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Part 4:
We have seen photographs of the whole earth taken from great distances in outer space. This is the first time, the (131) very first time, in man's long history that such pictures have been possible. (132) For many years most people have believed that the earth was ball-shaped. A few thought it was round and (133) flat, like a coin. Now we know, beyond doubt, that those few were (134) wrong/mistaken. The photographs show a ball-shaped (135) earth/planet, bright and beautiful. In colour photographs of the earth, the sky is as (136) black as coal. The (137) sea looks much bluer than it usually does to us. All our grey (138) clouds are a perfect white in colour; because, of course, the (139) sun is for ever shining on them. We are (140) lucky to live on the beautiful earth
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
1. One of the characteristics of the postal service before the 1840s was that
A. postmen were employed by various organisations.
B. letters were restricted to a certain length.
C. distance affected the price of postage.
D. the price of delivery kept going up.
2. Letter writers in the 1830s
A. were not responsible for the cost of delivery.
B. tried to fit more than one letter into an envelope.
C. could only send letters to people living in cities.
D. knew all letters were automatically read by postal staff.
3. What does the text say about Hill in the 1830s?
A. He was the first person to express concern about the postal system.
B. He considered it would be more efficient for mail to be delivered by rail.
C. He felt that postal service reform was necessary for commercial development.
D. His plan received support from all the important figures of the day.
The Penny Black
It might not have looked very impressive, but the Penny Black, now 170 years old, was the first stamp to be created and it launched the modem postal system in Britain.
Before 1840 and the arrival of the Penny Black, you had to be rich and patient to use the Royal Mail. Delivery was charged according to the miles travelled and the number of sheets of paper used; a 2-page letter sent from Edinburgh to London, for example, would have cost 2 shillings, or more than £7 in today’s money. And when the top-hatted letter carrier came to deliver it, it was the recipient who had to pay for the postage. Letter writers employed various ruses to reduce the cost, doing everything possible to cram more words onto a page. Nobody bothered with heavy envelopes; instead, letters would be folded and sealed with wax. You then had to find a post office - there were no pillar boxes - and hope your addressee didn't live in one of the several rural areas which were not served by the system. If you were lucky, your letter would arrive (it could take days) without being read or censored.
The state of mail had been causing concern throughout the 1830s, but it was Rowland Hill, an inventor, teacher and social reformer from Kidderminster, who proposed a workable plan for change. Worried that a dysfunctional, costly service would stifle communication just as Britain was in the swing of its second industrial revolution, he believed reform would ease the distribution of ideas and stimulate trade and business, delivering the same promise as the new railways.
Hill’s proposal for the penny post, which meant any letter weighing less than half an ounce (14 grams) could be sent anywhere in Britain for about 30p in today’s money, was so radical that the Postmaster General, Lord Lichfield, said, 'Of all the wild and visionary schemes which I ever heard of, it is the most extravagant.’ Lord Lichfield spoke for an establishment not convinced of the need for poor people to post anything. But merchants and reformers backed Hill. Soon the government told him to make his scheme work. And that meant inventing a new type of currency.
Hill quickly settled on 'a bit of paper covered at the back with a glutinous wash which the user might, by applying a little moisture, attach to the back of a letter’. Stamps would be printed in sheets of 240 that could be cut using scissors or a knife. Perforations would not arrive until 1854. The idea stuck, and in August 1839 the Treasury launched a design competition open to ‘all artists, men of science and the public in general’. The new stamp would need to be resistant to forgery, and so it was a submission by one Mr Cheverton that Hill used as the basis for one of the most striking designs in history. Cheverton, who worked as a sculptor and an engineer, determined that a portrait of Queen Victoria, engraved for a commemorative coin when she was a 15-year-old princess, was detailed enough to make copying difficult, and recognisable enough to make fakes easy to spot. The words ‘Postage’ and ‘One Penny’ were added alongside flourishes and ornamental stars. Nobody thought to add the word ‘Britain’, as it was assumed that the stamps would solely be put to domestic use.
With the introduction of the new postal system, the Penny Black was an instant hit, and printers struggled to meet demand. By the end of 1840, more than 160 million letters had been sent - more than double the previous year. It created more work for the post office, whose reform continued with the introduction of red letter boxes, new branches and more frequent deliveries, even to the remotest address, but its lasting impact on society was more remarkable.
Hill and his supporters rightly predicted that cheaper post would improve the ‘diffusion of knowledge’. Suddenly, someone in Scotland could be reached by someone in London within a day or two. And as literacy improved, sections of society that had been disenfranchised found a voice.
Tristram Hunt, an historian, values the ‘flourishing of correspondence’ that followed the arrival of stamps. ‘While I was writing my biography of Friedrich Engels I could read the letters he and Marx sent between Manchester and London,’ he says. ‘They wrote to each other three times a day, pinging ideas back and forth so that you can almost follow a real-time correspondence.’
The penny post also changed the nature of the letter. Weight-saving tricks such as cross-writing began to die out, while the arrival of envelopes built confidence among correspondents that mail would not be stolen or read. And so people wrote more private things - politically or commercially sensitive information or love letters. ‘In the early days of the penny post, there was still concern about theft,’ Hunt says. ‘Engels would still send Marx money by ripping up five-pound notes and sending the pieces in different letters.’ But the probity of the postal system became a great thing and it came to be expected that your mail would not be tampered with.
For all its brilliance, the Penny Black was technically a failure. At first, post offices used red ink to cancel stamps so that they could not be used again. But the ink could be removed. When in 1842, it was determined that black ink would be more robust, the colour of the Penny Black became a sort of browny red, but Hill’s brainchild had made its mark.
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
1. One of the characteristics of the postal service before the 1840s was that
A. postmen were employed by various organisations.
B. letters were restricted to a certain length.
C. distance affected the price of postage.
D. the price of delivery kept going up.
2. Letter writers in the 1830s
A. were not responsible for the cost of delivery.
B. tried to fit more than one letter into an envelope.
C. could only send letters to people living in cities.
D. knew all letters were automatically read by postal staff.
3. What does the text say about Hill in the 1830s?
A. He was the first person to express concern about the postal system.
B. He considered it would be more efficient for mail to be delivered by rail.
C. He felt that postal service reform was necessary for commercial development.
D. His plan received support from all the important figures of the day.
Lời giải:
1. C | 2. D | 3. B |
1. C
Điều gì là đúng về cảm xúc của người phụ nữ khi bước vào nhà?
A. Cô nhận ra rằng cô đã nhớ nhà cũ của mình.
B. Cô ấy rất vui khi trở về nhà.
C. Cô ấy buồn về tình trạng của ngôi nhà. Ngôi nhà tương lai?
D. Cô ấy buồn về tình trạng của ngôi nhà.
Thông tin: As she stepped into the hall after nearly thirty years of absence, she realised at once that she shouldn't have come back.
(Khi bước vào sảnh sau gần ba mươi năm vắng bóng, cô ấy nhận ra ngay rằng mình không nên quay lại.)
2. D
Phản ứng của nhà văn đối với cuộc triển lãm là gì?
A. Anh ấy thấy nó rất thú vị.
B. Nó làm anh ấy nhớ đến một bộ phim khoa học viễn tưởng.
C. Anh ấy muốn mua các tiện ích trực tuyến.
D. Anh ấy không thấy việc sử dụng của nhiều phát minh.
Thông tin: I suspect that they are still wrong. Why do I need a super-intelligent fridge or an internet- surfing mirror?
(Tôi nghi ngờ rằng chúng vẫn sai. Tại sao tôi cần một chiếc tủ lạnh siêu thông minh hay một chiếc gương lướt web?)
3. B
Mục đích của văn bản là để
A. mô tả một ngôi nhà cụ thể.
B. thu hút sự quan tâm của những người đang tìm kiếm một ngôi nhà mới.
C. sơ lược về lịch sử của người xây nhà.
D. giải thích điều gì tạo nên một ngôi nhà chất lượng.
Thông tin: With spacious semi-detached and detached homes from £275,000 to £425,000, we are sure that you will find what you're looking for.
(Với những ngôi nhà liền kề và liền kề rộng rãi từ £275.000 đến £425.000, chúng tôi chắc chắn rằng bạn sẽ tìm thấy những gì bạn đang tìm kiếm.)
Tạm dịch:
Quay ngược thời gian
Khi bước vào hội trường sau gần ba mươi năm vắng bóng, cô nhận ra ngay rằng mình không nên quay lại. Mùi khói gỗ, đá ẩm và giấy cũ kỹ mang quá khứ trở lại mạnh mẽ đến nỗi nó gần như đánh bật cô ra sau. Ngay lập tức cô cảm thấy mình như một cô gái trẻ, cô đơn và sợ hãi trong nhà. Cô nhớ mình đã cảm thấy rất, rất lạnh - không phải vì ẩm ướt và nhiệt độ gần như đóng băng, mà vì một cuộc sống mới khủng khiếp đang bắt đầu. Và cô không thể làm gì để ngăn chặn nó.
Ngôi nhà tương lai?
Cứ sau vài năm, những người theo dõi xu hướng lại nói với chúng tôi rằng ngôi nhà của tương lai đã đến và các thiết bị từ các bộ phim khoa học viễn tưởng sẽ sớm có mặt trong mọi gia đình trên cả nước. Cho đến nay họ đã sai - và sau khi xem triển lãm 'Ngôi nhà của tương lai', tôi nghi ngờ rằng họ vẫn còn sai. Tại sao tôi cần một chiếc tủ lạnh siêu thông minh hay một chiếc gương lướt web? Tôi thà nhìn rõ mặt mình trong một chiếc gương phòng tắm thông thường còn hơn là cố gắng lướt Internet trong khi đang chải đầu! Giá như họ có thể thiết kế một thiết bị để ngăn tôi giết tất cả cây trồng trong nhà. Nếu họ đã làm điều đó, thì tôi có thể quan tâm!
Ackerman ngôi nhà mơ ước
Kể từ năm 1893, những ngôi nhà của Ackerman đã tạo ra một số khu dân cư duyên dáng nhất ở miền nam nước Anh. Những ngôi nhà của chúng tôi kết hợp cảm giác lịch sử với những tiến bộ hiện đại nhất trong thiết kế và công nghệ nhà ở. Giờ đây, bạn có thể có cơ hội sở hữu một ngôi nhà Ackerman hiện đại tuyệt đẹp trong khu phát triển mới của chúng tôi ở Acreage Woods. Trải nghiệm chất lượng, vẻ đẹp và sự thoải mái của những ngôi nhà Ackerman, cái tên đáng tin cậy nhất trong lĩnh vực xây dựng nhà ở. Với những ngôi nhà liền kề và liền kề rộng rãi từ £275.000 đến £425.000, chúng tôi chắc chắn rằng bạn sẽ tìm thấy những gì bạn đang tìm kiếm. Vậy tại sao không ghé thăm chúng tôi ngày hôm nay?
Đáp án: A