists like Blake tended to be one - offs rather than members of a school, and their work is diverse and often word - based so it is difficult to export. 

Perhaps, as ever, the truth is somewhere in between these two opinions. It is true that visits to traditional galleries like the National and the National Portrait Gallery outnumber attendance at more modern shows, but this is the case in every country except Spain, perhaps because of the influence of the two most famous non - traditional Spanish painters of the 20th century, Picasso and Dali. However, what is also true is that Britain has produced a long line of individual artists with unique, almost unclassifiable styles such as Blake, Samuel Palmer and Henry Moore. 

Questions 29 – 37:

Classify the following statements as referring to:

• Charlie Moore

• Lewis Williams

• Emily Cope

Write the appropriate letters A, B or C in boxes 29 – 37 on your answer sheet.

29. British people don't appreciate art because they don't see enough art around them all the time. 

30. British museums aim to appeal to popular tastes in art. 

31. The average Englishman likes the works of Turner and Constable. 

32. Britain, like every other country, has its own view of what art is. 

33. In Britain, interest in art is mainly limited to traditional forms such as representational painting. 

34. British art has always been affected by other cultures. 

35. Galleries in other countries are of better quality that those in Britain. 

36. People are not raised to appreciate art. 

37. The British have a limited knowledge of art. 

Questions 38 – 40:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 38 – 40 on your answer sheet.

38. Many British artists 

A. Are engravers or poets

B. Are great but liked only in Britain 

C. Do not belong to a school or general trend

D. Are influenced by Picasso and Dali

39. Classic' art can be described as 

A. Sentimental, realistic paintings with geometric shapes

B. Realistic paintings with primary colours

C. Abstract modern paintings and sculptures

D. Realistic, representational pictures and sculptures

40. In Spain, people probably enjoy modern art because 

A. Their artists have a classifiable style

B. The most renowned modern artists are Spanish

C. They attend many modern exhibitions

D. They have different opinions on art

2.8 Đề thi số 8

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 1 – 12, which are based on reading passage 1 below. 

Harsh marks 'put pupils off languages'

(A) Harsh and inconsistent marking is putting pupils in England off studying languages beyond age 14, a report says. The dawn of more rigorous GCSEs will further reduce interest in languages, research by the British Council and Education Development Trust suggests. It says a focus on maths and sciences, as well as a perception languages are a hard option, is also de - motivating pupils and teachers.

(B) Exams watchdog Ofqual said last year's languages results were "very stable". From September 2016, new GCSE and A - level modern language syllabuses will be taught in England, and new exams will be taken in the summer of 2018. The Language Trends Survey, in its 14th year of charting the state of language learning in England's schools, suggests these changes - particularly at A - level - will deter pupils from studying languages. It says: "The exam system is seen as one of the principal barriers to the successful development of language teaching. "The comparative difficulty of exams in languages in relation to other subjects, and widely reported harsh and inconsistent marking, are deeply de - motivating for both pupils and teachers."

(C) The report says the EBacc, where pupils have to study English, a language, maths, science and history or geography to GCSE, "appears to be having very little impact on the numbers of pupils taking languages post - 16". Uptake after GCSE is found to be a particular concern, with some state schools suggesting the small numbers of students opting to take languages at A - level means the subject is becoming "financially unviable".

(D) The proportion of the total cohort sitting a GCSE in a language dropped by one percentage point (to 48%) between 2014 and 2015, ending the rise in entries seen from 2012 onward, when the EBacc was brought in. Entries for each of the three main languages fell this year compared with 2014, French is down 6%, German is down 10% and Spanish is down 3%. Overall entries for languages at A - level are at 94% of their 2002 level, and they declined by 3% between 2014 and 2015 - French uptake declined by 1% and German by 2.5% while Spanish uptake rose by almost 15%.

(E) The report does note some positive developments, particularly at primary level, saying just over half of England's primary schools now have access to specialist expertise in the teaching of languages. But primary schools report finding it hard to fit languages into the curriculum time available and to recruit suitably qualified teaching staff. Teresa Tinsley, Co - Author of the report, said: "Languages are already one of the harder GCSEs, and teachers fear that with the new exams it will be even tougher for pupils to get a good grade. "Combine this with the expectation that a wider range of pupils will be sitting the exam and it is not surprising that teachers feel embattled. "Improving their morale and confidence in the exam system is crucial if languages are to thrive in our schools." 

(F) A spokesman for the exam regulator, Ofqual, said: "We are committed to ensuring that all GCSEs, AS - and A - levels, including those in modern foreign languages, are sufficiently valid, produce fair and reliable results and have a positive impact on teaching and learning. "Last year's results in modern foreign languages were very stable, with only small changes in the proportions achieving each grade compared to the previous year. "We have looked into concerns that it is harder for students to achieve the highest grades in A level languages. "We found this is because of the way the exams are designed, rather than the nature of the subject content. "We are keeping this under review and will be further publishing information shortly." 

(G) Referring to the new modern foreign language A - levels and GCSEs being taught from this September, the spokesman added: "Before we accredit a qualification, we check the exams will be designed to allow good differentiation - including that the best students will be able to achieve the highest grades - and whether they are properly based on the new subject content."

(H) Mark Herbert, head of schools programmes at the British Council, said: "The country's current shortage of language skills is estimated to be costing the economy tens of billions in missed trade and business opportunities every year. "Parents, schools and businesses can all play their part in encouraging our young people to study languages at school and to ensure that language learning is given back the respect and prominence that it deserves." Tony McAleavy, director of research and development at the Education Development Trust, said: "The reduction in pupils opting for GCSE and A - level languages is concerning, particularly coupled with teachers' lack of faith in the exam system. "Solutions are required to give languages a firmer place in the curriculum, to make languages more compelling for pupils who find the examination process a barrier and to boost teacher morale." 

Questions 1 – 8:

Reading Passage 1 has eight paragraphs, A – H. Choose the most suitable paragraph headings from the list of headings and write the correct letter, A – H, in boxes 1 – 8 on your answer sheet.

1. Data about studying 

2. Stable results 

3. Heavy economic losses 

4. Fairness of the exams 

5. A hard option 

6. A - level changings 

7. The most important thing for languages to be able to prosper 

8. Weak influence on pupils 

Questions 9 – 13:

Classify the events with the following dates.

• 2018

• 2016

• 2014 – 2015

• None of the above

In boxes 9 – 13 on your answer sheet, write either A, B, C or D.

9. A Drop of GCSE to 48% 

10. New syllabus system arrives in England 

11. The start of new exams 

12. The rise in entries 

13. The decline of French by 1 percent 

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 14 – 25, which are based on reading passage 2 below. 

Making sense of scent

With every whiff you take as you walk by a bakery, a cloud of chemicals comes swirling up your nose. Identifying the smell as freshly baked bread is a complicated process. But, compared to the other senses, the sense of smell is often underappreciated. 

In a survey of 7,000 young people around the world, about half of those between the age of 16 and 30 said that they would rather lose their sense of smell than give up access to technology like laptops or cell phones.

We're not that acutely aware of our use of olfaction in daily living. In fact, mammals have about a thousand genes that code for odor reception. And even though humans have far fewer active odor receptor genes, 5 percent of our DNA is devoted to olfaction, a fact that emphasizes how important our sense of smell is.

Smell begins at the back of nose, where millions of sensory neurons lie in a strip of tissue called the olfactory epithelium. Molecules of odorants pass through the superior nasal concha of the nasal passages and come down on the epithelium. The tips of the epithelium cells contain proteins called receptors that bind odor molecules. The receptors are like locks and the keys to open these locks are the odor molecules that float past, explains Leslie Vosshall, a scientist who studies olfaction.

People have about 450 different types of olfactory receptors. (For comparison, dogs have about two times as many.) Each receptor can be activated by many different odor molecules, and each odor molecule can activate several different types of receptors. However, the forces that bind receptors and odor molecules can vary greatly in strength, so that some interactions are better “fits” than others. 

The complexity of receptors and their interactions with odor molecules are what allow us to detect a wide variety of smells. And what we think of as a single smell is actually a combination of many odor molecules acting on a variety of receptors, creating an intricate neural code that we can identify as the scent of a rose or freshly - cut grass.

This neural code begins with the nose’s sensory neurons. Once an odor molecule binds to a receptor, it initiates an electrical signal that travels from the sensory neurons to the olfactory bulb, a structure at the base of the forebrain that relays the signal to other brain areas for additional processing.

One of these areas is the piriform cortex, a collection of neurons located just behind the olfactory bulb that works to identify the smell. Smell information also goes to the thalamus, a structure that serves as a relay station for all of the sensory information coming into the brain. The thalamus transmits some of this smell information to the orbitofrontal cortex, where it can then be integrated with taste information. What we often attribute to the sense of taste is actually the result of this sensory integration. 

"The olfactory system is critical when we're appreciating the foods and beverages we consume," says Monell Chemical Senses Center scientist Charles Wysocki. This coupling of smell and taste explains why foods seem lackluster with a head cold. 

You’ve probably experienced that a scent can also conjure up emotions and even specific memories, like when a whiff of cologne at a department store reminds you of your favorite uncle who wears the same scent. This happens because the thalamus sends smell information to the hippocampus and amygdala, key brain regions involved in learning and memory.

Although scientists used to think that the human nose could identify about 10,000 different smells, Vosshall and her colleagues have recently shown that people can identify far more scents. Starting with 128 different odor molecules, they made random mixtures of 10, 20, and 30 odor molecules, so many that the smell produced was unrecognizable to participants. The researchers then presented people with three vials, two of which contained identical mixtures while the third contained a different concoction, and asked them to pick out the smell that didn’t belong. 

Predictably, the more overlap there was between two types of mixtures, the harder they were to tell apart. After calculating how many of the mixtures the majority of people could tell apart, the researchers were able to predict how people would fare if presented with every possible mixture that could be created from the 128 different odor molecules. They used this data to estimate that the average person can detect at least one trillion different smells, a far cry from the previous estimate of 10,000. 

This number is probably an underestimation of the true number of smells we can detect, said Vosshall, because there are far more than 128 different types of odor molecules in the world. And our olfaction is quite powerful comparing to other mammals. For example, marine animals can detect only water - soluble odorants.

No longer should humans be considered poor smellers. “It’s time to give our sense of smell the recognition it deserves,” said Vosshall.

Questions 14 – 19:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 14 – 19 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

14. In general, olfaction and sense of taste are considered equally important.    

15. About 7,000 young people around the world would prefer losing their sense of smell than access to laptops.

16. Odor reception is an integral function of all mammals.

17. Superior nasal concha is compared to a lock and odor molecules are like keys that are used to open it. 

18. Cats have two times as many olfactory receptors as humans. 

19. We are able to detect a lot of different scents because of a variety of odor receptors, which translate impact of molecules into a neural code.     

Questions 20 – 25:

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 20 – 25 on your answer sheet.

20. The part of our brain responsible for identifying the smell is called………..

21. The……….. is a region in our brain that serves as a transition station for all sensory information that we receive. 

22. Sense of smell is closely related to………..

23. ……….. and……….. are involved in arousing memories caused by specific smells. 

24. The experiment proved that the average person can discriminate between at least……….. smells. 

25. Sea mammals can smell only odorants that are……….. in water.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 26 – 40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below. 

Cognitive dissonance

(A) Charles Darwin said, “This not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” So you've sold your home, quit your job, shunned your colleagues, abandoned your friends and family. The end of the world is nigh, and you 'know for a fact' that you are one of the chosen few who will be swept up from the 'great flood' approaching on 21st December at midnight to be flown to safety on a far off planet. And then midnight on 21st December comes around and there is no flood. No end of the world. No flying saucer to the rescue. What do you do? Admit you were wrong? Acknowledge that you gave up position, money, friends - for nothing? Tell yourself and others you have been a schmuck? Not on your life.

(B) Social psychologist Leon Festinger infiltrated a flying saucer doomsday cult in the late 1950s. The members of this cult had given up everything on the premise that the world was about to self destruct and that they, because of their faith, would be the sole survivors. In the lead up to the fateful day, the cult shunned publicity and shied away from journalists. Festinger posed as a cultist and was present when the space ship failed to show up. He was curious about what would happen. How would the disappointed cultists react to the failure of their prophecy? Would they be embarrassed and humiliated? What actually happened amazed him.

(C) Now, after the non - event, the cultists suddenly wanted publicity. They wanted media attention and coverage. Why? So they could explain how their faith and obedience had helped save the planet from the flood. The aliens had spared planet earth for their sake - and now their new role was to spread the word and make us all listen. This fascinated Festinger. He observed that the real driving force behind the cultists' apparently inexplicable response was the need, not to face the awkward and uncomfortable truth and 'change their minds', but rather to 'make minds comfortable' - to smooth over the unacceptable inconsistencies.

(D) Festinger coined the term 'cognitive dissonance' to describe the uncomfortable tension we feel when we experience conflicting thoughts or beliefs (cognitions), or engage in behavior that is apparently opposed to our stated beliefs. What is particularly interesting is the lengths to which people will go to reduce the inner tension without accepting that they might, in fact, be wrong. They will accept almost any form of relief, other than admitting being at fault, or mistaken. Festinger quickly realized that our intolerance for 'cognitive dissonance' could explain many mysteries of human behavior.

(E) In a fascinating experiment Festinger and his colleagues paid some subjects twenty dollars to tell a specific lie, while they paid another group of subjects only one dollar to do the same. Those who were paid just one dollar were far more likely to claim, after the event, that they had actually believed in the lie they were told to tell. Why? Well, because it's just so much harder to justify having done something that conflicts with your own sense of being 'an honest person' for a mere pittance. If you get more money, you can tell yourself: 'Yeah, I lied, but I got well paid! It was justified.' But for one dollar? That's not a good enough reason to lie, so what you were saying must have been true in the first place, right? 

(F) Emotional factors influence how we vote for our politicians much more than our careful and logical appraisal of their policies, according to Drew Westen, a professor of psychiatry and psychology. This may come as little surprise to you, but what about when we learn that our favored politician may be dishonest? Do we take the trouble to really find out what they are supposed to have done, and so possibly have to change our opinions (and our vote), or do we experience that nasty cognitive dissonance and so seek to keep our minds comfortable at the possible cost of truth?

(G) Cognitive dissonance is essentially a matter of commitment to the choices one has made, and the ongoing need to satisfactorily justify that commitment, even in the face of convincing but conflicting evidence. This is why it can take a long time to leave a cult or an abusive relationship - or even to stop smoking. Life's commitments, whether to a job, a social cause, or a romantic partner, require heavy emotional investment, and so carry significant emotional risks. If people didn’t keep to their commitments, they would experience uncomfortable emotional tension. In a way, it makes sense that our brains should be hard - wired for monitoring and justifying our choices and actions - so as to avoid too much truth breaking in at once and overwhelming us. 

(H) I guess we can't really develop unless we start to get a grip and have some personal honesty about what really motivates us. This is part of genuine maturity. If I know I am being lazy, and can admit it to myself, that at least is a first step to correcting it. If, however, I tell myself it's more sensible to wait before vacuuming, then I can go around with a comfortable self - concept of 'being sensible' while my filthy carpets and laziness remain unchanged. Cognitive dissonance can actually help me mature, if I can bring myself, first, to notice it (making it conscious) and second, to be more open to the message it brings me, in spite of the discomfort. As dissonance increases, providing I do not run away into self - justification, I can get a clearer and clearer sense of what has changed, and what I need to do about it.

And then I can remember what Darwin had to say about who will survive...

Questions 26 – 33:

Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs, A – H. Choose the most suitable headings for these paragraphs from the list of ten headings below.

Write the appropriate number i – x in the text boxes 26 – 33. There are more paragraph headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all. 

List of headings:

i. Leon Festinger: On being stood up by the aliens 

ii. Dishonest politicians? Never!  

iii. Mind manipulation: the true reason of strange behaviour 

iv. You can't handle the truth!  

v. The catastrophe of 21st December  

vi. Grow up - make cognitive dissonance work for you  

vii. How many dollars would you take to tell a lie?  

viii. Revealing mysteries: Darwin was right. 

ix. Cognitive dissonance: who are you kidding?  

x. The high cost of commitment exposes us to cognitive dissonance 

26. Passage A 

27. Passage B 

28. Passage C 

29. Passage D 

30. Passage E 

31. Passage F 

32. Passage G 

33. Passage H 

Questions 34 – 40:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, or C. Write the correct letter in boxes 34 – 40 on your answer sheet.

34. After the space ship didn’t show up on the fateful day, the members of flying saucer doomsday cult.

A. Didn’t want to admit the uncomfortable truth and still believed that the world would self destruct.

B. Were embarrassed and humiliated because of their failure.

C. Wanted media attention to say that they saved the planet.

35. The main reason why people fight cognitive dissonance is 

A. A desire to reduce the inner tension.

B. People’s unwillingness to accept their mistakes.

C. Wish to avoid the awkward feeling of lying for not a good reason.

36. During the experiment, people who were telling lies were more likely to claim that they believed in the lie if.

A. They were paid less.

B. They were paid more.

C. They felt uncomfortable because of lying.

37. Commitment to the choices someone has made, and the ongoing need to justify that commitment, despite the conflicting evidence can be explained by the fact that.

A. It causes uncomfortable emotional tension.

B. Commitments require heavy emotional investment.

C. Our brain always justifies our choices.

38. The big part of genuine maturity is the ability of 

A. Sensible reasoning.

B. Disregarding cognitive dissonance.

C. Being honest with yourself.

39. According to the text, which of the situations below is NOT an example of cognitive dissonance? 

A. A man learns that his favored politician is dishonest, but continues to vote for him.

B. A woman doesn’t want to do vacuuming, but convinces herself that otherwise her carpet will remain filthy and finally does it.

C. A woman has been dating with her boyfriend for five years. Everyone tells her that it’s an abusive relationship because he often beats and humiliates her, but she doesn’t want to leave her romantic partner.

40. Charles Darwin quote from the beginning of the text implies that. 

A. Cognitive dissonance helps us to change and therefore makes us more enduring species

B. People often accept almost any form of relief, rather than admitting being at fault, to survive.

C. Fighting the discomfort caused by cognitive dissonance is a survival mechanism developed during the evolution.

2.9 Đề thi số 9

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 1 – 13, which are based on reading passage 1 below. 

We French do love to demonstrate

(A) Josiane Bertrand has a small family business - a neighbourhood charcuterie selling sausage, poached pigs' trotters, pate and jellied pig snouts. Her ham, she says, is the best in Paris and her queue of customers is long. Despite the ceaseless rain outside - among all its other woes, France is now flooding - it's a convivial crowd waiting to be served, and the animated conversation is all about strikes. 

(B) If the opinion pages of Le Monde are to be believed, the charcuterie queue is a pretty accurate reflection of the mood of the country. Split, roughly half and half, between those for the Work Bill and those against. Philippe's 28. He's landed what most French would regard as a dream job. He's a fonctionnaire working in local government. A fonctionnaire is an employee of the French state in almost any form of public administration and service. It's a job for life - with solid pay and conditions, fixed working hours, a good pension, generous holidays. So, what many young French people aspire to is not to change the world - explore, create, set - up alone - but, with self - employment difficult and taxes punitive, they dream of becoming steadily employed bureaucrats. 

(C) Philippe knows he's lucky. And he's against any change. "I'm happy," he says. "I know exactly where I am and where I'll be in 40 years' time, with a good pension." Eleonore, who has four children, two of them dancing around the shop as they wait, is in her early 40s. As a secondary school teacher she has also got a job for life and generous state benefits. But, unlike Philippe, she's all for change. "It can't go on like this. For every person like me, there are 20 or more with no hope at all," she says.

(D) A quarter of all French people under 25, many of them well - qualified, have no work. A large number of those are from immigrant families, making their chances of employment even slimmer. These are the kind of people who voted Francois Hollande into the presidency in 2012, with his pledge to end the country's employment troubles. 

(E) Now he's made a new promise, putting his own political career on the line - he's not running for re - election next spring unless he cuts unemployment. A bold move for a president with an approval rating of only 14% in a country riven by industrial disputes. Along with his prime minister, Manuel Valls, and Pierre Gattaz - known as the "boss of bosses", president of Medef, the largest federation of employers in France - Hollande stands against the combined power of the country's two biggest unions. 

(F) The proposed Work Bill runs to over 500 pages. It aims to simplify and liberalise the French Work Code which, at 3,689 pages, is a vast labyrinth beset with perils for employers. The unions won't even consider negotiations until the bill is removed from parliament. The president and his allies refuse to change a word of it. "It's a good law, good for France," says Hollande. The result? Total stalemate. An ongoing siege. Just after one o'clock on the glassed - in terrace of a popular restaurant on the Boulevard Montparnasse, and everything begins to go quiet. The traffic disappears from the street. Cordons of riot police move in, three columns deep, flanked by armoured vans. There's a whirr of helicopters overhead. 

(G) In the distance, a gathering roar and blare - the protesters. The noise becomes deafening. The riot police take up positions. Frederique, the waiter, temporarily locks the doors - and those having lunch find themselves exhibits in a kind of transparent, gastronomic showcase along with various grilled fish, bottles of wine and assorted desserts. Looking in from the outside, hundreds of protesters passing down the boulevard, some marching, others ambling, a few dancing to music booming from the accompanying floats. Looking out from the inside, the lunchers. The lunchers comment on the demonstrators, the demonstrators wave cheerily at the lunchers. There's general resigned, amused talk amid the eating - "Here we go again," and "Where will this round end?" And self - deprecating comments such as, "We French do love to demonstrate…" 

(H) Then it all subsides, passes on, the noise, the marchers, the red balloons and pounding music, leaving a trailing wake of litter. Frederique unlocks the doors. The conversation leaves the political, returns to the personal. Similar reforms have already been implemented in Italy and Spain. Germany did so long ago - its unemployment, at 5%, is less than half that of France, which according to some commentators here now stands alone as the last bastion of 20th Century - style socialism in Europe.

Questions 1 – 8:

Reading Passage 1 has eight paragraphs, A – H. Which paragraph contains what information? Choose the headings and write the correct letter, A – H, in boxes 1 – 8 on your answer sheet.

1. A bold promise 

2. Similar reforms in other countries 

3. A refusal to change the law 

4. Unemployment rate statistics 

5. The dream of young French people 

6. Different opinions 

7. Best ham in all Paris 

8. The demonstration itself 

Questions 9 – 13:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 9 – 13 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

9. Most french would say that Philippe has a very good job.                  

10. Eleonore and Philippe have same views on the situation.            

11. 25% of all people in France have no job.                

12. Francois Hollande might not run for re – election next year.            

13. The French Work Code is concidered simplier than the proposed Work Bill.                  

14. The unemployment rate in Spain is less than in Italy.        

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 15 – 27, which are based on reading passage 2 below. 

How I was floored by a tick

When Allan Little began to feel ill, he knew almost immediately what it was - Lyme Disease. But getting a medical diagnosis, and treatment, took a lot longer. I'd been going for years to the same little town in New England and Lyme Disease is everywhere there. You can't walk more than a few hundred metres in the countryside without coming across a public health notice warning you not to get bitten by a deer tick.

So the intense headache, the aching limbs, the burning joints, the ferocious fever and night sweats that hit me in a matter of hours, a few days after I'd got back to London, were all consistent with what I'd read about the condition. I went to a London GP, who wasn't convinced. She took a blood sample and advised me to go home, rest, and take paracetamol. The next day, the blood test came back. It was negative for Lyme. My condition grew worse. I could hardly stand up. I called another doctor, who came to my house. He was also sceptical. He took another blood test. This too came back negative. But he gave me a prescription for powerful painkillers which made me feel well enough to get on a train to Edinburgh, my home town.

Within three hours of arriving at Waverley Station I was an in - patient in the Infectious Diseases Department of the city's Western General Hospital: diagnosis, Acute Lyme Disease. By now I had found the tick bite and the distinctive livid red rash, about six inches in diameter. (To be fair to those London GPs, I hadn't noticed it when I'd consulted them.)

"It's attacked your liver," the Edinburgh Consultant said. "You have three distinct kinds of liver inflammation". I made a lame sick - bed joke: "You're sure that's not like Lager - and - Lime Disease then?" She laughed politely and reassured me that that would look quite different. Why then had both blood tests come back negative? Dr Roger Evans of Raigmore Hospital in Inverness is one of the UK's leading Lyme Disease researchers. "In early Lyme Disease," he told me, "the test is not reliable because no antibodies have been produced. In the first few weeks of infection, you could test negative, but still have Lyme Disease."

This is a problem for GPs, especially in urban centres where Lyme Disease is unfamiliar. Lyme is not a viral infection. It's bacterial. GPs will not prescribe antibiotics if they think you're showing symptoms of a viral infection - and it does look and feel like a bad case of flu, or chronic fatigue syndrome, neither of which can, or should, be treated with antibiotics. "In the early weeks of infection, when the blood test is not reliable," says Evans, "the GP needs to assess the patient clinically, looking for other symptoms that identify Lyme Disease." In other words, symptoms that distinguish it from flu.

If you have been bitten: 

Remove the tick as soon as possible - the safest way is to use a pair of fine - tipped tweezers, or a tick removal tool

Grasp the tick as close to the skin as possible, pull upwards slowly and firmly, as mouthparts left in the skin can cause a local infection

Once removed, apply antiseptic to the bite area, or wash with soap and water and keep an eye on it for several weeks for any changes

Contact your GP if you begin to feel unwell and remember to tell them you were bitten by a tick or have recently spent time outdoors

Catching it early is vital. Angela Howard fell ill with Lyme Disease in the 1990s. She had never heard of it. Her doctor, she says, told her to go home and see whether her symptoms persisted. It was only when a visiting American friend saw the distinctive rash - concentric red rings around the place where the tick bite had occurred that she realised she might have Lyme Disease. She says her doctor was still reluctant to diagnose Lyme. "Doctors say you can only get this abroad - that it comes from overseas. But I hadn't been abroad. I'd been picnicking in Wiltshire." She was not treated early and her symptoms have persisted for years. 

There is an accumulation of anecdotal evidence that Lyme Disease often goes undiagnosed. One problem is that no - one knows how prevalent it now is. It is not a notifiable disease in the National Health Service - doctors are not required to inform a central database when they diagnose it. So there is no reliable evidence of how widespread it is, or where in the country you are most likely to get it. Roger Evans at Raigmore Hospital wants to remedy that. 

"We're using Scotland as a pilot study," he said. "We're trying to create maps of areas where there's a risk of tick exposure. We're using satellite data from the European Space Agency to create an app that will give information, but which will also be interactive, so that users can put in information about where they've been bitten and whether the Lyme Disease rash has appeared." Why has Lyme, which 30 years ago seemed largely limited to a small area of New England - Lyme is the town in Connecticut where it was first identified - now so prevalent across the continental USA and in Europe? One theory is climate change: That small gradations in climate can create new habitats for micro - organisms, or keep them alive and active for longer. 

I was struck, at the time of my own treatment, that awareness was far greater in Scotland than in England and Wales. And awareness of the condition is vital to catching it early. For when you catch it early, treatment is easy and in most cases successful. It floors you though. It took me four or five months to get my strength and stamina back. It is a debilitating and dangerous illness and there is no doubt that it is getting more common. You can get it in the Scottish Highlands, in Devon and Cornwall, in Richmond Park in London and probably in your own back garden - anywhere where there are small furry animals on whose skins a deer tick can live. If you get it, you can get treatment. But take it from me: it really helps if you know what it is you've got.

Questions 15 – 22:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 15 – 22 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

15. Alan had no doubt about his illness from the beginning.                      

16. Both blood tests were negative for Lyme Disease.                

17. Alan didn't become a Waverley Station patient for more than 3 hours.           

18. Blood tests were inaccurate because they were taken unprofessionaly.                

19. Lyme Disease is very unfamiliar in the UK.                

20. When bitten, you should remove the tick, preferably with a tool.             

21. After you remove the tick and apply antiseptic, you should take paracetamol.                           

22. It is advise to contact a doctor, if you feel ill after removing the tick.                 

Questions 23 – 27:

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 23 – 27 on your answer sheet.

23. Angela's friend recognized the Lyme Disease as soon as she saw the rash. 

24. One problem is, it's unknown how Lyme Disease is nowadays. 

25. Roger Evans says that they try to create maps of Scotland where there's a risk of. 

26. The one possible reason for Lyme Diseaes to move all over the world is.

27. You can catch the disease even in your own back.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 28 – 40, which are based on reading passage 3 below. 

Structure and function of cell membranes

(A) Human body is made up of millions of cells - little building blocks of life. Each cell contains many functional subunits (organelles) that enable its proper functioning and is protected from the external environment by a cell membrane. While structure and function of organelles are extensively covered in various biology courses, the importance of study of cell membranes is often underrated. This article is dedicated to provide a short introduction into the basic functions and anatomy of a cell membrane.

(B) Cell membranes protect and organize cells. Most importantly they serve as barriers, discriminating the cell’s interior from the outer milieu. Because cells always exist in aqueous environment their membranes should be structured in such way so they do not solve in water. This function is ideally carried by special chemical molecules - phospholipids. These molecules are constructed from two parts: tails made up of 2 molecules of fat that ‘avoid’ water and heads that have an affinity for water. For this specific behaviour the phospholipid’s tails are called hydrophobic (‘hydro’ means water and ‘phobia’ means fear) and heads are called hydrophilic (‘philos’ means love). When phospholipids are added to water, they self - assemble into double - layered structures, shielding their hydrophobic portions from water and exposing their hydrophilic portions to the environment. This phospholipid bilayer may resemble a sandwich, where phospholipid heads are bread rolls and tails are the sandwich filling.

(C) In addition to lipids, membranes are loaded with proteins. They usually go through the lipid bilayer and are exposed to both aqueous environment and cell's interior. In fact, proteins account for roughly half the mass of most cellular membranes. They make the membrane semi - permeable, which means that some molecules can diffuse across the lipid bilayer but others cannot. Small hydrophobic molecules and gases like oxygen and carbon dioxide cross membranes rapidly. Small molecules, such as water and ethanol, can also pass through membranes, but they do so more slowly. On the other hand, cell membranes restrict diffusion of highly charged molecules, such as ions, and large molecules, such as sugars and amino acids. The passage of these molecules relies on specific transport proteins embedded in the membrane.

(D) Membrane transport proteins are specific and selective for the molecules they move, and they often use energy to enhance passage. Also, these proteins transport some nutrients against the concentration gradient, which requires additional energy. The ability to maintain concentration gradients and sometimes move materials against them is vital to cell health and maintenance. Thanks to membrane barriers and transport proteins, the cell can accumulate nutrients in higher concentrations than exist in the environment and, conversely, dispose of waste products.

(E) Other membrane - embedded proteins have communication - related jobs. Large molecules from the extracellular environment, such as hormones or immune mediators, bind to the receptor proteins on the cell membrane. Such binding causes a conformational change in the protein that transmits a signal to intracellular messenger molecules. Like transport proteins, receptor proteins are specific and selective for the molecules they bind. 

(F) Another important type of membrane’s components are cholesterol molecules, which account for about 20 percent of the lipids in animal cell plasma membranes. However, cholesterol is not present in bacterial membranes or mitochondrial membranes. The cholesterol molecules are embedded in place of phospholipid molecules and help to regulate the stiffness of membranes. To function properly, the cell membrane should be in fluid state. Cholesterol reduces membrane fluidity at moderate temperatures by reducing the moving of phospholipids. But at low temperatures, it hinders solidification by disrupting the regular packing of phospholipids. 

Questions 28 – 30:

Label the diagram below. Write NO MORE THAN ONE WORD from the passage for each answer. Do not write the articles.

Which elements of cell membrane correspond to the numbers in the diagram?

28. ..............

29. ..............

30. ..............

Questions 31 – 35:

Reading passage 3 has six paragraphs, A – F. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A – F, in boxes 31 – 35 on your answer sheet.

31. Specific proteins transport nutrients from the external environment against the concentration gradient. 

32. The barrier function of cell membranes is supported by a bilayer of phospholipids. 

33. The level of membrane fluidity is regulated by cholesterol molecules. 

34. The importance of cell membranes are often underestimated. 

35. Proteins make the membrane semi - permeable. 

Questions 36 – 40:

Complete the summary below. Choose ONLY ONE WORD from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 36 – 40 on your answer sheet.

Cell membranes protect cells and organize their activities. The first main function of cell membrane - barrier function - is carried by phospholipids. These molecules don’t solve in water and, thus, are ideal for cells that always exist in 36…………. environment. 

In addition to lipids, membranes are loaded with 37…………. that make the membrane 38…………. , which means that some molecules can diffuse across the lipid bilayer but others cannot. One of the most important types of membrane proteins are 39…………. proteins and receptor proteins. 

The last type of membrane elements are cholesterol molecules, which are embedded in place of 40…………. molecules and help to regulate the stiffness of membranes.

2.10 Đề thi số 10

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 1 – 13, which are based on reading passage 1 below. 

Phi Phi Island Resort

The “Phi Phi Island Resort” is located in Phi Phi Leh island in Thailand, between the large island of Phuket and the west Strait of Malacca coast of the mainland. Phi Phi consists of six small islands 46km south of Phuket. Fine sandy beaches give way to soaring limestone cliffs to form spectacular scenery. Add crystal clear water, a refreshing lack of roads, plus a laid - back lifestyle, and it's easy to see why Phi Phi is one of southern Thailand's most popular destinations.

The islands are administratively part of Krabi province. Ko Phi Phi is the largest island of the group, and is the most populated island of the group, although the beaches of the second largest island, Ko Phi Phi Leh are visited by many people as well. The rest of the islands in the group, including Bida Nok, Bida Noi, and Bamboo Island are not much more than large limestone rocks jutting out of the sea. The Islands are reachable by speedboats or Long - tail boats most often from Krabi Town or from various piers in Phuket Province.

The islands came to worldwide prominence when Ko Phi Phi was used as a location for the 2000 British - American film The Beach. This attracted criticism, with claims that the film company had damaged the island's environment, since the producers bulldozed beach areas and planted palm trees to make it resemble description in the book, an accusation the film's makers contest. An increase in tourism was attributed to the film's release, which resulted in increases in waste on the Islands, and more developments in and around the Phi Phi Don Village. 

Unlike its larger brother Ko Phi Phi, Phi Phi Leh is a virgin island - it is almost untouched by human civilization. Surrounded by sheer limestone walls dotted with caves and passages the island's shallow blue - green lagoons and coral gardens are a snorkeler’s paradise. The island also has two magnificent beaches, Loh Samah and Maya Bay.

The climate on Phi Phi Leh island is influenced by tropical monsoon winds. There are two seasons: the rainy season from May till December and the hot season from January till April. Average temperature ranges between 17–37 degrees Celsius. Average rainfall per year is about 2,231 millimetres, wettest in July and driest in February. 

The “Phi Phi Island Resort” is an eco - friendly hotel that aims at providing excellent service without hurting the local environment. This dreamy lodging in Thailand is as environmentally friendly as it gets. The building itself is built with natural materials, such as local stone and wood. Moreover, all utilities (such as cutlery, hygiene items, towels, kitchen utensils) are made of bio - degradable materials. 

The pool is created in the local stone quarry, so that the harmony of local landscape was not infringed. Since the water in the pool is replete with natural salts and minerals, there is no need in further disinfection with chlorinated compounds and the pool is absolutely chemical - free.

The hotel provides soaps, gels and creams, which are all natural and organic. Waste is recycled to the garden via a bio - cycle septic system, and “Phi Phi Island Resort” uses hydro - electricity from a Pelton wheel and solar power. 

The restaurant values locally sourced products. That’s why only locally grown vegetables and fruits along with natural sea products are served. The resort ensures that fishing and croppage don’t contravene the local equilibrium of the island.

Diving and snorkeling at Phi Phi Leh Island are excellent. Many dive companies offer all - inclusive trips only in this location. And other little secluded islands are accessible from “Phi Phi Island Resort” by long - tail boats. Visitors can take advantage of the free bike rentals, free shuttle service in an electric vehicle and even green spa, with all organic products.

On the other hand, this beautiful resort combines the seclusion much sought after in Thailand with refinement of a 4.5 star resort. Privacy is certain on 70 tranquil acres of swaying coconut palms, fragrant gardens, and a half - mile of sparkling shore overlooking the crystal Andaman Sea. Spacious and secluded bungalows conform comfortably to the natural surroundings, welcoming stunning coastal vistas and cool sea breezes. Stylish furnishings, gracious hospitality and a private 800 metres stretch of pristine white sand beach lapped by the turquoise waters of the Andaman Sea create an idyllic setting for a green and calm holiday.

Questions 1 – 8:

Do the following statements agree with the information in the IELTS reading text? In boxes 1 – 8 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

1. Phi Phi is located 46km south of Phuket.                    

2. Ko Phi Phi is the largest, though not the most populated island of the group.                

3. Islands gained their popularity after Ko Phi Phi was used for a famous film.              

4. The increase in tourism had a negative effect on the Ko Phi Phi island.            

5. Unlike its larger brother Phi Phi Leh, Ko Phi Phi is a virgin island.            

6. There are two seasons on the Phi Phi Leh island: rainy and hot.           

7. July is the hottest month on the Phi Phi Leh.                 

8. The “Phi Phi Island Resort” is very environmentally friendly.            

Questions 9 – 13:

Complete the sentences below. Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 9 – 13 on your answer sheet.

9. Due to the fact that the pool is rich in natural salts and minerals, there is no need to use  for further disinfection. 

10. The "Phi Phi Island Resort" uses a bio - cycle………….. to recycle waste. 

11. The restaurant serves only natural………….. products. 

12. Visitors can take free bike rentals, free shuttle service and even…………..

13. Phi Phi Island Resort has a refinement of a 4.5…………..

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 14 – 25, which are based on reading passage 2 below. 

Sponging dolphins

(A) In 1984, researchers spotted dolphins doing something unusual in Shark Bay, Western Australia. When the animals got hungry, they ripped a marine basket sponge from the sea floor and fitted it over their beaks like a person would fit a glove over a hand. The scientists suspected that as the dolphins foraged for fish, the sponges protected their beaks, or rostra, from the rocks and broken chunks of coral that litter the sea floor, making this behavior the first example of tool use in this species. 

(B) The researchers surmised that a long time ago one ingenious Shark Bay dolphin figured out that by prodding the sediments with a sponge attached to her beak, she could stir up these swim bladder - less fish without being hurt. Eventually, such technique became popular among other dolphins. But why do dolphins go to all of this trouble when they could simply snag a fish from the open sea? The answer is that the bottom - dwelling fish are a lot more nutritious. Some species also don't have swim bladders, gas chambers that help other fish control their buoyancy as they travel up and down the water column. In the Bahamas, where dolphins are also known to forage for bottom - dwelling fish, dolphins hunt partly by echolocating these bladders, which give off a strong acoustic signal. That helps the cetaceans find prey even when it's buried in sea sand. But bottom - dwelling fish, such as barred sandperch, which are favored by some Shark Bay dolphins, don't have swim bladders and so are harder to find with echolocation. The sea floor is not nearly as soft here as it is in the Bahamas, so if dolphins want to probe for these fish, they risk injuring their rostra.

(C) Not every dolphin in Shark Bay hunts with sponges. "It's primarily done by females," says Janet Mann, a behavioral ecologist. She believes the female dolphins invented the method because of the "selective pressures they face while raising a calf as long as they do," about 4 to 5 years. "These clever dolphins have figured out a way to target fish that other dolphins cannot," she says, adding that even the local fishermen do not catch, or even know about, this particular species. Mann's previous research has shown that dolphin mothers pass the sponging method to their daughters and some of their sons, rare evidence of a cultural tradition in an animal other than humans. The team has documented three generations of sponging dolphins.

(D) The foraging technique came to light a few decades ago - very recently in evolutionary terms - when a local fisherman spotted what looked like a strange tumour on a dolphin’s nose. Researchers eventually worked out that the ‘tumour’ was a conically shaped sponge and it became apparent that the dolphins would spend considerable time searching for one the right shape to fit their nose. The sponge is used to scatter the sand gently on the sea floor and disturb buried fish. When a fish is spotted, the dolphin drops the sponge and gives chase. "It has been thought that behaviours which are exclusively learnt from one parent are not very stable. With our model we could now show that sponging can be a stable behaviour," said Dr Anna Kopps, a biologist at the University of New South Wales.

(E) By modelling the emergence of "sponger" dolphins in a computer simulation, the team of researchers could see different scenarios in which the skill could have spread among the dolphin population over the years. They then compared the results of these simulations with field data on the genetic relationship between the spongers, to estimate the role of mothers teaching their offspring in transmitting the skill. They found that if the likelihood of a sponger's offspring learning the ability was less than certain, the dolphins that did pick up the technique needed to gain a survival advantage from the skill, in order for the ability to pass on to the next generation. The model also allowed them to attempt to calculate the date that the behaviour was likely to have originated."The results suggested that sponging was innovated at least 120 to 180 years ago - it is only a best estimate," said Dr Kopps. Scientists discovered that although dolphins tried to teach the hunting technique to all their young, it was mainly female offspring that grasped the concept. Why male offspring rarely acquire the same skill remains unclear, though the team put forward one possible explanation: male bottlenose dolphins tend to form close bonds with other males, and such alliances aren't suited to seabed foraging, since it is a time - consuming, solitary activity.

(F) The US scientists say discovering a new tool is a direct sign of intelligence. “There’s a strong link between animals with larger brains and tool users. Bottlenose dolphins have a brain second in size only to humans.” said Janet Mann, a marine biologist who led the research. “Dolphins are already good at catching fish so they don’t need tools, but they’ve discovered this sponge makes their job easier. Working out how to use tools in a creative way like that is a hallmark of intelligence.” Mann admits we still do not understand dolphins well. “It’s hard to get inside their heads because their brains are constructed differently and it’s very hard to analyse their language, but they do seem very intelligent,” she said.

(G) Dolphins are also often seen engaging in playful behaviour and creating tools to use for entertainment. They have been observed to blow bubbles which they form into rings to play with. After creating the bubble ring, a dolphin will use its nose and body to maintain the shape of the bubble and keep it from floating to the surface. The study provides a "better understanding of the why and how of sponging" by the Shark Bay dolphins, says Louis Herman, a cognitive psychologist. The work "adds to previously documented" examples of "innovation by this highly intelligent species." Patterson's and Mann's results also "reinforce a pattern" often seen in other tool - using animals, says Simon Reader, a behavioral biologist. "Tool use appears to be almost a last option, taken when other options fail or are unavailable," he says, noting that woodpecker finches in the Galápagos Islands "turn to tool use only in arid areas," wielding cactus spines to extract grubs from tree branches. Using tools takes time and energy, Reader says, and animals tend to rely on them only when there's a guaranteed payoff, such as turning up a fatty fish that most other dolphins (and fishermen) know nothing about.

Questions 14 – 20:

Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A – G. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A – G, in boxes 14 – 20 on your answer sheet.

14. Hallmark of intelligence.

15. Fisrt example of dolphins using tools.

16. Tool for entertainment.

17. The reason why dolphins go through trouble of getting fish from the bottom of the ocean.

18. The evidence of tradition in dolphins.

19. The estimated time of sponging innovation.

20. The observation of a local fisherman.

Questions 21 – 25:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 21 – 25 on your answer sheet.

21. Dolphins use sponges for hunting fish because: 

A. They like it.

B. It helps them get fish from the bottom of the ocean.

C. It makes hunting easier.

D. It helps them to get more fish during the hunt.

22. All the following statements about dolphins are true, EXCEPT: 

A. Females discovered the method of hunting with sponges.

B. The sponging method is passed by female dolphins to their daughters.

C. Male dolphins never use the sponging technique. 

D. Three generations of sponging dolphins have been documented.

23. Biologist Dr. Anna says that:

A. Sponging is very dangerous for dolphins.

B. Dolphins do not inherit sponging method from their parents. 

C. She has benn studying dolphins for a few decades now.

D. Sponging can be a stable behaviour.

24. With the computer simulation that modeled sponging, researchers:

A. Managed to find out approximately when sponging was originated.

B. Were able to predict the behaviour of dolphins. 

C. Found out the true reason of sponging.

D. Discovered a new way treating dolphins.

25. Accroding to Janet Mann:

A. Bottlenose dolphins have brain as big as humans have.

B. We can understand dolphins well now. 

C. Dolphins are very intellegent.

D. All of the above.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 26 – 40, which are based on reading passage 3 below. 

Toddlers Bond With Robot

(A) Will the robot revolution begin in nursery school? Researchers introduced a state - of - the - art social robot into a classroom of 18 - to 24 - month - olds for five months as a way of studying human-robot interactions. The children not only came to accept the robot, but treated it as they would a human buddy - hugging it and helping it - a new study says. "The results imply that current robot technology is surprisingly close to achieving autonomous bonding and socialization with human toddlers," said Fumihide Tanaka, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego 

(B) The development of robots that interact socially with people has been difficult to achieve, experts say, partly because such interactions are hard to study. "To my knowledge, this is the first long - term study of this sort," said Ronald Arkin, a roboticist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who was not involved with the study. "It is groundbreaking and helps to forward human - robot interaction studies significantly," he said.

(C) The most successful robots so far have been storytellers, but they have only been able to hold human interest for a limited time. For the new study, researchers introduced a toddler - size humanoid robot into a classroom at a UCSD childhood education center. Initially the researchers wanted to use a 22 - inch - tall model, but later they decided to use another robot of the QRIO series, the 23 - inch - tall (58 - centimeter - tall) machine was originally developed by Sony. Children of toddler age were chosen because they have no preconceived notions of robots, said Tanaka, the lead researcher, who also works for Sony. The researchers sent instructions about every two minutes to the robot to do things like giggle, dance, sit down, or walk in a certain direction. The 45 sessions were videotaped, and interactions between toddlers and the robot were later analyzed.

(D) The results showed that the quality of those interactions improved steadily over 27 sessions. The tots began to increasingly interact with the robot and treat it more like a peer than an object during the first 11 sessions. The level of social activity increased dramatically when researchers added a new behavior to QRIO's repertoire: If a child touched the humanoid on its head, it would make a giggling noise. The interactions deteriorated quickly over the next 15 sessions, when the robot was reprogrammed to behave in a more limited, predictable manner. Finally, the human - robot relations improved in the last three sessions, after the robot had been reprogrammed to display its full range of behaviors. "Initially the children treated the robot very differently than the way they treated each other," Tanaka said. "But by the end they treated the robot as a peer rather than a toy." 

(E) Early in the study some children cried when QRIO fell. But a month into the study, the toddlers helped QRIO stand up by pushing its back or pulling its hands. “The most important aspect of interaction was touch”, Tanaka said. “At first the toddlers would touch the robot on its face, but later on they would touch only on its hands and arms, like they would with other humans”. Another robotlike toy named Robby, which resembled QRIO but did not move, was used as a control toy in the study. While hugging of QRIO increased, hugging of Robby decreased throughout the study. Furthermore, when QRIO laid down on the floor as its batteries ran down, a toddler would put a blanket over his silver - colored "friend" and say "night - night."

(F) "Our work suggests that touch integrated on the time - scale of a few minutes is a surprisingly effective index of social connectedness," Tanaka says. "Something akin to this index may be used by the human brain to evaluate its own sense of social well - being." He adds that social robots like QRIO could greatly enrich classrooms and assist teachers in early learning programs. Hiroshi Ishiguro - robotics expert at Osaka University in Japan - says, "I think this study has clearly reported the possibilities of small, almost autonomous humanoid robots for toddlers. Nowadays robots can perform a variety of functions that were thought to be incident to people only - in short time we’ll have electronic baby - sitters and peer - robots in every kindergarten," said Ishiguro, who was not involved with the study but has collaborated with its authors on other projects.

(G) Now this study has taken a new direction - the researchers are now developing autonomous robots for the toddler classroom. "I cannot avoid underlining how great potential it could have in educational settings assisting teachers and enriching the classroom environment," Tanaka said. However, some scientists don’t share his opinion.

(H) Arkin, the Georgia Tech roboticist, said he was not surprised by the affection showed by the toddlers toward the robot. "Humans have a tremendous propensity to bond with artifacts with any or all sort, whether it be a car, a doll, or a robot," he said. But he also cautioned that researchers don't yet understand the consequences of increased human - robot interaction. "Just studying how robots and humans work together can give us insight into whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for society," Akrin said. "What are the consequences of introducing a robot artifact into a cadre of children? How will that enhance, or potentially interfere with, their social development? It might make life easier for the teacher, but we really don't understand the long-term impact of having a robot as a childhood friend, do we?"

Questions 26 – 32:

Reading Passage 3 has eight paragraphs, A – H. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A – H, in boxes 26 – 32 on your answer sheet. You may use any letter more than once.

26. Changes in toddler - robot interactions quality. 

27. Comparison of two different robots. 

28. The fact that previous robots could maintain people’s interest only for a short time. 

29. The importance of touch. 

30. The new direction of the study. 

31. Technical parameters of the introduced robot. 

32. The significance and novelty of the conducted study. 

Questions 33 – 37:

Connect each of the statements below with the name of scientist who expressed it. Answer A, B, or C to questions 33 – 37.

33. Robots will perform duties of baby - sitters in the nearest future. 

34. By the end of the study children treated the robot as a living creature rather than a toy. 

35. The long - term impact of having a robot as a childhood friend can be negative. 

36. The conducted study is the first major study of this sort. 

37. Robots can be used in classrooms and assist teachers. 

Questions 38 – 40:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 38 – 40 on your answer sheet.

38. For the study, researchers introduced a toddler - size humanoid robot that was:

A. 58 - inch - tall

B. 22 - inch - tall 

C. 23 - inch - tall

D. 45 - inch - tall

39. The researchers sent instructions to the robot to perform different actions EXCEPT:

A. Laugh

B. Dance

C. Sit down

D. Crawl

40. The toddlers began to increasingly interact with the robot during 

A. The first 11 sessions

B. The next 15 sessions

C. The first 27 sessions

D. The last 15 sessions

3. IELTS General Reading

3.1 Đề thi số 1

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 1 – 13, which are based on reading passage 1 below.

The Earth

(A) The Earth is the third planet from the Sun and it is the only planet known to have life on it. The Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago. It is one of four rocky planets on the inside of the Solar System. The other three are Mercury, Venus, and Mars.

(B) The large mass of the Sun makes the Earth move around it, just as the mass of the Earth makes the Moon move around it. The Earth also turns round in space, so different parts face the Sun at different times. The Earth goes around the Sun once (one "year") for every 365¼ times it turns all the way around (one "day").

(C) The Moon goes around the Earth about every 27⅓ days, and reflects light from the Sun. As the Earth goes round the Sun at the same time, the changing light of the Moon takes about 29½ days to go from dark to bright to dark again. That is where the idea of "month" came from. However, now most months have 30 or 31 days so they fit into one year.

(D) The Earth is the only planet in our Solar System that has a large amount of liquid water. About 71% of the surface of the Earth is covered by oceans. Because of this, it is sometimes called the "Blue Planet".

(E) Because of its water, the Earth is home to millions of species of plants and animals. The things that live on Earth have changed its surface greatly. For example, early cyanobacteria changed the air and gave it oxygen. The living part of the Earth's surface is called the "biosphere". 

(F) The Earth is part of the eight planets and many thousands of small bodies that move around the Sun as its Solar System. The Solar System is moving through the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy now, and will be for about the next 10,000 years.

(G) The Earth is generally 150,000,000 kilometers or 93,000,000 miles away from the Sun (this distance is named an "Astronomical Unit"). The Earth moves along its way at an average speed of about 30 km or 19 mi a second. The Earth turns all the way around about 365¼ times in the time it takes for the Earth to go all the way around the Sun. To make up this extra bit of a day every year, an additional day is used every four years. This is named a "leap year".

(H) The Moon goes around the Earth at an average distance of 400,000 kilometers (250,000 mi). It is locked to Earth, so that it always has the same half facing the Earth; the other half is called the "dark side of the Moon". It takes about 27⅓ days for the Moon to go all the way around the Earth but, because the Earth is moving around the Sun at the same time, it takes about 29½ days for the Moon to go from dark to bright to dark again. This is where the word "month" came from, even though most months now have 30 or 31 days.

Questions 1 – 8:

Reading Passage 1 has eight paragraphs A – H. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A – H, in boxes 1 – 8 on your answer sheet.

1. Earth’s natural satellite 

2. Distance between Earth and Sun 

3. General information about Earth 

4. The Solar System  

5. Length of most moths 

6. Another name for Earth 

7. The living part of the Earth's surface 

8. The movements of Earth around the Sun 

Questions 9 – 13:

Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 9 – 13 on your answer sheet.

9. Apart from Earth, other rocky planets in our Solar Systems are Venus, Mars and . 

10. Moon from the Sun on Earth.

11. There are millions of plants and animals that inhabit Earth.

12. Now the Solar System is travelling through. 

13. The dark side of the Moon is the side, which faces Earth.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on questions 14 – 28. Read the texts below and answer the following questions.

1. The Vitamin Shoppe: 1,946 part time openings. 

The Vitamin Shoppe is a New Jersey - based retailer of nutritional supplements. They also operate stores in Canada under the name "VitaPath". The company provides approximately 8,000 different SKU's of supplements through its retail stores and over 20,000 different SKU's of supplements through its online retail websites.

Employee Review: "Good growth opportunities and stores opening all over the US all year 'round. Company based out of NJ, so more progressive policies on employment and benefits. Good vacation, health, and dental benefits. Payment is above average. Good policies on customer service interaction as well. Focus on Customer service vs. pushing products."

2. Chipotle: 1,553 part - time openings.

Chipotle is known for its use of organic meats throughout its more than 1,500 restaurants, which are located in 45 states. Since having been founded in 1993, the chain has since exploded and now counts some 37,000 employees. It is a pioneer in the "fast casual" dining movement.

Employee Review: "The people I work with are awesome and the food is good. It pays my bills and makes me laugh. The schedule is super flexible but it's a lot of work. If you're looking for something easy and laid back, keep looking."

3. Advantage Sales & Marketing: 1,742 part - time openings. 

Advantage Sales & Marketing provides outsourced sales, merchandising, and marketing services to consumer goods and food product manufacturers and suppliers. Owning more than 65 offices in the US and Canada, ASM does merchandising for 1,200 clients - including Johnson & Johnson, Mars, Unilever, Energizer.

Employee Review: "Long lasting business, able to adapt to changes in market. Well - thought out schedule, and flexible time off for both vacation and illness."

4. Universal Protection Service: 1,219 part - time openings.

Universal Protection Service is one of the largest providers of security services in the U.S. They offer an expansive range of security solutions for airports, healthcare facilities, office buildings, and more.

Employee Review: "Good pay depending on where you work. Room for advancement based on availability. Better company than any other I have worked for in security."

5. PSA Healthcare: 1,295 part - time openings.

PSA Healthcare, also known as Pediatric Services of America, provides comprehensive home health services through a branch of office across the United States. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Ga.

Employee Review: "I love working one - on - one with the pediatric patient and their families. You have the time needed to give great compassionate care! Office staff and supervisors are very good with both employees and clients. There is a lot of flexibility with staffing. I never received grief for requesting a day off."

Questions 14 – 22:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in boxes 14 – 22 on your answer sheet.

14. Which offer has the most part - time openings? 

A. Chipotle

B. PSA Healthcare

C. The Vitamin Shoppe

D. Advantage Sales & Marketing

15. Which of these companies operate both in USA and Canada?

A. The Vitamin Shoppe and Advantage Sales & Marketing

B. PSA Healthcare and Advantage Sales & Marketing

C. Chipotle and PSA Healthcare

D. PSA Healthcare and The Vitamin Shoppe

16. Review of which company says that it is the best security company he/she worked for? 

A. Chipotle

B. The Vitamin Shoppe

C. Universal Protection Service

D. PSA Healthcare

17. Which company was founded in 1993? 

A. The Vitamin Shoppe

B. Universal Protection Service

C. PSA Healthcare

D. Chipotle

18. Main office of which company is situated in Atlanta? 

A. The Vitamin Shoppe

B. PSA Healthcare

C. Chipotle

D. Advantage Sales & Marketing

19. VitaPath is the other name of which company? 

A. PSA Healthcare

B. Universal Protection Service

C. The Vitamin Shoppe

D. Advantage Sales & Marketing

20. Which review doesn’t mention a comfortable timetable? 

A. Chipotle

B. Advantage Sales & Marketing

C. The Vitamin Shoppe

D. PSA Healthcare

21. Which company is described as a long lasting business? 

A. PSA Healthcare

B. Advantage Sales & Marketing

C. Universal Protection Service

D. Chipotle

22. Organic meat is used by what company? 

A. Chipotle

B. The Vitamin Shoppe

C. Advantage Sales & Marketing

D. None of them

Questions 23 – 28:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Section 2? In boxes 23 – 28 on your answer sheet, write: 

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

23. The Vitamin Shoppe has an above average salary, according to the review.                    

24. Reviewer of the company Chipotle says that working there is both fun and earns enough money.                   

25. Advantage Sales & Marketing owns 65 offices all over the world.                    

26. Universal Protection Service offers various security services in the USA.                 

27. Reviewer of the PSA Healthcare praises its high wages.              

28. None of the offers included an approximate salary in the description. 

READING PASSAGE 3

Read the text below and answer questions 29 – 40. 

What to do in a fire?

Fire drills are a big part of being safe in school: They prepare you for what you need to do in case of a fire. But what if there was a fire where you live? Would you know what to do? Talking about fires can be scary because no one likes to think about people getting hurt or their things getting burned. But you can feel less worried if you are prepared.

It's a good idea for families to talk about what they would do to escape a fire. Different families will have different strategies. Some kids live in one - story houses and other kids live in tall buildings. You'll want to talk about escape plans and escape routes, so let's start there.

Know Your Way Out

An escape plan can help every member of a family get out of a burning house. The idea is to get outside quickly and safely. Smoke from a fire can make it hard to see where things are, so it's important to learn and remember the different ways out of your home. How many exits are there? How do you get to them from your room? It's a good idea to have your family draw a map of the escape plan.

It's possible one way out could be blocked by fire or smoke, so you'll want to know where other ones are. And if you live in an apartment building, you'll want to know the best way to the stairwell or other emergency exits.

Safety Steps

If you're in a room with the door closed when the fire breaks out, you need to take a few extra steps:

Check to see if there's heat or smoke coming in the cracks around the door. (You're checking to see if there's fire on the other side.)

If you see smoke coming under the door — Don't open the door!

If you don't see smoke — touch the door. If the door is hot or very warm — Don't open the door!

If you don't see smoke — and the door is not hot — then use your fingers to lightly touch the doorknob. If the doorknob is hot or very warm — Don't open the door!

If the doorknob feels cool, and you can't see any smoke around the door, you can open the door very carefully and slowly. When you open the door, if you feel a burst of heat or smoke pours into the room, quickly shut the door and make sure it is really closed. If there's no smoke or heat when you open the door, go toward your escape route exit.

Questions 29 – 34:

Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 29 – 34 on your answer sheet.

29. While some might live in a tall buildings, others might live in a………….

30. Important thing is to talk with your kids about escape  and………….

31. Making a…………. is a good idea, it can help you escape.

32. If you live in an apartment, you have to know the way to the staircase or other………….

33. You can only open the door if the…………. is not hot and you can’t see smoke around the door.

34. You should immediately close the door, if smoke…………. into the room.

Questions 35 – 39:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Section 3? In boxes 35 – 39 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

35. It is important to have a strategy before escaping the fire.                       

36. You should mark different ways out of your home on the map.                    

37. If you’re stuck in a room, and see smoke coming from the other room, you should open the door and ran to the exit.                      

38. Hot door means you shouldn’t open it to escape.                   

39. If you open the door and everything seems fine, go straight to the exit.                     

Question 40:

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. Write the correct letter in box 40 on your answer sheet.

40. This article is mainly aimed at helping: 

A. Children

B. Children and their parents 

C. Only parents

D. Teachers at schools

3.2 Đề thi số 2

READING PASSAGE 1

Read passage 1 and answer questions 1 – 14.

EMERGENCY PROCEDURES

Revised July 2011

This applies to all persons on the school campus.

In cases of emergency (e.g. fire), find the nearest teacher who will: send a messenger at full speed to the Office OR inform the Office via phone ext. 99. 

PROCEDURE FOR EVACUATION

1. Warning of an emergency evacuation will be marked by a number of short bell rings. (In the event of a power failure, this may be a hand - held bell or siren.) 

2. All class work will cease immediately.

3. Students will leave their bags, books and other possessions where they are.

4. Teachers will take the class rolls. 

5. Classes will vacate the premises using the nearest staircase. If these stairs are inaccessible, use the nearest alternative staircase. Do not use the lifts. Do not run. 

6. Each class, under the teacher’s supervision, will move in a brisk, orderly fashion to the paved quadrangle area adjacent to the car park. 

7. All support staff will do the same. 

8. The Marshalling Supervisor, Ms Randall, will be wearing a red cap and she will be waiting there with the master timetable and staff list in her possession. 

9. Students assemble in the quad with their teacher at the time of evacuation. The teacher will do a head count and check the roll. 

10. Each teacher sends a student to the Supervisor to report whether all students have been accounted for. After checking, students will sit down (in the event of rain or wet pavement they may remain standing). 

11. The Supervisor will inform the Office when all staff and students have been accounted for. 

12. All students, teaching staff and support personnel remain in the evacuation area until the All Clear signal is given.

13. The All Clear will be a long bell ring or three blasts on the siren. 

14. Students will return to class in an orderly manner under teacher guidance.

15. In the event of an emergency occurring during lunch or breaks, students are to assemble in their home - room groups in the quad and await their home - room teacher.

Questions 1 – 8:

Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 1 – 8 on your answer sheet. 

1. In an emergency, a teacher will either phone the office or.

2. The signal for evacuation will normally be several.

3. If possible, students should leave the building by the.

4. They then walk quickly to the.

5.  will join the teachers and students in the quad. 

6. Each class teacher will count up his or her students and mark.

7. After the, everyone may return to class. 

8. If there is an emergency at lunchtime, students gather in the quad in and wait for their teacher.

Read the texts below and answer questions 9 – 14:

Community Education

SHORT COURSES: BUSINESS

Business Basics 

Gain foundation knowledge for employment in an accounts position with bookkeeping and business basics through to intermediate level; suitable for anyone requiring knowledge from the ground up. 

• Code B/ED011 

• 16th or 24th April 9am – 4pm 

• Cost $420 

Bookkeeping 

This course will provide students with a comprehensive understanding of bookkeeping and a great deal of hands - on experience. 

• Code B/ED020 

• 19th April 9am – 2.30pm (one session only so advance bookings essential) 

• Cost $250 

New Enterprise Module 

Understand company structures, tax rates, deductions, employer obligations, profit and loss statements, GST and budgeting for tax. 

• Code B/ED030 

• 15th or 27th May 6pm – 9pm 

• Cost $105 

Social Networking – The Latest Marketing Tool 

This broad overview gives you the opportunity to analyse what web technologies are available and how they can benefit your organisation. 

• Code B/ ED033 

• 1st or 8th or 15th June 6pm – 9pm 

• Cost $95 

Communication 

Take the fear out of talking to large gatherings of people. Gain the public - speaking experience that will empower you with better communication skills and confidence. 

• Code B/ ED401 

• 12th or 13th or 14th

• July 6pm – 9pm 

• Cost $90 

Questions 9 – 14:

Do the following statements agree with the information given in the text? In boxes 9 – 14 on your answer sheet, write:

• TRUE if the statement agrees with the information 

• FALSE if the statement contradicts the information 

• NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 

9. Business Basics is appropriate for beginners.              

10. Bookkeeping has no practical component.              

11. Bookkeeping is intended for advanced students only.                        

12. The New Enterprise Module can help your business become more profitable. (Choose)     

13. Social Networking focuses on a specific website to help your business succeed. (Choose)

14. The Communication class involves speaking in front of an audience. 

READING PASSAGE 2

Read passage 2 and answer questions 15 – 28:

BENEFICIAL WORK PRACTICES FOR THE KEYBOARD

OPERATOR

(A) Sensible work practices are an important factor in the prevention of muscular fatigue; discomfort or pain in the arms, neck, hands or back; or eye strain which can be associated with constant or regular work at a keyboard and visual display unit (VDU). 

(B) It is vital that the employer pays attention to the physical setting such as workplace design, the office environment, and placement of monitors as well as the organisation of the work and individual work habits. Operators must be able to recognise work - related health problems and be given the opportunity to participate in the management of these. Operators should take note of and follow the preventive measures outlined below. 

(C) The typist must be comfortably accommodated in a chair that is adjustable for height with a back rest that is also easily adjustable both for angle and height. The back rest and sitting ledge (with a curved edge) should preferably be cloth - covered to avoid excessive perspiration. 

(D) When the keyboard operator is working from a paper file or manuscript, it should be at the same distance from the eyes as the screen. The most convenient position can be found by using some sort of holder. Individual arrangement will vary according to whether the operator spends more time looking at the VDU or the paper – whichever the eyes are focused on for the majority of time should be put directly in front of the operator. 

(E) While keying, it is advisable to have frequent but short pauses of around thirty to sixty seconds to proofread. When doing this, relax your hands. After you have been keying for sixty minutes, you should have a ten minute change of activity. During this spell it is important that you do not remain seated but stand up or walk around. This period could be profitably used to do filing or collect and deliver documents. 

(F) Generally, the best position for a VDU is at right angles to the window. If this is not possible then glare from the window can be controlled by blinds, curtains or movable screens. Keep the face of the VDU vertical to avoid glare from overhead lighting. 

(G) Unsatisfactory work practices or working conditions may result in aches or pain. 

Symptoms should be reported to your supervisor early on so that the cause of the trouble can be corrected and the operator should seek medical attention. 

Questions 15 – 21:

The text on the next page has seven sections, A – G. Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.  Write the correct number, i – x, in boxes 15 – 21 on your answer sheet. 

List of Headings:

i. How can reflection problems be avoided? 

ii. How long should I work without a break? 

iii. What if I experience any problems? 

iv. When is the best time to do filing chores? 

v. What makes a good seat? 

vi. What are the common health problems? 

vii. What is the best kind of lighting to have? 

viii. What are the roles of management and workers? 

ix. Why does a VDU create eye fatigue? 

x. Where should I place the documents? 

15. Section A 

16. Section B 

17. Section C  

18. Section D 

19. Section E 

20. Section F 

21. Section G 

Workplace dismissals

Before the dismissal

If an employer wants to dismiss an employee, there is a process to be followed. 

Instances of minor misconduct and poor performance must first be addressed through some preliminary steps. 

Firstly, you should be given an improvement note. This will explain the problem, outline any necessary changes and offer some assistance in correcting the situation. Then, if your employer does not think your performance has improved, you may be given a written warning. The last step is called a final written warning which will inform you that you will be dismissed unless there are improvements in performance. If there is no improvement, your employer can begin the dismissal procedure. 

The dismissal procedure begins with a letter from the employer setting out the charges made against the employee. The employee will be invited to a meeting to discuss these accusations. If the employee denies the charges, he is given the opportunity to appear at a formal appeal hearing in front of a different manager. After this, a decision is made as to whether the employee will be let go or not. 

Dismissals 

Of the various types of dismissal, a fair dismissal is the best kind if an employer wants an employee out of the workplace. A fair dismissal is legally and contractually strong and it means all the necessary procedures have been correctly followed. In cases where an employee’s misconduct has been very serious, however, an employer may not have to follow all of these procedures. If the employer can prove that the employee’s behaviour was illegal, dangerous or severely wrong, the employee can be dismissed immediately: a procedure known as summary dismissal. 

Sometimes a dismissal is not considered to have taken place fairly. One of these types is wrongful dismissal and involves a breach of contract by the employer. This could involve dismissing an employee without notice or without following proper disciplinary and dismissal procedures. Another type, unfair dismissal, is when an employee is sacked without good cause. 

There is another kind of dismissal, known as constructive dismissal, which is slightly peculiar because the employee is not actually openly dismissed by the employer. In this case the employee is forced into resigning by an employer who tries to make significant changes to the original contract. This could  mean an employee might have to work night shifts after originally signing on for day work, or he could be made to work in dangerous conditions. 

Questions 22 – 23:

Complete the sentences below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the text for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 22 – 23 on your answer sheet.

22. If an employee receives a…………., this means he will lose his job if his work does not get better.

23. If an employee does not accept the reasons for his dismissal, a…………. can be arranged.

Questions 24 – 28:

Look at the following descriptions (Questions 24 – 28) and the list of terms in the box below. Match each description with the correct term A – E. Write the appropriate letter A – E in boxes 24 – 28 on your answer sheet.

24. An employee is asked to leave work straight away because he has done something really bad.

25. An employee is pressured to leave his job unless he accepts conditions that are very different from those agreed to in the beginning.

26. An employer gets rid of an employee without keeping to conditions in the contract.

27. The reason for an employee’s dismissal is not considered good enough.

28. The reasons for an employee’s dismissal are acceptable by law and the terms of the employment contract.

A. Fair dismissal 

B. Summary dismissal 

C. Unfair dismissal 

D. Wrongful dismissal 

E. Constructive dismissal

READING PASSAGE 3

Read passage 3 and answer questions 29 – 40:

CALISTHENICS

The world’s oldest form of resistance training

(A) From the very first caveman to scale a tree or hang from a cliff face, to the mighty armies of the Greco - Roman empires and the gymnasiums of modern American high schools, calisthenics has endured and thrived because of its simplicity and utility. Unlike strength training which involves weights, machines or resistance bands, calisthenics uses only the body’s own weight for physical development. 

(B) Calisthenics enters the historical record at around 480 B.C., with Herodotus’ account of the Battle of Thermopolylae. Herodotus reported that, prior to the battle, the God - King Xerxes sent a scout party to spy on his Spartan enemies. The scouts informed Xerxes that the Spartans, under the leadership of King Leonidas, were practicing some kind of bizarre, synchronised movements akin to a tribal dance. Xerxes was greatly amused. His own army was comprised of over 120,000 men, while the Spartans had just 300.

Leonidas was informed that he must retreat or face annihilation. The Spartans did not retreat, however, and in the ensuing battle they managed to hold Xerxes’ enormous army at bay for some time until reinforcements arrived. It turns out their tribal dance was not a superstitious ritual but a form of calisthenics by which they were building awe - inspiring physical strength and endurance. 

(C) The Greeks took calisthenics seriously not only as a form of military discipline and strength, but also as an artistic expression of movement and an aesthetically ideal physique. Indeed, the term calisthenics itself is derived from the Greek words for beauty and strength. We know from historical records and images from pottery, mosaics and sculptures of the period that the ancient Olympians took calisthenics training seriously. 

They were greatly admired – and still are, today – for their combination of athleticism and physical beauty. You may have heard a friend whimsically sigh and mention that someone ‘has the body of a Greek god’. This expression has travelled through centuries and continents, and the source of this envy and admiration is the calisthenics method.

(D) Calisthenics experienced its second golden age in the 1800s. This century saw the birth of gymnastics, an organised sport that uses a range of bars, rings, vaulting horses and balancing beams to display physical prowess. This period is also when the phenomena of strongmen developed. These were people of astounding physical strength and development who forged nomadic careers by demonstrating outlandish feats of strength to stunned populations. Most of these men trained using hand balancing and horizontal bars, as modern weight machines had not yet been invented. 

(E) In the 1950s, Angelo Siciliano – who went by the stage name Charles Atlas – was crowned “The World’s Most Perfectly Developed Man”. Atlas’s own approach stemmed from traditional calisthenics, and through a series of mail order comic books he taught these methods to hundreds of thousands of children and young adults through the 1960s and 1970s. But Atlas was the last of a dying breed. The tides were turning, fitness methods were drifting away from calisthenics, and no widely - regarded proponent of the method would ever succeed him.    

(F) In the 1960s and 1970s calisthenics and the goal of functional strength combined with physical beauty was replaced by an emphasis on huge muscles at any cost. This became the sport of body building. Although body building’s pioneers were drawn from the calisthenics tradition, the sole goal soon became an increase in muscle size. Body building icons, people such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sergio Oliva, were called mass monsters because of their imposing physiques.

Physical development of this nature was only attainable through the use of anabolic steroids, synthetic hormones which boosted muscle development while harming overall health. These body builders also relied on free weights and machines, which allowed them to target and bloat the size of individual muscles rather than develop a naturally proportioned body. 

Calisthenics, with its emphasis on physical beauty and a balance in proportions, had little to offer the mass monsters. 

(G) In this “bigger is better” climate, calisthenics was relegated to groups perceived to be vulnerable, such as women, people recuperating from injuries and school students. 

Although some of the strongest and most physically developed human beings ever to have lived acquired their abilities through the use of sophisticated calisthenics, a great deal of this knowledge was discarded and the method was reduced to nothing more than an easily accessible and readily available activity. Those who mastered the rudimentary skills of calisthenics could expect to graduate to weight training rather than advanced calisthenics. 

(H) In recent years, however, fitness trends have been shifting back toward the use of calisthenics. Bodybuilding approaches that promote excessive muscle development frequently lead to joint pain, injuries, unbalanced physiques and weak cardiovascular health. As a result, many of the newest and most popular gyms and programmes emphasize calisthenics - based methods instead. Modern practices often combine elements from a number of related traditions such as yoga, Pilates, kettle - ball training, gymnastics and traditional Greco - Roman calisthenics. Many people are keen to recover the original Greek vision of physical beauty and strength and harmony of the mind - body connection.

Questions 29 – 35:

The text has eight paragraphs, A – H. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A – H, in boxes, 29 – 35 on your answer sheet. 

29. The origin of the word ‘calisthenics’. 

30. The last popular supporter of calisthenics. 

31. The first use of calisthenics as a training method. 

32. A multidisciplinary approach to all - round health and strength. 

33. Reasons for the survival of calisthenics throughout the ages. 

34. The use of a medical substance to increase muscle mass and strength. 

35. A reference to travelling showmen who displayed their strength for audiences. 

Questions 36 – 40:

Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 36 – 40 on your answer sheet.

During the sixties and seventies, attaining huge muscles became more important than 36…………….. or having an attractive-looking body. The first people to take up this new sport of body building had a background in calisthenics but the most famous practitioners became known as 37…………….. on account of the impressive size of their muscles. Drugs and mechanical devices were used to develop individual muscles to a monstrous size. Calisthenics then became the domain of ‘weaker’ people: Females, children and those recovering from 38…………….. Much of the advanced knowledge about calisthenics was lost and the method was subsequently downgraded to the status of a simple, user - friendly activity. Once a person became skilled at this, he would progress to 39……………... Currently a revival of calisthenics is under way as extreme muscle building can harm the body leaving it sore, out of balance, and in poor 40……………..

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