Hoang Thao – Bien Hoa Gifted High School

SUPPLEMENTARY 92

I. Choose the word that best completes each sentence.

1. None of his relatives really understood the full ____________ of his difficulty or his desperation.
A. degree B. dimension C. extent D. width
2. It’s quite unreasonable to ask me to organize the conference at such short ____________.
A. warning B. notice C. time D. advance
3. I slept badly last night and am feeling particularly ____________ this morning.
A. slow-witted B. far-reaching C. off-hand D. top-heavy
4. Serena is still ____________ ignorant of the fact that she is about to be made redundant.
A. delightedly B. blissfully C. jubilantly D. ecstaticall
5. Revenge at last! I always said I would ____________ my own back on Steve, and now I have.
A. turn B. get C. do D. make
6. I think everyone should be ____________ with the way office machinery works.
A. conversant B. mindful C. answerable D. attuned
7. He crept in ____________ his parents should wake up.
A. unless B. lest C. otherwise D. whereby
8. They threatened to cancel the whole project ____________.
A. thick and fast B. at a stroke C. on the whole D. of set purpose
9. “Thank you very much. I haven’t been to ____________ party for ages,” said the woman.
A. so enjoyable a B. the so enjoyable C. a so enjoyable D. so enjoyable
10. The whole holiday turned out to be an ____________ disaster.
A. unmatched B. unmitigated C. undiluted D. umindful
11. I’m determined to finish building the house by the end of the month, come rain or ____________.
A. shine B. sun C. sunny D. dry
12. Andrea has a ____________ rug on the floor in her bedroom.
A. sheepskin long lovely white B. lovely long sheepskin white
C. lovely long white sheepskin D. sheepskin long white lovely
13. State enterprises face fierce competition from the private ____________.
A. province B. department C. sector D. zone
14. She had a(n) ____________ interest in holding a separate bank account.
A. implied B. shadowed C. invested D. vested
15. There were one or two ____________ voices, although the majority were in favor of the proposal.
A. acclaiming B. clamouring C. refuting D. dissenting
16. I wish you would stop sitting on the ____________ and decide whose side you’re on.
A. fence B. crossroads C. wall D. middle
17. ____________ the difficulties they had getting it produced, the play is a huge success.
A. On account of B. Concerning C. As far as D. For all
18. Anna’s friend knew the casting director, so she pulled a few ____________ to arrange an audition.
A. ropes B. wires C. strings D. threads
19. Apparently her father is a(n) ____________ in one of the major banks.
A. bread B. cheese C. apple D. meat
20. The mayor expressed strong ____________ about the necessity for the new ring road.
A. scruples B. reservations C. questions D. wonders

II. Complete each sentence with one suitable particle or preposition.

1. One good way to drum ______up______ support is to get people in the high street to sign a petition.
2. I’ve got two weeks’ holiday left but I think I’ll carry it ______over______ till next year and take it in
January.
3. Only radical action will bring _____about_______ the changes that we so desperately need.
4. What annoys me is that the men got _______off_____ with just 100 hours’ community service.
5. The authorities shouldn’t give ______in______ to this kind of blackmail from the workers.
6. News gets ____around________ very fast in this town.
7. We struck _____up_______ a friendship the very first time we met.
8. I hate buying furniture from that place because you have to put it _____together_______ yourself.
9. I have taken ______on______ a lot of extra hours this week. I need the money.
10. I’ve been trying to explain the situation to Ben for weeks, but I don’t seem to be able to get
 Hoang Thao – Bien Hoa Gifted High School
__through____to him.

III. Write the correct form of the words given in the brackets.
1. The unresponsive audience made the lecturer somewhat ___disheartened_________ (HEART). What a
shame!
2. I have been told that she was quite a(n) ____eyeful________ (EYE) in her youth.
3. It appears that what I said was untrue, but I did not______knowingly______ (KNOW) lie to you.
4. The candidate made a(an) _____inflammatory_______ (FLAME) speech that incensed all those who heard
it.
5. It’s common ____courtesy________ (COURTEOUS) to give up your seat for elderly people.
6. Some analysts worry that violence on TV might _____desensitize_______ (SENSE) children to violence in
real life.
7. The headmistress commended her on her ____exemplary________ (EXAMPLE) behaviour.
8. The newspaper report before the trial may have had a _____prejudicial_______ (PREJUDICE) effect on the
verdict.
9. They were attacked without any _____provocation_______ (PROVOKE) at all.
10. Don’t ______belittle______ (LITTLE) her piano-playing just because you are jealous.

IV. Read the text below and decide which answer A, B, C or D best fits each space.
Sleeping disorders like insomnia can prove to be a worrying question for many of us. Almost anyone
can easily conjure (1) _______ at least one sleepless night of (2) _______ and turning in bed awaiting the bliss
of a deep dream. Most probably, a third of us undergo the distressing experience at least once a week.
Even though it is possible for people to function without any sleep at all for a certain period of time,
such occurrences are rather few and far between and there is no evidence to (3) _______ this assumption.
What is sure, however, is the fact that we do need some sleep to regenerate our strength and to (4) _______
the brain to its proper activity. No wonder, then, that the tiredness and fatigue that appear after a sleepless
night compel many of us to go for chemical support in the form of sleep (5) _______ tablets or powders.
However long the problem of sleeplessness has afflicted many individuals, very little has been (6)
_______ in the question of its original causes. We are conscious that it usually (7) _______ those who are
exposed to a great deal of stress, anxiety or depression. It may also be (8) _______ by overworking or
unfavorable surroundings with scarcity of fresh air.
Sleeping pills may provide some relief and can act as an alternative in this desperate situation. Yet,
they do little to combat the ailment in full. Consequently, our hopes should be (9) _______ on the medical
authorities to (10) _______ the root cause of insomnia before we take to being nocturnals leading our noisy
lives in the dead of night.

1. A. up B. about C. off D. out

2. A. rolling B. wriggling C. tossing D. spinning
3. A. proclaim B. endure C. invalidate D. substantiate
4. A. recuperate B. restore C. revive D. resume
5. A. inducing B. attaining C. exacting D. contributing
6. A. disparaged B. retrieved C. detected D. originated
7. A. betrays B. besets C. bemoans D. bestows
8. A. engendered B. applied C. instigated D. evolved
9. A. placed B. ascribed C. focused D. attached
10. A. emerge B. release C. determine D. confess

V. Read the passage below and choose the best answer to each question.
There is one kind of pain for which nobody has yet found a cure- the pain that comes from the ending
of a relationship. The relationship could be a marriage, a love affair or a deep friendship, in fact, any strong
emotional tie between two people. Such a relationship may come to an abrupt but premeditated end; or it may
simply fade away slowly as people and circumstances change(1). You may be the one to “break it off”, with a
short note or a brief phone call. Or you may be on the receiving end, like the soldier who dreads getting a
“Dear John” letter from a girl friend who has got tired of waiting. But however it ended and whoever decided
to end it, the pain is equally hard to bear. It is a sort of death, and it requires the same period of mourning, the
same time for grief.
Although there is no cure for grief, we cannot help looking for one, to ease the pain and to make us
 Hoang Thao – Bien Hoa Gifted High School
forget our tears. We seek refuge in other relationships(2), we keep ourselves busy with work, we try to
immerse ourselves in our hobbies. Perhaps we start to drink more than we should to drown our sorrows or we
follow the conventional advice and join a club or society. But these things only relieve the symptoms of the
illness; they cannot cure it. Moreover, we are always in a hurry to get rid of our grief. It is as if we were
ashamed of it. We feel that we should be able to “pull ourselves together”(3). We try to convince ourselves, as
we bite on the pillow, that we are much too old to be crying. Some people bury their grief deep inside
themselves, so that nobody will guess what they are going through(4). Others seek relief by pouring their
hearts out to their friends, or to anyone else who can offer a sympathetic shoulder to cry on(5). But after a
while, even our friends start to show their impatience, and suggest with their reproachful glances that it is
about time we stopped crying(6). They, too, are in a hurry for the thing to be over.(3)
It is not easy to explain why we adopt this attitude to emotional pain, when we would never expect
anyone to overcome physical pain simply by an effort of willpower. Part of the answer must lie in the nature
of grief itself. When the love affair dies, you cannot believe that you will ever find another person to replace
the one who has gone so completely out of your life. Even after many, many months, when you think that you
have begun to learn to live without your lost love, something- a familiar place, a snatch of music, a whiff of
perfume- will suddenly bring the bittersweet memories flooding back(7). You choke back the tears and the
desperate, almost angry, feeling that you are no better now than the day the affair ended(8).
And yet, grief is like an illness that must run its course. Memories do fade eventually, a healing skin
does start to grow over the wound, the intervals between sudden glimpses of the love you have lost do get
longer. Bit by bit, life resumes the normal flow. Such is the complexity of human nature that we can even start
to feel guilty as these things start to happen, as if it were an insult to our lost love that we can begin to forget
at all.
The important thing to admit about grief, then, is that it will take its time. By trying to convince
ourselves that it ought to be over sooner, we create an additional tension(9) which can only make things
worse. People who have gone through the agony of a broken relationship- and there are few who have not-
agree that time is the “great healer”. How much time is needed will vary from person to person, but
psychiatrists have “a rule of thumb”(10): grief will last as long as the original relationship lasted. The sad
thing is that, when the breakdown occurs, we can only stumble over the stories beneath our feet. It is dark
ahead, and you will fail painfully many times before we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

1. Relationships often come to an end because _______.

A. the feelings of the people were not very deep B. people do not realize the pain they can cause
C. people do not always stay the same D. very few people really know how to love
2. One way to get over a broken relationship is to _______.
A. write a “Dear John” letter B. form new relationships
C. make a brief phone call D. try to forget the other person
3. If you seek advice on what to do about a broken relationship, you will probably be told to _______.
A. pull yourself together (use your willpower) B. keep busy at work
C. find someone else D. join a club
4. Often we are ashamed when we cry because _______.
A. we think it is a bad thing to do B. we do not expect our unhappiness to last so long
C. we are worried what others will think of us D. only babies and children cry
5. You tell your friends about your unhappiness because _______.
A. you hope it will make you feel better B. you want them to hear the story from you
C. you feel sure that they have had similar experiences D. you want them to feel sorry for you
6. When your friends get tired of listening to you, they will _______.
A. tell you to pull yourself together B. try to avoid your company
C. show by their expressions that they have had enough D. help you to get over your grief
7. We are upset by reminders of our lost love because they come so _______.
A. unexpectedly B. rapidly C. frequently D. rarely
8. Memories continue to upset you, and this makes you feel that you _______.
A. will never get over your grief B. have no will power
C. are utterly alone D. have made no progress at all
9. If we try to recover too quickly from grief, we shall make ourselves _______.
A. ridiculous B. tense C. ill D. unpopular
10. Psychiatrists tell you that grief will last as long as the original relationship. This calculation is _____.
A. the result of scientific research B. no more than a hopeful guess
 Hoang Thao – Bien Hoa Gifted High School
C. generally true but with many exceptions D. based on a deep understanding of human nature

VI. Read the following text and then choose from the list A-I the best phrase given below it to fill each of
the spaces. Each correct phrase may only be used once. Some of the suggested answers do not fit at all.
WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE COSMOS
Cosmological ideas are no longer any more fragile and evanescent (1) ………I…….... Geologists infer
that the continents are drifting over the globe, about (2) ……F………..., and that Europe and North America
were joined together two hundred million years ago. We believe them, (3) ………D…….... We also believe,
at least in outline, the story of how our biosphere evolved and how we humans emerged. But some key
features of our cosmic environment are now underpinned by equally firm data. The empirical support of a Big
Bang ten to fifteen billion years ago is as compelling as the evidence that geologists offer on our Earth's
history. This is an astonishing turnaround: our ancestors could weave theories almost unencumbered by facts,
and until quite recently cosmology seemed (4) ………C……......
A few years ago, I already had ninety per cent confidence that there was indeed a Big Bang - that
everything in our observable universe started (5) ………G……....., far hotter than the centre of the Sun. The
case now is far stronger: dramatic advances in observations and experiments brought the broad cosmic picture
into sharp focus during the 1990s, and I would now raise my degree of certainty to ninety nine per cent.
“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” is one of Einstein's
best-known aphorisms, expressing his amazement that the laws of physics, which our minds are somehow
attuned to understand, apply not just here on Earth but also in the remotest galaxy. Newton taught us that the
same force that makes apples fall holds the Moon and planets in their courses. We now know that this same
force binds the galaxies, pulls some stars into black holes and may eventually cause the Andromeda galaxy to
collapse on top of us. Atoms in the most distant galaxies are identical to those we can study in our
laboratories. All parts of the universe seem to be evolving in a similar way, (6) ………A……...... Without this
uniformity, cosmology would have got nowhere.
A. as though they share a common origin
B. at about ninety five per cent
C. little more than speculative mathematics
D. even though such vast spans of time are hard to grasp
E. though that is what Newton suggested
F. as fast as your fingernails grow
G. as a compressed fireball
H. although we do not understand why
I. than our theories about the history of our own Earth