Question

[Lê Quỳnh Anh]

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions that follow.

Music can bring us to tears or to our feet, drive us into battle or lull us to sleep. Music is indeed remarkable in its power over all humankind, and perhaps for that very reason, no human culture on earth has ever lived without it. From discoveries made in France and Slovenia, even Neanderthal man, as long as 53,000 years ago, had developed surprisingly sophisticated, sweet-sounding flutes carved from animal bones. It is perhaps then, no accident that music should strike such a chord with the limbic system – an ancient part of our brain, evolutionarily speaking, and one that we share with much of the animal kingdom. Some researchers even propose that music came into this world long before the human race ever did. For example, the fact that whale and human music have so much in common even though our evolutionary paths have not intersected for nearly 60 million years suggests that music may predate humans. They assert that rather than being the inventors of music, we are latecomers to the musical scene.

Humpback whale composers employ many of the same tricks that human songwriters do. In addition to using similar rhythms, humpbacks keep musical phrases to a few seconds, creating themes out of several phrases before singing the next one. Whale songs in general are no longer than symphony movements, perhaps because they have a similar attention span. Even though they can sing over a range of seven octaves, the whales typically sing in key, spreading adjacent notes no farther apart than a scale. They mix percussive and pure tones in pretty much the same ratios as human composers – and follow their ABA form, in which a theme is presented, elaborated on and then revisited in a slightly modified form. Perhaps most amazing, humpback whale songs include repeating refrains that rhyme. It has been suggested that whales might use rhymes for exactly the same reasons that we do: as devices to help them remember. Whale songs can also be rather catchy. When a few humpbacks from the Indian Ocean strayed into the Pacific, some of the whales they met there quickly changed their tunes – singing the new whales’ songs within three short years. Some scientists are even tempted to speculate that a universal music awaits discovery.

According to the passage, which of the following is true of humpback whales?

A. they do not use rhyme, unlike humans

B. their tunes are distinctively different from human tunes

C. whale songs of a particular group cannot be learned by other whales

D. they can sing over a range of seven octaves

Answer 1

[Dương Hoàn Anh]

Đáp án D

Theo đoạn văn, điều nào sau đây đúng với cá voi lưng gù?

A. không giống con người, chúng không sử dụng vần.

B. các giai điệu của chúng khác biệt rõ nét với giai điệu của con người.

C. các bài hát của một nhóm cá voi riêng biệt không thể được học bởi những con cá voi khác.

D. chúng có thể hát một khoảng gồm bảy quãng tám.

Thông tin ở câu: “Even though they can sing over a range of seven octaves, the whales typically sing in key, spreading adjacent notes no farther apart than a scale” (Mặc dù chúng có thể hát trong khoảng 7 quãng tám, nhưng cá voi thường hát theo trọng âm, lan rộng các nốt liền kề xa hơn một âm giai.)