SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO BÌNH ĐỊNH ĐỀ ÔN HSG LỚP 11 NĂM 2020- 2021

TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN MÔN: TIẾNG ANH - KHỐI 11

CHU VĂN AN Thời gian: 180 phút
Đề thi gồm: 18 trang
(Thí sinh viết câu trả lời vào bảng cho sẵn trong
đề)

Điểm Giám khảo 1 Giám khảo 2 Số phách

Bằng số Bằng chữ

A. LISTENING (50 pts.)

HƯỚNG DẪN PHẦN THI NGHE HIỂU
 Bài nghe gồm 3 phần, mỗi phần được nghe 2 lần, mỗi lần cách nhau 15 giây, mở đầu và
kết thúc mỗi phần nghe có tín hiệu.
 Mở đầu và kết thúc bài nghe có tín hiệu nhạc. Thí sinh có 3 phút để hoàn chỉnh bài
trước tín hiệu nhạc kết thúc bài nghe.
 Mọi hướng dẫn cho thí sinh (bằng tiếng Anh) đã có trong bài nghe.
Part 1. You will hear a radio discussion about children who invent imaginary friends. For
questions 1-5, choose the answer (A, B. C or D), which fits best according to what you
hear.(10 pts.)
1. In the incident that Liz describes,
A. her daughter asked her to stop the car. B. she had to interrupt the journey
twice.
C. she got angry with her daughter D. her daughter wanted to get out of the car.
2. What does the presenter say about the latest research into imaginary friends?
A. It contradicts other research on the subject.
B. It shows that the children who have them is increasing.
C. It indicates that the negative attitudes towards them are wrong.
D. It focuses on the effect they have on parents.
3. Karen says that one reason why children have imaginary friends is that
A.they are having serious problems with their real friends.
B. they can tell imagine friends what to do.
C. they want something that cannot be given.
D. they want something that other children that other children haven’t got.
4. Karen says that the teenager who had invented a superhero is an example of
A. a very untypical teenager.
B. a problem that imaginary friends can cause.
C. something she had not expected to discover.
D. how children change as they get older.

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5. According to Karen, show should parents react to imaginary friends?
A. They should pretend that they like the imaginary friend.
B. They shouldn’t get involved in the child’s relationship with the friend.
C. They should take action if the situation becomes annoying.
D. They shouldn’t discuss the imaginary friend with their child.
Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Part 2.You will hear a dialogue about property development. For questions 1-5, decide
whether the following statements are True (T) or False (F). (10 pts.)
1. The process of buying a house, improving it and selling it for a profit is called money
making.
2. Marcus says that buyers need to do their homework before they buy a house at an
auction.
3. When renovating a house, Marcus suggests that buyers think about what fittings future
occupants will need.
4. People advertise in newspapers because they want to sell their homes at lower price. 
5. Marcus suggests contacting the land registry if you find an empty house. 

Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Part 3. You will hear a man talking about dolphins’ behavior. Answer the following
questions with NO MORE THAN 5 WORDS (10 pts.)
1. What is the feature of the place where a temporary super-pod is formed?
- ………………………………………………………………………….
2. To which sex is knowledge handed down from mother dolphins?
- ………………………………………………………………………….
3. What is one reason for male dolphins engaging in acts of aggression?
- ………………………………………………………………………….
4. What breed of dolphins may engage in infanticide?
- ………………………………………………………………………….
5. Which dolphins’ behavior may involve human beings?
- ………………………………………………………………………….
Part 4.You will hear a news item. For question 1-10, complete the summary WITH NO
MORE THAN 3 WORDS.(20 pts.)

Offering (1) ______ is one way of retaining workers that (2) ______ have recruited and
trained. Some companies prefer (3) ______ benefits, such as free gym (4) ______ A London-
based branding (5) ______ has even allowed its workers to (6) ______ their offices. On the
other hand, City-based companies favour benefits such as (7) _______ and (8) ______.
Younger workers may not always think they are (9) ______, but they make sense in the (10)
______.
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Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

B. LEXICO-GRAMMAR (30 pts.)

Part 1: Choose the word or phrase (A, B, C or D) which best completes each sentence.(10
pts)
1. The man’s choice to run away virtually ______ to an admission of guilt.
A. devoted B. came C. amounted D. added
2. I have to stress that the ______ is on you to bring up your own children.
A. duty B. charge C. onus D. liability
3. She was just an ordinary person before suddenly thrusting into the ______.
A. limelight B. floodlight C. headlight D. flashlight
4. Many people no longer trust their own _____ memories and commit every detail of their
lives to some digital device or other and are completely lost without it.
A. fallible B. susceptible C. vulnerable D. controllable
5. I associate public transport with one of the worst experiences of my life and the _____ of
it is that I will never catch a bus again.
A. hard and fast B. thick and thin C. long and short D. ups and downs
6. Getting that job did a lot to ______his ego after having been turned down many times.
A. boost B. promote C. develop D. accelerate
7. My boss is a typical person who has to deal with ___________ activities every day.
A. miscellaneous B. multifarious C. assorted D. manifold
8. Fortunately, her parents were ______ unaware of what was happening to her.
A. rapturously B. exultantly C. blissfully D. jubilantly
9. After five hours, we realized that we had reached ________ in the discussion. Everyone
was fidgeting, indicating that they were bored and restless.
A. first mate B. running made C. checkmate D. stalemate
10. Today many people find that the pressure they have at work makes their jobs ________
as they have to put their families totally in the background.
A. untenable B. unforgivable C. unsustainable D. unreliable
Your answers
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Part 2: Identify 5 errors in the following passage and correct them, (0) has been done as
an example.(5 pts.)
Lin
e
0 Typically, children do not end up in the streets due to a single cause, but to a
1 combination of factors: a dearth of adequately funded schools, the demand for income
2 at home, family breakdown and violence. The street may be attractive to children as a
3 place to find adventure play and money. Generally, it is also a place where some

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4 children are exposed, with little or no protection, to exploitative employment, urban
5 crime, and abuse.
6 Children who work on the streets are generally involved in unskillful, labour-intensive
7 tasks which require long hours, such as shining shoes, carrying goods, guarding or
8 washing cars, and informal tracing. Some may also derive income through begging, or
9 through theft and illegal activities. At the same time, there are street children who take
10 pride in supporting themselves and their families and who often enjoy their work.
11 Many children may choose entrepreneurs because it allows them a degree of
12 independence, is less exploitative than many forms of paid employment, and is
13 flexible enough to allow them to participate in other activities such as education and
14 domestic tasks.

Your answer:
Line Error Correction
0 in on

Part 3.Complete each of the following sentences with a suitable preposition or particle. (5
pts.)
1. The new company had been fraught ______ one problem after another and looked as if it
were about to go under.
2. One-to-one courses are tailored ______ the individual needs of each and every one of our
students.
3. I’ve been ______ pins and needles all week waiting for the interview result.
4. The country was ______ the throes of its worst economic crisis on record.
5. Our conversation suddenly drowned ______ by the ear-splitting sound of a pneumatic
drill.
Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Part 4. Complete the following sentences with the words given in the brackets. You have to
change the form of the word. (10 pts.)
Modern advertisements contain hidden messages. (1.IMPLY) in the advertisements
showing the pretty girl in the new car or the (2. SMILEY) children round the packet of
washing powder is the message that if we buy the product, we also achieve success and
happiness. It is a subtle approach since it seeks to exploit our secret dreams, and it is
(3.ESCAPE) since advertising is ubiquitous. Giant street hoardings and (4.CATCH)
jingles on television bombard us from all sides. They (5. BRAIN) us into believing that we
can realize our ambitions quickly and easily. On the other hand, defenders of advertising
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 say that it is beneficial. Advertising is (6. MISINFORM). Advertisements tell us about
useful new products. They brighten our lives with color and music. They increase demand,
(7.STIMULUS) industry and so keep prices down. Whether for or against advertising, most
people would agree that some kind of watch-dog body, (8.APPOINTMENT) by the
government or by the advertising industry itself, is necessary to maintain standards of
(9.DISHONEST) and to discourage the more blatant types of (10.LEAD) advertisements.
Your answer
1. 3. 5. 7. 9.
2. 4. 6. 8. 10.

C. READING (60 pts.)

Part 1: For questions 1–10, read the following passage and decide which answer (A, B, C,
or D) best fits each gap. Write your answers in corresponding numbered boxes. (10 pts.)

A popular character in the nation's top television soap opera is jailed for something of which
she was probably innocent. Having been found (1) ______ of series of fraudulent acts,
she contemplates months of incarceration. A good storyline, but wait! Within hours the
television station is being (2) ______ with calls of protest. A national newspaper soon (3)
______ up a campaign to have her freed. Thousands of T-shirts are printed with slogans (4)
______ for her release. Offices and factory floors (5) ______ to the sounds of animated
debate. It is even mentioned in Parliament. It's easy to laugh off such idiocies as 'a bit of fun',
but there's surely a more serious side. A fair proportion of viewers were obviously (6)
______ in by the story to such an extent that their perception of fact and fiction was clearly
(7) ______. Everywhere, millions will pore over their 7-day TV guide to get a preview of the
week's soaps, worried that they might miss out on some little detail of the story. If a character
is (8) ________ to be past his or her sell-by date, and the decision has been taken to write
him or her (9) ________, possibly to have them killed off in spectacular fashion, viewing
figures are to soar by up to twenty-five per cent. A life-threatening fire can be relied upon to
add millions to the ratings. A major wedding can find half of Britain sitting (10) ______ to
the screen! It's all very strange.
1. A. guilty B. afraid C. lack D. sensible
2. A. inundated B. bombed C. attacked D. arrested
3. A. ends B. starts C. stirs D. blows
4. A. standing B. calling C. asking D. allowing
5. A. echo B. respond C. reply D. react
6. A. taken B. given C. believed D. engrossed
7. A. glossed B. tampered C. hampered D. blurred
8. A. suspected B. deemed C. resolved D. suspected
9. A. about B. in C. off D. out
10.A. glued B. added C. stuck D. swamped
Your answers
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
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 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Part 2: For questions 1-10, 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). (15 pts.)

One rather unlikely word that has recently entered the language is ‘blog’, a shortened
form of ‘web lob’. A blog is a diary (1) ________ on the Internet by the person writing it –
the ‘blogger’ – who presumably expects other people to read it. It is ironical that modern
technology is being used to (2) ________ new life into such an old-fashioned form as the
personal journal. And now, as the technology (3) ________ video camera is making them
easier to use, we have the video log, or ‘vlog’. Vlogging does not require (4) ________
sophisticated equipment: a digital video camera, a high-speed Internet connection and a host
are all that is needed. Vloggers can put anything that takes their fancy (5) ________ their
personal website. Some vloggers have no ambitions other than to show films they have shot
while on holiday in exotic places. However, vlogs can also (6) ________ more ambitious
purposes. For instance, amateur film-makers who want to make a (7) ________ for
themselves might publish their work on the Internet, eager to receive advice or criticism. And
increasingly, vlogs are being used to publicize political and social issues that are not (8)
________ enough to warrant coverage by the mass media. It is still too early to predict (9)
________ vlogging will ever take off in a major way or if it is just a passing fad, but its (10)
________ is only now becoming apparent.
Your answer
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Part 3: Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow. (10pts.)
Some time ago, a website highlighted the risks of public check-ins – online
announcements of your whereabouts. The site’s point was blunt: you may think you are just
telling the world, ‘Hey, I’m at this place’ – but you are also advertising your out-and-about-
ness to all kinds of people everywhere – not all of them people you might like to bump into.
This appeared to confirm the growing awareness that there might be a downside to all the
frantic sharing the web has enabled. The vast new opportunities to publish any and every
aspect of our lives to a potentially global audience hold out all sorts of tantalising
possibilities: Wealth! Fame! So we plunge into the maelstrom of the internet, tossing
confessions, personal photos and stories into the digital vortex. Too late we realise that the
water is crowded and treacherous – and we are lost.
Depressing? Perhaps, but don’t give up. This future has a map, drawn for us years ago
by a reckless group of online pioneers. In the early days of the web, they sailed these waters
and located all the treacherous shoals. They got fired from their jobs, found and lost friends
and navigated celebrity’s temptations and perils – all long before the invention of social
networking. These pioneers, the first wave of what we now call bloggers, have already been
where the rest of us seem to be going. Before their tales scroll off our collective screen, it’s
worth spending a little time with them. After all, those who cannot learn from history are
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doomed to repost it.
In January 1994, Justin Hall, a 19-year-old student, began posting to the ‘WWW’, as it
was then known, something inhabited mostly by grad students, scientists and a handful of
recocious teens like him. The web had been invented at CERN, the international physics lab
in Switzerland, so researchers could more easily share their work. Hall saw something else:
an opportunity to share his life. Link by link, he built a hypertext edifice of autobiography, a
dense thicket of verbal self-exposure leavened with photos and art. In January 1996, on a
dare, he began posting a daily blog, and readers flocked to the spectacle of a reckless young
man pushing the boundaries of this new medium in every direction at once.
Hall’s ethos was absolute: cross his path and you could appear on his site; no topic was
taboo. Certainly, this was the work of an exhibitionist, but there was also a rigour and beauty
to his project that only a snob would refuse to call art. One day though, visitors to Hall’s site
discovered his home page gone, replaced with a single anguished video titled Dark Night.
His story tumbled out; he’d fallen spectacularly in love, but when he started writing about it
on his site he was told ‘either the blog goes, or I do’. He’d published his life on the internet
and, Hall protested, ‘it makes people not trust me’. The blog went, but the dilemma persists.
Sharing online is great. But if you expect your song of yourself to ‘make people want to be
with you’, you’ll be disappointed.
In 2002, Heather Armstrong, a young web worker in Los Angeles, had a blog called
Dooce. Occasionally, she wrote about her job at a software company. One day an anonymous
colleague sent the address of Armstrong’s blog to every vice president at her company –
including some whom she’d mocked – and that was the end of her job. Those who study the
peculiar social patterns of the networked world have a term to describe what was at work
here. They call it the ‘online distribution effect’: that feeling so many of us have that we can
get away with saying things online that we’d never dream of saying in person. But our digital
lives are interwoven with our real lives. When we pretend otherwise, we risk making terrible,
life-changing mistakes.
Armstrong’s saga had a happy ending. Though she was upset by the experience and
stopped blogging for several months afterwards, she ended up getting married and restarting
her blog with a focus on her new family. Today she is a star in the burgeoning ranks of
‘mommy bloggers’ and her writing supports her household. Once a poster child for the
wages of web indiscretion, she has become a virtuoso of managed self-revelation. What
Armstrong has figured out is something we would all do well to remember: the web may
allow us to say anything, but that doesn’t mean we should.
1. The word “tantalizing” in paragraph 1 can be best replaced by______.
A. seductive B. compelling C. conducive D. appealing
2. Why does the writer describe a website about public check-ins?
A. to reinforce the concerns already felt by some people
B. to remind readers to beware of false promises
C. to explain that such sites often have a hidden agenda
D. to show that the risks of internet use are sometimes overestimated
3. What is the writer’s attitude to the online pioneers mentioned?
A. He is concerned by the risks they took.

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B. He appreciates their unprecedented achievements.
C. He admires their technical skills.
D. He is impressed by the extent of their cooperation.
4. What does the writer suggest about Justin Hall?
A. He was unusually innovative in his approach.
B. His work was popular for the wrong reasons.
C. He inspired others writing in different fields of study.
D. His work displayed considerable literary skills.
5. What point is exemplified by the references to Hall’s project?
A. People usually dislike exhibitionists. B. Someone’s life can be a form of art.
C. Relationships are always a private matter. D. Being too open may be counterproductive.
6. What does the account of Armstrong’s later career suggest about blogging?
A. It is important to choose an appropriate audience.
B. It is possible to blog safely and successfully.
C. It is vital to consider the feelings of others.
D. It is best to avoid controversial subjects when blogging.
7. In this article, the writer’s aim is to______
A. illustrate a point. B. defend a proposition.
C. describe developments. D. compare arguments.
8. The word “virtuoso” in the last paragraph can be best replaced by_____.
A. ace B. genius C. prodigy D. professor
9. What is the tone of the writer in this reading passage?
A. indignent B. straghtforward C. admiring D. sarcastic
10. What is the best title for the passage?
A. Blogging: Confessing to the World B. Bloging: Online Distribution Effect
C. Blogging: Road to Potential Future D. Blogging: Frantic Sharing and Changing
Your answer
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Part 3: Read the following passage and do the tasks below (10 pts.)

RISING SEA
Paragraph 1 - INCREASED TEMPERATURES
The average air temperature at the surface of the earth has risen this century, as has the
temperature of ocean surface waters. Because water expands as it heats, a warmer ocean
means higher sea levels. We cannot say definitely that the temperature rises are due to the
greenhouse effect; the heating may be part of a ‘natural’ variability over a long time - scale
that we have not yet recognized in our short 100 years of recording. However, assuming the
build up of greenhouse gases is responsible, and that the warming will continue, scientists
– and inhabitants of low-lying coastal areas – would like to know the extent of future sea
level rises. 
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Paragraph 2
Calculating this is not easy. Models used for the purpose have treated the ocean as passive,
stationary and one -dimensional. Scientists have assumed that heat simply diffused into the
sea from the atmosphere. Using basic physical laws, they then predict how much a known
volume of water would expand for a given increase in temperature. But the oceans are not
one -dime nsional, and recent work by oceanographers, using a new model which takes into
account a number of subtle facets of the sea –including vast and complex ocean currents –
suggests that the rise in sea level may be less than some earlier estimates had predicted.
Paragraph 3
An international forum on climate change, in 1986, produced figures for likely sea-level rises
of 20 cms and 1.4 m, corresponding to atmospheric temperature increases of 1.5 and 4.5C
respectively. Some scientists estimate that the ocean warming resulting from those
temperature increases by the year 2050 would raise the sea level by between 10 cms and 40
cms. This model only takes into account the temperature effect on the oceans; it does not
consider changes in sea level brought about by the melting of ice sheets and glaciers, and
changes in groundwater storage. When we add on estimates of these, we arrive at figures for
total sea-level rises of 15 cm and 70 cm respectively.
Paragraph 4
It’s not easy trying to model accurately the enormous complexities of the ever-changing
oceans, with their great volume, massive currents and sensitively to the influence of land
masses and the atmosphere. For example, consider how heat enters the ocean. Does it just
‘diffuse’ from the warmer air vertically into the water, and heat only the surface layer of the
sea? (Warm water is less dense than cold, so it would not spread downwards). Conventional
models of sea-level rise have considered that this the only method, but measurements have
shown that the rate of heat transfer into the ocean by vertical diffusion is far lower in practice
than the figures that many modelers have adopted.

Paragraph 5
Much of the early work, for simplicity, ignored the fact that water in the oceans moves in
three dimensions. By movement, of course, scientists don’t mean waves, which are too small
individually to consider, but rather movement of vast volumes of water in huge currents. To
understand the importance of this, we now need to consider another process – advection.
Imagine smoke rising from a chimney. On a still day it will slowly spread out in all
directions by means of diffusion. With a strong directional wind, however, it will all shift
downwind, this process is advection – the transport of properties (notably heat and salinity in
the ocean) by the movement of bodies of air or water, rather than by conduction or diffusion.
Paragraph 6.
Massive ocean currents called gyres do the moving. These currents have far more capacity to
store heat than does the atmosphere. Indeed, just the top 3m of the ocean contains more heat
than the whole of the atmosphere. The origin of gyres lies in the fact that more heat from the
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Sun reaches the Equator than the Poles, and naturally heat tends to move from the former to
the latter. Warm air rises at the Equator, and draws more air beneath it in the form of winds
(the “Trade Winds”) that, together with other air movements, provide the main force driving
the ocean currents. Water itself is heated at the Equator and moves poleward, twisted by the
Earth’s rotation and affected by the positions of the continents. The resultant broadly circular
movements between about 10 and 40 North and South are clockwise in the Southern
Hemisphere. They flow towards the east at mid latitudes in the equatorial region. They then
flow towards the Poles, along the eastern sides of continents, as warm currents. When two
different masses of water meet, one will move beneath the other, depending on their relative
densities in the subduction process.The densities are determined by temperature and salinity.
the convergence of water of different densities from the Equator and the Poles deep in the
oceans causes continuous subduction. This means that water moves vertically as well as
horizontally. Cold water from the Poles travels as depth – it is denser than warm water –until
it emerges at the surface in another part of the world in the form of a cold current.
Paragraph 7
- HOW THE GREEN HOUSE EFFECT WILL CHANGE OCEAN TEMPERATURES
Ocean currents, in three dimensions, form a giant ‘conveyor belt’, distributing heat from the
thin surface layer into the interior of the oceans and around the globe. Water may take
decades to circulate in these 3-D gyres in the lop kilometer of the ocean, and centuries in the
deep water. With the increased atmospheric temperatures due to the greenhouse effect, the
oceans conveyor belt will carry more heat into the interior. This subduction moves heat
around far more effectively than simple diffusion. Because warm water expands more than
cold when it is heated, scientists had presumed that the sea level would rise unevenly around
the globe. It is now believed that these inequalities cannot persist, as winds will act to
continuously spread out the water expansion. Of course, of global warming changes the
strength and distribution of the winds, then this ‘evening-out’ process may not occur, and the
sea level could rise more in some areas than others.
Questions 1 - 6 
There are 8 paragraphs numbered 1 - 8 in Reading Passage. The first paragraph and the last
paragraph have been given headings.
From the list below numbered A - I, choose a suitable heading for the remaining 5
paragraphs.
There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use all the headings.
List of headings
A.    THE GYRE PRINCIPLE
B.     THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT
C.     HOW OCEAN WATERS MOVE
D.     STATISTICAL EVIDENCE
E.     THE ADVECTION PRINCIPLE
F.     DIFFUSION VERSUS ADVECTION
G.     FIGURING THE SEA LEVEL CHANGES
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H.     ESTIMATED FIGURES
I.     THE DIFFUSION MODEL
1.   Paragraph  2 ……………………..
2.   Paragraph  3 ……………………..
3.   Paragraph  4 ……………………..
4.   Paragraph  5 ……………………..
5.   Paragraph  6 ……………………..

Questions 6-10: Read each of the following statements. According to the information in the
reading passage. Write:
T  if it is true 
F  if it is false
NI If there is no information about the statement in the reading passage.
6. The surface layer of the oceans is warmed by the atmosphere.
7. Advection of water changes heat and salt levels.
8. A gyre holds less heat than there is in the atmosphere.
9. The process of subduction depends on the water density.
10. The sea level is expected to rise evenly over the Earth's surface.
Your answer
1. 3. 5. 7. 9.
2. 4. 6. 8. 10.

Part 5. You are going to read an extract from a book on photography. For questions 1 –
10, choose from the sections (A – E). The sections may be chosen more than once. (15pts.)

In which section are the following mentioned?

the possibility that photography can directly influence events in the world 1……..

the possibility that the photographic image has become redundant 2……..

images being interpreted in a similar way by different societies 3……..

a commonly held view about the relationship between what is visible 4……..
and how it is interpreted

the contrasts of scale that can be represented in photography 5……..

the possibility that the techniques employed in photography today 6……..

have taken the medium back to where it started

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 the ability of photography to provide images that will exist for a long time 7……..

uncertainty as to whether the main purpose of photography is to 8……..

inform or to entertain

the potential of photography to epitomise the human condition 9……..

the view that photography was the greatest achievement in the 10……..
history of visual images
A
Over the past one and a half centuries, photography has been used to record all aspects of
human life and activity. During this relatively short history, the medium has expanded its
capabilities in the recording of time and space, thus allowing human vision to be able to view
the fleeting moment or to visualise both the vast and the minuscule. It has brought us images
from remote areas of the world, distant parts of the solar system, as well as the social
complexities and crises of modern life. Indeed, the photographic medium has provided one
of the most important and influential means of capturing the essence of our being alive.
Nonetheless, the recording of events by means of the visual image has a much longer history.
The earliest creations of pictorial recording go as far back as the Upper Palaeolithic period of
about 35,000 years ago and, although we cannot be sure of the exact purposes of the early
cave paintings, pictorial images seem to be inextricably linked to human culture as we
understand it.
B
Throughout the history of visual representation, questions have been raised concerning the
supposed accuracy (or otherwise) of visual images, as well as their status in society. Ideas
and debates concerning how we see the world and the status of its pictorial representations
have been central political, philosophical and psychological issues from the time of Ancient
Greece to the present-day technical revolution of the new media communications. Vision and
representation have pursued interdependent trajectories, counter-influencing each other
throughout history. The popular notion that ‘seeing is believing’ had always afforded special
status to the visual image. So when the technology was invented, in the form of photography,
the social and cultural impact was immense. Not only did it hold out the promise of
providing a record of vision, but it had the capacity to make such representation enduring.
C
In the mid-nineteenth century, the invention of photography appeared to offer the promise of
‘automatically’ providing an accurate visual record. It was seen not only as the culmination
of visual representation but, quite simply, the camera was regarded as a machine that
could provide a fixed image. And this image was considered to be a very close
approximation to that which we actually see. Because of the camera’s perceived realism in
its ability to replicate visual perception, it was assumed that all peoples would ‘naturally’ be
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able to understand photographs. This gave rise to the question of whether photography
constituted a ‘universal language’. For example, a photograph of the heavens, whether it
showed the sun and moon or the constellations, would immediately be understood in any
part of the world. In the face of the rapid increase in global communications, we do need at
least to ask to what extent the photographic image can penetrate through cultural differences
in understanding.
D
There are other questions that arise concerning the role of photography in society that have
aimed to determine whether the camera operates as a mute, passive recorder of what is
happening or whether it possesses the voice and power to instigate social change. We may
further speculate whether the camera provides images that have a truly educational function
or if it operates primarily as a source of amusement. In provoking such issues, the
photographic debate reflects polarised arguments that traditionally have characterised much
intellectual thought.
E
The last 170 years have witnessed an ever- increasing influence of the visual image,
culminating in the global primacy of television. For photography, the new prospects and
uncertainties posed by digital storage and manipulation, and the transmission of images via
the internet present new challenges. It has even been suggested that we now inhabit the ‘post-
photographic era’ – where technological and cultural change have devalued photography to
such an extent that events have taken us beyond the photograph’s use and value as a medium
of communication. Furthermore, perhaps we should be asking if the advent of digital
imagery means that photography, initially born from painting, has turned full circle and has
now returned to emulating painting – its progenitor.
Your answer
1. 3. 5. 7. 9.
2. 4. 6. 8. 10.

D. WRITING (60 points)

Part 1: Read the following text and use your own words to summarize it. Your summary
should be about 140 words long. You MUST NOT copy the original. (15 pts.)
Why do Weight-Loss Diets Fail?
The popularity of diet crazes over the last 30 years shows that many of us think we are
overweight. It also suggests that we want to do something about it. Diet books with the latest
scientific advice become best sellers, and yet we continue to gain weight. Who’s
responsible? It’s easy to blame scientific experts, but in my view, the problem is often with
us, the dieters. We can’t lose weight because of the way we think about food.

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 If we cannot follow a plan every day, no diet book can help. Many dieters change from
one type of diet to another, so they never allow their bodies to get into a healthy rhythm.
Others start out strongly on a program and lose a few pounds. Then, when their weight stays
the same for a few weeks, they become discouraged and lose their self-control. If the weight
doesn’t go away quickly, they give up.
But the number on the scale is not our challenge. Modern life is so fast and stressful
that many diets are ruined by “comfort eating”. When we feel down, we want a slice of
cheesecake or a chocolate brownie with ice cream to make us feel better. We use food as an
escape. On the other hand, some of us use food as a reward. If we’ve done something well,
we think we “deserve it”.
We also need to pay attention to the food we eat. We should read food labels carefully
and remember that we are often misled by them. Although a food package may say “low fat”,
manufacturers sometimes replace the fat with carbon hydrates, sugar, and other fattening
substances. In addition, they may not take out much of the fat. Low-fat ice cream can have
70% of the fat or regular ice cream, so a scoop and a half of low-fat ice cream is more
fattening than one scoop of regular.
There are just a few of the reasons why our diets fail, but they all arise from our state
of mind and our ability to pay attention. The next time you reach for the cookie jar,
remember: control your mind and you can control your body! The most important factor in
losing weight is in our heads.
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Part 2: Table description (15 pts.)
The tables show population in 2010 and 2100 in some countries.
Write a summary of the information. Select and report the main features, and make
comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.

2010 2100 projection

China 1341 India 1551
India 1225 China 941
USA 310 Nigeria 730
Indonesia 240 USA 478
Brazil 195 Tanzania 316
Pakistan 174 Pakistan 261
Nigeria 158 Indonesia 254
Bangladesh 149 Democratic Republic of Congo 212
Russia 143 Philippines 178
Japan 127 Brazil 177

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Part 3: Essay writing (30 pts.)
Write about the following topic in at least 350 words.
These days many advertisements are aimed at children. What effect do you think they
have? Should advertising to children be more controlled and regulated?
Provide reasons for your answer. Include relevant examples from your own knowledge or
experience.
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