Bài tập trắc nghiệm 15 phút Đoạn văn đọc hiểu - Tiếng Anh 12 - Đề số 15

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The deepest diving submarine

The Japanese research submarine Shinkai 6500 can dive deeper than any other submarine. On August 11, 1989, it went down to a depth of 6,526 meters beneath the ocean's surface. The submarine is in 935 meters long, about the size of a bus and can take up to three people. It is used for ocean research all over the world.

The most useful television

The Viera is the name of the world's only digital entertainment device that can go underwater. It is made and sold in Japan. You can listen to your favorite music, or even watch a movie, all from the comfort of your bathtub. And the battery lasts over five hours if you're planning to spend a long time bathing. You can even use headphones with it-all you’ll need is to find a pair that is waterproof!

The smartest monitor

The Japanese company EizoNanao has invented a very special computer monitor, called the FlexScan monitor. The FlexScan monitor can stand up to 23 centimeters high, and it can turn almost 180 degrees left or right. It weighs only 4.3kg. What’s more, it can help save electricity. It senses when you have left your computer and turns itself off when you've been gone for more than 40 seconds. When you come back, it knows to turns itself back on!

The smallest motorcycle

A Swedish man named Tom Wiberg built the world’s smallest motorcycle that can be ridden by a person. He calls it the Small Toe. The front wheel is only 1.6 centimeters wide, and the back wheel is 2.2 centimeters wide. The rider sits barely seven centimeters above the ground. In 2003, Wiberg rode his machine for more than ten meters and set a new Guinness World Record for the smallest rideable motorcycle ever built.

Question: The word “barely” in the last paragraph closest in meaning to_____                

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It is hard to think of a world without gas or electricity. Both are commonly used for lighting and heating today. We now can instantly flick a lighter or strike a match to make a flame. But it was not long ago that there were no such things as matches or lighters. To make fire, it was necessary to strike a piece of iron on flint for sparks to ignite some tinder. If the tinder was damp, or the flint old, you had to borrow some fire from a neighbor. We do not know exactly when or how people first used fire. Perhaps, many ages ago, they found that sticks would burn if they were dropped into some hole where melted lava from a volcano lay boiling. They brought the lighted sticks back to make their fire in a cave. Or, they may have seen trees catch fire through being struck by lightning, and used the trees to start their own fires. Gradually people learned they could start a fire without traveling far to find flames. They rubbed two pieces of wood together. This method was used for thousands of years. When people became used to making fires with which to cook food and stay warm at night, they found that certain resins or gums from trees burnt longer and brighter. They melted resins and dipped branches in the liquid to make torches that lit their homes at night. Iron stands in which torches used to be fixed can still be seen in old buildings of Europe. There was no lighting in city streets until gas lamps, and then electric lamps were installed. Boys ran about London at night carrying torches of burning material. They were called torch boys, or link boys, and earned a living by guiding visitors to friends’ houses at night. For centuries homes were lit by candles until oil was found. Even then, oil lamps were no more effective than a cluster of candles. We read about the splendors and marvels of ancient palaces and castles, but we forget that they must have been gloomy and murky places at night.

Question: According to the passage, which of the following sentence is NOT true?         

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You can usually tell when your friends are happy or angry by the looks on their faces or by their actions. This is useful because reading their emotional expressions helps you to know how to respond to important situations and to convey our intentions to others. But does raising the eyebrows and rounding the mouth say the same thing in Minneapolis as it does in Madagascar ? Much research on emotional expressions has centered on such questions. According to Paul Ekman, the leading researcher in this area, people speak and understand substantially the same “facial language”. Studies by Ekman’s group have demonstrated that humans share a set of universal emotional expressions that testify to the common biological heritage of the human species. Smiles, for example, signal happiness and frowns indicate sadness on the faces of people in such far-flung places as Argentina, Japan, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Sumatra, the United States, Vietnam, the jungles of New Guinea, and the Eskimo villages north of Artic Circle. Ekman and his colleagues claim that people everywhere can recognize at least seven basic emotions : sadness, fear, anger, disgust, contempt, happiness, and surprise. There are, however, huge differences across cultures in both the context and intensity of emotional displays – the so-called display responses – expecially negative ones – while many American children are encouraged to express their feelings more openly. Regardless of culture, however, emotions usually show themselves, to some degree, in people’s behavior. From their first days in life, babies produce facial expressions that communicate their feelings. The ability to read facial expressions develops early, too. Very young children pay close attention to facial expressions, and by age five, they nearly equal adults in their skill at reading emotions on people’s faces. This evidence all points to a biological underpinning for our abilities to express and interpret a basic set of human emotions. Moreover, as Chales Dawin pointed out over a century ago, some emotional expressions seem to appear across species boundaries. Cross-cultural psychologists tell us that certain emotional responses carry different meanings in diferrent cultures. For example, what emotion do you suppose might be conveyed while sticking out your tounge ? For American, this might indicate disgust, while in China it can signify surprise. Likewise, a grin on an American face may indicate joy, while on a Japanese face it may just as easily mean embarrassment. Clearly, culture influences emotional expressions.  

Question: Paul Ekman is mentioned in the passage as an example of ______         

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During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, almost nothing was written about the contributions of women during the colonial period and the early history of the newly formed United States. Lacking the right to vote and absent from the seats of power, women were not considered an important force in history. Anne Bradstreet wrote some significant poetry in the seventeenth century, Mercy Otis Warren produced the best contemporary history of the American Revolution, and Abigail Adams penned important letters showing she exercised great political influence over her husband, John, the second President of the United States. But little or no notice was taken of these contributions. During these centuries, women remained invisible in history books.Throughout the nineteenth century, this lack of visibility continued, despite the efforts of female authors writing about women. These writers, like most of their male counterparts, were amateur historians. Their writings were celebratory in nature, and they were uncritical in their selection and use of sources. During the nineteenth century, however, certain feminists showed a keen sense of history by keeping records of activities in which women were engaged. National, regional, and local women's organizations compiled accounts of their doings. Personal correspondence, newspaper clippings, and souvenirs were saved and stored. These sources from the core of the two greatest collections of women's history in the United States one at the Elizabeth and Arthur Schlesinger Library at  Radcliffe College, and the other the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College. Such sources have provided valuable materials for later Generations of historians. Despite the gathering of more information about ordinary women during the nineteenth Century, most of the writing about women conformed to the "great women" theory of History, just as much of mainstream American history concentrated on "great men." To demonstrate that women were  making significant contributions to American life, female authors singled out women leaders and wrote biographies, or else important women produced their autobiographies. Most of these leaders were involved in public life as reformers, activists working for women's right to vote, or authors, and were not representative at all of the great of ordinary woman. The lives of ordinary people continued, generally, to be untold in the American histories being published.

Question 9: What use was made of the nineteenth-century women's history materials in the Schlesinger Library and the Sophia Smith Collection?         

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If we believe that clothing has to do with covering the body, and costume with the choice of a particular form of garment for a particular use, then we can say that clothing depend primarily on such physical conditions as climate, health, and textile manufacture, whereas costume reflect social factors such as religious beliefs, aesthetics, personal status, and the wish to be distinguished from or to emulate our fellows.

The ancient Greeks and the Chinese believed that we first covered our bodies for some physical reason such as protecting ourselves from the weather elements. Ethnologists and psychologists have invoked psychological reasons: modesty in the case of ancients, and taboo, magical influence and the desire to please for the moderns.

In early history, costume must have fulfilled a function beyond that of simple utility, perhaps through some magical significance, investing primitive man with the attributes of other creatures. Ornaments identified the wearer with animals, gods, heroes or other men. This identification remains symbolic in more sophisticated societies. We should bear in mind that the theater has its distant origins in sacred performances, and in all period children at play have worn disguises, so as to adapt gradually to adult life.

Costume helped inspire fear or impose authority. For a chieftain, costume embodied attributes expressing his power, while a warrior’s costume enhanced his physical superiority and suggested he was superhuman. In more recent times, professional or administrative costume has been devised to distinguish the wearer and express personal or delegated authority; this purpose is seen clearly in the judge’s robes and the police officer’s uniform. Costume denotes power, and since power is usually equated with wealth, costume came to be an expression of social caste and material prosperity. Military uniform denotes rank and is intended to intimidate, to protect the body and to express membership in a group. At the bottom of the scale, there are such compulsory costumes as the convict’s uniform. Finally, costume can possess a religious significance that combines various elements: an actual or symbolic identification with a god, the desire to express this in earthly life, and the desire to enhance the wearer’s position of respect.

Question 16: It can be inferred from paragraph 3 that_________          

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The American type of football was developed in the 19th century from soccer and rugby football. Played by professionals, amateurs, college and high school students, or young children, football in American is one of the most popular sports besides basketball and baseball. It attracts millions of fans each fall and people are very supportive of their favourite teams. The football playing field of today is rectangular in shape and measures 100 yards long and 53.5 yards wide. White lines are painted on the playing field to mark off the distances to the end zone. The games is divided into four quarters, each fifteen minutes long. The first two quarters are known as the first half. There is a rest period between two halves which usually last about fifteen minutes. Each team has eleven players. Each team has offensive players who play when the team has possession of the ball and defensive players who play when the other team has the possession of the ball. Because of the body contact players have during the game, helmets are worn to protect their head and face area, whereas pads are worn to protect the shoulders, arms, and legs. Also, there are officials carrying whistles and flags to make certain that  the rules of the game are followed during the game. The football is made of leather and is brown in colour. It is shaped much like an oval and has white rings near each end of the football. These rings help the players see the ball when it is thrown or someone is running with it. The eight stitches on the top of the football help the  players to grip the ball when throwing or passing. The most famous game of the year is Super Bowl that is played in January or February. It is televised around the world and is watched by millions of people each year.

Question: What do officials do during the game of football?         

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Many flowering plants woo insect pollinators and gently direct them to their most fertile blossoms by changing the color of individual flowers from day to day. Through color cues, the plant signals to the insect that it would be better off visiting one flower on its bush than another. The particular hue tells the pollinator that the flower is full of far more pollen than are neighboring blooms. That nectar-rich flower also happens to be fertile and ready to disperse its pollen or to receive pollen the insect has picked up from another flower. Plants do not have to spend precious resources maintaining reservoirs of nectar in all their flowers. Thus, the color-coded communication system benefits both plants and insects. For example, on the lantana plant, a flower starts out on the first day as yellow, when it is rich with pollen and nectar. Influenced by an as-yet-unidentified environmental signal, the flower changes color by triggering the production of the pigment anthromyacin. It turns orange on the second day and red on the third. By the third day, it has no pollen to offer insects and is no longer fertile. On any given lantana bush, only 10 to 15 per cent of the blossoms are likely to be yellow and fertile. But in tests measuring the responsiveness of butterflies, it was discovered that the insects visited the yellow flowers at least 100 times more than would be expected from haphazard visitation. Experiments with paper flowers and painted flowers demonstrated that the butterflies were responding to color cues rather than, say, the scent of the nectar. In other types of plants, blossoms change from white to red, others from yellow to red, and so on. These color changes have been observed in some 74 families of plants.

Question: The passage implies that insects would be most attracted to lantana blossoms_______         

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The biologist's role in society as well as his moral and ethical responsibility in the discovery and development of new ideas has led to a reassessment of his social and scientific value systems. A scientist can no longer ignore the consequences of his discoveries; he is as concerned with the possible misuses of his findings as he is with the basic research in which he is involved. This emerging social and political role of the biologist and all other scientists requires a weighing of values that cannot be done with the accuracy or the objectivity of a laboratory balance. As a member of society, it is necessary for a biologist now to redefine his social obligations and his functions, particularly in the realm of making judgments about such ethical problems as man's control of his environment or his manipulation of genes to direct further evolutionary development.

Probably the greatest biological problem of the future, as it is of the present, will be to find ways to curb environmental pollution without interfering with man's constant effort to improve the quality of his life. Many scientists believe that underlying the spectre of pollution is the problem of surplus human population. A rise in population necessitates an increase in the operations of modern industry, the waste products of which increase the pollution of air, water, and soil. The question of how many people the resources of the Earth can support is one of critical importance.

Question: According to the passage, a modern scientist should be more concerned about _______.         

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 In early civilizations, citizens were educated informally, usually within the family unit. Education meant simply learning to live. As civilizations became more complex, however, education became more formal, structured and comprehensive. Initial efforts of the ancient Chinese and Greek societies concentrated solely on the education of males. The post-Babylonian Jews and Plato were exceptions to this pattern. Plato was apparently the first significant advocate of the equality of the sexes. Women, in his ideal state, would have the same rights and duties and the same educational opportunities as men. This aspect of Platonic philosophy, however, had little or no effect on education for many centuries, and the concept of a liberal education for men only, which had been espoused by Aristotle, prevailed.

 In ancient Rome, the availability of an education was gradually extended to women, but they were taught separately from men. The early Christians and medieval Europeans continued this trend, and single-sex schools for the privileged classes prevailed through the Reformation period. Gradually, however, education for women on a separate but equal basis to that provided for men was becoming a clear responsibility of society. Martin Luther appealed for civil support of schools for all children. At the Council of Trent in the 16^th century, the Roman Catholic Church encouraged the establishment of free primary schools for children of all classes. The concept of universal primary education, regardless of sex, had been born, but it was still in the realm of the single-sex school.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, co-education became a more widely applied principle of educational philosophy. In Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union the education of boys and girls in the same classes became an accepted practice. Since World War II, Japan and the Scandinavian countries have also adopted relatively universal co-educational systems. The greatest negative reaction to co-education has been felt in the teaching systems of the Latin countries, where the sexes have usually been separated at both primary and secondary levels, according to local conditions.

 A number of studies have indicated that girls seem to perform better overall and in science in particular in single-sex classes: during the adolescent years, pressure to conform to stereotypical female gender roles may disadvantage girls in traditionally male subjects, making them reluctant to volunteer for experimental work while taking part in lessons. In Britain, academic league tables point to high standards achieved in girls' schools. Some educationalists therefore suggest segregation of the sexes as a good thing, particularly in certain areas, and a number of schools are experimenting with the idea.

Question 47: When education first reached women, they were _______.

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There is a strange paradox to the success of the Asian education model. On the one hand, class sizes are huge by Western standards with between 30 and 40 students per class, in countries like Japan and Korea. On the other hand, school children in developed Asian economies rank among the highest in the world for academic achievement in the areas of science and mathematics, especially on standardised tests. Meanwhile, British secondary school students fail to shine in conditions most educational researchers would say are far more likely to help them succeed. Classroom management seems to be easier in places like Korea, and perhaps lessons are more effective as a direct consequence. After all, we are only too aware of the decline in discipline standards in our own school: belligerent and disrespectful students appear to be the norm these days. Teachers in Britain seem powerless to control what happens anymore. Surely this situation cannot create a very effective learning environment, so perhaps the number of students is far less relevant than is the manner in which they conduct themselves. But there are other factors to consider, too. There is the home environment. The traditional family unit still remains relatively intact in Korea. Few children come from broken homes, so there is a sense of security, safety and trust both at home and at school. In Britain meanwhile, one in every two marriages fails and divorce rates are sky high. Perhaps children struggle to cope with unstable family conditions and their only way to express their frustration is by misbehaving at school. But while the Japanese, Korean and Asian models generally do seem to produce excellent results, the statistics don’t tell the whole truth. You see, behind those great maths and science scores, there is a quite remarkable work ethic. Asian students tend to put their education before literally everything else. They do very few extracurricular activities and devote far more time to their studies than their British peers. There has been a lot of attention and praise given to these Asian models and their “impressive” statistics of late. And without question, some of this praise is justified, but it seems to be a case of two extremes in operation here. At one end, there is the discipline and unbelievably hard work ethic of the Asian students – success in education before all else. At the other end, British students at times appear careless and extremely undisciplined by comparison, but at least they do have the free time to enjoy their youth and explore their interests. Is either system better outright? Or is it perhaps about time we stopped comparing and started trying to combine the best bits of both, so that we can finally offer our students a balanced, worthwhile education?   

Question: The traditional family unit_______.