Bài tập trắc nghiệm 15 phút Đoạn văn đọc hiểu - Tiếng Anh 12 - Đề số 20

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Ambient divers are, unlike divers who go underwater in submersible vehicles of pressure resistant suits, exposed to the pressure and temperature of the surrounding ambient water. Of all types of diving, the oldest and simplest is free diving. Free divers may use no equipment at all, but most use a face mask, foot fins, and a snorkel. Under the surface, free divers must hold their breath. Most free divers can only descend 30 to 40 feet, but some skilled divers can go as deep as 100 feet.

Scuba diving provides greater range than free diving. The word scuba stands for self-contained underwater breathing apparatus. Scuba divers wear metal tanks with compressed air or other breathing gases. When using open-circuit equipment, a scuba diver simply breathes air form the tank through a hose and releases the exhaled air into the water. A closed-circuit breathing device, also called a rebreather, filters out carbon dioxide and other harmful gases and automatically adds oxygen. This enables the diver to breathe the same air over and over. In surface-supplied diving, divers wear helmets and waterproof canvas suits. Today, sophiticated plastic helmets have replaced the heavy copper helmets used in the past. These divers get their air from a hose connected to compressors on a boat. Surface-supplied divers can go deeper than any other type of ambient diver.  

Question: Ambient divers are ones who_____.             

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 36 to 42:

 Although speech is the most advanced form of communication, there are many ways of communicating without using speech. Signals, signs, symbols, and gestures may be found in every known culture. The basic function of signal is to impinge upon the environment in such a way that it attracts attention, as, for example, the dots and dashes of a telegraph circuit. Coded to refer to speech, the potential for communication is very great. Less adaptable to the codification of words, signs also contain meaning in and of themselves. A stop sign or a barber pole conveys meaning quickly and conveniently.  Symbols are more difficult to describe than either signals or signs because of their intricate relationship with the receiver’s cultural perceptions. In some cultures, applauding in a theater provides performers with an auditory symbol of approval. Gestures such as waving and handshaking also communicate certain cultural messages. Although signals, signs, symbols, and gestures are very useful, they do have a major disadvantage in communication. They usually do not allow ideas to be shared without the sender being directly adjacent to the receiver. Without an exchange of ideas, interaction comes to a halt. As a result, means of communication intended to be used for long distances and extended periods must be based upon speech. To radio, television, and the telephone, one must add fax, paging systems, electronic mail, and the Internet, and no one doubts but that there are more means of communication on the horizon.

Question 40: Applauding was cited as an example of ____________.           

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Sony Pictures released a remarkable and intriguing film entitled The Da Vinci Code, based on the novel of the same name by Dan Brown. In the film, religious leaders and professors are in a race to discover the secrets of an organization called the Priory of Sion. The biggest secret kept by this organization is supposedly that Jesus Christ and a woman whose name is recorded in the Bible as Mary Magdalene had a child, and that their family 55 line continues to this day. In a TV interview, Dan Brown stated that, in his book, "all of the art, architecture, secret rituals, secret societies, all of that is historical fact." However, while the Priory of Sion did exist, it's nothing like the one which is so central to The Da Vinci Code. The Priory of Sion was started in France in 1956 by a skillful liar named Pierre Plantard. Priory means religious house, and Sion was a hill in the town of Annemasse, where the Priory was started by Plantard and four of 60 his friends. At first, their group fought for housing rights for local people, and their offices were at Plantard's apartment. The organization promised to benefit the weak and the oppressed, and to do good in general. However, there was a darker side to the Plantard's Priory. Plantard actually hoped to use the Priory of Sion to claim to be a descendant of French kings. Between the years 1961 and 1984, Plantard created the enigma of a much more powerful Priory than his insignificant organization. First, in order to give the impression that the Priory began in 1099, Plantard and his friend Philippe de Cherisey created documents, called the Secret Dossiers of Henri Lobineau, and illegally put them into the National Library of France. Next, Plantard got author Gerard de Sede to write a book in 1967 using the false documents; the book became very popular in France. This phenomenon is similar to the popularity of The Da Vinci Code, where a book based on false information or speculation becomes popular. 70 Matters were complicated when in 1969, an English actor and science-fiction writer named Henry Lincoln read Gerard de Sede's book. Lincoln did not know of Plantard and his schemes, and may have been a victim of the hoax. He seemed to believe what he read, and jumped to even more wild conclusions, which he published in his 1982 book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. He and his co-authors declared as fact that the Priory started in 1099; that its leaders included Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Victor Hugo; that the Priory protects the descendants of Jesus 75 Christ and Mary Magdalene; and that these descendants ruled France from A.D. 447 to 751. All this was based on reading a novel based on the false facts from documents which were a hoax. Most modern historians do not consider Lincoln's book to be a serious work of history. How can we be so sure that Plantard created this hoax? Well, the best witness to a crime is the criminal himself. Over 100 hundred letters between Plantard, de Cherisey, and de Sede, discovered by researcher Jean-Luc 80 Chaumeil, show clearly that they were trying to pull an elaborate hoax. In fact, in the 1990s, Plantard got in trouble with the law, and his house was searched. Within it were found many false documents, most harmless, some of which said he was the true king of France. As a final embarrassment, Plantard had to swear in a court of law that the enigma of the Priory of Sion was the work of his imagination.

Question: What is true about the real Priory of Sion?         

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The issue of equality for women in British society first attracted national attention in the early 20th century, when the suffragettes won for women the right to vote. In the 1960s feminism became the subject of intense debate when the women’s liberation movement encouraged women to reject their traditional supporting role and to demand equal status and equal rights with men in areas such as employment and pay. Since then, the gender gap between the sexes has been reduced. The Equal Pay Act of 1970, for instance, made it illegal for women to be paid less than men for doing the same work, and in 1975 the Sex Discrimination Act aimed to prevent either sex having an unfair advantage when applying for jobs. In the same year the Equal Opportunities Commission was set up to help people claim their rights to equal treatment and to publish research and statistics to show where improvements in opportunities for women need to be made. Women now have much better employment opportunities, though they still tend to get less well-paid jobs than men, and very few are appointed to top jobs in industry. In the US the movement that is often called the “first wave of feminism” began in the mid 1800s. Susan B. Anthony worked for the right to vote, Margaret Sanger wanted to provide women with the means of contraception so that they could decide whether or not to have children, and Elizabeth Blackwell, who had to fight for the chance to become a doctor, wanted women to have greater opportunities to study. Many feminists were interested in other social issues. The second wave of feminism began in the 1960s. Women like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem became associated with the fight to get equal rights and opportunities for women under the law. An important issue was the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was intended to change the Constitution. Although the ERA was not passed, there was progress in other areas. It became illegal for employers, schools, clubs, etc. to discriminate against women. But women still find it hard to advance beyond a certain point in their careers, the so-called glass ceiling that prevents them from having high-level jobs. Many women also face the problem of the second shift, i.e. the household chores. In the 1980s, feminism became less popular in the US and there was less interest in solving the remaining problems, such as the fact that most women still earn much less than men. Although there is still discrimination, the principle that it should not exist is widely accepted.

Question: Which of the following is true according to the passage?         

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                                                  FAMILY LIFE IN THE UNITED STATES

Family life in the United States is changing. Fifty or sixty years ago, the wife was called a “housewife”. She cleaned, cooked, and cared for the children. The husband earned the money for the family. He was usually out working all day. He came home tired in the evening, so he did not do much housework. And he did not see the children very much, except on weekends.

These days, however, more and more women work outside the home. They cannot stay with the children all day. They, too, come home tired in the evening. They do not want to spend the evening cooking dinner and cleaning up. They do not have time to clean the house and do the laundry. So who is going to do the housework now? Who is going to take care of the children?

Many families solve the problem of housework by sharing it. In these families, the husband and wife agree to do different jobs around the house, or they take turns doing each job. For example, the husband always cooks dinner and the wife always does the laundry. Or the wife cooks dinner on some nights and the husband cooks dinner on other nights.

Then there is the question of the children. In the past, many families got help with child care from grandparents. Now families usually do not live near their relatives. The grandparents are often too far away to help in a regular way.

More often, parents have to pay for child care help. The help may be a babysitter or a day-care center. The problem with this kind of help is the high cost. It is possible only for couples with jobs that pay well.

Parents may get another kind of help form the companies they work for. Many companies now let people with children work part-time. That way, parents can spend mo re time with their children. Some husbands may even stop working for a while to stay with the children. For these men there is a new word: they are called “househusbands”. In the USA more and more men are becoming househusbands every year.

These changes in the home mean changes in the family. Fathers can learn to understand their  children better, and the children can get to know their fathers better. Husbands and wives may also find changes in their marriage.

Question: It can be inferred from paragraph 5 that__________.  

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The penny press, which emerged in the United States during the 1830's, was a powerful agent of mass communication. These newspapers were little dailies, generally four pages in length, written for the mass taste. They differed from the staid, formal presentation of the conservative press, with its emphasis on political and literary topics. The new papers were brief and cheap, emphasizing sensational reports of police courts and juicy scandals as well as human interest stories. Twentieth-century journalism was already foreshadowed in the penny press of the 1830's. The New York Sun, founded in 1833, was the first successful penny paper, and it was followed two years later by the New York Herald, published by James Gordon Bennett. Not long after, Horace Greeley issued the New York Tribune, which was destined to become the most influential paper in America. Greeley gave space to the issues that deeply touched the American people before the Civil War-abolitionism, temperance, free homesteads, Utopian cooperative settlements, and the problems of labor. The weekly edition of the Tribune, with 100,000 subscribers, had a remarkable influence in rural areas, especially in Western communities. Americans were reputed to be the most avid readers of periodicals in the world. An English observer enviously calculated that, in 1829, the number of newspapers circulated in Great Britain was enough to reach only one out of every thirty-six inhabitants weekly; Pennsylvania in that same year had a newspaper circulation which reached one out of every four inhabitants weekly. Statistics seemed to justify the common belief that Americans were devoted to periodicals. Newspapers in the United States increased from 1,200 in 1833 to 3,000 by the early 1860's, on the eve of the Civil War. This far exceeded the number and circulation of newspapers in England and France.

Question 41: The word “avid” in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to _______.         

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The issue of equality for women in British society first attracted national attention in the early 20th century, when the suffragettes won for women the right to vote. In the 1960s feminism became the subject of intense debate when the women’s liberation movement encouraged women to reject their traditional supporting role and to demand equal status and equal rights with men in areas such as employment and pay. Since then, the gender gap between the sexes has been reduced. The Equal Pay Act of 1970, for instance, made it illegal for women to be paid less than men for doing the same work, and in 1975 the Sex Discrimination Act aimed to prevent either sex having an unfair advantage when applying for jobs. In the same year the Equal Opportunities Commission was set up to help people claim their rights to equal treatment and to publish research and statistics to show where improvements in opportunities for women need to be made. Women now have much better employment opportunities, though they still tend to get less well-paid jobs than men, and very few are appointed to top jobs in industry. In the US the movement that is often called the “first wave of feminism” began in the mid 1800s. Susan B. Anthony worked for the right to vote, Margaret Sanger wanted to provide women with the means of contraception so that they could decide whether or not to have children, and Elizabeth Blackwell, who had to fight for the chance to become a doctor, wanted women to have greater opportunities to study. Many feminists were interested in other social issues. The second wave of feminism began in the 1960s. Women like Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem became associated with the fight to get equal rights and opportunities for women under the law. An important issue was the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which was intended to change the Constitution. Although the ERA was not passed, there was progress in other areas. It became illegal for employers, schools, clubs, etc. to discriminate against women. But women still find it hard to advance beyond a certain point in their careers, the so-called glass ceiling that prevents them from having high-level jobs. Many women also face the problem of the second shift, i.e. the household chores. In the 1980s, feminism became less popular in the US and there was less interest in solving the remaining problems, such as the fact that most women still earn much less than men. Although there is still discrimination, the principle that it should not exist is widely accepted.  

Question: In the late 20th century, some information about feminism in Britain was issued by ______.         

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American humor and American popular heroes were born together. The first popular heroes of the new nation were comic heroes, and the first popular humor of the new nation was the antics of its hero-clowns.

The heroic and the comic were combined in novel American proportions in popular literature. The heroic themes are obvious enough and not much different from those in the legends of other times and places: Achilles, Beowulf, Siegfried, Roland, and King Arthur. The American Davy Crockett legends repeat the familiar pattern of the old world heroic story: the pre-eminence of a mighty hero whose fame in myth has a tenuous basis in fact; the remarkable birth and precocious strength of the hero; single combats in which he distinguished himself against antagonists, both man and beast; vows and boasts; pride of the hero in his weapons, his dog, and his woman.

Davy Crockett conquered man and beast with a swaggering nonchalance. He overcame animals by force of body and will. He killed four wolves at the age of six. He hugged a bear to death; he killed a rattlesnake with his teeth. He mastered the forces of nature. Crockett's most famous natural exploit was saving the earth on the coldest day in history. First, he climbed a mountain to determine the trouble. Then he rescued all creation by squeezing bear-grease on the earth's frozen axis and over the sun's icy face. He whistled, "Push along, keep moving!" The earth gave a grunt and began moving.

Neither the fearlessness nor the bold huntsman's prowess was peculiarly American. Far more distinctive was the comic quality, all heroes are heroic; few are also clowns. What made the American popular hero heroic also made him comic. "May be", said Crockett, "you'll laugh at me and not at my book". The ambiguity of American life and the vagueness which laid the continent open to adventure, which made the land a rich storehouse of the unexpected, which kept vocabulary ungoverned and the language fluid----this same ambiguity suffused both the Crockett legends were never quite certain whether to laugh or to applaud, or whether what they saw and heard was wonderful, awful or ridiculous.

Question 50: The word "ambiguity" in the last paragraph is closest meaning to _______.

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There have been many famous detectives in literature. But one of the first – and certainly the most famous – is Sherlock Holmes. Holmes was created by the British writer Sis Arthur Conan Doyle in the late nineteenth century. Sherlock Holmes made his first appearance in the work A study in Scarlet, which was published in 1887. Holmes instantly became a popular literary figure with the general populace, who demanded that Doyle write more stories involving him. Doyle complied and eventually wound up writing fifty-six short stories and four novels that featured Holmes. While he took a break of several years from creating stories about Holmes, Doyle countinued to write Holmes stories until 1927. Among the most famous of all the works featuring Holmes are The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Blue Carbuncle, and A Scandal in Bohemia. One of the reasons that Sherlock Holmes was popular concerns the method he employs to solve his case: logic. Together with his partner, Dr. Watson, Holmes uses his powers of observation to detect clues that can help him solve the cases he accepts. Holmes has an incredibly sharp mind that enables him to determine who the guilty party or what the problem is. Holmes also is a master of disguise, which he prove many times, and he is skilled at boxing as well as sword fighting. While Holmes often solves cases that are unrelated to one another, he has a nemesis with whom he comes into both direct and indirect conflict in several stories. That person is Professor Moriarty, the leader of a crime ring in London. In one of the stories, The Final Problem, Holmes and Moriarty fight one another and fall to their deaths by plunging down a steep cliff near a waterfall. When he wrote that story, Doyle had tired of Holmes and wanted to kill off the character. He then refrained from writing about Holmes for many years, but public demand for more stories induced him to bring Holmes back from the dead and to continue writing detective stories.

Question: The word “nemesis” in pharagraph 4 is closest in meaning to______.         

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Life originated in the early seas less than a billion years after the Earth was formed. Yet another three billion years were to pass before the first plants and animals appeared on the continents. Life’s transition from the sea to the land was perhaps as much of an evolutionary challenge as was the genesis of life. What forms of life were able to make such a drastic change in lifestyle? The traditional view of the first terrestrial organisms is based on megafossils-relatively large specimens of essentially whole plants and animals. Vascular plants, related to modern seed plants and ferns, left the first comprehensive megafossil record. Because of this, it has been commonly assumed that the sequence of terrestrialization reflected the evolution of modern terrestrial ecosystems. In this view, primitive vascular plants first colonized the margins of continental waters, followed by animals that feed on the plants, and lastly by animals that preyed on the plant-eaters. Moreover, the megafossils suggest that terrestrial life appeared and diversified explosively near the boundary between the Silurian and the Devonian periods, a little more than 400 million years ago. Recently, however, paleontologists have been taking a closer look at the sediments below this Silurian-Devonian geological boundary. It turns out that some fossils can be extracted from these sediments by putting the rocks in an acid bath. The technique has uncovered new evidence form sediments that were deposited near the shores of the ancient oceans- plant microfossils and microscopic pieces of small animals. In many instances the specimens are less than one-tenth of a millimeter in diameter. Although they were entombed in the rocks for hundreds of millions of years, many of them fossils consist of the organic remains of the organism. These newly discovered fossils have not only revealed the existence of previously unknown organisms, but have also pushed back these dates for the invasion of land by multicellular organisms. Our views about the nature of the early plant and animal communities are now being revised. And with those revisions come new speculations about the first terrestrial life-forms.

Question: What is the following paragraph likely to discuss?