Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow. Circle A, B, C, or D to indicate your answers.

Alfred Bernhard Nobel, a Swedish inventor, and philanthropist bequeathed most of his vast fortune in trust as a fund from which annual prizes could be awarded to individuals and organizations who had achieved the greatest benefit to humanity in a particular year. Originally, there were six classifications for outstanding contributions designated in Nobel’s will, including chemistry, physics, physiology or medicine, literature, and international peace.

The prizes are administered by the Nobel Foundation in Stockholm. In 1969, a prize for economics endowed by the Central Bank of Sweden was added. Candidates for the prizes must be nominated in writing a qualified authority in the field of competitions. Recipients in physics, chemistry, and economics are selected by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; and physiology or medicine by the Caroline Institute; in literature by the Swedish Academy; and in peace by the Norwegian Nobel Committee appointed by Norway’s parliament. The prizes are usually in Stockholm on December 10, with the King of Sweden officiating, an appropriate tribute to Alfred Nobel on the anniversary of his death. Each one includes a gold medal, a diploma, and a cash award of about one million dollars.

Why are the awards presented on December 10?

Choose the correct answer A, B, C, or D that best fits each space in the following passage from 23 to 32:

Malaysia (23)__________one of the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It consists (24)________ the Malay Peninsula and Sarawak and Sabah on the island Borneo. It is (25) ________into two regions, known as West Malaysia and East Malaysia. It has a tropical (26)________.

The (27)________of Malaysia is Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia is (28)________world’s biggest producer of palm oil, and it exports rubber, tin, and gas. In addition to Islam, the country’s official (29)__________, there are Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity. Malaysian people speak Bahasa Malaysia as (30)_________mother tongue. It is the language of (31)______in all secondary schools. English, Chinese, and Tamil are also widely spoken in (32)_____country.

Question 31:_____________

Read, then choose the best answer by circling the corresponding letter A, B, C, or D. 

Radar is an electronic device that can “see” great distances (1) ……. fog, rain, snow, cloud, and darkness. It can find and (2) ……… locate missiles, aircraft, ships, cities, rainstorms, and mountains. Radar uses radio waves, (3) ……….. light waves, which the human eye uses in seeing. This makes it (4) …….. for radar to locate many kinds of objects at (5) …….. greater distances than the eye can see. Radar became an important military device during World War II. Today, networks of radar lookout stations guard the United States and Canada 24 hours a day against (6) ……. missiles and airplanes. Patrol planes and ships (7) …….. the oceans with radar for hostile ships and aircraft. Airports use radar to (8).…. planes safety to earth in fog or storms. Ships use it to steer clear of other (9) ……… or icebergs.  Radar helps weathermen warn of (10) ……. hurricanes or tornadoes.

5..........................

Read the text and then choose the best answer A, B, C, or D.

    Visit the Edinburgh Festival

Every year, thousands of people come to Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland, to be part of the Edinburgh Festival. For three weeks every August and September the city is filled with actors and artists from all over the world. They come to Edinburgh for the biggest arts festival in Britain. During this time, the streets of the city are alive with music and dance from early in the morning untill late at night. You can even see artists painting pictures on the streets.

Tens of thousands of tourists come to the festival to see new films and plays and to hear music played by famous musicians. This year, you can see over five hundred performances with actors from more than forty countries.

The tickets for these performances are quite cheap, and it is usually easier to see your favourite star in Edinburgh than it is in London. So come to Edinburgh next summer!

What can you even see artists doing on the streets?

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

Every nation and every country has its own customs and traditions. In Britain, traditions play a more important part in the life of the people than in other countries. Englishmen are proud of their traditions and carefully keep them up.

It has been the law for about 300 years that all theaters are closed on Sundays. No letters are delivered, only a few Sunday papers are published.

To this day an English family prefers a house with a garden to a flat in a modern house with central heating. English people like gardens. Sometimes the garden in front of the house is a little square covered with cement painted green in imitation of grass and a box of flowers.

Holidays are especially rich in old traditions and are different in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and England. Christmas is a great English national holiday, and in Scotland, it is not kept, except by clerks in banks, all shops and factories are working.

What is the best title for the passage?

Marseilles is the ______ where Marie’s family lives. It is a very large port.

Read the passage below then pick out ONE best option (A, B, C or D . to complete each of the following sentences:

Britain is now a highly industrialized country and there are only 238,000 farms in the UK. More and more farmers leave the land because they can not earn enough money to survive. Only large farms are economic and because of this most British farm are big. They usually grow cereals in the east of England and raise sheep and cowsin the north of England and Scotland. The small family farms often have to earn more money by offering bed and breakfast accommodation to tourists.

Farming methods in Britain have also changed. Fields used to be quite small, divided by hedges which were sometimes a thousand years old and full of wild flowers and birds. Many hedges were pulled up to allow farmers to use mordern machinery. Now most fields in England are large by European standards.

. Fields on British farms were __________ .

They survived in very good ______.

Pick out ONE best option (A, B, C, or D) to fill in each numbered blank, completing the meaning of the passage: 

   The International Space Station (ISS) is a large spacecraft that was launched in 1998. It orbits the Earth and is the place where astronauts live and conduct research in microgravity (25)…..

   Below is about the day in the life of an astronaut aboard the International Space Station.

   Astronauts sleep in sleeping bags. The microgravity makes them (26)……. They have to attach themselves so they don’t float about.

   Hair is washed with a “senseless” shampoo that does not need water. For toothbrushing, a small (27)……of water is used with toothpaste and then swallowed.

   The crew spend their day doing science experiments. They also carry out checks for the maintenance of the station. The Mission Control Centre on Earth (28)……their operations.

   The astronauts eat various foods (29)……fruits, nuts, chicken, beef, seafood, brownies, salt and pepper (in liquid forms), etc. Drinks include coffee, tea, and fruits juice (all packaged). Foods can be heated up or kept cool with special machines.

   A popular pastime while orbiting Earth is (30)……looking out of the windows to admire its beauty. In their free time, astronauts exercise, watch movies, play music, read books, play cards, and talk to their families.

   How are astronauts trained? Anyone can apply to train as an astronaut as long as they have a bachelor’s degree in science, mathematics, or engineering, experience as a jet pilot, and are (31)…… If they get accepted, there are several phases of training. The first phase requires them to pass a swimming test in a flight suit. They take parabolic flights that produce weightlessness. They also learn about various spaceship systems. In the second phase, they are trained to operate spacecraft systems and deal with emergencies. The training is often (32)……in a water tank laboratory so that trainees become familiar with crew activities in simulated microgravity in order to perform spacewalks.

31___________

Read the following passage and choose the best answer to each question. Write your answers in the space provided. 

Of all the weather events that occur around the world, lighting is the single most powerful and most frequent. Lightning strikes somewhere around the Earth 100 times each second. A typical lightning strike carries enough electricity to power a small town. In less than a second, a lightning strike heats the surrounding air to temperatures several times hotter than the surface of the sun. Obviously, lightning strikes are powerful. But how do they work?

A lightning strike is the last of the complex chain of events that happen inside a cloud. This chain of events starts when warm air rises in the clouds and cold airdrops. As the cold air and warm air pass each other, they carry millions of tiny drops of water and ice. When these passing water drops hit each other, they create electricity. Just like the batteries in your MP3 player, this electricity has a positive and a negative side. In the cloud, the negative side is at the bottom, and the positive side is at the top of the cloud. This makes the cloud electrically unbalanced. When the imbalance becomes too great, a streak of lightning forms, reconnecting the positive and negative parts of the cloud.

Lightning has two basic forms: cloud to cloud lightning and cloud to ground lightning. Cloud to cloud lightning occurs inside a cloud and never touches the ground. Sometimes called heat lightning, cloud to cloud lightning is most common in the late afternoon and evening, when temperatures begin to fall and there is more movement between hot and cold air inside a cloud. Cloud to ground lightning is far more dangerous. Cloud to ground lightning usually occurs during a thunderstorm. Many people think that cloud-to-ground lightning will hit the latest available object, but this is not always true. Cloud to ground lightning is very unpredictable and can even hit objects very low to the ground.

According to paragraph 2, the electrical charge in a cloud is created by

Read the text and then choose the best answer A, B, C, or D.

Every year, thousands of people come to Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland, to be part of the Edinburgh Festival. For three weeks every August and September the city is filled with actors and artists from all over the world. They come to Edinburgh for the biggest arts festival in Britain. During this time, the streets of the city are alive with music and dance from early in the morning untill late at night. You can even see artists painting pictures on the streets.

Tens of thousands of tourists come to the festival to see new films and plays and to hear music played by famous musicians. This year, you can see over five hundred performances with actors from more than forty countries.

The tickets for these performances are quite cheap, and it is usually easier to see your favourite star in Edinburgh than it is in London. So come to Edinburgh next summer!

Question: What can you even see artists doing on the streets?

Read the text and then choose the best answer A, B, C, or D.

    Visit the Edinburgh Festival

Every year, thousands of people come to Edinburgh, the capital city of Scotland, to be part of the Edinburgh Festival. For three weeks every August and September the city is filled with actors and artists from all over the world. They come to Edinburgh for the biggest arts festival in Britain. During this time, the streets of the city are alive with music and dance from early in the morning untill late at night. You can even see artists painting pictures on the streets.

Tens of thousands of tourists come to the festival to see new films and plays and to hear music played by famous musicians. This year, you can see over five hundred performances with actors from more than forty countries.

The tickets for these performances are quite cheap, and it is usually easier to see your favourite star in Edinburgh than it is in London. So come to Edinburgh next summer!

How many people come to attend the Edinburgh Festival every year?

Read the passage and choose the correct answer for each question.
If you travel by air across the center of Africa or South America, you fly over forests for thousands of kilometers. These great forests are the oceans of trees. There are thousands and thousands of different kinds of plants and animals.
However, the world’s forests are getting smaller all the time. We are cutting down the trees because we need wood, and we need more farmland. Some people say that there will not be any forests like these in 20 or 30 years. What will happen if they disappear?
If we cut down our forests, a lot of plants and animals will disappear from the world. In a lot of places, the new farmland will soon look like the old deserts. Crops will not grow there. It will not rain very often, and the weather will get very hot. Perhaps the climate of the world will change. This will be dangerous for everyone in the world. That is why we must take care of our forests.
The passage mainly tells us about ………….

Read the following passage and write 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.

            A lot of people have hobbies, but who spends 8 hours a day (01)___________ a hobby? Meet Shi-tung Chuang. He plays online (02)___________ games eight hours a day! Shi-tung is a college student at DeLin (03)___________. He does well in school, so his parents do not (04) ___________ that he spends so much time on the computer. Does he have time (05)___________ friends? “Sure, I do.”, he says. “All my friends have the same (06)___________, so we play (07)___________ online. Sometimes we even see each other in (08)___________ life.”

“Many online players spend too much time on their games.”, says Stephen Kline of Simon Fraser University in Canada, and this can (09)___________ to family fights. Some players are (10) ___________. “I’m not addicted,” says Shi-tung, “although it’s a bit hard to stop. It’s crazy and so much fun to play. I want to succeed! I want to win!”.

Câu 02._________

Đọc đoạn văn sau đó chọn phương án thích hợp cho mỗi câu dươi dây.

Almost all our energy comes from oil, coal, and natural gas. We call them fossil fuels. The earth’s fossil fuels are running out. What would happen if there were no oil, coal, and gas on earth?

Scientists are trying to find and use other alternative sources of energy. We can use energy from the sun, the wind, and the water.

Solar energy is unlimited. It supplies all the energy used to grow plants, evaporate water for rain, and maintain the temperature of the planet. All are necessary for human life. If we’re able to collect solar energy, we’ll be sure to make good use of this abundant source of power.

Another source of energy from nature is the wind. Wind power is clean and plentiful. Energy from the wind has been used for centuries to move ships, grind grain, pump water, and do other kinds of work. In more recent times, wind power has been used to generate electricity.

Water can also provide power. For a long time, people have used water to power machines. Some early uses of water power were to mill grain, saw wood, and power machinery for the textile industry. Today water power is mostly used to generate electricity.

We are asking the question “What would happen if there were no oil, coal, and gas on earth?” because………

Pick out ONE best option (A, B, C, or D) to fill in each numbered blank, completing the meaning of the passage. 

   Before the (25)……of newspapers, town criers would go through city streets ringing a bell. They shouted the latest news as they were walking.

   In Vietnam, people love reading newspapers and magazines. The Tuoi Tre is one of the (26)……newspapers and is widely read by young and old alike.

   Thanks to television people can get the latest information and enjoy interesting programs in an inexpensive and convenient way. Nowadays, viewers can watch a (27)……of local and international programs on different channels.

   The next stage in the development of television is interactive TV. Viewers are able to ask questions about the show (28)……their remote controls.

   The Internet has (29)……developed and become part of our everyday life. People find the Internet useful. People use the Internet for many purposes. Some access the Internet to look for information, some surf the web for entertainment, and (30)……rely on the Internet as a means of education.

   The mass media plays an important (31)……in collecting and passing on information. The information may be local, national, or international. It can cover a wide range of topics, from news and weather to entertainment. News stories contain information about politics, the economy, and such international affairs (32)……wars or natural disasters.

28._________

Pick out ONE best option (A, B, C, or D) to fill in each numbered blank, completing the meaning of the passage. 

   Before the (25)……of newspapers, town criers would go through city streets ringing a bell. They shouted the latest news as they were walking.

   In Vietnam, people love reading newspapers and magazines. The Tuoi Tre is one of the (26)……newspapers and is widely read by young and old alike.

   Thanks to television people can get the latest information and enjoy interesting programs in an inexpensive and convenient way. Nowadays, viewers can watch a (27)……of local and international programs on different channels.

   The next stage in the development of television is interactive TV. Viewers are able to ask questions about the show (28)……their remote controls.

   The Internet has (29)……developed and become part of our everyday life. People find the Internet useful. People use the Internet for many purposes. Some access the Internet to look for information, some surf the web for entertainment, and (30)……rely on the Internet as a means of education.

   The mass media plays an important (31)……in collecting and passing on information. The information may be local, national, or international. It can cover a wide range of topics, from news and weather to entertainment. News stories contain information about politics, the economy, and such international affairs (32)……wars or natural disasters.

25________

Khoanh tròn A, B, C hoặc D ứng với phương án đúng để hoàn chỉnh văn bản sau: 

The Mediterranean has been described as ______(0)___ world’s largest swimming pool. However, it can also be described now as the world’s dirtiest sewer, full of rubbish, oil, chemicals, and wastes _____(1) all kinds.
Unfortunately, most countries bordering the Mediterranean ________(2) ____ greatly in their attitudes to this problem. While some countries want to start cleaning up the Mediterranean, others have begun building new ports to develop their oil wells and natural gas fields. Industries _______(3) ______ in all the countries surrounding the Mediterranean. It will take a century for all the water in the Mediterranean to drain into the Atlantic Ocean, and be replaced completely by clean water. Three great rivers, the Nile, Po, and Rhone, all flow into the Mediterranean, carrying lots of ______(4)_______ into the sea and making it very dangerous for everyone who swims in the Mediterranean and who eats fish ______(5)_____ there.

2.__________

Read the following passage and choose the best answer to each question. Write your answers in the space provided. 

Of all the weather events that occur around the world, lighting is the single most powerful and most frequent. Lightning strikes somewhere around the Earth 100 times each second. A typical lightning strike carries enough electricity to power a small town. In less than a second, a lightning strike heats the surrounding air to temperatures several times hotter than the surface of the sun. Obviously, lightning strikes are powerful. But how do they work?

A lightning strike is the last of the complex chain of events that happen inside a cloud. This chain of events starts when warm air rises in the clouds and cold airdrops. As the cold air and warm air pass each other, they carry millions of tiny drops of water and ice. When these passing water drops hit each other, they create electricity. Just like the batteries in your MP3 player, this electricity has a positive and a negative side. In the cloud, the negative side is at the bottom, and the positive side is at the top of the cloud. This makes the cloud electrically unbalanced. When the imbalance becomes too great, a streak of lightning forms, reconnecting the positive and negative parts of the cloud.

Lightning has two basic forms: cloud to cloud lightning and cloud to ground lightning. Cloud to cloud lightning occurs inside a cloud and never touches the ground. Sometimes called heat lightning, cloud to cloud lightning is most common in the late afternoon and evening, when temperatures begin to fall and there is more movement between hot and cold air inside a cloud. Cloud to ground lightning is far more dangerous. Cloud to ground lightning usually occurs during a thunderstorm. Many people think that cloud-to-ground lightning will hit the latest available object, but this is not always true. Cloud to ground lightning is very unpredictable and can even hit objects very low to the ground.

The word “strikes” in the passage is closest in meaning to

Read the following passage and write 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.

            A lot of people have hobbies, but who spends 8 hours a day (01)___________ a hobby? Meet Shi-tung Chuang. He plays online (02)___________ games eight hours a day! Shi-tung is a college student at DeLin (03)___________. He does well in school, so his parents do not (04) ___________ that he spends so much time on the computer. Does he have time (05)___________ friends? “Sure, I do.”, he says. “All my friends have the same (06)___________, so we play (07)___________ online. Sometimes we even see each other in (08)___________ life.”

“Many online players spend too much time on their games.”, says Stephen Kline of Simon Fraser University in Canada, and this can (09)___________ to family fights. Some players are (10) ___________. “I’m not addicted,” says Shi-tung, “although it’s a bit hard to stop. It’s crazy and so much fun to play. I want to succeed! I want to win!”.

Câu 07.__________

Read this passage carefully and then choose the best answers to the questions below by circling the corresponding letter A, B, C, or D. 

A recent investigation by scientists at the US Geological Survey shows that strange animal behavior might help predict the future earthquake.
Investigators found such occurrences in a ten-kilometer radius of the center of a fairly recent quake. Some birds screeched and flew about wildly. Dogs yelped and ran uncontrollably.
Scientists believe that animals can perceive these environmental changes as early as several days before the disaster.
In 1976 after observing animal behavior, the Chinese were able to predict a terrible quake. Although hundreds of thousands of people were killed, the government was able to evacuate millions of people and thus keep the death toll at a lower rate.

Why can animals perceive these changes when humans can not?