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DẠNG 1: TRUE/FALSE/NOT GIVEN – YES/NO/NOT GIVEN

Exercise 1:

Sylvia Earle, underwater hero


She has spent her working life studying the world's oceans

Sylvia Earle is an underwater explorer and marine biologist who was born in the USA in 1935.
She became interested in the world’s oceans from an early age. As a child, she liked to stand on
the beach for hours and - look at the sea, wondering what it must be like under the surface.
When she was 16, she finally got a chance to make her first dive. It was this dive that inspired
her to become an underwater explorer. Since then, she has spent more than 6,500 hours under
water, and hạs led more than seventy expeditions worldwide. She has also made the – deepest
dive ever, reaching a record-breaking depth of 381 metres.
In 1970, she became famous around the world when she became the captain of the first all-
female team to live under water. The team spent two weeks in an underwater house. The research
they carried out showed the damage that pollution was causing to marine, life, and especially to
coral reefs. Her team also studied the problem of over-fishing. Fishing methods meant that
people were catching too many fish, Earle warned, and many species were in danger of
becoming extinct.
Since then she has written several books and magazine - articles in which she suggests ways of
reducing the damage that is being done to the world's oceans. One way, she believes, is to rely on
fish farms for seafood, and reduce the amount of fishing that is done out at sea. Although she no
longer eats seafood herself, she realises the importance it plays in our diets. It would be wrong to
tell people they should stop eating fish from the sea, she says. However, they need to reduce the
impact they are having on the ocean's supplies.
Question 1 – 5:
Now decide if these statements are TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN according to the information
in the passage. 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. Sylvia Earle lives in the USA.


2. Until 1970, nobody had lived underwater before
3. Sylvia Earle was worried about the amount of fish that were being caught.
4. Her books offer some solutions to marine.
5. She thinks people should avoid eating seafood.
Exercise 2:

Break the habit


We all think we can break our habits bad habits — but they can stay with us for life

What is a bad habit? The most common definition is that it is something that we do regularly,
almost without thinking about it, and which has some sort of negative consequence. This
consequence could affect those around us, or it could affect us personally. Those who deny
having bad habits are probably lying. Bad habits are part of what makes us human.
Many early habits, like sucking our thumb, are broken when we are very young. We are either
told to stop doing it by our parents, or we consciously or subconsciously observe that others do
not have the same habit, and we gradually grow out of it. It is when we intentionally or
unintentionally pick up new habits in our later childhood or early adulthood that it becomes a
problem. Unless we can break that habit early on, it becomes a part of our life, and becomes
“programmed' into our brain.
A recent study of human memory suggests that no matter how hard we try to change our habits,
it is the old ways that tend to win, especially in situations where we are rushed, stressed or
overworked. Habits that we thought we had got rid of can suddenly come back. During the study
programme, the researchers - showed a group of volunteers several pictures, and gave them
words to associate with them (for example, see a picture of tea, and associate it with 'breakfast').
They then showed the volunteers the same pictures again, and gave them new words to associate
with them (see a, picture of tea, and say 'afternoon').
A few days later, the volunteers were given a test. The "researchers showed them the pictures,
and told them to respond with one of the words they had been given for each one. It came as no
surprise that thein answers were split between the first set of words and the second. Two weeks
later, they were given the same test again. This time, most of them only gave the first set of
words. They appeared to have completely forgotten the second set.
The study confirms that the responses we learn first are those that remain strongest over time.
We may try to change our ways, but after a while, the response that comes to mind first is
usually the first one we learned. The more - that response is used, the more automatic it becomes
and the harder it becomes to respond in any other way.
The study therefore suggests that over time, our bad habits also become automatic, learned
behaviour. This is not good news for people who picked up bad habits early in life and now want
to change or break them. Even when we try to put new, good intentions into practice, those
previously learned habits remain stronger in more automatic, unconscious forms of memory.
Questions 1-7:
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the Reading passage?
In boxes from 1 - 5 on the answer sheet, write:

YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer


NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if there is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

1. We usually develop bad habits when we are very young.


2. We can only break bad habits if people tell us to do so.
3. Bad habits may return when we are under pressure.
4. Researchers were surprised by the answers that the volunteers gave in the first test.
5. The volunteers found the test more difficult when they did it the second time.
6. People find it more difficult to remember things they learnt when they were young.
7. If we develop bad habits early in life, they are harder to get rid of.

Exercise 3:

Australian culture and culture shock


by Anna Jones and Xuan Quach

Sometimes work, study or a sense of adventure take us out of our familiar surroundings to go and
live in a different culture. The experience can be difficult, even shocking. Almost everyone who
studies, lives or works abroad has problems adjusting to a new culture. This response is
commonly referred to as ‘culture shock’. Culture shock can be defined as ‘the physical and
emotional discomfort a person experiences when entering a culture different from their own’
(Weaver, 1993).
For people moving to Australia, Price (2001) has identified certain values which may give rise to
culture shock. Firstly, he argues that Australians place a high value on independence and
personal choice. This means that a teacher or course tutor will not tell students what to do, but
will give them a number of options and suggest they work out which one is the best in their
circumstances. It also means that they are expected to take action if something goes wrong and
seek out resources and support for themselves.
Australians are also prepared to accept a range of opinions rather than believing there is one
truth. This means that in an educational setting, students will be expected to form their own
opinions and defend the reasons for that point of view and the evidence for it. Price also
comments that Australians are uncomfortable with differences in status and hence idealise the
idea of treating everyone equally. An illustration of this is that most adult Australians call each
other by their first names. This concern with equality means that Australians are uncomfortable
taking anything too seriously and are even ready to joke about themselves.
Australians believe that life should have a balance between work and leisure time. As a
consequence, some students may be critical of others who they perceive as doing nothing but
study.
Australian notions of privacy mean that areas such as financial matters, appearance and
relationships are only discussed with close friends. While people may volunteer such
information, they may resent someone actually asking them unless the friendship is firmly
established. Even then, it is considered very impolite to ask someone what they earn. With older
people, it is also rude to ask how old they are, why they are not married or why they do not have
children. It is also impolite to ask people how much they have paid for something, unless there is
a very good reason for asking.
Kohls (1996) describes culture shock as a process of change marked by four basic stages. During
the first stage, the new arrival is excited to be in a new place, so this is often referred to as the
“honeymoon” stage. Like a tourist, they are intrigued by all the new sights and sounds, new
smells and tastes of their surroundings. They may have some problems, but usually they accept
them as just part of the novelty. At this point, it is the similarities that stand out, and it seems to
the newcomer that people everywhere and their way of life are very much alike. This period of
euphoria may last from a couple of weeks to a month, but the letdown is inevitable.
During the second stage, known as the ‘rejection’ stage, the newcomer starts to experience
difficulties due to the differences between the new culture and the way they were accustomed to
living. The initial enthusiasm turns into irritation, frustration, anger and depression, and these
feelings may have the effect of people rejecting the new culture so that they notice only the
things that cause them trouble, which they then complain about. In addition, they may feel
homesick, bored, withdrawn and irritable during this period as well.
Fortunately, most people gradually learn to adapt to the new culture and move on to the third
stage, known as ‘adjustment and reorientation’. During this stage a transition occurs to a new
optimistic attitude. As the newcomer begins to understand more of the new culture, they are able
to interpret some of the subtle cultural clues which passed by unnoticed earlier. Now things make
more sense and the culture seems more familiar. As a result, they begin to develop problem-
solving skills, and feelings of disorientation and anxiety no longer affect them.
In Kohls’s model, in the fourth stage, newcomers undergo a process of adaptation. They have
settled into the new culture, and this results in a feeling of direction and self-confidence. They
have accepted the new food, drinks, habits and customs and may even find themselves enjoying
some of the very customs that bothered them so much previously. In addition, they realise that
the new culture has good and bad things to offer and that no way is really better than another,
just different.

Now decide if these statements are TRUE, FALSE or NOT GIVEN according to the
information in the passage.
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 Australian teachers will suggest alternatives to students rather than offer one solution.
2 In Australia, teachers will show interest in students’ personal circumstances.
3 Australians use people’s first names so that everyone feels their status is similar.
4 Students who study all the time may receive positive comments from their colleagues.
5 It is acceptable to discuss financial issues with people you do not know well.
6 Younger Australians tend to be friendlier than older Australians.

Exercise 4:

Why don’t babies talk like adults?


A recent e-trade advertisement shows a baby speaking directly to the camera: 'Look at this,’ he
says, I'm a free man. I go anywhere I want now.’ He describes his stock-buying activities, and
then his phone rings. This advertisement proves what comedians have known for years: few
things are as funny as a baby who talks like an adult. But it also raises an important question:
Why don’t young children express themselves clearly like adults?
Many people assume children learn to talk by copying what they hear. In other words, they listen
to the words adults use and the situations in which they use them and imitate accordingly.
Behaviourism, the scientific approach that dominated American cognitive science for the first
half of the 20th century, made exactly this argument.
However, this ’copycat’ theory can’t explain why toddlers aren’t as conversational as adults.
After all, you never hear literate adults express themselves in one-word sentences like ‘bottle’ or
‘doggie’. In fact, it's easy for scientists to show that a copycat theory of language acquisition
can’t explain children’s first words. What is hard for them to do is to explain these first words,
and how they fit into the language acquisition pattern.
Over the past half-century, scientists have settled on two reasonable possibilities. The first of
these is called the ‘mental-developmental hypothesis. It states that one-year-olds speak in baby
talk because their immature brains can’t handle adult speech. Children don't learn to walk until
their bodies are ready. Likewise, they don't speak multi-word sentences or use word endings and
function words (‘Mummy opened the boxes') before their brains are ready.
The second is called the ‘stages-of-language hypothesis’, which states that the stages of progress
in child speech are necessary stages in language development.
A basketball player can't perfect his or her jump shot before learning to (1) jump and (2) shoot.
Similarly, children learn to multiply after they have learned to add. This is the order in which
children are taught - not the reverse. There's evidence, for instance, that children don't usually
begin speaking in two-word sentences until they’ve learned a certain number of single words
In other words, until they’ve crossed that linguistic threshold, the word-combination process
doesn't get going. The difference between these theories is this: under the mental-development
hypothesis, language learning should depend on the child’s age and level of mental development
when he or she starts learning a language. Linder the stages-of-language hypothesis, however, it
shouldn’t depend on such patterns, but only on the completion of previous stages.
In 2007, researchers at Harvard University, who were studying the two theories, found a clever
way to test them. More than 20,000 internationally adopted children enter the US each year.
Many of them no longer hear their birth language after they arrive, and they must learn English
more or less the same way infants do - that is, by listening and by trial and error. International
adoptees don’t take classes or use a dictionary when they are learning their new tongue and most
of them don’t have a well-developed first language. All of these factors make them an ideal
population in which to test these competing hypotheses about how language is learned.
Neuroscientists Jesse Snedeker, Joy Geren and Carissa Shafto studied the language development
of 27 children adopted from China between the ages of two and five years. These children began
learning English at an older age than US natives and had more mature brains with which to
tackle the task. Even so, just as with American-born infants, their first English sentences
consisted of single words and were largely bereft of function words, word endings and verbs.
The adoptees then went through the same stages as typical American- born children, albeit at a
faster clip. The adoptees and native children started combining words in sentences when their
vocabulary reached the same sizes, further suggesting that what matters is not how old you are or
how mature your brain is, but the number of words you know.
This finding - that having more mature brains did not help the adoptees avoid the toddler-talk
stage - suggests that babies speak in babytalk not because they have baby brains, but because
they have only just started learning and need time to gain enough vocabulary to be able to
expand their conversations. Before long, the one-word stage will give way to the two-word stage
and so on. Learning how to chat like an adult is a gradual process.
But this potential answer also raises an even older and more difficult question. Adult immigrants
who learn a second language rarely achieve the same proficiency in a foreign language as the
average child raised as a native speaker. Researchers have long suspected there is a ‘critical
period’ for language development, after which it cannot proceed with full success to fluency. Yet
we still do not understand this critical period or know why it ends.
Questions 26-29:
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the reading
passage?
Write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if there is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
1. People are extremely amused when they see a baby talk like an adult.
2. Behaviourists of the early 20th century argued that children learn to speak by copying adults.
3. Children have more conversations with adults than with other children.
4. Scientists have found it easy to work out why babies use one-word sentences.

Exercise 5:

The history of the poster


The appearance of the poster has changed continuously over the past two centuries.

The first posters were known as ‘broadsides’ and were used for public and commercial
announcements. Printed on one side only using metal type, they were quickly and crudely
produced in large quantities. As they were meant to be read at a distance, they required large
lettering. There were a number of negative aspects of large metal type. It was expensive, required
a large amount of storage space and was extremely heavy. If a printer did have a collection of
large metal type, it was likely that there were not enough letters. So printers did their best by
mixing and matching styles.
Commercial pressure for large type was answered with the invention of a system for wood type
production. In 1827, Darius Wells invented a special wood drill - the lateral router - capable of
cutting letters on wood blocks. The router was used in combination with William Leavenworth’s
pantograpn (1834) to create decorative wooden letters of all shapes and sizes. The first posters
began to appear, but they had little colour and design; often wooden type was mixed with metal
type in a conglomeration of styles.
A major development in poster design was the application of lithography, invented by Alois
Senefelder in 1796, which allowed artists to hand-draw letters, opening the field of type design
to endless styles. The method involved drawing with a greasy crayon onto finely surfaced
Bavarian limestone and offsetting that image onto paper. This direct process captured the artist's
true intention; however, the final printed image was in reverse. The images and lettering needed
to be drawn backwards, often reflected in a mirror or traced on transfer paper.
As a result of this technical difficulty, the invention of the lithographic process had little impact
on posters until the 1860s, when Jules Cheret came up with his ‘three-stone lithographic
process’. This gave artists the opportunity to experiment with a wide spectrum of colours.
Although the process was difficult, the result was remarkable, with nuances of colour impossible
in other media even to this day. The ability to mix words and images in such an attractive and
economical format finally made the lithographic poster a powerful innovation.
Starting in the 1870s, posters became the main vehicle for advertising prior to the magazine era
and the dominant means of mass communication in the rapidly growing cities of Europe and
America. Yet in the streets of Paris, Milan and Berlin, these artistic prints were so popular that
they were stolen off walls almost as soon as they were hung. Cheret, later known as ‘the father of
the modern poster’, organised the first exhibition of posters in 1884 and two years later published
the first book on poster art. He quickly took advantage of the public interest by arranging for
artists to create posters, at a reduced size, that were suitable for in-home display.
Thanks to Cheret. the poster slowly took hold in other countries in the 1890s and came to
celebrate each society’s unique cultural institutions: the cafe in France, the opera and fashion in
Italy, festivals in Spain, literature in Holland and trade fairs in Germany. The first poster shows
were held in Great Britain and Italy in 1894, Germany in 1896 and Russia in 1897. The most
important poster show ever, to many observers, was held in Reims, France, in 1896 and featured
an unbelievable 1,690 posters arranged by country.
In the early 20th century, the poster continued to play a large communication role and to go
through a range of styles. By the 1950s, however, it had begun to share the spotlight with other
media, mainly radio and print. By this time, most posters were printed using the mass production
technique of photo offset, which resulted in the familiar dot pattern seen in newspapers and
magazines. In addition, the use of photography in posters, begun in Russia in the twenties,
started to become as common as illustration.In the late fifties, a new graphic style that had strong
reliance on typographic elements in black and white appeared. The new style came to be known
as the International Typographic Style. It made use of a mathematical grid, strict graphic rules
and black-and-white photography to provide a clear and logical structure. It became the
predominant style in the world in the 1970s and continues to exert its influence today.
It was perfectly suited to the increasingly international post-war marketplace, where there was a
strong demand for clarity. This meant that the accessibility of words and symbols had to be taken
into account. Corporations wanted international identification, and events such as the Olympics
called for universal solutions, which the Typographic Style could provide. However, the
International Typographic Style began to lose its energy in the late 1970s. Many criticised it for
being cold, formal and dogmatic. A young teacher in Basel. Wolfgang Weingart, experimented
with the offset printing process to produce posters that appeared complex and chaotic, playful
and spontaneous - all in stark contrast to what had gone before. Weingart's liberation of
typography was an important foundation for several new styles. These ranged from Memphis and
Retro to the advances now being made in computer graphics.
Questions 10-13
Do the following statements agree with the information in the reading passage?
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
10. By the 1950s. photographs were more widely seen than artists' illustrations on
posters.
11. Features of the Typographic Style can be seen in modern-day posters.
12. The Typographic Style met a global need at a particular time in history.
13. Weingart got many of his ideas from his students in Basel.

Exercise 7:

Examining the placebo effect


The fact that taking a fake drug can powerfully improve some people's health – the so-called
placebo effect - was long considered an embarrassment to the serious practice of pharmacology,
but now things have changed.
Several years ago. Merck, a global pharmaceutical company, was falling behind its rivals in
sales. To make matters worse, patents on five blockbuster drugs were about to expire, which
would allow cheaper generic products to flood the market. In interviews with the press. Edward
Scolnick. Merck's Research Director, presented his plan to restore the firm to pre-eminence. Key
to his strategy was expanding the company’s reach into the anti depressant, market, where Merck
had trailed behind, while competitors like Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline had created some of the
best-selling drugs in the world. "To remain dominant in the future.” he told one media company,
"we need to dominate the central nervous system."
His plan hinged on the success of an experimental anti-depressant codenamed MK-869. Still in
clinical trials, it was a new kind of medication that exploited brain chemistry in innovative ways
to promote feelings of well-being. The drug tested extremely well early on. with minimal side
effects. Behind the scenes, however, MK-869 was starting to unravel. True, many test subjects
treated with the medication felt their hopelessness and anxiety lift. But so did nearly the same
number who took a placebo, a look-alike pill made of milk sugar or another ineit substance given
to groups of volunteers in subsequent clinical trials to gauge the effectiveness of the real drug by
comparison. Ultimately Merck's venture into the anti-depressant market failed. In the jargon of
the industry, the trials crossed the "futility boundary".
MK-869 has not been the only much-ited medical breakthrough to be undone in recent years by
the placebo effect. And it's not only trials of new drugs that are crossing the futility boundary.
Some products that have been on the market for decades are faltering in more recent follow-up
tests It's not that the old medications are getting weaker, drug developers say It's as if the placebo
effect is somehow getting stronger The fact that an increasing number of medications are unable
to beat sugar pills has thrown the industry into crisis The stakes could hardly be higher. To win
FDA* approval, a new medication must beat placebo In at least two authenticated trials. In
today’s economy, the fate of a well-established company can hang on the outcome of a handful
of tests.
Why are fake pills suddenly overwhelming promising new drugs and established medicines
alike? The reasons are only just beginning to be understood. A network of independent
researchers is doggedly uncovering the inner workings and potential applications of the placebo
effect A psychiatrist. William Potter, who knew that some patients really do seem to get healthier
for reasons that have more to do with a doctor's empathy than with the contents of a pill, was
baffled by the fact that drugs he had been prescribing for years seemed to be struggling to prove
their effectiveness Thinking that a crucial factor may have been overlooked, Potter combed
through his company’s database of published and unpublished trials—including those that had
been kept secret because of high placebo response. His team aggregated the findings from
decades of anti-depressant trials, looking for patterns and trying to see what was changing over
time. What they found challenged some of the industry’s basic assumptions about its drug-
vetting process Assumption number one was that if a trial were managed correctly, a medication
would perform as well or badly in a Phoenix hospital as in a Bangalore dinic. Potter discovered,
however, that geographic location alone could determine the outcome. By the late 1990s, for
example, the anti-anxiety drug Diazepam was still beating placebo in France and Belgium But
when the drug was tested in the U.S. it was likely to fail. Conversely, a similar drug. Prozac,
performed better in America than it did in western Europe and South Africa. It was an unsettling
prospect FDA approval could hinge on where the company chose to conduct a trial.
Mistaken assumption number two was that the standard tests used to gauge volunteers'
improvement in trials yielded consistent results. Potter and his colleagues discovered that ratings
by trial observers varied significantly from one testing site to another. It was like finding out that
the judges in a tight race each had a different idea about the placement of the finish line.
After some coercion by Potter and others, the National Institute of Health (NIH) focused on the
issue in 2000, hosting a three-day conference in Washington, and this conference launched a new
wave of placebo research in academic laboratories in the U.S. and Italy that would make
significant progress toward solving the mystery of what was happening in clinical trials.
In one study last year. Harvard Medical School researcher Ted Kaptchuk devised a clever
strategy for testing his volunteers’ response to varying levels of therapeutic ritual The study
focused on a common but painful medical condition that costs more than $40 billion a year
worldwide to treat. First, the volunteers were placed randomly in one of three groups. One group
was simply put on a waiting list; researchers know that some patients get better just because they
sign up for a trial. Another group received placebo treatment from a clinician who declined to
engage in small talk. Volunteers in the third group got the same fake treatment from a clinician
who asked them questions about symptoms, outlined the causes of the illness, and displayed
optimism about their condition.
Not surprisingly, the health of those in the third group improved most. In fact, just by
participating in the trial, volunteers in this high-interaction group got as much relief as did people
taking the two leading prescription drugs for the condition. And the benefits of their “bogus”
treatment persisted for weeks afterward, contrary to the belief—widespread in the
pharmaceutical industry- that the placebo response is short-lived.
Studies like this open the door to hybrid treatment strategies that exploit the placebo effect to
make real drugs safer and more effective. As Potter says. “To really do the best for your patients,
you want the best placebo response plus the best drug response''.
Question 1 – 5:
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer?
Write
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the
passage?
In boxes from 1 - 5 on the answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if there is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

1. Merck’s experience with MK-869 was unique.


2. These days, a small number of unsuccessful test results can ruin a well-established drugs
company.
3. Some medical conditions are more easily treated by a placebo than others.
4. It was to be expected that the third group in Kaptchuk’s trial would do better than the other
two groups.
5. Kaptchuk’s research highlights the fact that combined drug and placebo treatments should be
avoided.

Exercise 8:

The Earth and Space Foundation


The community that focuses its efforts on the exploration of space has largely been different
from the community focused on the study and protection of the Earth's environment, despite the
fact that both fields of interest involve what might be referred to as "scientific exploration'. The
reason for this dichotomous existence is chiefly historical. The exploration of the Earth has been
occurring over many centuries, and the institutions created to do it are often very different from
those founded in the second part of the 20th century to explore space. This separation is also
caused by the fact that space exploration has attracted experts from mainly non-biological
disciplines - primarily engineers and physicists - but the study of Earth and its environment is a
domain heavily populated by biologists.
The separation between the two communities is often reflected in attitudes. In the environmental
community, it is not uncommon for space exploration to be regarded as a waste of money,
distracting governments from solving major environmental problems here at home. In the space
exploration community, it is not uncommon for environmentalists to be regarded as introspective
people who divert attention from the more expansive visions of the exploration of space - the
‘new frontier’. These perceptions can also be negative in consequence because the full potential
of both communities can be realised better when they work together to solve problems. For
example, those involved in space exploration can provide the satellites to monitor the Earth’s
fragile environments, and environmentalists can provide information on the survival of life in
extreme environments.
In the sense that Earth and space exploration both stem from the same human drive to understand
our environment and our place within it, there is no reason for the split to exist. A more accurate
view of Earth and space exploration is to see them as a continuum of exploration with many
interconnected and mutually beneficial links. The Earth and Space Foundation, a registered
charity, was established for the purposes of fostering such links through field research and by
direct practical action.
Projects that have been supported by the Foundation include environmental projects using
technologies resulting from space exploration: satellite communications, GPS, remote sensing,
advanced materials and power sources. For example, in places where people are faced with
destruction of the forests on which their livelihood depends, rather than rejecting economic
progress and trying to save the forests on their intrinsic merit, another approach is to enhance the
value of the forests - although these schemes must be carefully assessed to be successful. In the
past, the Foundation provided a grant to a group of expeditions that used remote sensing to plan
eco-tourism routes in the forests of Guatemala, thus providing capital to the local communities
through the tourist trade. This novel approach is now making the protection of the forests a
sensible economic decision.
The Foundation funds expeditions making astronomical observations from remote, difficult-to-
access Earth locations, archaeological field projects studying the development of early
civilisations that made significant contributions to astronomy and space sciences, and field
expeditions studying the way in which views of the astronomical environment shaped the nature
of past civilisations. A part of Syria - ‘the Fertile Crescent’ - was the birthplace of astronomy,
accountancy, animal domestication and many other fundamental developments of human
civilisation. The Foundation helped fund a large archaeology project by the Society for Syrian
Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, in collaboration with the Syrian
government that used GPS and satellite imagery to locate mounds, or ’tels’, containing artefacts
and remnants of early civilisations. These collections are being used to build a better picture of
the nature of the civilisations that gave birth to astronomy.
Field research also applies the Earth’s environmental and biological resources to the human
exploration and settlement of space. This may include the use of remote environments on Earth,
as well as physiological and psychological studies in harsh environments. In one research
project, the Foundation provided a grant to an international caving expedition to study the
psychology of explorers subjected to long-term isolation in caves in Mexico. The psychometric
tests on the cavers were used to enhance US astronaut selection criteria by the NASA Johnson
Space Center.
Space-like environments on Earth help us understand how to operate in the space environment or
help us characterise extraterrestrial environments for future scientific research. In the Arctic, a
24-kilometre wide impact crater formed by an asteroid or comet 23 million years ago has
become home to a Mars- analogue programme. The Foundation helped fund the NASA
Haughton-Mars Project to use this crater to test communications and exploration technologies in
preparation for the human exploration of Mars. The crater, which sits in high Arctic permafrost,
provides an excellent replica of the physical processes occurring on Mars, a permafrosted,
impact-altered planet. Geologists and biologists can work at the site to help understand how
impact craters shape the geological characteristics and possibly biological potential of Mars.
In addition to its fieldwork and scientific activities. the Foundation has award programmes.
These include a series of awards for the future human exploration of Mars, a location with a
diverse set of exploration challenges. The awards will honour a number of ‘firsts’ on Mars that
include landing on the surface, undertaking an overland expedition to the Martian South Pole,
undertaking an overland expedition to the Martian North Pole, climbing Olympus Mons, the
highest mountain in the solar system, and descending to the bottom of Valles Marineris, the
deepest canyon on Mars. The Foundation will offer awards for expeditions further out in the
solar system once these Mars awards have been claimed. Together, they demonstrate that the
programme really has no boundary in what it could eventually support, and they provide
longevity for the objectives of the Foundation.
Question 1 – 5:
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the passage?
In boxes from 1 - 5 on the answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if there is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

1 Activities related to environmental protection and space exploration have a common theme.
2 It is unclear why space exploration evolved in a different way from environmental studies on
Earth.
3 Governments tend to allocate more money to environmental projects than space exploration.
4 Unfortunately, the environmental and space exploration communities have little to offer each
other in terms of resources.
5 The Earth and Space Foundation was set up later than it was originally intended.

DẠNG 2: GAP FILLING/COMPLETION:


Exercise 1: Table completion

The best cities in the world


In a recent internet survey, tourists and business travellers were asked to rate 50 cities around
the world, from the best to the worst. Of the top three cities, two were in Europe and one was
in Australia. In third place was London, scoring highly mainly because it was the most
famous city on the list of 50 surveyed. It was also seen as a very good place to do business,
and was an important cultural centre. However, it lost points because people believed it was
an extremely expensive place to live. Sydney was also a very popular destination, achieving
second place on the list because people believed it had the friendliest inhabitants, as well as
the best standard of living and the nicest climate. It failed to make the top spot, however,
because people thought there were very few things to see there, and many also thought it was
too far away from other business and cultural centres. At the top of the list was Paris. Despite
problems such as the large amount of traffic, it beat other cities to first place because people
considered it to be the most interesting city, with more museums, art galleries and places of
interest than anywhere else. People also thought it was the best city to take a holiday in.

Now complete the table. Choose ONE word from the passage for each answer.
City Overall Perceived advantages Perceived
position in disadvantages
survey
London 1……………… - Is more well-known than the other Is very 3 ..........
cities.
- Has excellent 2.......... opportunities.
Sydney Second - Residents are the 4 .......... Not many things
- Has the best quality of life to see.
- Has the most pleasant 5 ..........
Paris 6………………. - Is more 7..........than other cities Has a lot of 8 .....

Exercise 2: Note completion:

A city survey with a difference


There are many websites on the Internet which provide lists of the world's best cities to visit, live
or work in. These lists usually grade the cities in order, from 'best' to 'worst', and are based on
facts and figures provided by local or national organisations.
The City Brands Index (CBI) also provides a list of best and worst cities. However, unlike other
surveys, it is based on the idea that cities are similar to products in shops. It asks ordinary people
in other countries to grade cities in the same way that they would grade a product, like a soft
drink or a car. What is particularly different about the CBI is that the people who take part in the
survey may not have ever visited the cities. Instead, they are asked to say what they think the
cities are like, basing their opinions on things like news stories, magazine articles or television
programmes theyhave heard or seen.
Each year, about 10,000 people in 20 countries take part in the CBI survey, and they grade a total
of 50 cities. They do this by filling in an online questionnaire. There are several categories in the
survey. These include things like the economy, education, the environment, local culture, climate
and what the city's residents are like.
The CBI list is useful because it helps people choose a good place to live, find work or take a
holiday. It also helps regional governments to understand why people and businesses are, or are
not, coming to their cities, and so shows them areas which they could develop or improve.
Choose ONE WORD OR A NUMBER from the passage for each answer:

The City Brands Index


The CBI believes that cities are like 1.......... which people can buy when they go shopping.
Surveys take place every 2 .......... A maximum of 3 .......... cities are included in the survey.
A number of different 4.......... are included in the survey.
The CBI list is helpful for:
• people who are trying to decide where to 5.......... or get a job.
• people who are looking for a good 6 .......... destination.
• local 7.......... who want to make their city a better place.

Exercise 3: Flow chart completion


Patrick Malone (Part 2)
The Amazon expedition, which took six months and covered a distance of almost 2,500
kilometres, was a great success. The group discovered some new plant and insect species, as well
as a forest tribe which people had never heard of. Malone enjoyed the trip so much that he
decided to become a full-time explorer. He earned money by writing travel articles for
magazines and newspapers, which he illustrated with his own photographs.
In 1996, he married Margaret Logan, an American doctor he had met while travelling around
Africa. In 1998 they had Adam, the first of three children (twins Amelia and Jennifer were born
a year later). Many families at this stage would settle down, but Margaret and Patrick decided to
keep travelling, spending two years walking around India and another twelve months exploring
the islands of Indonesia.
When they returned home, they wrote a magazine article about travelling with small children. It
was so popular that they were asked to write several more articles on the same subject. This was
followed by an offer from a television company to present a TV series about travelling with
children. The series ran for 12 years, and won several television awards. Today they still make
the most of every opportunity to travel, and have recently returned from the South Pacific.
Read the next part of the passage, and complete gaps 1-6.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each one.
Exercise 4: Sentence Completion

The honey badger


It looks harmless and vulnerable. But the honey badger is afraid of nothing... and will
attack and eat almost anything
The honey badger (Melivora capensis), is an African and south-Asian mammal that has a
reputation for being one of the world's most fearless animals, despite its small size. And in spite
of its gentle-sounding name, it is also one of its most aggressive. Honey badgers have been
known to attack lions, buffalo, and snakes three times their size. Even humans are not safe from
a honey badger if it thinks the human will attack or harm it. They are also extremely tough
creatures, and can recover quickly from injuries that would kill most other animals.
At first glance, honey badgers look like the common European badger. They are usually between
75cm and 1 metre long, although males are about twice the size of females. They are instantly
recognisable by grey and white stripes that extend from the top of the head to the tail. Closer
inspection, which is probably not a wise thing to do, reveals pointed teeth, and sharp front claws
which can be four centimetres in length.
Honey badgers are meat-eating animals with an extremely varied diet. They mainly eat a range
of small creatures like beetles, lizards and birds, but will also catch larger reptiles like snakes and
small crocodiles. Some mammals, such as foxes, antelope and wild cats also form part of their
diet.
The badgers locate their prey mainly using their excellent sense of smell, and catch most of their
prey through digging. During a 24-hour period, they may dig as many as fifty holes, and travel
more than 40 kilometres. They are also good climbers, and can easily climb very tall trees to
steal eggs from birds' nests, or catch other tree-dwelling creatures.
As their name suggests, honey badgers have always been associated with honey, although they
do not actually eat it. It is the highly nutritious bee eggs (called 'brood') that they prefer, and they
will do anything to find it. They usually cause a lot of damage to the hive in the process, and for
this reason, humans are one of their main predators. Bee-keepers will often set special traps for
honey badgers, to protect their hives.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the honey badger is its working relationship with a bird
called the greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator). This bird deliberately guides the badger to
beehives, then waits while the badger breaks into the hive and extracts the brood. The two
creatures, bird and mammal, then share the brood between them.

Complete labels on the diagram. NO MORE THAN ONE WORD OR A NUMBER


1. Although they are not big animals, honey badgers are fearless, ... and tough.
2. Honey badgers will attack ...... if they need to protect themselves.
3. The pattern and colours on the honey badger's back make it ................
4. The food they eat is meat based and ....................
5. ................ form the biggest part of a honey badger's diet.
6. Honey badgers find the creatures they eat by their ................
7. ................ are often used to catch honey badgers which attack beehives.
8. For more particular type of food, the honey badger has a ................. with another creature.
Exercise 5: Flow chart completion:

The way the brain buys


Supermarkets take great care over the way the goods they sell are arranged. This is because they
know a lot about how to persuade people to buy things.
When yon enter a supermarket, it takes some time for the mind to get into a shopping mode. This
is why the area immediately inside the entrance of a supermarket is known as the
‘decompression zone’. People need to slow down and take stock of the surroundings, even if
they are regulars. Supermarkets do not expect to sell much here, so it tends to be used more for
promotion. So the large items piled up here are designed to suggest that there are bargains further
inside the store, and shoppers are not necessarily expected to buy them.
Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer, famously employs ‘greeters’ at the entrance to its stores. A
friendly welcome is said to cut shoplifting. It is harder to steal from nice people.
Immediately to the left in many supermarkets is a ‘chill zone’, where customers can enjoy
browsing magazines, books and DVDs. This is intended to tempt unplanned purchases and slow
customers down. But people who just want to do their shopping quickly will keep walking
ahead, and the first thing they come to is the fresh fruit and vegetables section.
However, for shoppers, this makes no sense. Fruit and vegetables can be easily damaged, so they
should be bought at the end, not the beginning, of a shopping trip. But psychology is at work
here: selecting these items makes people feel good, so they feel less guilty about reaching for
less healthy food later on.
Shoppers already know that everyday items, like milk, arc invariably placed towards the back of
a store to provide more opportunity to tempt customers to buy things which are not on their
shopping list. This is why pharmacies are also generally at the back. But supermarkets know
shoppers know this, so they use other tricks, like placing popular items halfway along a section
so that people have to walk all along the aisle looking for them.
The idea is to boost ‘dwell time’: the length of time people spend in a store. Having walked to
the end of the fruit-and-vegetable aisle, shoppers arrive at counters of prepared food, the
fishmonger, the butcher and the deli. Then there is the in-store bakery, which can be smelt before
it is seen. Even small supermarkets now use in store bakeries.
Mostly these bake pre-prepared items and frozen ingredients which have been delivered to the
supermarket previously, and their numbers have increased, even though central bakeries that
deliver to a number of stores are much more efficient. They do it for the smell of freshly baked
bread, which arouses people’s appetites and thus encourages them to purchase not just bread but
also other food, including ready meals.
Retailers and producers talk a lot about the ‘moment of truth’. This is not a philosophical idea,
but the point when people standing in the aisle decide to buy something and reach to get it. At
the instant coffee section, for example, branded products from the big producers are arranged at
eye level while cheaper ones are lower down, along with the supermarket’s own label products.
But shelf positioning is fiercely fought over, not just by those trying to sell goods, but also by
those arguing over how best to manipulate shoppers. While many stores reckon eye level is the
top spot, some think a little higher is better. Others think goods displayed at the end of aisles sell
the most because they have the greatest visibility. To be on the right-hand side of an eye-level
selection is often considered the very best place, because most people are right-handed and most
people’s eyes drift rightwards. Some supermarkets reserve that for their most expensive own-
label goods.
Scott Bearse, a retail expert with Deloitte Consulting in Boston, Massachusetts, has led projects
observing and questioning tens of thousands of customers about how they feel about shopping.
People say they leave shops empty- handed more often because they are ‘unable to decide’ than
because prices are too high, says Mr Bearse. Getting customers to try something is one of the
best ways of getting them to buy, adds Mr Bearse. Deloitte found that customers who use fitting
rooms in order to try on clothes buy the product they are considering at a rate of 8j% compared
with 58% for those that do not do so.
Often a customer struggling to decide which of two items is best ends up not buying either. In
order to avoid a situation where a customer decides not to buy either product, a third ‘decoy’
item, which is not quite as good as the other two, is placed beside them to make the choice easier
and more pleasurable. Happier customers are more likely to buy.
Questions 1-3: Complete the flow-chart below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
In-store bread production process
Exercise 6: Table completion
The appearance of the poster has changed continuously over the past two centuries.
The first posters were known as ‘broadsides’ and were used for public and commercial
announcements. Printed on one side only using metal type, they were quickly and crudely
produced in large quantities. As they were meant to be read at a distance, they required large
lettering.
There were a number of negative aspects of large metal type. It was expensive, required a large
amount of storage space and was extremely heavy. If a printer did have a collection of large
metal type, it was likely that there were not enough letters. So printers did their best by mixing
and matching styles.
Commercial pressure for large type was answered with the invention of a system for wood type
production. In 1827, Darius Wells invented a special wood drill – the lateral router - capable of
cutting letters on wood blocks. The router was used in combination with William Leavenworth’s
pantograpn (1834) to create decorative wooden letters of all shapes and sizes. The first posters
began to appear, but they had little colour and design; often wooden type was mixed with metal
type in a conglomeration of styles.
A major development in poster design was the application of lithography, invented by Alois
Senefelder in 1796, which allowed artists to hand-draw letters, opening the field of type design
to endless styles. The method involved drawing with a greasy crayon onto finely surfaced
Bavarian limestone and offsetting that image onto paper. This direct process captured the artist's
true intention; however, the final printed image was in reverse. The images and lettering needed
to be drawn backwards, often reflected in a mirror or traced on transfer paper.
As a result of this technical difficulty, the invention of the lithographic process had little impact
on posters until the 1860s, when Jules Cheret came up with his ‘three-stone lithographic
process’. This gave artists the opportunity to experiment with a wide spectrum of colours.
Although the process was difficult, the result was remarkable, with nuances of colour impossible
in other media even to this day. The ability to mix words and images in such an attractive and
economical format finally made the lithographic poster a powerful innovation.
Starting in the 1870s, posters became the main vehicle for advertising prior to the magazine era
and the dominant means of mass communication in the rapidly growing cities of Europe and
America. Yet in the streets of Paris, Milan and Berlin, these artistic prints were so popular that
they were stolen off walls almost as soon as they were hung. Cheret, later known as ‘the father of
the modern poster’, organised the first exhibition of posters in 1884 and two years later published
the first book on poster art. He quickly took advantage of the public interest by arranging for
artists to create posters, at a reduced size, that were suitable for in-home display.
Thanks to Cheret. the poster slowly took hold in other countries in the 1890s and came to
celebrate each society’s unique cultural institutions: the cafe in France, the opera and fashion in
Italy, festivals in Spain, literature in Holland and trade fairs in Germany. The first poster shows
were held in Great Britain and Italy in 1894, Germany in 1896 and Russia in 1897. The most
important poster show ever, to many observers, was held in Reims, France, in 1896 and featured
an unbelievable 1,690 posters arranged by country.
In the early 20th century, the poster continued to play a large communication role and to go
through a range of styles. By the 1950s, however, it had begun to share the spotlight with other
media, mainly radio and print. By this time, most posters were printed using the mass production
technique of photo offset, which resulted in the familiar dot pattern seen in newspapers and
magazines. In addition, the use of photography in posters, begun in Russia in the twenties,
started to become as common as illustration.
In the late fifties, a new graphic style that had strong reliance on typographic elements in black
and white appeared. The new style came to be known as the International Typographic Style. It
made use of a mathematical grid, strict graphic rules and black-and-white photography to
provide a clear and logical structure. It became the predominant style in the world in the 1970s
and continues to exert its influence today.
It was perfectly suited to the increasingly international post-war marketplace, where there was a
strong demand for clarity. This meant that the accessibility of words and symbols had to be taken
into account. Corporations wanted international identification, and events such as the Olympics
called for universal solutions, which the Typographic Style could provide.
However, the International Typographic Style began to lose its energy in the late 1970s. Many
criticised it for being cold, formal and dogmatic. A young teacher in Basel. Wolfgang Weingart,
experimented with the offset printing process to produce posters that appeared complex and
chaotic, playful and spontaneous - all in stark contrast to what had gone before. Weingart's
liberation of typography was an important foundation for several new styles. These ranged from
Memphis and Retro to the advances now being made in computer graphics.
Question 1 – 5: Complete the table below.
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.

Early Printing Methods


Features Problems
Metal type • produced large print • cost, weight and 1............ difficulties
• mixed styles
Wood type • Darius's wood drill used in connection • lacked both 3 ............
with another 2............ • mixed type
• produced a range of letters
Lithography • letters drawn by hand • had to use a mirror or 5............ to
• design tool - a 4 achieve correct image

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