SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO KỲ THI CHỌN ĐỘI TUYỂN THAM DỰ

QUẢNG NGÃI
KỲ THI CHỌN HSG QUỐC GIA NĂM 2019
Ngày thi: 19/09/2018
ĐỀ CHÍNH THỨC
Môn thi: Tiếng Anh
Thời gian làm bài: 180 phút

(Đề thi gồm có 18 trang. Thí sinh làm bài trên giấy thi.)
PART A: LISTENING (5pts)
HƯỚNG DẪN PHẦN THI NGHE HIỂU
 Bài nghe gồm 4 phần; thí sinh có 20 giây để đọc mỗi phần.
 Mở đầu và kết thúc bài nghe có tín hiệu nhạc.
 Mọi hướng dẫn cho thí sinh (bằng Tiếng Anh) đã có trong bài nghe.
PART I: Listen to a lecture about population growth and decide whether these
statements are TRUE (T) or FALSE (F). (You will listen to the recording once only)
1. Birth rate is the average number of children born in a year, per thousand people.
2. Fertility rate in the UK was first reported to have been so high in 2008.
3. Fertility rate in the UK is higher than it was twenty years ago because a higher
proportion of women are having children.
4. 10% of women in their mid-forties do not have children nowadays.
5. Fertility rates are low partly because parents do not have time to have children.
PART II: You will hear part of a radio interview with a literacy critic about
Huxley’s novel, Brave New World. For questions 6-10, choose the answer (A,B,C
or D), which fits best according to what you hear. (You will listen to the recording
twice)
6. In the 1930s, Huxley…
A. was trying to launch his career as a writer.
B. was known for his observations on social behavior.
C. could not decide what kind of writer he wanted to be.
D. could not settle happily in any country.
7. In writing Brave New World, Huxley was …
A. going against the grain in literacy trends.
B. trying to outdo Wells.

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C. tackling a dangerous topic.
D. stealing Wells’ ideas pretending.
8. When Huxley went to the United States, he…
A. disliked what he saw. B. found people to be very unfriendly.
C. was offended by American art. D. felt too nervous to stay there.
9. To Huxley, America was…
A. violent. B. an exciting symbol of the future.
C. a warning of what might happen. D. a place to make his fortune.
10. Huxley seems to have been…
A. something of a puritan.
B. blased against all other nations than his own.
C. arrogant when comparing himself to other writers.
D. a man who embraced great change.
PART III: You will hear part of a radio programme in which journalist Arabella
Gordon talks about the phenomenon of technophobia. Answer the following
questions with a word or a short phrase (NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS).
(You will listen to the recording twice)
11. What did people think of new machines when they first appeared in their places of
work?
12. Who operated the new weaving machines?
13. According to the Frame Breaking Act, what was brought in the death penalty?
14. What makes electronic typewriters attractive to students in the UK?
15. What did Frederick Forsyth do before he was a writer?
PART IV: For questions 16-25, listen to a piece of news from the BBC and fill in
the missing information. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS taken from
the recording for each answer in the spaces provided. (You will listen to the
recording twice)
Recently in the Great Pyramids, a 100-feet long space, which is called a (16) ….., has
been discovered lately. According to the “Nature”, this is a significant discovery to the
archaeology because since the 1800s, there has no other significant discovery like this
(17) ….. . However, whether this can help to unravel the ancient mysteries is (18) ….
There is no proof that a/an (19) ….. or burial chamber can be found from this space.
There may be more others like this in the pyramid and this discovery is expected to
help the researchers find out how it was built. To identify this space, not allowed to

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track (20) ….. or use cameras, they had to take use of some appliances to (21) …..
inside the structure. That’s not the only way the modern technology is helping
archaeologists. Adam Low, an archaeologist, admitted to being a man with (22) …..
the tomb of a Pharaoh, Seti I. It can be learnt from the tomb how ancient people have
different thoughts, different values and (23) …... .He can read the way they thought
through the (24) ….. on the walls. With the help of technology, a dialogue crossing
time can be built and become one of the most exciting moments. “the Hall of
Beauties” is, in fact, only a (25) ….. built in a museum in Switzerland.
PART B: LEXICO-GRAMMAR (2pts)
PART I: Choose the correct answer (A,B,C or D) to complete each of the
following sentences. (1pt)
1. The ………… old man stood by the seashore, gazing into the horizon.
A. immobile B. motionless C. stationery D. stationary
2. Lisa is in her mourning ………… as her grandmother has just passed away.
A. suit B. apparel C. accessory D. attire
3. Mrs. Smith is a …………… woman who makes all the decisions for her family.
A. determined B. despicable C. domineering D. dominant
4. The immature girl takes a very ………… view of things, which makes us wonder
whether “moderation” is even in her dictionary.
A. extreme B. absolute C. defined D. impetuous=impulsive
5. We have yet to find an … means to divide the profits we made from the bazaar.
A. equable = calm B. equivocal C. equilateral D. equitable= fair
and impartial
6. My brother, who is in the army, has to suffer the ………… of army life.
A. trials B. impossibilities C. rigours D. hardness
7. The thief made a ………… of the keys he had stolen.
A. copy B. duplicate C. replica D. reprint
8. Could you help me to ………… his handwriting?
A. pronounce B. understand C. detach D. decipher
9. The employees are ………… against the new manager of the company.
A. compelled B. prejudiced C. repelled D. humiliated
10. The story was blown out of ………… by the media.

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A. proportion = more serious B. contortion C. distortion D.
presentation
PART II: Use the correct forms of the words given in capitals to complete the
passage. (1pt)
The Meaning of Dreams
Incomprehensible
12. Psychologists
13. Countless
14. Originate
15. Unexpectedly
16. Enigmatic/ ENIGMATICAL
17. Unknown
18. Mysteriously
19. Independently
20. HAPPENINGS
Until the early of twentieth century, most scientists argued that dreams were
nothing but a random jumble of completely (11) COMPREHEND images
remaining from the sensory accumulation of our daily lives. Since the idea that
dreams have meaning in their own way became popular, (12) PSYCHOLOGY
have proposed (13) COUNT theories to explain the logic of dreams. The
bewildering nature of this logic reflects the primary source of the dreams outside the
tidy confines of the conscious mind. A dream can be a response to events in the
outside world, or it can (14) ORIGIN within, expressing aspects of the dreamer’s
deep-seated feelings; it can fulfil desires or highlight unresolved emotions in the
dreamer’s life. Not (15) EXPECT, the contradictions implicit in these complex
processes are reflected in the syntax of dreams. Often (16) ENIGMA, halting and
fragmentary, the language of dreams can warp time, bringing together historical and
contemporary figures. It can mix the familiar with the (17) KNOW and work
fantastic transformations by its own brand of magic. Scenes in dreams merge (18)
MYSTERY into one another, as in certain movies. People or animals may fly or
inanimate things may move (19) DEPEND and talk. It is out of such complex and
contrary (20) HAPPEN that the meanings of dreams have to be teased.

PART C: READING (5pts)

PART I: Read the following passage and fill in each numbered blank with ONE
suitable word.

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 The Psychology of Selling
The psychology of retailing has come to rely on highly sophisticated techniques. Over
and (1) ABOVE = IN ADDITION TO … the design of the shops and the packaging
of the merchandise, clever positioning of goods also ensures that the natural flow of
people takes them to (2) EACH… and every section in a shop. Customers are led
gently, but at the same time with deadly accuracy, towards the merchandise in such a
way as to maximize sales.
Manufacturers compete for the right to get their products displayed at the most
effective level. In supermarkets, there is a crucial section in the tiers of vertical
shelving somewhere between waist height and eye level, where we are mostly likely to
(3) TAKE… note of a brand. In the old days, when we went into a shop, we made
our(4) WAY… up to the counter, behind (5) …WHICH would be the shopkeeper and
virtually all of the merchandise, and were served with what we wanted. Those days are
(6) WELL … and truly over. Today we are used to serving ourselves in supermarkets;
products are laid before us as enticingly as (7) POSSIBLE…, and impulse purchases
are encouraged as a major part of the exercise. As a result of this, we, as shoppers,
have to keep our wits (8) ABOUT… us to resist the retailers’ ploys.
KEEP ONE’S WITS ABOUT ..= TO BE AWARE OF WHAT IS HAPPENING
PART II: Read the following passage, then choose the correct answer (A, B, C or
D) to complete each of the numbered blanks.
Problem Staff
The issue of problem staff in restaurants covers a multitude of sins. Usually poor
service comes (9) … to the behavior of an individual employee, but its’also the
restaurant’s responsibility. Why should restaurant managers tolerate bad attitudes?
When you do get a less than helpful waiter, it’s tempting to suggest to the manager or
owner that the individual concerned might be better employed elsewhere - not in the
service industry, perhaps. (10) … are they’re already aware of such “attitude issues”
and tolerate bad behavior for reasons best (11) … to themselves. This is when it’s
worth remembering that a service charge isn’t mandatory. Hit them where it hurts-in
the (12) … packet, and eventually they might (13) … the message.
9. A. over B. along C. up D. down
10. A. Possibilities B. Chances C. Eventualities D. Prospects
CHANCES ARE (THAT) S+V= IT IS LIKELY THAT
11. A. renowned B. familiar C. known D. acknowledged
12. A. pay B. salary C. wages D. earnings
13. A. catch B. get C. take D. grasp

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PART III: Read the following passage carefully, then choose the best answer to
each question.
Maps
The purpose of a map is to express graphically the relations of points and
features on the earth’s surface to each other. These are determined by distance and
direction. In early times distance was often expressed in units of time, for example ‘so
many hours’ march or ‘a day’s journey by river’, but such measurements gave more
information about the relative ease of crossing the local terrain than they did about
actual distance. The other element is direction, but for the ordinary traveller, whose
main concern was ‘Where do I go from here?’ and ‘How far away is it?’, the accurate
representation of direction was not of primary importance. Partly for this reason,
written itineraries for a long time rivalled maps. Even today, certain types of maps, for
example those showing railway systems, may make little attempt to show true
directions. Similarly, conspicuous landmarks along a route were at first indicated by
signs, realistic or conventional, and varied in size to indicate their importance. Clearly
the conventions employed varied with the purpose of the map, and also from place to
place, so that in studying early maps the first essential is to understand the particular
convention employed.
The history of cartography is largely that of the increase in the accuracy with
which these elements of distance and direction are determined and in the
comprehensiveness of the map content. In this development, cartography has called in
other sciences to its aid. For example, instead of determining direction by observing
the position of a shadow at midday, or of a constellation in the night sky, or even of a
steady wind, use was made of terrestrial magnetism through the magnetic compass,
and instruments were evolved which enabled horizontal angles to be calculated with
great accuracy.
The application of astronomical concepts, and the extension of the knowledge
of the world through exploration, encouraged attempts to map the known world. Then
astronomers discovered that the earth is not a perfect sphere, but is flattened slightly at
the poles, which introduced further refinements into the mapping of large areas.
Meanwhile, the demands being made of the map maker were shifting significantly.
The traveller or the merchant ceased to be the sole user of maps. The soldier,
especially after the introduction of artillery , and the problems of range, field of fire,
and dead ground which it raised, demanded an accurate representation of the surface
features, in place of the earlier conventional or pictorial delineation, and a solution in
any degree satisfactory was not reached until the contour was invented.
Then there was the archaeologist, the historian and, much later, the modern
geographer, each with their own special requirements. In order to address these, the
present-day cartographer has had to evolve methods of mapping all kinds of
‘distributions’, from geological strata and climatic regimes to land use. It is the present

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widespread recognition of the value of the map in the co-ordination and interpretation
of phenomena in many sciences that has led to what may truly be called a modern
renaissance of cartography.
It would be misleading of me to represent the stages summarily sketched above
as being either continuous or consecutive. There have been periods of retrogression or
stagnation, broken by others of rapid development, during which outmoded ideas have
held their place beside the new. Again, cartographers have constantly realised the
theoretical basis for progress, but have had to wait for technical improvement in their
instruments before they could apply their new ideas. Sine the easiest way to make a
map is to copy an old one, and considerable capital has often been locked up in
printing plates or stock, map publishers have often been resistant to new ideas.
Consequently, maps must never be accepted uncritically as evidence of contemporary
knowledge and technique.
Clearly, the maps, many thousands in number, which have come down to us
today, are the results of much human work and thought. They constitute therefore an
invaluable record for the student of man’s past. It is above all this aspect that makes
the study of historical cartography so fascinating and so instructive.

14. Why might early maps have been misleading?

A. Distances could not be calculated reliably.
B. They were based on written itineraries.
C. They were drawn by ordinary travellers.
D. Distances tended to be exaggerated.
15. What problem did early maps exhibit when showing landmarks?
A. The signs used bore little relation to the landmarks.
B. The selection of landmarks was flawed.
C. They used symbols that were not standardised.
D. They sometimes incorporated unimportant features.
16. In the second paragraph, the writer says that better quality map-making was
facilitated by …..
A. a greater understanding of climatic factors.
B. greater accuracy in draughtsmanship.
C. more precision in measurement.
D. more intensive map production.
17. What prompted the search for a more precise means of mapping the physical
geography of the landscape?
A. a discovery in astronomy
B. the growth of mathematical science
C. the activities of the great explorers
D. military considerations

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18. The writer implies that present-day cartographers ….
A. have to be highly adaptable.
B. enjoy a high status in the scientific world.
C. are rediscovering the value of early maps.
D. have achieved something extraordinary.
19. The writer points out that his own account of the history of map-making is based
on …..
A. a rather traditional view.
B. certain theoretical assumptions.
C. a simplification of complex processes.
D. somewhat unreliable data.
20. What point is the writer making about publishers of maps?
A. Their technical equipment holds them back.
B. They are inhibited by financial considerations.
C. They are critical of cartographers.
D. Their conservatism limits map production.
PART IV: You are going to read an article about a jazz record. Seven paragraphs
have been removed from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A-H the one which
fits each gap (21-27). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.
Kind of Blue
As two books celebrate Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, Martin Gayford salutes a
towering achievement.
What is the greatest jazz album ever made? Perhaps it’s an impossible question, but
there is a strong candidate in Kind of Blue, recorded by the Miles Davis Sextet in the
spring of 1959. It is the one jazz album owned by many people who don’t really like
jazz at all.
21. F

And for many who do love jazz, this is the one record that they would choose to take
with them to a desert island. If he had to select one record to explain what jazz is,
producer and arranger Quincy Jones has said, this would be it (he himself plays it
every day – ‘It’s my orange juice’).
22. C

What is so special about Kind of Blue? First, it was made by a magnificent band. Apart
from Davis himself, Kind of Blue features John Coltrane on tenor saxophone,
Cannonball Adderley on alto, and Bill Evans on piano – all among the finest
performers of that era, and at the height of their powers. And, unlike many all-star
recordings, the players were at ease in each other’s musical company, as this was a
working group (or almost).

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 23. H

Everybody was on the most inspired form. That does not happen every day, and is
particularly unlikely to happen in the tense and clinical atmosphere of the recording
studio. Other jazz performers, for example the saxophonist Sonny Rollins and the
trumpeter Roy Eldridge, have spoken of rare days on which some external force seems
to take over their instrument, and they can do no wrong.
24. G

Evans wrote about that spur-of-the-moment freshness in his original notes for the
album. Each of the five pieces on the album, he claimed, was recorded in a single take,
and the musicians had never seen the music before, as Miles was still working on it
hours before the recording sessions. Davis was credited with all the compositions.
25. D

The key to Kind of Blue lies in the enigmatic personality of Davis, who died in 1991.
He was an irascible, contrary, foul-mouthed, aggressive man who, it seems, sheltered
within an extremely sensitive soul. ‘Miles talks rough,’ claimed trumpeter Dizzy
Gillespie, ‘but his music reveals his true character… Miles is shy. He is super-shy’. As
a young man, playing with Charlie Parker, Davis was so paralysed with terror that he
sometimes had to be pushed on stage. At that time he seriously considered forsaking
music for dentistry.
26. A

‘I think,’ he said in 1958, ‘that a movement in jazz is beginning, away from a

conventional string of chords – a return to an emphasis on melodic rather than
harmonic variations. There will be fewer chords, but infinite possibilities as to what to
do with them.’ ‘Classical composers,’ he went on, ‘some of them have been working
that way for years.’ Indeed, Davis’s feeling for European music – Ravel,
Khachaturian. Rachmaninov – colours Kind of Blue. He disliked most attempts to
blend classical and jazz – so-called ‘third stream music’.
27. E

It is a completely integrated, freely improvised album of unhackneyed, moving music.

Davis never sounded better – and in his heart, he knew it.
A. Over the years he developed a tough carapace. But in a music characterised by
extroversion and ostentatious virtuosity, he developed a style that became ever more
muted, subtle, melodic and melancholy.
B. Firstly, most of Davis’s albums were largely recorded in one take per tune. He
seems to have believed that first thoughts were the freshest (the alternative, adopted by

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Bill Evans and Coltrane on their own recordings, is to do takes by the dozen in a
search for perfection). And the other point about Kind of Blue is its musical novelty.
As revered pianist Chick Corea has put it, ‘It’s one thing to play a tune or a
programme of music, but it’s another to practically create a new language of music,
which is what Kind of Blue did.’
C. Now comes another sign of renown. How many jazz recordings are the subject of
even one book? This spring, not one but two are being published on the subject of
Kind of Blue. There is Kind of Blue: The Making of a Jazz Masterpiece by Ashley
Kahn and, published in the US, The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and his
Masterpiece.
D. On closer examination, these celebrated the facts, which make Kind of Blue seem
almost supernatural, are only partially true. Two tracks, So what and All Blues, had
been played previously by the band, on the road, which Evans, not having been with
them, probably didn’t realise. And Evans himself was largely responsible for the two
mesmerisingly beautiful slow pieces, Blue in Green and Flamenco Sketches – a fact
that he modestly suppressed at the time, and then seems to have been quietly resentful
about.
E. But he did it himself on Sketches of Spain, and he loved the playing of Bill
Evans, which uniquely combined the feeling of classical piano and the freshness of
jazz. The partnership of Davis and Evans is at the heart of Kind of Blue, and gives it a
wonderful unity of mood – romantic, delicate, hushed on the slow pieces, more
exuberant elsewhere.
F. The contemporary guitarist John Scofield remembers knocking on strangers’
doors when he was a student in the 1970s, and asking if he could borrow their copy.
The point was, he knew they would have one.
G. On Kind of Blue, all the principals seem to feel like that. Davis and Evans, I
would say, never played better. The result is something close to the philosopher’s
stone of jazz: formal perfection attained with perfect spontaneity.
H. In fact, Evans had actually resigned the previous November - Kind of Blue was
made on March 2, and April 22, 1959 – and was invited back for the recording (this
replacement, Wynton Kelly, appears on one track).
PART V: Read the following passage and do the tasks below.
Questions 28-36
The Origin of Writing
The Sumerians had a story to explain the invention of writing more than 5,000
years ago. It seems a messenger of the king of Uruk arrived at the court of a distant
ruler so exhausted from the journey that he was unable to deliver the oral message. So
the king, being clever, came up with a solution. He patted some clay and wrote down
the words of his next messages on a tablet. A charming story, the retelling of which at
a symposium on the origins of writing held at the University of Pennsylvania, both

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amused and frustrated scholars. It reminded them that they could expect little help -
only a myth - from the Sumerians themselves, presumably the first writing people, in
understanding how and why the invention responsible for the great divide in human
culture between prehistory and history had come about. The archeologists, historians
and other scholars at the meeting smiled at the absurdity of the King writing a letter
that its recipient could not read. They also doubted that the earliest writing was a direct
rendering of speech. Writing more than likely began as a separate and distinct
symbolic system of communication, like painting, sculpture and oral storytelling, and
only later merged with spoken language.
Yes in the story, the Sumerians, who lived in Mesopotamia, the lower valley of
the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now southern Iraq, seemed to understand
writing's transforming function. As Dr Holly Pittman, director of the university’s
Centre for Ancient Studies and organiser of the symposium, observed, writing ‘arose
out of the need to store information and transmit information outside of human
memory and over time and over space.’ In exchanging interpretations and new
information, the scholars acknowledged that they will still had no fully satisfying
answers to the most important questions of exactly how and why writing was
developed. Many of them favored a broad explanation that writing has its origin in the
visual arts, pictograms of things being transformed into increasingly abstract symbols
of things, names and eventually words in speech. Their views clashed with a widely
held theory among archaeologists that writing grew out of the pieces of clay assorted
sizes and shapes that Sumerian accountant had used as tokens to keep track of
livestock and stores of grain.
For at least two decades, Dr Denise Schmandt-Besserat, an archeologist of the
University of Texas, has argued that the first writing grew directly out of a counting
system practiced by the Sumerian accountants. They use moulded clay ‘tokens’, each
one specially shaped to represent a jar of oil, a large or small container of grain, or a
particular kind of livestock. When the tokens were placed inside hollow clay spheres,
the number and type of tokens inside were recorded on the ball with impressions
resembling the tokens. Finally, to simplify matters, to token impressions were replaced
with inscribed signs, and writing was invented.
Though Dr. Schmandt-Besserat has won wide support, some linguists question
her thesis and other scholars, like Dr Pittman of Penn, think it too narrow an
interpretation. They emphasized that pictorial representation and writing evolved
together, part of the same cultural context that fostered experimentation in
communication through symbols. ‘There's no question that the token system is a
forerunner of writing and really important,’ Dr. Pittman said in an interview. ‘But I
have an argument with her evidence for the link between tokens and signs, and she
doesn't open up the process to include picture-making and all other kinds of
information-storage practices that are as important as the tokens.’

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 The scholars at the meeting also conceded that they had no definitive answer to
the question of whether writing was invented only once and spread elsewhere or arose
independently several times in several places, like Egypt, the Indus Valley, China and
among Olmecs and Maya of Mexico and Central America. But they criticized recent
findings suggesting that writing might have developed earlier in Egypt than in
Mesopotamia. In December, Dr Gunter Dreyer, director of the German Archeological
Institute in Egypt, announced new radiocarbon dates for the tombs at Abydos, on the
Nile about 250 miles south of Cairo. The dates indicated that some hieroglyphic
inscriptions on pots, bone and ivory in the tombs were made at least as early as 3200
B.C., possibly 3400 B.C. It was now an ‘open question,’ Dr. Dreyer said, whether
writing appeared first in Egypt or Mesopotamia.
At the symposium, Dr John Baines, an Oxford University Egyptologist who had
just visited Dr. Dreyer, expressed skepticism in polite terms. ‘I'm suspicious of the
dates,’ he said in an interview. ‘ I think he’s being very bold in his readings of these
things.’ The preponderance of archeological evidence has shown that the urbanising
Sumerians were the first to develop writing, in 3200 or 3300 B.C. These are the dates
for many clay tablets with a proto-cuneiform script found at the site of the ancient city
of Uruk. The tablets bore pictorial symbols of the names of people, places and things
for governing and commerce. The Sumerian scripts gradually evolved from the
pictorial to the abstract, but it was properly at least five centuries before writing came
to represent recorded spoken language.
In a report from the field, distributed on the Internet, Dr. Jonathan Mark
Kenoyer of the University of Wisconsin and Dr Richard H. Meadow of Harvard
University showed pictures of marks incised on potshards that they interpreted as
evidence for the use of writing signs by Indus people as early as 3300 B.C. If these are
indeed proto-writing examples, the discovery indicates that an independent origin of
Indus writing contemporary with the Sumerian and Egyptian inventions. Dr Meadow,
using email, the electronic age’s version of the king of Uruk’s clay tablet, confirmed
that the inscribed marks were ‘similar in some respects to those later used in the Indus
script.’ The current excavations, he added, were uncovering ‘very significant findings
at Harappa with respect to the Indus script.’ At the symposium, though Dr. Gregory L.
Possehl, a Pennsylvania archeologist who specializes in the Indus civilization and had
examined the pictures, cautioned against jumping to such conclusions. One had to be
careful, he said, not to confuse potter’s marks, graffiti and fingernail marks with
symbols of nascent writing.
Questions 28-31
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
28. The author quotes the story of the King of Uruk here to ….
A. amuse scholars at the symposium.
B. remind scholars at the symposium that they could expect little help.

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C. help scholars understand how and why the invention came about.
D. give an idea of how little information was available on the exact origin of writing.
29. What have the archeologists and historians at the meeting found ridiculous from
the story?
A. The earliest writing was a direct rendering of speech.
B. How the story both amused and frustrated them.
C. The king sent a letter to another person at a time no one could read.
D. It was a charming story.
30. Opponents of the ‘token’ theory in explaining the origin of writing argue that ….
A. writing grew out of a Sumerian counting system.
B. this interpretation was narrow.
C. token system is a forerunner of writing.
D. pictorial representation and writing evolved together within one cultural context
both as experiments in communication through symbols.
31. Scholars at the symposium acknowledged that …..
A. no consensus has been reached on whether writing appeared independently in
different places.
B. writing appeared first in Egypt in as early as 3200 B.C.
C. urbanizing Sumerians were the first to develop writing.
D. the use of writing signs by Indus people appeared as early as 3300 B.C.
Questions 32-36: Look at the following statements (questions 32-36) and the list of
people in the box below.
Match each statement with the correct person A-E.
Write the appropriate letter, A-E, in boxes 32-36.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
32. inscribed signs representing the clay tokens used by the Sumerians accountants
finally evolved into writing. D
33. questions the link between tokens and signs. B
34. writing was invented by the Sumerians for purposes relating to governing and
commerce. A
35. marks incised on potshards are evidence for the use of writing by Indus people. E
36. warns scholars not to confuse any kind of marks with writing symbols. C
A. Dr. Baines
B. Dr. Pittman
C. Dr. Possehl
D. Dr. Schnandt-Besserat
E. Dr.Kenoyer and Dr. Meadow

PART VI: Questions 37-50

Read the following passage and do the tasks below.

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 BIRTH OF MODERN MASS PRODUCTION
A. Despite its obvious connection, mass production was not a corollary of the
modern Industrial Revolution. Various mass production techniques had been practiced
in ancient times, from ceramic production in the Orient to manufacturing in ancient
Greece. The British were most likely the first modern economy to adapt water-
powered, then steam-powered, machinery to industrial production methods, most
notably in textile industry. Yet it is generally agreed that modern mass production
techniques came into widespread use through the innovation of an assortment of
Americans who substantially improved the ancient techniques. Indeed, this modern
mass production was called the American System and its early successes are often
attributed to Eli Whitney, who adapted mass production techniques and the
interchangeability of parts to the manufacture of flintlock muskets for the U.S.
government in the late 1790s.
B. Interchangeable parts are components of any device designed to specifications
which insure that they will fit within any device of the same type. This streamlines the
manufacturing process, since all pieces are guaranteed to fit with all others, and it
similarly creates the opportunity for replacement parts. Prior to the 18th century,
devices such as guns were made one at a time by gunsmiths, and each gun was unique.
If one single component of a weapon needed a replacement, the entire weapon either
had to be sent back to an expert gunsmith to make custom repairs or discarded and
replaced by another weapon. A gunsmith is a person who designs, builds, repairs and
modifies firearms according to blueprint and customer specifications, using hand tools
and machine tools such as grinders and lathes. Around 1778, Honore Blanc began
producing some of the first firearms with interchangeable parts. Blanc demonstrated in
front of a committee of scientists that his muskets could be assembled from a pile of
parts selected at random. Other inventors to implement the principle included Henry
Maudslay, John Hall, and Simeon North.
C. Eli Whitney saw the potential benefit of developing ‘interchangeable parts’ for
the firearms of the United States military. For $134,000, the equivalent of $1.4 million
today, Whitney promised to deliver 10,000 muskets within 28 months. No one
believed he could do it. Muskets were made one by one by craftsmen. Nobody thought
the process could be rushed. But Whitney had a good name. He’d secured a patent for
his cotton gin five years earlier. And ambition then did the job of a dozen lobbyists
now. He got the contract. Whitney then patented other great specialty of military
contracts and missed deadlines. He hadn’t produced a single musket by 1801. But he’d
built a factory in Connecticut and made parts of muskets for his “interchangeable
system’’, an unheard-of concept until then. To secure more money and buy more time,
he built ten guns, all containing the exact same parts and mechanisms, and
disassembled them before the United States Congress. He then piled up his musket

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parts on a table before Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and dared them to assemble
a weapon from the right parts chosen at random. The Congress was immensely
impressed and ordered a standard for all United States equipment. With
interchangeable parts, the problems that had plagued the era of unique weapons and
equipment passed, and if one mechanism in a weapon failed, a new piece could be
ordered and the weapon would not have to be discarded.
D. The hitch was that the guns Whitney showed to Congress were made by hand at
great cost by extremely skilled workmen. Whitney, however, was never able to design
a manufacturing process capable of producing guns with interchangeable parts.
Historians Merritt Roe Smith and Robert B. Gordon have demonstrated conclusively
that Whitney never achieved interchangeable parts manufacturing. The men who did
achieve mass production using interchangeable parts were, however, Americans.
According to Diana Muir’s writing in Reflections in Bullough’s Pond. “The world’s
first complex machine mass-produced from interchangeable parts” was Eli Terry’s
pillar-and-scroll clock, which rolled off the production line in 1814 at Plymouth,
Connecticut. Terry’s clocks, however, were made of wooden parts. Making a machine
with moving parts mass-produced from metal would be much more difficult.
E. The crucial step in that direction was taken by Simeon North, working only a
few miles from Eli Terry. North is known to have created the world’s first machine
capable of shaping metal (work that previously, as under Eli Whitney, had to be done
by hand with a file). Muir believes that North’s milling machine was online around
1816. Diana Muir, Merritt Roe Smith and Robert B. Gordon all agree that before 1832,
both Simeon North and John Hall were able to mass-produce complex machines with
moving parts (guns) using a system that entailed the use of rough-forged parts, with a
milling machine that milled the parts to near-correct size, which were then ‘filed to
gage by hand with the aid of filing jigs.’
F. Historians differ over the question of whether Hall or North made the crucial
improvement. Merrit Roe Smith believes that it was done by Hall. Diana Muir
demonstrates the close personal ties and professional alliances between Simeon North
and neighboring mechanics mass-producing wooden clocks to argue that the process
for manufacturing guns with interchangeable parts was most probably devised by
North in emulation of the successful methods used in mass-producing clocks. It may
not be possible to resolve the question with absolute certainty unless documents now
unknown should surface in the future.
G. The principle of interchangeable parts flourished and developed throughout the
19 century, and made mass production in all sorts of industries relatively easy. It was
th

based on the use of templates and other jigs and fixtures and applied by semi-skilled
labor using machine tools instead of traditional hand tools. Throughout that century
there was a lot of development work to be done in creating gauges, measuring tools
(such as calipers and micrometers), standards (such as those for screw threads), and

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processes from scientific management to lean manufacturing), but the principle of
interchangeability remained constant. With the introduction of the assembly line at the
beginning of the 20th century, interchangeable parts became ubiquitous elements of
manufacturing.
Questions 37-42: The Reading Passage has 7 paragraphs A-G. Choose the correct
heading for paragraphs A-E and G from the list of headings below. Write the correct
number, i-x, in boxes 37- 42.
Lists of Headings
i. Not a byproduct of industry revolution
ii. Interchangeability in 18th-century gun making
iii. Blanc’s demonstration of muskets with interchangeable parts
iv. An innovation of American origin
v. Pioneering efforts in mass-producing machines from metal
vi. Whitney’s demonstration of interchangeability
vii. Vast advances in mass-producing techniques and processes
viii. Whitney’s introduction of the concept of interchangeability through a military
contract
ix. The truth about Whitney
x. First mass-produced machine from interchangeable parts

37. Paragraph A . IV
38. Paragraph B. II
39. Paragraph C VIII
40. Paragraph D X
41. Paragraph E V
42. Paragraph G VII
Questions 43-45: Do the following statements agree with the information given in the
Reading passage? In statements 43-45 write
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
43. Whitney got the contract with the help of a dozen ambitious lobbyists. F
44. Whitney’s demonstration marked the passing of the era of unique weapons and
equipment. F (DOAN C)
45. Historians have reached a conclusion that Whitney had never achieved
interchangeable parts manufacturing. T (DOAN D)
Questions 46-50
Complete the summary below using NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the
passage for each blank.

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Practiced in ancient times in (46) THE ORIENT (DOAN 1)… as well as ancient
Greece, mass production is not a modern creation. However, the concept, also known
as (47) THER AMERICAN SYSTEM… for its techniques, came into widespread
use through the innovation of a group of American engineers and inventors. First
introduced through military purchasing projects, its application expanded, during the
first half of the 19th century, to many branches of America’s manufacturing business,
from the making of daily objects such as (48) CLOCKS (DOAN D) … to more
complex machines like milling machines. Using interchangeable parts produced from
(49) TEMPLATES (DOAN G)… with machine tools, (50) SEMI SKILLED
LABORS… were able to out-perform skilled craftsmen, making all sorts of industries
relatively easy.
PART D: WRITING ( 6pts)
PART I: (2 pts) Read the following extract and use your own words to
summarise it. Your summary should be between 100 and 120 words long.
Choosing a career may be one of the hardest jobs you ever have, and it must be
done with care. View a career as an opportunity to do something you love, not simply
as a way to earn a living. Investing the time and effort to thoroughly explore your
options can mean the difference between finding a stimulating and rewarding career
and move from job to unsatisfying job in an attempt to find the right one. Work
influences virtually every aspect of your life, from your choice of friends to where you
live. Here are just a few of the factors to consider.
Deciding what matters most to you is essential to making the right decision.
You may want to begin by assessing your likes, dislikes, strengths, and weaknesses.
Think about the classes, hobbies, and surroundings that you find most appealing. Ask
yourself questions, such as “Would you like to travel? Do you want to work with
children? Are you more suited to solitary or cooperative work ?” There are no right or
wrong answers; only you know what is important to you. Determine which job
features you require, which ones you would prefer, and which ones you cannot accept.
Then rank them in order of importance to you.
The setting of the job is one factor to take into account. You may not want to sit
at a desk all day. If not, there is a diversity of occupations – building inspector,
supervisor, real estate agent – that involve a great deal of time away from the office.
Geographical location may be a concern, and employment in some fields is
concentrated in certain regions. Advertising job can generally be found only in large
cities. On the other hand, many industries such as hospitality, law education, and retail
sales are found in all regions of the country.
If a high salary is important to you, do not judge a career by its starting wages.
Many jobs, such as insurance sales, offers relatively low starting salaries; however,
pay substantially increases along with your experience, additional training, promotions
and commission.

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 Don’t rule out any occupation without learning more about it. Some industries
evoke positive or negative associations. The traveling life of a flight attendant appears
glamorous, while that of a plumber does not. Remember that many jobs are not what
they appear to be at first, and may have merits or demerits that are less obvious. Flight
attendants must work long, grueling hours without sleeps, whereas plumbers can be as
highly paid as some doctors. Another point to consider is that as you mature, you will
be likely to develop new interests and skills that may point the way that to new
opportunities. The choice you make today need not be your final one.
PART II: (1.5pts)
The graphs below give information about commuting inside and outside London
in 2009.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make
comparisons where relevant.
Write at least 150 words.

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Source: Office for National Statistics
PART III: Essay Writing (2.5pts)
“Prevention is better than cure.”
Out of a country’s health budget, a large proportion should be diverted from
treatment to spending on health education and preventative measures.
To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Use specific reasons and details to support your answer. You should write at least 350
words.
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