MATERS NATIONAL ENGLISH OLYMPIC TEST FOR ENGLISH MAJORED-STUDENTS VARIATION A. 1100 min/ PAPER 1: LISTENING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS 1-18 points: 22*1=22 i Listen to the lecture and choose the correct answers. What is the lecture mainly about? . How to clean up space junk The effects space junk has on shuttles How to identify the types of space junk |. Why space shuttles are painted yopp™ According to the professor, why is space junk dangerous? . Itcan fall to the Earth, Itmoves at a very high speed. Itcan become too cold. . Itean become too hot. Listen again to part of the lecture, Then answer the question. ( ) Why does the professor say this: ()? Because the student does not believe him Because the student already knows the answer Because he is upset with the student for interrupting Because he is almost finished with the lecture pOpPSs coEps Why does the professor mention how a recent space shuttle got dented? ‘To show how space junk can only do small amounts of damage To prove that space shuttles use strong metals to protect them ‘To explain how pieces of paint are the most dangerous junk To give an example of the damage that space junk can cause Listen again to part of the lecture. Then answer the question. () SOPs What is the professor's attitude towards how shuttles orbit? He believes that it will cause more problems He is impressed at the solution to the problem He thinks it is a strange way to move a space shuttle He feels the shuttle pilots are clever Pepe What can be inferred about what a larger piece of space junk would do if it hit a shuitle? ‘The shuttle might be fine The shuttle would tum around and fly backwards The shuttle would be very badly damaged. The shuttle would be painted. poppe7A MI. Listen to the lecture and choose the correct answers. What is the lecture about? How Moldova is developing as a country The developing countries of Eastern Europe The importance of government in development Moldova's relationship with other countries DOmEs According to the professor, how did Moldova inerease its economy? It brought in foreign investors It sold farmland to the people It made a strong government It traded with other countries SOpP se 9. Why does the professor say this: €)? ‘A. To emphasize how these jobs are specifically chosen B. To explain that not all jobs are good enough for the students C. To describe how there are not many jobs in Moldova D. To suggest that the students like some jobs more than others 10, What is the professor's opinion of Moldova's economy and school system? A. She thinks the schools still need work B. She feels they are both doing very well C. She feels they are hurting Moldova’s growth D. She thinks the government needs to change them 11. Why does the professor mention foreign investors? ‘A. To explain how Moldova does not need them B. To support the idea that Moldova can compete with them C. To explain how economy is more important than education D. To give an example of one of Moldova’s weaknesses 12, What can be inferred about the role that government plays in Moldova's development? ‘A. Itis the biggest reason for Moldova's fast development B. It does not affect it as much as the economy does C. Itneeds to pay more attention to the school systems D. Itis not helping Moldova’s future in certain ways. Listen to the lecture and choose the correct answers. 13. What is the lecture mainly about? A. What heat is B. How heat transfers CC. The properties of heat D. Heat in hot air balloons 14, What happens to a hot air balloon because of convection? ‘A. The balloon’s air is heated B. The balloon becomes filled with gasC. The balloon goes up and goes down D. The balloon’s flame gets hotter and hotter 15, What is professor’s opinion of conduction? A. He finds it easiest to teach by cooking B. He feels that it is good for making buildings C. He believes that itis useful heating buildings D. He thinks many people get hurt from it 16. Why does the professor mention a toaster? . To explain how toast is made by convection To discuss how conduction makes toasters hot To give an example of something that bums people To give an example of heat radiation pomp 7. Why does the professor say this: Cb? To find out how many students have been near a fire To give students an example of radiation To show how dangerous fire is To get students to try this powers 18, Based on the information in the lecture, indicate whether the professor mentions the following statements about heat transfer. For each sentence, put a checkmark in the True or False column, Statement True False ‘Heat moving through liquid or gas is convection. ‘Convection is a pattern that repeats, ‘Heat cannot move through solid materials. Some materials are better at conducting heat than others. Radiating heat cannot be seen,PAPER 2: GRAMMAR & VOCABULARY Part I points: 15*1=15 For questions 1-15, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each space. Use only one word in each space. There is an example at the beginning (0). Example: 0 as Buying art on the Internet Spending on art has trebled to more than 3 billion pounds in the past year, (0). abandon art galleries and rush to snap (1) . . bargains on the Internet, . Britons Recent research (2) ... domestic art buying has revealed that 31% of people have @).-. .. one and five (4) of art in their home and it (5) suggests that people are now spending larger (6) .. on fewer items. No longer Oy . the middle classes merely buy art for its own (8) . +» but as a means of investing their ever growing surplus income. ©). purchasing on the Internet is a relatively new concept and (10) ... which some find unnatural and unacceptable. (11) . is viewed cautiously by art purists as they (12) .. . would never consider acquiring a painting without (13) . seen it in person beforehand or knowing the pedigree of the artist. To many, though, buying art on the Internet is a far (14) daunting prospect than having to face gallery owners, (15) .. knowledge of the subject is far superior to the purchaser’s and who often adopt a condescending manner towards the less knowledgeable prospective buyer. Part IT points: 10*1=10 Read the sentences and circle the word in bold which completes each sentence correctly. 1. Itwas a lovely resort, particularly 3. A good teacher will always be aware of Jexactly ‘precisely /distinetly at night the effeets/ needs/ results/ questions of when there was so much to do. his or her students and consider these when planning lessons. 2. Most people have experienced a disastrous holiday at one/ a / any / the 4, His rudeness brought up/ across/ to/ time or another. off the surface all the anger she had kept hidden inside her for months. 5. The weather is so bad you could be forgiven/ defended/ permitted/ allowed for thinking that it was winter.6.1 knew my mother would drag/ lift/ pull/ raise a face the minute she saw my new haircut. 7. When I saw him wearing those bright red trousers I just couldn’t keep a straight head/ face/ eye/ mouth. 8. If you are going to town, keep your eyes peeled/ clean/ wide/ fresh for that book I was telling you about. Part UL 9. After being shown to be responsible for this mess, if he has the courage of his own convictions/ certainties/ principles/ opinions, he must resign. 10, He loves the power he has as manager, and he always tries to be in the front/ driving/ leading/ foremost seat. Choose the correct answer. In choosing answers, follow the requirements of standard written English 1, Interested in studying insects and their effects on agriculture, Larissa and Tariq plan A to become an entomologist and then return to help the farmers in their small town. B c No error E 2. From about A.D. 700 to 1600, sculptors created nearly 1000 colossal rock statues on the A remote and tiny Easter Island, No error D E c 3. Because our casserole was smelling surprisingly badly as it baked, the food science teacher came over to ask us what we had put in i B 1D 4. According to educational statistics, the average age of college students has risen A quite noticeable over the past 25 years. No error Cc D B 5. Before boarding, passengers must purchase his or her tickets in the main concourse of the bus A B terminal because tickets are not sold on the bus. No error D EPart IV points: 5*1=5 Choose the set of words that, when inserted in the sentence, best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole. 1, Although the editors were reputed to be very... the uneven quality of the material they put into the anthology suggests they were too .. A .. professional judgmental. . sensitive. B. Cs D. E, 2, The professor’s presentation was both... : though brief, it comprehensive. . suecinct.....enlightening provocative. ....technical POOR 3. Freedom of expression is not necessarily 8 ssesseeees force: communities that encourage it often feel less threatened by social unrest than do those in which dissent is ... A. revolutionary...... promoted B. positive.......prohibited C. suecessful.....protested Part V D. divisive.....restricted E. militant.....fostered . Some skeptics consider the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) to be... ., even foolish; others go so far as to accuse SETI scientists of outright............. in applying skewed data, misguided. .....remonstrance absurd......erudition plausible.......lassitude painstaking wrongheaded.....chicanery moOOwD> . Although the archaeologist .......... the symbols on the cave wall, she was unable to .... . them because they were too faint. replicated.....ignore perused.....discard obliterated.....translate recollected. scrutinized.....decipher conceal HO ORP points: 10*1=10 Use the word in capitals to form a word that fits into the space. ‘While the number of adults who remain illiterate are fewer than ever, it is becoming 1 ... clear that they are more 2). than such people were in the past. Nowadays the written word is so important that without it much information that is vital for the running of our everyday lives becomes 3). Ashamed to admit it, illiterate adults often become INCREASE CONVENIENT ACCESS4) to concealing their ignorance, and CUSTOM 5). ., many do so with remarkable success. SEEM This may be one of the reasons why Bristol’s ‘Literacy for You’ scheme has been received rather less than 6).. +++ «Not surprisingly, adults have ENTHUSIASM one) eee about coming forward and RESERVE openly admitting that they find 8). .a page of COMPREHEND print that a child of seven could read without effort. Programmes for teaching basic literacy skills to adults need to be sensitively assembled so as not to discourage or humiliate the learner, who is probably already experiencing high levels of frustration on a day to day basis. Reading materials need to be graded carefully in terms of 9) : .- and some authentic texts COMPLEX may require considerable 10) .. before the SIMPLE Jeamer is able to handle them, PAPER 3: READING COMPREHENSION Variations on a theme: the sonnet form in English poetry points: 18 ‘A. The form of lyric poetry known as ‘the sonnet’, or ‘little song’, was introduced into the English poetic corpus by Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder and his contemporary Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, during the first half of the sixteenth century. It originated, however, in Italy three centuries earlier, with the earliest examples known being those of Giacomo de Lentino, “The Notary’ in the Sicilian court of the Emperor Frederick Il, dating from the third decade of the thirteenth century. The Sicilian sonneteers are relatively obscure, but the form was taken up by the two most famous poets of the Italian Renaissance, Dante and Petrarch, and indeed the latter is regarded as the master of the form. B. The Petrarchan sonnet form, the first to be introduced into English poetry, is a complex poetic structure. It comprises fourteen lines written in a rhyming metrical pattern of iambic pentameter, that is to say each line is ten syllables long, divided into five ‘feet’ or pairs of syllables (hence ‘pentameter’), with a stress pattern where the first syllable of each foot is unstressed and the second stressed (an iambic foot). This can be seen if we look at the first line of one of Wordsworth’s sonnets, ‘After-Thought’: “I thought of thee my partner and my guide’, If we break down this line into its constituent syllabic parts, we can see the five feet and the stress pattern (in this example each stressed syllable is underlined), thus: “Tthought/ of thee/ my part/ner and/ my guide’C. The thyme scheme for the Petrarchan sonnet is equally as rigid. The poem is generally divided into two parts, the octave (eight lines) and the sestet (six lines), which is demonstrated through rhyme rather than an actual space between each section. The octave is usvally rhymed abbaabba with the first, fourth, fifth and eight lines rhyming with each other, and the second, third, sixth and seventh also rhyming. The sestet is more varied: it can follow the patterns cdecde, edecde, or cdedce. Perhaps the best interpretation of this division in the Petrarchan sonnet is by Charles Gayley, who wrote: The octave bears the burden; a doubt, a problem, a reflection, a query, a historical statement, a cry of indignation or desire, a vision of the ideal. The sestet eases the load, resolves the problem or doubt, answers the query or doubt, solaces the yearning, realizes the vision. “Thus, we can see that the rhyme scheme demonstrates a twofold division in the poem, providing a structure for the development of themes and ideas. D. Early on, however, English poets began to vary and experiment with this structure. The first major development was made by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, altogether an indifferent poet, but was taken up and perfected by William Shakespeare, and its named after him. The Shakespearean sonnet also has fourteen lines in iambic pentameter, but rather than the division into octave and sestet, the poem is divided into four parts: three quatrains and a final rhyming couplet. Each quatrain has its own internal rhyme scheme, thus a typical Shakespearean sonnet would rhyme abab cded efef gg. Such a structure naturally allows greater flexibility for the author and it would be hard, if not impossible, to enumerate the different ways in which it has been employed, by Shakespeare and others. For example, an might be introduced in the first quatrain complicated in the second, further complicated in the third, and resolved in the final couplet-indeed; the couplet is almost always used as a resolution to the poem, though often in a surprising way. E, These, then, are the two standard forms of the sonnet in English poetry, but it should be recognized that poets rarely follow rules precisely and a number of other sonnet types have been developed, playing with the structural elements. Edmund Spenser, for example, more famous for his verse epic ‘The Faerie Queene’ invented a variation on the Shakespearean form by interlocking the rhyme schemes between the quatrains, thus: abab bebe ceded ee, while in the twentieth century Rupert Brooke reversed his sonnet, beginning with the couplet. John Milton, the seventeenth-century poet, was unsatisfied with the fourteen-line format and wrote a number of ‘Caudate’ sonnets, or sonnets with the regular fourteen lines (on the Petrarchan model) with a ‘coda’ or ‘tail’ of a further six lines. A similar notion informs George Meredith's sonnet sequence ‘Modern Love’, where most sonnets in the cycle have sixteen lines. F. Perhaps the most radical of innovators, however, has been Gerard Manley Hopkins, who developed what he called the ‘Curtal’ sonnet. This form varies the length of the poem, reducing it in effect to eleven and a half lines, the rhyme scheme and the number of feet per line. Modulating the Petrarchan form, instead of two quatrains in the octave, he has two tercets rhyming abc abe, and in place of the sestet he has four and a half lines, with a rhyme scheme debde. As if this is not enough, the tercets are no longer in iambic pentameter, but 8have six stresses instead of five, as does the final quatrain, with the exception of the last line, which has three, Many critics, however, are sceptical as to whether such a major variation can indeed be classified as a sonnet, but as verse forms and structures become freer, and poets less satisfied with convention, itis likely that even more experimental forms will out. Questions 1-5 Choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B-F from the list of headings below. Write the appropriate numbers in the space provided. One of the headings has been done for you. ‘Note: There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use all of them. List of Headings Octave develops sestet The Faerie Queene and Modern Love ‘The origins of the sonnet The Shakespearean sonnet form The structure of the Petrarchan sonnet form A real sonnet? Rhyme scheme provides structure developing themes and ideas Dissatisfaction with format The Sicilian sonneteers Howard v. Shakespeare Wordsworth’s sonnet form Future breaks with convention ‘The sonnet form: variations and additions T. Example: Paragraph A .. Paragraph B Paragraph C Paragraph D Paragraph E Paragraph F PaeNe Questions 6-10 Using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage, complete the sentences below. 6. Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder and Henry Howard were ... 7. It was in the third decade of the thirteenth century that the ..... was introduced.8. Among poets of the Italian Renaissance considered to be the better sonneteer. 9. The Petrarchan sonnet form consists of .. 10. In comparison with the octave, the rhyming scheme of the sestet is... . varied. Questions 11-13, Choose the correct letters A-D and circle them. 11, According to Charles Gayley, A. the octave is longer than the sestet. B. the octave develops themes and ideas C. the sestet provides answers and solutions. D. the sestet demonstrates a twofold division. 12. The Shakespearean sonnet is an indifferent development. more developed than the Petrarchan sonnet. more flexible than the Petrarchan sonnet. enumerated in different ways. poe 13, According to the passage, whose sonnet types are similar? A. Spenser and Brooke B. Brooke and Milton C. Hopkins and Spenser D. Milton and Meredith PAPER 4: WRITING points: 15 ‘As people rely more and more on technology to solve problems, the ability of humans to think for themselves will surely deteriorate. /250-300 words! Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning using strong justifications for the position you take.