1. LISTENING (50 points)

HƯỚNG DẪN PHẦN THI NGHE HIỂU

• Mở đầu và kết thúc bài nghe có nhạc hiệu. 

• Bài nghe gồm 4 phần; mỗi phần được nghe 2 lần, mỗi lần cách nhau 10 giây; mở đầu và kết thúc mỗi phần nghe có tín hiệu.

• Mọi hướng dẫn cho thí sinh (bằng tiếng Anh) đã có trong bài nghe.

Part 1. For questions 1-5, listen to a talk about Epidemiology and decide whether these statements are True (T), False (F), or Not Given (NG). Write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.

1. 1. Epidemiology involves an interdisciplinary approach to the study of human health and disease. 
2. 2. Epidemiology is commonly identified with both infectious and non-infectious diseases. 
3. 3. The epidemiologic triangle is made up of three components: an external agent, a host and an environment. 
4. 4. Large-scale social distancing recommended by a team of scientists from Imperial College London aimed to break the link between the external agent and the host. 
5. 5. The team’s recommendations were strongly embraced among the public in many countries.

Your answers:

Part 2. For questions 6-10, listen to someone talking about “Is it bad to hold your pee”, answer the questions, write NO MORE THAN FOUR WORDS taken from the recording for each answer in the spaces provided. 

6. 6. Apart from water, what is the component of the yellowish liquid known as urine?

_______________________________________________________________________

7. 7. Which opens automatically and involuntarily when the bladder fills to release urine? 

_______________________________________________________________________

8. 8.  What structures within the bladder contain sensory receptors that trigger signals when the bladder fills? 

_______________________________________________________________________

9. 9. What severe condition might occur if the bladder becomes excessively full and is not emptied?

_______________________________________________________________________

10. 10. What group of muscles helps prevent leakage by maintaining internal pressure? _______________________________________________________________________

Part 3. You will hear part of a discussion between two experts on 15-minute cities-cities where you can reach everything you need within 15 minutes. For questions 11–15, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which fits best according to what you hear. Write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.

11. 11. According to Dr O’Keefe, the key motivation for 15-minute cities is to
12. make them more homogenous B. increase efficiency
13. provide enhanced facilities D. alleviate injustice
14. 12. What potential misunderstanding does Susan Travis seek to clarify?
15. the idea that many city-dwellers are excluded from car- ownership
16. the suggestion that driving will remain a viable alternative
17. the assumption of her hostility to cycling and walking
18. the notion that city-dwellers rely on cars less than those in the countryside
19. 13. Which of these points about cars does Dr O’Keefe support with only one argument?
20. the space they require B. their impact on city design
21. their environmental impact D. their dangers
22. 14. Susan Travis claims that 15-minute cities
23. are merely the beginning of a far more sinister project
24. would develop naturally and more efficiently without excessive planning
25. will depend on more technological solutions to impose control
26. are less likely to relieve traffic congestion for those who rely on cars
27. 15. Dr O’Keefe hints that Susan Travis
28. has failed to conduct sufficiently thorough investigations to support her claims
29. is too gullible to question the ludicrous assertions she has encountered
30. is unaware of his vast experience and specialist knowledge
31. is deliberately misleading the audience for ulterior purposes 

Your answers:

Part 4. For questions 16-25, listen to a piece of news and complete the following summary. Write NO MORE THAN FOUR WORDS taken from the recording for each blank. Write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.

The Hidden History of Gin and Tonic

Gin is a popular spirit in Britain, with over 47 million bottles sold in 2017. Its origins date back to the 9th century when Arabian alchemists developed the (16) __________, which produced highly alcoholic spirits initially used for medicinal purposes. 

By 1269, Dutch monks created a juniper-based spirit believed to cure the plague, marking the beginning of gin. Initially a drink for the wealthy, gin became more widely produced at home following the (17) __________.

By the 17th century, spirits or cordials were commercialized as pleasant and (18) __________. British soldiers, influenced by the Dutch, popularized the (19) __________in Britain. 

The gin craze of the 18th century led to (20) __________and (21) __________, who attempted to regulate gin. 

In the 19th century, gin’s image improved with (22) __________ in working-class gin palaces. Tonic water, derived from the (23) __________, transformed from (24) __________to a popular mixer in the 18th century. Combining it with gin in the British colonies created the gin and tonic. 

Today, gin remains popular, with laws in 2009 easing the production for (25) __________.

Your answers:

1. LEXICO – GRAMMAR (20 points)

Part 1. For questions 26-35, choose the correct answer A, B, C or D to each of the following questions. Write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.

26. 26. The surgeon maintained her ________ throughout the lengthy and complex operation.
27. A. serendipity B. volatility C. elasticity D. equanimity
28. 27. The team offers financial ________to the director so that they can secure their place in the finals.
29. A. godsends B. windfalls C. jackpots D. sweeteners
30. 28. Money was short and people survived by ________and saving. 
31. scrimping B. scavenging C. scouring D. scrounging
32. 29. The car was launched with a massive media ________, involving newspapers, magazines, television and radio.
33. A. raid B. blitz   C. blast D. spree  
34. 30. The police knew that Barker was ________and that he would lie convincingly in court.
35. A. a fast worker   B. a hatchet man  C. a live wire D. a cool customer   
36. 31. The new law has been seen as an attempt to________ of small companies by barring them from freely entering the market. 
37. A. crack the whip B. cover the tracks  C. clip the wings D. chance the arm
38. 32. The terrible storm in Ha Long spoiled what________ a perfect family vacation in September.
    would other than that would be B. would just as soon be
39. would otherwise have been D. had better would have been
40. 33. In some parts of Vietnam, the former generations still go along ________ with many long-standing customs even when they are clearly specious. 
41. gratuitously  B. felicitously  C. fortuitously D. acquiescently
42. 34. Steve used to be easy to work with, but since his promotion he’s begun to________. 
43. A. throw his weight around B. throw in the towel
44. C. throw him off balance D. throw a monkey wrench in the works
45. 35. I haven’t been able to visit my nieces for weeks, ________one thing or another. 
46. A. what’s what B. what with C. and what not D. but for

Your answers:

Part 2. For questions 36-40, write the correct form of each bracketed word in each sentence in the numbered spaced provided in the column on the right.                                                                                         Your answers:

Part 3. The passage below contains 5 mistakes. For questions 41-45, UNDELINE THE MISTAKES and WRITE YOUR CORRECTIONS in the numbered spaces provided in the column on your right. 

III. READING (50 points)

Part 1. For questions 46-55, read the passage and fill each of the following blanks with ONE suitable word. Write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided. 

Yagi Storm

In early September 2024, the Yagi storm (46) ________as one of the most powerful and devastating weather events of the year. (47) ________in the western Pacific, Yagi rapidly intensified, reaching the highest category on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane (48) ________. The storm’s intensity was unprecedented, with maximum sustained winds exceeding 220 mph, which is rare even for storms of such magnitude.

As Yagi approached coastal regions, its effects were catastrophic. Entire communities (49) ________severe damage (50) ________to flooding, wind damage, and storm surges. The impact was so severe that emergency services and (51) ________relief efforts were overwhelmed, struggling to keep pace with the chaos caused by the storm.

Meteorologists and climate scientists have (52) ________to Yagi as a prime example of (53) ________climate change can amplify the severity of natural disasters. The unusually high sea surface temperatures provided additional energy for the storm’s rapid intensification. This has (54) ________urgent calls for improved disaster preparedness and climate (55) ________strategies.

Your answers:

Part 2. For questions 56-68, read the following passage and do the tasks that follow.

The Unselfish Gene

A psychologist gives his view on how humans became self-centered

There has long been a general assumption that human beings are essentially selfish. We’re apparently ruthless, with strong impulses to compete against each other for resources and to accumulate power and possessions. If we are kind to one another, it’s usually because we have ulterior motives. If we are good, it’s only because we have managed to control and transcend our innate selfishness and brutality.

This bleak view of human nature is closely associated with the science writer Richard Dawkins, whose 1976 book The Selfish Gene became popular because it fitted so well with – and helped to justify – the competitive and individualistic ethos that was so prevalent in late 20th-century societies. Like many others, Dawkins justifies his views with reference to the field of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology theorizes that present-day human traits developed in prehistoric times, during what is termed the ‘environment of evolutionary adaptedness’.

Prehistory is usually seen as a period of intense competition, when life was such a brutal battle that only those with traits such as selfishness, aggression and ruthlessness survived. And because survival depended on access to resources forests and animals – there was bound to be conflict between rival groups, which led to such as rivers, the development of traits such as racism and warfare. This seems logical. But, in fact, the assumption on which this all rests – that prehistoric life was a desperate struggle for survival – is false.

It’s important to remember that in the prehistoric era, the world was very sparsely populated. According to some estimates, around 15,000 years ago, the population of Europe was only 29,000, and the population of the whole world was less than half a million. Humans at that time were hunter-gatherers: people who lived by hunting wild animals and collecting wild plants. With such small population densities, it seems unlikely that prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups had to compete against each other for resources or had any need to develop ruthlessness and competitiveness, or to go to war.

There is significant evidence to back this notion from contemporary hunter-gatherer groups, who live in the same way as prehistoric humans did. As the anthropologist Bruce Knauft has remarked, hunter-gatherers are characterized by ‘extreme political and sexual egalitarianism’. Knauft has observed that individuals in such groups don’t accumulate property or possessions and have an ethical obligation to share everything. They also have methods of preserving egalitarianism by ensuring that disparities of status don’t arise.

The !Kung people of southern Africa, for example, swap arrows before going hunting and when an animal is killed, the acclaim does not go to the person who fired the arrow, but to the person the arrow belongs to. And if a person becomes too domineering, the other members of the group ostracise them, exiling the offender from society. Typically in such groups, men do not dictate what women do. Women in hunter-gatherer groups worldwide often benefit from a high level of autonomy, being able to select their own marriage partners, decide what work they do and work whenever they choose to. And if a marriage breaks down, they have custody rights over their children.

Many anthropologists believe that societies such as the !Kung were normal until a few thousand years ago, when population growth led to the development of agriculture and a settled lifestyle. In view of the above, there seems little reason to assume that traits such as racism, warfare and male domination should have been selected by evolution as they would have been of little benefit in the prehistoric era. Individuals who behaved selfishly and ruthlessly would be less likely to survive, since they would have been ostracized from their groups.

It makes more sense, then, to see traits such as cooperation, egalitarianism, altruism and peacefulness as innate characteristics of human beings. These were the traits that were prevalent in human life for tens of thousands of years. So presumably these traits are still strong in us now.

But if prehistoric life wasn’t really as brutal as has often been assumed, why do modern humans behave so selfishly and ruthlessly? Perhaps these negative traits should be seen as a later development, the result of environmental and psychological factors. Research has shown repeatedly that when the natural habitats of primates such as apes and gorillas are disrupted, they tend to become more violent and hierarchical.

So, it could well be that the same thing has happened to us. I believe that the end of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle and the advent of farming was connected to a psychological change that occurred in some groups of people. There was a new sense of individuality and separateness, which led to a new selfishness, and ultimately to hierarchical societies, patriarchy and warfare. At any rate, these negative traits appear to have developed so recently that it doesn’t seem feasible to explain them in adaptive or evolutionary terms.

Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D, write your answer in the boxes provided.

56. What is the writer doing in the first paragraph?
57. A. setting out two opposing views about human nature
58. B. justifying his opinion about our tendency to be greedy 
59. C. describing a commonly held belief about people’s behaviour
60. D. explaining why he thinks that humans act in a selfish manner
61. What point is made about Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene?
62. A. Its appeal lay in the radical nature of its ideas.
63. B. Its success was due to the scientific support it offered.
64. C. It presented a view that was in line with the attitudes of its time.
65. D. It took an innovative approach to the analysis of human psychology.
66. What does the writer suggest about the prehistoric era in the fourth paragraph?
67. A. Societies were more complex than many people believe.
68. B. Supplies of natural resources were probably relatively plentiful. 
69. C. Most estimates about population sizes are likely to be inaccurate.
70. D.  Humans moved across continents more than was previously thought. 
71. The writer refers to Bruce Knauft’s work as support for the idea that________
72. A. selfishness is a relatively recent development in human societies.
73. B. only people in isolated communities can live in an unselfish manner.
74. C. very few lifestyles have survived unchanged since prehistoric times.
75. D. hunter-gatherer cultures worldwide are declining in number.

Complete the summary below with ONE WORD from the Reading and write your annswers in the boxes provided.

Contemprary hunter- gatherer societies

        Bruce Knauft’s research shows that contemporary hunter-gatherer societies tend to exhibit a high level of (60) _________________in all areas of life. In these cultures, distributing resources fairly among all members is a moral obligation. These societies also employ strategies to prevent differences in (61) _________________occurring: for example, the !Kung follow a custom whereby the credit for one person’s success at hunting is given to another member of the group. Individuals who behave in a (62) _________________manner are punished by being excluded from the group, and women have a considerable amount of (63) _________________in choices regarding work and marriage. 

Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in the Reading passge, write:

     YES                 if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

     NO                   if the the statement contradicts the views of the writer

     NOT GIVEN   if it is impossible  to say what the writer thinks about this

64. 64. Some anthropologists are mistaken about the point when the number of societies such as the !Kung began to decline.
65. 65. Humans who developed warlike traits in prehistory would have had an advantage over those who did not.
66. 66. Being peaceful and cooperative is a natural way for people to behave.
67. 67. Negative traits are more apparent in some modern cultures than in others.
68. 68. Animal research has failed to reveal a link between changes in the environment and the emergence of aggressive tendencies. 

Your answers:

Part 3. You are going to read an article. Seven paragraphs have been removed from the article. Choose from the paragraphs A-H the one which fits each gap (69-75). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use. Write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided.  

From Time Crystals to Wormholes: When is a Quantum Simulation Real?

Physicists are using quantum computers to conjure various exotic phenomena and are claiming that their creations are truly real. The work is forcing us to ask challenging questions about the nature of quantum reality.

When scientists reported they had created a space-time wormhole in November last year, the world’s media were all over the story, even though they struggled to make sense of it. A journalist for the website UNILAD put it neatly when they wrote: “So, you might have to bear with us here a bit, because it’s all very complicated and new.” As far as many observers could see, physicist Maria Spiropulu at the California Institute of Technology and her colleagues had in fact merely used a quantum computer to simulate a wormhole. Good luck flying a spaceship through that. What confused matters was that the team insisted the work amounted to more than just a simulation. The quantum computation, the researchers said, was fully equivalent to the creation of a wormhole.

The putative wormhole isn’t the only thing said to have been conjured up by quantum computers recently – there is also the alluringly named time crystal, as well as strange particles called nonabelions, touted as the ideal ingredient for next-generation quantum computers. But whether these amount to instances of true creation or not is a question that takes us into deep waters. It is a new twist on the riddle that has haunted physics since quantum mechanics was devised in the early 20th century: what is truly real?

In place of encoded 1s and 0s, quantum computers instead use quantum bits (or qubits). These are typically quantum particles, like photons or cold atoms, whose properties are described in the language of quantum mechanics, using an abstract mathematical object called a wave function. Quantum rules permit qubits to be entangled with one another, so that what happens to one apparently influences what happens to others. That is generally how this type of computation can speed up certain kinds of calculation. In other words, the qubits inside a quantum computer are described by the same theory that explains the fundamental particles that make up everything. This is what motivated the proposal for such computing first made by Richard Feynman in 1981. Why not, he said, simulate physical systems using the same quantum rules that govern those systems themselves, instead of clumsy approximations with conventional bits?

In 1997, physicist Alexei Kitaev showed that hypothetical nonabelions can be moved around each other (or “braided”, as physicists put it) to preserve a memory of those movements in a way that could encode quantum information robustly. This means nonabelions could act as qubits that aren’t prone to the kind of random errors that bedevil existing quantum computing. Kitaev argued that such nonabelions could be created as “quasiparticles” in certain materials – that is, as collective emergent states of the electrons in these materials.

Imagine, say, that we want to model a hydrogen molecule on a quantum computer. The molecule is made of two protons bound by a cloud of electrons. A quantum simulation may have exactly the same wave function as these components, but it clearly isn’t the same as the real-world object. We know what a hydrogen molecule is, and it’s not a collection of qubits. This is the framing used by Adam Zalcman at Google Quantum AI to explain why he thinks the team really “made” nonabelions in a quantum computer chip. When you ask if a simulation is “real”, he says, the question is whether what the quantum computer is doing has a real-world equivalent to be “mapped onto”. If so, then you have a simulation. But if you are studying a more abstract phenomenon, say, quantum entanglement, then generating it using qubits doesn’t lack anything present in that phenomenon itself. “Entangling two qubits in a quantum processor does not involve mapping their states to that of any system distinct from the processor itself,” he says.

Nonabelions, meanwhile, are hypothetical particles that – as far as we know – don’t exist in reality at large. So, for Zalcman, there is nothing to be mapped onto. The only way we can define a nonabelion is based on its quantum properties. “The process that occurred on the chip is non-Abelian braiding and we therefore say that our investigation is a realisation, not a simulation,” says Zalcman.

Wilczek also conceived of an entirely different kind of quantum object that now features in this debate. In 2012, he was looking for a way to spice up a university course he was teaching on the structure of crystals, whose atomic arrangement repeats periodically in space. He speculated about a crystal that repeats not in a spatial dimension, but in time. The components of these time crystals would change with the proverbial ticking of the clock (moving around, say), but return to their original state at regular intervals – forever and ever.

So was it a real time crystal? “We spent a while grappling with this question,” says Matteo Ippoliti, a member of the Stanford team. Quantum computing “is blurring these lines”, he says, “and there is ongoing debate in the community about terminology.” 

Quantum information theorist Seth Lloyd at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology thinks similarly. The question is whether the qubits are at all times doing what is expected of the system they are modelling. In the nonabelion case, they do, he says. But if they don’t, it is a simulation.

1982. To see why this blurs the boundaries between simulation and reality, let’s put wormholes aside for a moment and look at another recent experiment using quantum computers. It concerns a particle called a non-Abelian anyon (or nonabelion for short). These are a variety of anyon, a kind of particle first hypothesised by theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek in 1982. Anyons have odd properties in between those of the two normal classes of fundamental particle: bosons, which carry forces, and fermions, which constitute matter.
1983. Although Wilczek’s original notion of time crystals proved impossible to realise, a subset of them, called discrete time crystals, did seem to be feasible. In 2021, teams of scientists at Stanford University in California, Google Quantum AI, the Max Planck Institute for Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany, and the University of Oxford created a time crystal using Google’s Sycamore quantum-computing processor. The states that were produced in the qubits displayed exactly the periodic behaviour in time predicted for quantum discrete time crystals
1984. Regular computers use transistors as switches to encode the bits, or 0s and 1s, of binary code. We can use them to simulate all kinds of objects and processes – but it would be absurd to suggest that a simulation of a molecule or a weather system, say, really creates those things. So why should quantum computers be any different?
1985. Despite several claims to the contrary, there is no compelling evidence that such nonabelion quasiparticles have been created in real materials. But in June, teams of researchers at Google Quantum AI in Mountain View, California, Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China, and quantum computing company Quantinuum’s labs in Germany and Colorado claimed to have made these entities in quantum computers. They coaxed the qubits into states that have wave functions corresponding to the strange predicted properties of nonabelions. But was this an act of creation – or just simulation?
1986. If you find that hard to swallow, you aren’t alone. Ask other physicists about Spiropulu’s claims and you tend to get a lot of long pauses, chin-stroking and disagreement. It seems there is genuine confusion about if and when a quantum computation can create real entities or just simulate them.
1987. Computer scientist Scott Aaronson at the University of Texas at Austin also alights on this issue of mapping. “It depends on what sort of ‘thing’ we’re talking about,” he says. A computer simulation of a hurricane “doesn’t make anyone wet, but a computer simulation of multiplication is multiplication”, he says.
1988. But he adds that there is a distinction between simulating a quantum time crystal on a classical computer and what his team did. “In the former case, a physical system – the classical computer – evolves in a way that looks nothing like the physics we’re interested in, but nevertheless outputs numbers that replicate the outcomes of a hypothetical experiment.” Yet using a quantum computer in the way the researchers did “is itself an experiment”, he says, because it involves quantum objects (the qubits) doing what they are supposed to in a time crystal.
1989. The philosophical implications of quantum simulations have intrigued thinkers and scientists alike, drawing parallels with ancient philosophical conundrums. Some philosophers argue that the distinction between simulation and reality may eventually dissolve, reflecting the age-old debate on the nature of existence and the reality of our perceptions. This debate raises questions about our understanding of reality and whether we can ever discern simulated quantum phenomena from truly existent ones, echoing the thoughts of philosophers like Plato and his allegory of the cave. Such philosophical undertones, although fascinating, diverge from the empirical pursuits of physicists and computer scientists, focusing instead on the metaphysical dimensions of quantum computing.

Your answers:

Part 4. For questions 76-85, read an extract from an article and choose the answer A, B, C or D that fits best according to the text. Write your answers in the corresponding numbered boxes provided. 

A Dancer’s Lot

All across London, they emerge from underground stations and buses; bags slung over their shoulders and taut stomachs beneath thick winter overcoats. Nobody recognizes them, as they head for freezing upstairs rooms in tatty gymnasiums or slink into backstage theatre doors, even though they appear regularly in sold-out musicals and favorite television shows. They earn precious little, even those who perform live with famous singers, and have no real prospects, doing what they’re doing, despite having hustled and sweated themselves to the heights of one of Britain’s most demanding professions. But still they go, every morning, to their grim upstairs rooms in gyms and their backstreet, backstage doors, to dance.

Most have left behind worried parents in faraway towns and villages; made repeated promises to look after themselves and taken trains, in their late teenage years, for London. There’s much to despise about the city, where talent and a reptilian grade of resilience, although prerequisites, provide no guarantee of success. Even auditions are becoming rare. Conscious of deadlines and financial constraints, choreographers call in talent from the blessed pool of their own chosen. If you aren’t the right height, don’t have the right face, hair or sartorial style, then don’t expect a look in. Although choreographers occasionally seek out the beautiful, they’re mostly instructed to hunt the bland: those least likely to outshine the stars. And, as many dancers will tell you, it’s getting to the point where mediocrity is acceptable; there’ll be someone over there out of sync, someone over there who can’t hold her arm still.

And if they get a part, increasingly dancers are turning up for jobs where the choreographer just stands there and works them endlessly, fingers clicking: ‘Again, again, again’ As one dancer, Melanie Grace says, ‘You dance for the love and the passion, and keep your mouth shut because you don’t want to get a reputation.’ It’s not always easy, though. You think the television shows provide changing rooms for dancers? Even the big budget ones have them disrobing in a corner of the canteen  – and the pay’s lousy. But you have to ignore it, keep your head down. You’re in London now. You’re one of many, one of nothing. The sooner you accept that, the better you’ll get on. Of the fleets of talented dancers who try, only a quarter make it, the rest simply can’t process the ruthlessness – to dance in London is hard on the soul.

Yet most of the dancers have agents, who you might think would negotiate a better fee or conditions for their dancers, but no. You’ll never meet a dancer who thinks their agent deserves their twenty percent cut of the fee. Mostly you’ll just get a text or email notifying you of an audition and a single agent might have as many as two hundred dancers on their books. As Melanie says, ‘It’s catch-22, because you won’t hear about the auditions without one.’ Here’s the job, take it or leave it, and if you leave it, they’ll just hire someone straight out of college and pay them even less.

Oh, the annual churn of the colleges. The dancers hear it constantly, the sound of the machine in the distance, its ceaselessly grinding gears that, with every coming year, push out hundreds of new dancers, each one younger and hunger and less jaded than you. And with every release of fresh limbs into the stew of the city, things get harder. The worst thing the kids can do is accept a job for no pay. They do it all the time. One website has become notorious for television and pop-video production companies scrounging for trained people to work for nothing but ‘exposure’ And if the youngsters are fresh out of dance school, despairing of their blank CV and craving the love of those ranks of sparkle-eyed strangers, they’ll leap at the chance. It’s the reason things are getting harder. How to describe the London dance scene today? The word Melanie chooses is ‘savage’.

76. 76. Which of the following adjectives best describe the profession of dancing?
77. A. taxing but rewarding B. exacting and thankless
78. C. soul-destroying and gut-wrenching D. unmistakable and strenuous
79. 77. In delineating the job of dancing, the writer
80. A. compares their gains with the efforts dancers have to make
81. B. belabours the point that dancers suffer in the name of ‘noted artists’
82. C. juxtaposes the lives of dancers with those of well-known singers
83. D. elucidates the avenues open to dancers regarding their positions within the industry
84. 78. According to the passage, which of the following is true about dancers?
85. A. The majority of them hail from deprived backgrounds.
86. B. Fulfilling the requirements is not a bulwark against abortive attempts for them.
87. C. Usually, those who are nice-looking are given preference during recruitments. 
88. D. They are expected to meet higher standards by choreographers.
89. 79. It can be implied from the passage that__________
90. A. Auditions are becoming less popular as a result of worries about stars being overwhelmed.
91. B. The dancers who stand out from the crowd have a high chance of being recruited.
92. C. Financial burden inhibits choreographers to employ talents from their chosen ones.
93. D. A lower level of quality may soon be allowed within the industry of dancing.
94. 80. The statement: “You dance for the love and the passion, and keep your mouth shut because you don’t want to get a reputation” best underscores:
95. A. the importance of remaining unrecognizable B. the passion required in the profession
96. C. the need to be obedient D. the destructive power of silence
97. 81. From the passage, we can deduce that it is advisable for dancers to
98. A. accept the harsh realities and get the hang of surviving in the industry
99. B. abandon their expectations and never overlook the demerits of the job
100. C. be self-esteemed and bring the dismal side to light
101. D. insist that they have a specifically designated space to change clothes
102. 82. It is suggested in the passage that agents___________
103. A. are willing to pay high prices to their dancers.
104. B. devote their time and energy to several dancers at a time.
105. C. are indispensable from their dancers’ perspectives.
106. D. are unconcerned whether dancers accept twenty percent cut of the fee.
107. 83. The author makes use of the sound of the machine in order to underline_________
108. A. the attitudes of training institutions towards post-graduate dancers.
109. B. the constant and abundant supply of new talent.
110. C. the hostility of seniors within the profession of dancing.
111. D. the exploitation of young talents for the sake of financial gains.
112. 84. A reason given for the increasingly harder industry of dancing is that_________
113. A. Trained dancers are harnessed by online platforms to work without any gains but experience in the profession.
114. B. Chances, although unrewarding, are seized by graduates who are blissfully ignorant of the harsh realities involved in the profession of dancing.
115. C. Recent graduates are eager to grab any opportunity offered to them, regardless of how beneficial the chance is.
116. D. Inexperience and a craving for attention drive college graduates to join the ranks of sparkle-eyed strangers.
117. 85. In what sense can the word ‘savage’, used by Melanie to describe the London dance scene today, be understood?
118. A. involving fierce criticism B. aggressive and violent
119. C. mind-boggling and mysterious D. destructive and competitive

Your answers:

Part 5. You are going to read a Review of Books about Communication. For questions 86-95, choose from the sections (A -E). The sections may be chosen more than once.

Which book____?

1. ‘Actions speak louder than words’ by Karen Bradwell

As a general rule of thumb, no leader will be at his or her most effective as a communicator without possession of outstanding verbal skills, but his or her ability to mesmerize an audience also hangs on nonverbal skills – facial expression, gesture and the physical position assumed when addressing listeners included, whether this be in the boardroom, a conference or during a one-to-one. Actions speak louder than words is an indispensable guide to honing these skills to perfection, drawing as it does on neuroscience and psychological research with the sole aim of helping leaders to use body language to maximum effect – and read that of others. The guide also includes a one-of-a-kind and incredibly constructive chapter on communication for visually-impaired leaders, whose ability to understand aural cues in order to respond to others is paramount.

1. ‘Communication is key’ by Arthur Mayhew 

While peppering your speech with jargon and business speak may ostensibly make you look like you know what you’re talking about, you could be, albeit unintentionally, alienating your audience. Have you ever wondered why employees sit nodding away in meetings only to go away and do the opposite to what you thought you’d intended they should do? If so, perhaps being more amenable to engaging your brain before your mouth may be a good course of action. Making concessions to your audience is not a sign of weakness, but rather a sign of a good – and thoughtful – communicator. Communication is key outlines how to paraphrase those expressions which many employees consider to be a barrier to effective communication. Adopting a few useful synonyms, Mayhew suggests, will be enormously beneficial in helping others identify your message.

1. ‘Public speaking’ by Paula Benson

Public speaking can be a nightmare for many of us at the best of times. It is a hard nut to crack and can leave shy and retiring folk floundering. In Public speaking, Paula Benson addresses the difficulty many such people have in getting up to speak in front of others, specifically in cases where the speaker is paralysed by fear or overcome with feelings of powerlessness to better their situation. In particular, she focuses on those who have a stutter or other speech impediment, detailing established speech therapy techniques that promote a smooth and articulate flow of words. While brief, this slim book is nothing less than enlightening, and has the potential to change lives – or at the very least vastly improve one area of it. 

1. ‘Listening’ by Jonathan Strasbourg

Books devoted to the skill of listening are few and far between, so it is with open arms that we welcome this one to our bookshelves. If you’ve ever heard the expression that we’re given two ears and only one mouth for a reason, and you concur with the sentiment behind it, then this book will resonate with you. All too often we go through the motions of listening, but how often we really hear what’s been said is a different matter entirely. Founded on the principles of listening, i.e. applying an accurate interpretation to what you’ve just heard, however subtle the message, is, professes Strasbourg, the singular most effective way to engage with others and avoid breakdowns in communication. Many highly successful entrepreneurs credit mastering this art as the key to their prowess in business.

1. ‘Style and communication’ by Heather Burton 

What is all too often overlooked in books about communication is the way in which the genders differ in style, resulting in either gross misunderstandings in the worst-case scenario or uncertainty at the best. Burton’s in-depth analysis of what it is that goes wrong plays out through a series of case studies, in which she ponders ways to facilitate better understanding between the sexes and how this might come into play both at work and at home. While frustratingly inconclusive, there is much food for thought here and one could indubitably cobble together a strategy for getting to grips with other people’s communicative styles. On the surface of it, this book appears to be geared towards businesspeople as a target market, but because this offers insights into domestic situations too, this is more likely to be found in the general reader section of a bookshop 

1. WRITING (60 points)

Part 1. Read the following extract and use your own words to summarise it. Your summary should be between 100 and 120 words.

What is the Unconscious?

It took until the early 20th century for humanity to start to pay proper attention to a highly distinctive feature of the mind: that it is divided into a conscious and an unconscious part. In the former and far smaller section lies all that we have direct awareness of and can reflect on at will; while in the latter and far larger part lie the many processes and functions that constantly unfold somewhere within our craniums but which ‘we’ (the cognizant part of us) cannot directly register and would struggle to put into words. This split inspires some highly paradoxical-sounding situations; for example, we write using complex rules of grammar which we would have no idea how to explain to a stranger. 

The reason why a lot of what we do remains unconscious has to do with efficiency. Needing to have no active awareness of most mental processes allows us to focus on just one or two areas of concern. What we call thinking would quickly become impossible if we had to remain at all times alert to how we were breathing, interpreting the wavelengths from our fovea centralis or achieving hormonal balance in our pituitary glands. But there is a more ticklish, provocative thesis as to why certain things remain unconscious: because they violate our self-image, because we are too proud and sentimental to face up to who we actually are. A lot of what we strive to keep in the unconscious mind flies rather radically in the face of what we would like to be true about ourselves. Were we to be fully aware of these less acceptable parts of ourselves, we might grow untenably disgusted by our natures. We remain unconscious from a sentimental wish for a comfortable, dignified-feeling existence. 

The problem, as psychology sees it, is that this unknowing exacts a high price. However awkward it might be to face up to our proclivities, unconscious material is better off brought into the light than pressed down forcefully in our mental catacombs. We need to know where our regrets genuinely lie; we have to get to know our true desires and actual frustrations. Wherever we remain ignorant, painful symptoms develop. We end up in depression because we don’t know what we are sad about, we wind up anxious when we’re ignorant of our real worries or irritable because we have sidestepped the true locus of our rage.

Part 2. The chart below shows what Anthropology graduates from one university did after finishing their undergraduate degree course. The table shows the salaries of the anthropologists in work after five years. 

Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparison where relevant. You should write about 180 words. 

Destination of Anthropology graduates (from one university)

Salaries of Anthropology graduates (after 5 years’ work)

Part 3. Write an essay of about 350 words on the following topic. 

“Some educational systems emphasize the development of student’s capacity for reasoning and logical thinking, but students would benefit more from an education that also taught them to explore their own emotions.”

Present your perspective on this issue, using relevant reasons and examples to support your views.

(You may write overleaf if you need more space)

-THE END-