Đề thi chọn đội tuyển dự thi Học sinh giỏi quốc gia THPT năm 2016 môn Tiếng Anh tỉnh Quảng Trị (Vòng I)

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO KỲ THI CHỌN HỌC SINH GIỎI LỚP 12 – VÒNG 1 LONG AN
Môn thi: TIẾNG ANH – BẢNG B
Ngày thi: 07/10/2016
ĐỀ CHÍNH THỨC
T hời gian: 180 phút (không kể thời gian phát đề)
(Đề thi gồm có 08 trang)
LƯU Ý: THÍ SINH LÀM BÀI TRÊN PHIẾU TRẢ LỜI,
KHÔNG LÀM BÀI TRÊN ĐỀ THI NÀY.
PART 1: LISTENING (20 points)
You will hear people talking in five different situations. For questions 1-5, choose the best
answer (A, B or C). You will hear each piece twice. 1.
You are at a public celebration when you hear this announcement.
Why does the speaker want the car moved?
A. it is parked inconveniently. B. it is parked illegally. C. somebody has complained. 2.
You have taken your camera to a shop where the assistant explains
why it is not working. What does he tell you? A. the battery was too old.
B. the battery was incorrectly fitted.
C. the film was incorrectly fitted. 3.
You switch on the radio to find a phone-in program in progress.
What is the caller asking the expert about? A. gardening B. cheese making C. travel 4.
You are in the lounge of an expensive hotel when you hear this exchange. .
What does the woman want the man to do? A. not take a photograph B. stop smoking
C. not bring his dog in the building 5.
You are in the office of a major trading company when you hear this woman
talking on the phone. What time does she arrange to meet Peter? A. 3:45 B. 4:15 C. 4:45 Page 1 of 8 PART 2. READING (28 points)
For questions 1-7, read the following passage and choose the correct answer (A, B, C or D). MIND OVER MATTER?
Harry Houdini, who died in 1927, was the entertainment phenomenon of the ragtime era. He
could escape from chains and padlocks, from ropes and canvas sacks. They put him in a strait-
jacket and hung him upside down from a skyscraper and he somehow untied himself. They tied
him up in a locked packing case and sank him in Liverpool docks. Minutes later he surfaced
smiling. They locked him in a zinc-lined Russian prison van and he emerged leaving the doors
locked and the locks undamaged. They padlocked him in a milk churn full of water and he burst
free. They put him in a coffin, screwed down the lid, and buried him and … well, no, he didn’t pop
up like a mole, but when they dug him up more than half an hour later, he was still breathing.
Houdini would usually allow his equipment to be examined by the audience. The chains,
locks and packing cases all seemed perfectly genuine, so it was tempting to conclude that he
possessed superhuman powers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was the very paragon
of analytical thinking but Conan Doyle believed that Houdini achieved his tricks through
spiritualism. Indeed, he wrote to the escapologist imploring him to use his psychic powers more
profitably for the common good instead of just prostituting his talent every night at the Alhambra.
However, Houdini repeatedly denounced spiritualism and disclaimed any psychic element to his act.
The alternative explanation for his feats of escapism was that Houdini could do unnatural
things with his body. It is widely held that he could dislocate his shoulders to escape from strait-
jackets, and that he could somehow contract his wrists in order to escape from handcuffs. His
ability to spend long periods in confined spaces is cited as evidence that he could put his body into
suspended animation, as Indian fakirs are supposed to do.
This is all nonsense. If you ever find yourself in a strait-jacket, it’s difficult to imagine
anything less helpful than a dislocated shoulder. Contracting your wrists is not only unhelpful but,
frankly, impossible because the bones of your wrist are very tightly packed together and the whole
structure is virtually incompressible. As for suspended animation, the trick of surviving burial and
drowning relies on the fact that you can live for short periods on the air in a confined space. The air
shifted by an average person in a day would occupy a cube just eight feet square. The build-up of
carbon monoxide tends to pollute this supply, but, if you can relax, the air in a coffin should keep
you going for half an hour or so.
In other words, there was nothing physically remarkable about Houdini except for his
bravery, dexterity and fitness. His nerve was so cool that he could remain in a coffin six feet
underground until they came to dig him up. His fingers were so strong that he could undo a buckle
or manipulate keys through the canvas of a strait-jacket or a mail bag. He made a comprehensive
study of locks and was able to conceal lock-picks about his person in a way which fooled even the
doctors who examined him. When they locked him in the prison van he still had a hacksaw blade
with which to saw through the joins in the metal lining and get access to the planks of the floor. As
an entertainer he combined all this strength and ingenuity with a lot of trickery. His stage escapes
took place behind a curtain with an orchestra playing to disguise the banging and sawing. The milk
churn in which he was locked had a double lining so that, while the lid was locked onto the rim, Page 2 of 8
the rim was not actually attached to the churn. Houdini merely had to stand up to get out. The mail
sack he cut open at the seam and sewed up with similar thread. The bank safe from which he
emerged had been secretly worked on by his mechanics for 24 hours before the performance.
All Houdini’s feats are eminently explicable, although to explain them, even now, is a kind
of heresy. Houdini belongs to that band of mythical supermen who, we like to believe, were
capable of miracles and would still be alive today were it not for some piece of low trickery. It’s
said of Houdini that a punch in his belly when he wasn’t prepared for it caused his burst appendix.
Anatomically, it’s virtually impossible that a punch could puncture your gut, but the story endures.
Somehow the myth of the superman has an even greater appeal than the edifice of twenty-first century logic. 1.
In the first paragraph, what does the writer say Houdini managed to do?
A. jump upside down from a skyscraper B. escape from a submerged box
C. break the locks of a Russian prison van
D. fight his way out of an empty milk churn 2.
The writer mentions Houdini’s burial alive to illustrate the fact that
A. his tricks sometimes went disastrously wrong.
B. he was not always able to do what he claimed he could.
C. he was capable of extraordinary feats of survival.
D. he had overcome his fear of confined spaces. 3.
The writer suggests that Conan Doyle
A. was less analytical about Houdini than one might have expected.
B. asked Houdini if he could include him in a Sherlock Holmes story.
C. felt that Houdini could make more money in other ways.
D. thought there were scientific explanations for Houdini’s feats. 4.
The writer comes to the conclusion that Houdini
A. had an unusual bone structure.
B. could make parts of his body smaller.
C. was able to put himself in a trance.
D. was not physically abnormal. Page 3 of 8 5.
It appears that Houdini was able to escape from strait-jackets by A. using hidden lock-picks.
B. undoing buckles from inside the material.
C. cutting the canvas with a hacksaw.
D. turning keys he had concealed. 6.
The writer states that when Houdini escaped from the milk churn
A. the role of the orchestra was important.
B. he made use of the hacksaw to free himself.
C. the container had been modified beforehand.
D. he was in full sight of the audience. 7.
How does the writer say people regard Houdini nowadays?
A. They want to hear the scientific explanations for his feats.
B. They prefer to believe that he had extraordinary powers.
C. They refuse to believe the story of how he died.
D. They doubt the fact that he ever really existed.
PART 3. USE OF ENGLISH (52 points)
1. For questions 1-12, read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap. (12 points) BANDERAS, ANTONIO
With 43 movies under his belt, Antonio Banderas in 1995 was on his way to becoming
America’s next “Latin lover”. His (1) _____ sexuality and European (2) _____ made this Spanish
actor a fully-fledged Hollywood film star.
Banderas was born on August 10, 1960, in Málaga, Spain. After seeing a performance of
Hair at the age of 15, he said of acting, “I want to be part of this ritual; I want to do this forever.”
In 1981 he (3) _____ on a five-year acting stint with the Spanish national theatre in Madrid. There
he was discovered by movie director Pedro Almodóvar, who offered him roles in films. In his first
movie with Almodóvar, Banderas played the first of several roles as a homosexual. Under
Almodóvar’s direction the young actor was able to (4) _____ his talent fully through (5) _____
roles such as rapist, mental patient, and kidnapper.
This experience (6) _____ valuable for Banderas after he moved to Hollywood in 1989.
There in 1992 he landed a role in The Mambo Kings, playing a young Cuban musician living in
New York City. Although he spoke almost no English, Banderas was able to learn his lines
phonetically and later took intensive English courses, which helped him land the role of Tom
Hanks’s lover in the box-office (7) _____ Philadelphia in 1993. Wanting to take the U.S. by (8)
_____, Banderas then enjoyed a whirlwind acting spree. His movies include The House of the
Spirits (1993), Interview with the Vampire (1994), Miami Rhapsody (1995), Desperado (1995),
Assassins (1995), and Never Talk to Strangers (1995). Banderas (9) _____ to being ambitious but
said that in Spain actors prove their success by making one film after another.
Success for Banderas came at a (10) _____. His personal life recently became public when
he fell in love with co-star Melanie Griffith from the film Two Much. Gossip columns across the
country were filled with news about the (11) _____ of his eight-year marriage to a Spanish actress. Page 4 of 8
Banderas insisted that his marriage had been (12) _____ for some time and said of Griffith, “I love
this woman, and I want to make her happy – that is my only purpose.” 1. A. unhesitating B. undoubting C. undeniable D. unanswerable 2. A. gift B. artistry C. mood D. flair 3. A. embarked B. diverged C. undertook D. propelled 4. A. voice B. provide C. exhibit D. express
5. A. uncomfortable B. uncustomary
C. unconventional D. uncultured 6. A. realized B. proved C. made D. came 7. A. premiere B. masterpiece C. smash D. hit 8. A. chance B. surprise C. storm D. attack 9. A. conceded B. assented C. revealed D. acknowledged 10. A. cost B. penalty C. fee D. price 11. A. breakaway B. break-off C. breakup D. break-out 12. A. shaken B. unfaithful C. weak D. unstable
2. For questions 13-22, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap.
Use ONLY ONE word in each gap. (10 points)
TWITTER IS FIRST WITH THE NEWS
The first news of a plane which made an emergency landing in New York’s Hudson River
came not from a reporter on a TV bulletin, but from Twitter, the social-networking site.
A passenger on a ferry (13) _____ the time, using his mobile phone, took a photo and
uploaded it to the Internet. Accompanying it was the simple message: ‘There’s a plane in the
Hudson. I’m on the ferry going to pick (14) _____ the people. Crazy.’
The US Airways plane found itself in trouble less than a minute after taking off at 3.26 p.m.
The photo appeared on the Internet a mere 10 minutes (15) _____, at 3.36 p.m. The professional
news outlets were slower. The New York Times managed to get the story onto (16) _____ website by 3.48 p.m.
The role of social media – created by ordinary people, not by professional journalists – is
becoming increasingly important when it comes to news stories (17) _____ as the Hudson plane
crash, and its growing use (18) _____ politicians to reach the public. Barack Obama became the
first US president to have his own Facebook page, not to mention a YouTube channel.
What this shows is that there is a general trend that established figures and institutions are
embracing change, willingly (19) _____ otherwise, and realizing that sites (20) _____ Twitter are
becoming normalized into today’s world. Journalists are making the attempt to use social-
networking sites (21) _____ their own advantage, with direct links and reporting on what’s
‘trending’ in the blogosphere. However, it seems that as far as traditional news outlets are
concerned, Twitter has already got a head start, and it seems they may have to try a little harder.
Having said that, there is also an issue with social-networking sites when it comes to non-
biased and impartial reporting, (22) _____, whereas most professional news sources aim to provide
carefully checked and balanced coverage of events, social-networking sites have no such concerns. Page 5 of 8
3. For questions 23-32, choose one of these words to fill in the blanks. There are more words than needed. (10 points) overweight fast food fat malnourished harvest balanced diet allergic processed obesity shortages fibre minerals free range famine
Children love eating (23) _____, but burgers, chicken nuggets and other heavily (24) _____ food
products not only contain a large number of unhealthy chemicals and other additives, but also lack
the essential vitamins and (25) _____ that a child needs. In addition, they also contain a lot of (26)
_____ and carbohydrates which, if eaten in quantity, can result in childhood (27) _____ (in fact, a
recent survey suggests that 39 per cent of 8 – 15 year-olds are seriously overweight).
Many children end up (28) _____, since they eat too much of the wrong sort of food. In fact,
in many parts of the developed world, a lot of children show similar symptoms to those in poorer
developing countries, where food (29) _____ cause thousands of deaths from starvation, especially
in the wake of natural disasters which ruin crops and in some cases totally destroy the annual (30)
_____. Furthermore, the large amounts of cholesterol in animal and dairy products (a common
feature of fast food) are believed to be partly responsible for increased cases of heart disease in
young people, a recent phenomenon that is causing great concern.
It is therefore important children learn the benefits of eating a (31) _____, as it is important
they consume sufficient quantities of the different food groups. They should be encouraged to eat
more fresh fruit and vegetables, and also more food that is high in (32) _____. They should still be
allowed the occasional burger or pizza, but these should be seen as an occasional treat rather than
forming the main part of their diet.
4. For questions 33-42, choose the underlined word or phrase in each sentence that needs correction. (10 points) 33.
However small, the sitting room is well designed and nicely decorated. A B C D 34.
Educated in the UK, his qualifications are widely recognized in the A B C world of professionals. D 35.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Smith are explaining the children the rules of the game. A B C D 36.
The media have produced live covering of Michael Jackson’s fans around the world A B C mourning for him. D Page 6 of 8 37.
In my judgment, I think Hem is the best physicist among the scientists of A B C the SEA region. D 38.
The captain accused me that I neglected my duties, which made me very angry. A B C D 39.
I have never seen him before in my life, so I don’t know how he looks. A B C D 40.
It is essential that commercial fishing has large shoals of fish of one species within A B C D reach of markets. 41.
Everyone was talking but stopped at the moment Mr. Smith arrived. A B C D 42.
A lot of ancient paintings and sculptures can be found in this museum but there are A B
a few works of Hugo because he is relatively unknown in this country. C D
5. For questions 43-52, complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the
first sentence, using the word given. Do not change the word given. You must use between
THREE and EIGHT words, including the word given. (10 points) 43.
I thought very hard but couldn’t remember the answer. RACKED
I __________ to remember the answer. 44.
I was just about to call you to tell you about the rearranged meeting. POINT
I was ___________ you to tell you about the rearranged meeting. 45.
The manager should think about experience when hiring new staff. CONSIDERATION
The manager should __________ when hiring new staff. 46.
Brian was about to blurt out my secret when I attracted his attention. EYE
Had I __________ blurted out my secret. 47.
Someone rang the police with information about an impending robbery. TIPPED
The __________ about an impending robbery.
48. Some improvements will have to be made if you all want to pass this exam. SOCKS
You will all __________ if you want to pass this exam. Page 7 of 8 49.
He denied the accusation unconvincingly, which made me think he was guilty. LED
His __________ believe that he was guilty. 50.
The manager praised one particular player. SINGLED
One particular player __________ praise by the manager. 51.
I’m sure you’re wondering why I haven’t contacted you for so long. HAS
You must __________ so long since I contacted you. 52.
Because he was injured he couldn’t play in the next game. PREVENTED
His __________ in the next game. **** HẾT ****
Họ và tên thí sinh:…………………………………………. Số báo danh:……………. .
Chữ ký giám thị 1:…………………………… Chữ ký giám thị 2:……………………… Page 8 of 8