Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 6 to 15

Music is universal - it is produced by all cultures. Some scientists believe that music came before speech and (6) ______ as a development of mating calls. In fact, there is one theory that the (7) ______ languages were chanted or sung, rather than spoken. Indeed, in some cultures, music is a form of (8) ______ history. The Aboriginal Australians, for example, use music as a means to (9) ______ on stories of the land and spirits to the next (10)________.

New evidence suggests that music does not just (11) ______ the feel - good factor but it is also good for the brain. A study of intellectually (12) ______ children showed that they could recall more (13)_________ after it was given to them in a song than after it was read to them as a story. Researchers also report that people score better on a standard intelligence test after listening to Mozart. The so-called “Mozart effect” has also been (14) ______ by findings that rats (15)________ up on Mozart run faster through a complex network of paths or passages, known as a maze. Overall, it seems that in most instances people who suffer from any form of mental illness benefit from listening to music.

Điền vào ô 15

A. brought

B. Stood

C. set

D. held

Read the following passage and then choose the best answer for each question by circling the corresponding letter A, B, C or D from 36 to 40.

The modern comic strip started out as ammunition in a newspaper war between giants of the American press in the late nineteenth century. The first full-color comic strip appeared in January 1894 in the New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer. The first regular weekly full-color comic supplement, similar to today’s Sunday funnies, appeared two years later, in William Randolph Hearst’s rival New York paper, the Morning Journal.

Both were immensely popular and publishers realized that supplementing the news with comic relief boosted the sale of papers. The Morning Journal started another feature in 1896, the “Yellow Kid”, the first continuous comic character in the United States, whose creator, Richard Outcault, had been lured away from the World by the ambitious Hearst. The “Yellow Kid” was in many ways a pioneer. Its comic dialogue was the strictly urban farce that came to characterize later strips, and it introduced the speech balloon inside the strip, usually placed above the characters’ heads.

The first strip to incorporate all the elements of later comics was Rudolph Dirks’s “Katzenjammer Kids”, based on Wilhelm Busch’s Max and Moritz, a European satire of the nineteenth century. The “Kids” strip, first published in 1897, served as the prototype for future American strips. It contained not only speech balloons, but a continuous cast of characters, and was divided into small regular panels that did away with the larger panoramic scenes of earlier comics.

Newspaper syndication played a major role in spreading the popularity of comic strips throughout the country. Though weekly colored comics came first, daily black-and-white strips were not far behind. The first appeared in the Chicago American in 1904. It was followed by many imitators, and by 1915 blackand-white comic strips had become a staple of daily newspapers around the country.

What does the passage mainly discuss? 

A. The differences between early and modern comic strips

B. Features of early comic strips in the United States

C. The effects of newspapers on comic strip stories

D. A comparison of two popular comic strips

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 from 25 to 29.

Why are there so many grandmothers and so few grandfathers? In other words, why do men die younger than women? Is this because men are afraid of getting old and helpless and so they prefer to die before that happens? Perhaps they fear to be left alone by their women and so decide to do the leaving first.

Many explanations are given for the fact that men die earlier than women. Men are stronger physically, yet women can hang on longer to life. Both men and women are emotional creatures but women are not afraid or ashamed to cry while men refuse to do so. They are afraid of being thought "soft". Some men, when they are upset, play loud music or dig in the garden to relieve their feelings. Many men like an orderly life so that they bury themselves in their work or want a wife with some children or long to take part in wars where there is a definite chain of command. There is a leader to give orders and a known enemy to fight against and defeat. All these make men feel they live in a rational world.

So the majority of men like a rational world. Rationality is fine but it does not include everything that makes life joyful and fun or even messy and frustrating. When a man refuses to cry he is refusing to accept that his emotions are part of him. Of course some men do not follow this pattern. Bob Hawke is capable of crying in public whereas Margaret Thatcher is probably incapable of crying at any time.

We need to cry because that shows our ability to suffer. If we do not suffer we are not really alive at all. Suffering can be creative or destructive. If we can all learn to cry and laugh and shout and dance openly, we are living creatively and adding something to the human race. We often say men suffer more from stress and therefore they die earlier. Are we not saying in another way that they do not know how to suffer in the right way – with tears and laughter instead of silence – and so they are miserable and just give up? That is just my theory of course. Have you a better one? 

What’s the writer’s opinion toward crying? 

A. It is a good thing for people to cry

B. It is all right for women to cry but shameful for men

C. Tears are not real signs of suffering

D. To be silent is better than to cry.

Mark the letter A, B, Cor D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions

According to some optimistists, by the end of the 21st century, our astronauts ______ on Mars.

A. will be landing 

B. have landed 

C. will land 

D. will have landed

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 5 to 9.

In the past, people bought goods using (5) _______. They rarely borrowed money from financial institutions and only when they had saved the money did they buy what they wanted.

Recently, however, there have been great changes in the way people purchase goods. To begin with, some people pay for things by cheque, (6) ______ others prefer monthly installments rather than paying the whole amount at once. Most consumers, though, prefer to buy things using their credit cards. (7) _______, it is thought that there are benefits to having a credit card. Apart from the fact that credit cards are handy, some stores offer bonus points to people making purchases, while others give discounts on certain products.

On the other hand, credit cards must be used wisely because they can prove disastrous. In the long run, consumers find that they can’t (8) _______ without their credit cards and constantly rely on them, as they are “easy money”. As a result, some people lose control of their finances spending more than they should end up not being able to (9) _______. So they end up in debt and have difficulty in paying it back.

Điền ô số 8

A. be 

B. make 

C. do 

D. go 

Mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the following questions.
Not only______to determine the depth of the ocean floor, but it is also used to locate oil.

A. seismology is used

B. using seismology

C. is seismology used

D. to use seismology