SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO KỲ THI LẬP ĐỘI TUYỂN

TỈNH YÊN BÁI DỰ THI CHỌN HỌC SINH GIỎI QUỐC GIA THPT
NĂM HỌC 2021-2022
ĐỀ SỐ 1
(Đề thi gồm 16 trang) Môn thi: TIẾNG ANH
Thời gian: 180 phút (không kể thời gian giao đề)
Ngày thi: 30/9/2021
Số phách
Điểm của bài thi Họ, tên và chữ kí của giám khảo (do chủ tịch HĐCT
ghi)
Bằng số: Giám khảo 1:

Bằng chữ: Giám khảo 2:

Lưu ý: Thí sinh làm bài trên tờ giấy thi

I. LISTENING (5 points)
 There is a piece of music at the beginning and at the end of the listening part.
 There are four parts, each will be played twice.
 Before each part, students have between 20 to 40 seconds to look at the questions.

Part 1. You will hear a conversation between a Scottish student called John and a student called
Pirkko about the Tampere Student Games in Finland. For questions 1-5, complete the notes below.
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer in the
corresponding numbered boxes.
Tampere Student Games
th
- The 80 anniversary celebration of (1) ______________________
- Date of Opening ceremony: (2) ______________________
- Cost of taking part: 16 - 18 euros per day each
- Entry fee includes competition entrance, three free meals and (3) ______________________
- (4) ______________________ has a special rate during the games
- Website address: (5) ______________________

Part 2. You will hear a psychologist being interviewed about friendship, choose the answer which
fits best according to what you hear.
1. From three to five years old, children __________.
A. are happy to play alone B. prefer to be with their family
C. have rather selfish relationships D. have little idea of ownership
2. From age five to eight or ten, children __________.
A. change their friends more often B. decide who they want to be friends with
C. admire people who don’t keep to rules D. learn to be tolerant of their friends
3. According to Sarah Browns, adolescents __________.
A. may be closer to their friends than to their parents
B. develop an interest in friends of the opposite sex
C. choose friends with similar personalities to themselves
D. want friends who are dependable

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4. Young married people __________.
A. tend to focus on their children B. often lose touch with their friends
C. make close friends less easily D. have fewer friends than single people
5. In middle or old age people generally prefer__________.
A. to stay in touch with old friends B. to see younger friends more often
C. to have friends who live nearby D. to spend more time with their friends
Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Part 3. You will hear two educationalists talking about a school for dyslexic children. Decide
whether the opinions are expressed by only one of the speakers, or whether the speakers agree.
Write T for Thomas,
H for Helen,
B for both, where they agree
1. The aim of Greenwood school is to develop the creative abilities of students.
2. In the 70s, the education system wasn’t able to cope with pupils with learning disabilities.
3. Separating dyslexic students from others may ultimately have negative effects.
4. Dyslexic students benefit from smaller classes.
5. Dyslexia tends to affect one gender more than the other.
Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Part 4. You will hear a piece of news about new vaccines against COVID-19. Fill in each blank with
NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the recording. You will hear the audio twice.

Another new vaccine is said to be 88% effective against severe Covid - BBC News

 Two new vaccines have reported to be effective in major trials in just 24 hours. The new Jansen
vaccine, 66% effective overall, only needs 1. ________________________. Novavax vaccine, 89%
effective in U.K trials, is claimed to protect against the new more 2. ________________________.
 The results of Covid vaccine trials:
The vaccine from Jansen, part of the 3. ________________________ - Johnson and Johnson is tested
in a worldwide programme. It is said to protect 85% against severe disease and complete protection
against 4. ________________________ after day 28. The finding was across the world in all the
regions independent of age and 5. ________________________.
 How do they work?
Novovax jab combines proteins from 6. ________________________ of coronavirus with a chemical
booster or adjuvant. The Jansen vaccine uses a similar approach to the Oxford Astrazeneca jab.
Both vaccines prime the immune system including creating 7. ________________________
 UK Vaccine orders:
The Novovax jab will be manufactured to ensure 8. ________________________ of vaccine because
the Oxford Astrazeneca vaccine and Pfizers are in limited supply at the moment.
If the Novovax jab and Jansen vaccine are approved, there will be enough doses to 9. ______________
the entire U.K population twice over.
 Impact on this pandemic.
The two vaccines give more resilience and new tools to spread the vaccine around the world.
Vaccinating one country in a pandemic is like putting 10. ________________________ on a gaping
wound. We will not truly be protected until the whole world is.

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II. LEXICO - GRAMMAR (2 points)
Part 1. Choose the best option to complete the following sentences.
1. Sandra astounded all the spectators by winning the match ______ down.
A. heads B. hands C. hearts D. feet
2. When his manager went on a business trip, Mark stepped into the ______ and chaired the meeting.
A. hole B. breach C. pool D. crack
3. It is public knowledge that new magazines often use free gifts or other _____ to get people to buy them.
A. gimmicks B. snares C. plots D. scams
4. We should never have quarreled like that. Let’s bury the ______and forget all about it.
A. axe B. argument C. hatchet D. subject
5. It is often difficult for a householder to ______ squatters and regain possession of his or her property.
A. eliminate B. withdraw C. evict D. vacate
6. I'm not a serious investor, but I like to ______ in the stock market.
A. splash B. splatter C. paddle D. dabble
7. The teacher said 'Well done' and patted me on the head. I can't stand people who treat me so
______.
A. pompously B. maternally C. snobbishly D. patronizingly
8. The investigation was instigated ______the Prime Minister.
A. on the part of B. consequence of C. subsequent to D. at the behest of
9. Teachers have the authority to discipline pupils by ______ of their position as teachers.
A. view B. virtue C. means D. way
10. The consultant called in by the firm brought a ______ of experience to bear on the problem.
A. wealth B. realm C. bank D. hoard
11. The thick fog ______ out any possibility of our plane taking off before morning.
A. ruled B. struck C. stamped D. crossed
12. The new curriculum has been designed to ______ students learning by combining theory with hands-
on practice.
A. endow B. optimize C. sharpen D. estimate
13. When I was younger, I wanted to be an air pilot but I soon went ____ the idea when I realised I hated flying.
A. out B. off C. up D. with
14. People can make themselves walk on nails or through fire. It’s a question of mind over ______.
A. body B. material C. matter D. facts
15. We had a ______ sale to sell off all the stuff we found in the attic
A. parking B. garage C. station D. garden
Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Part 2. Give the correct form of the words in brackets.

Complaining can be used constructively, for example to draw attention to _____ (1. EFFICENT)
but all too often in western society it consists of anti-social moaning and groaning which leads to mistrust
and unnecessary arguments within relationships.
So it is refreshing to live in a society where people do not complain. Kiribati consists of thirty-
three small islanders, diet is plain and _______ (2. TONE), but, thanks to plentiful fish, none of the
islanders suffer from malnutrition. Feast are popular social occasions, but if the fish is underdone or the
rice proves to be inedible, nobody complains. Similarly, in restaurants, if the waiter brings the wrong dish
or the bill is miscalculated the error is pointed out with a calm smile, not a surly frown. Ships frequently

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leave hours later than scheduled, yet the passengers wait with none of the signs of impatience which
would be loudly evident elsewhere.
Other traits of the Kiribati people complement this _______ (3. CLINE) to complain. Teachers
find it difficult to get their pupils to answer questions in class because it is culturally unacceptable to
show yourselves to be better than those around you. Competition is not exactly frowned upon in this
society, but it is refreshingly _______ (4. CHARACTER). Western tennis stars, well-known for their
immodest behavior on court, could learn a lot from one young finalist here who, despite being the better
player, _______ (5. LIBERAL) lost the match as his opponent was an older and more respected member
of the village.
Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

III. READING COMPREHENSION (5 points)

Part 1. Read the passage and fill in each gap with a suitable word.
Public opinion polls show that crime is viewed as one of the most serious problems of many
societies. Yet, 1. _______ studies have revealed that the amount of violent crime is 2. _______. Our
peculiar awareness and fear is largely brought about by the great attention it is 3. _______ in the mass
media and also because of violent crime being a popular theme for television series and films.
Among all crimes, murder makes the 4. _______ and there is a little doubt that homicides still
continue to be a 5. _______ question in a number of countries. The various causes of severe crime are
being constantly 6. _______ and innumerable reasons for it are being pointed out. Among these are
unemployment, drug abuse, inadequate police enforcement, ineffective courts, racial discrimination,
television and the general decline in social values.
An acknowledged fact is that it is mainly poverty that 7. ________ crime. Individual incapable of
8. ______ for themselves and their families the rudimentary means of living unavoidably take 9. _____
stealing, burgling or committing other offences. We may try to explain crime on different 10. ______ -
cultural, economic, psychological or political, but criminologists are still far from detecting the exact
source of violent offences as the direct link between these particular factors isn’t possible to specify.
1. A. pervading B. infiltrating C. examining D. penetrating
2. A. outspoken B. overestimated C. presupposed D. upgraded
3. A. granted B. awarded C. devoted D. entrusted
4. A. headlines B. titles C. captions D. spotlights
5. A. burdening B. obstructing C. nagging D. contending
6. A. debated B. conversed C. uttered D. articulated
7. A. rears B. nurtures C. breeds D. urges
8. A. insuring B. affording C. securing D. accommodating
9. A. on B. to C. for D. with
10. A. motives B. drives C. reasons D. grounds
Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

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Part 2. Read the passage and choose the best answer A, B, C or D.
The origins of the detective story
At first sight the classic detective story might seem to be a form that is continuing the
Enlightenment's attempts to grapple with the dark secrets of the human heart and, somehow, reassure us
that sweetness and light can win the day. But the history of the crime story is powered by something as
mysterious as the tales themselves. The form really begins in the 1840s with the publication of a short
story called The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe, the horrific tale of the murders of two
women in a 'vile alley' somewhere in Paris. The crime is solved by a character called Chevalier Dupin
who, at first sight, might appear to be the first of those nineteenth century thinking machines of whom
Sherlock Holmes is the most famous example. Close inspection of the mechanics of the tale, however,
reveals that Dupin is closer to being a wizard of the old fashioned type. Poe tells us at the beginning of
the story that draughts is superior to chess (more intuitive) and most of Dupin's 'deductions' - including a
bizarre sequence where he professes to be able to read his companion's mind - are about as far from
logical thought as you can get.
The detective story comes out of the nineteenth century's loss of faith in religious truth and its
heart lies in improbable explanations. Arthur Conan Doyle, whose Holmes is one of the most famous
fictional characters in the world, acknowledges his debt to Poe in his first published Holmes tale, A Study
in Scarlet. But though Doyle begins by emphasizing the rational nature of his principal character, Holmes
gradually gets taken over by the gothic, referring to cases such as that of 'the giant rat of Sumatra for
which the world is not yet prepared'.
In order to emphasize his hero's scientific credentials, Conan Doyle said that he was based on his
old professor of surgery, Joseph Bell. One of Bell's party tricks was to astonish patients in front of his
students by deducing their professions from the state of their clothes or telling them lie knew they had
walked across a certain golf course in order to get to the hospital: 'Only on these links, my dear man, is
found the reddish gravel that still adheres to your shoes'.
But one should always be cautious of authors' attempts to acknowledge or deny the 'real' originals
of fictitious characters. If we look closely at Holmes's methods, we discover that the great detective is
closer to the mystical and intuitive than anything else. One of his favorite ploys is to withhold facts from
the reader as well as the other characters and, when providing explanations, to make them as pleasingly
barmy as anything in Poe. The Speckled Band - one of Holmes's most famous cases – is based on a series
of absurdities, not least of which is the idea that snakes can slide down bell ropes.
This anti-rational strand of the genre might seem at odds with its next great development – The
English Golden Age Murder, whose greatest exponent is Agatha Christie. Christie is a writer whose
charm, for most people, is that her plots are fuelled by ingenuity, not violence. Her great detective
Hercule Poirot, reckons to solve all his cases by use of the 'the little grey cells'. And one of the things that
Christie fans will tell you is that she 'plays fair' with the reader. Even in a story where the narrator turns
out to be the murderer, she does carefully adjust the timescale to demonstrate that X would have had time
to do the bloody deed and, in order to seem absolutely above board, leaves an obliging trail of asterisks
to put us on our guard.
But when you come to look closely at Christie's work it becomes clear that we are not really
supposed to read these texts while attempting to understand them. As Raymond Chandler remarked of the
solution to her famous story in which all of the suspects did the murder in collaboration: 'The plot is so
ingenious only a half-wit would guess it'.
We read detective stories because we wish to imagine a world in which a strong, independent
figure - more and more, these days, a policeman or woman - can reassure us that justice has not altogether
been extinguished from the planet. And, as we move farther and farther from the notion of society, and

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mutual support and concern for others come a long way behind our personal survival, our need for the
world of the great detective - however fantastic it may be – is greater and greater.
from an article by N. Williams in 'The Sunday Times Review’
1. The writers of the first detective stories _______
A. were trying to understand the secrets of the human heart.
B. wanted to show that goodness always triumphs over evil.
C. were not motivated by the same forces as other thinkers in the Enlightenment.
D. wanted to introduce readers to scientific methods of deduction.
2. According to the writer _______
A. Dupin and Sherlock Holmes solved crimes in almost identical ways.
B. Poe intended Dupin to be a nineteenth century thinking machine.
C. Dupin's deductions are intuitive and logical.
D. Dupin uses superhuman powers rather than logical thinking.
3. The text claims that _______
A. Conan Doyle based Holmes on his old professor.
B. to give him authenticity, Conan Doyle said Holmes was a student of Bell's.
C. Conan Doyle wanted readers to believe that Holmes was well-versed in science.
D. Conan Doyle intended Holmes to be mystical and intuitive.
4. Conan Doyle's claims about the origins of his hero are _______
A. convincing. B. doubtful. C. logical. D. false.
5. The writer suggests that if you study Christie's work carefully, you find that she _______
A. unfairly prevents her readers from trying to guess who the murderer is.
B. does not expect her readers to try to understand the details of her stories.
C. makes it easy for readers to guess the ending.
D. plays clever games with the reader.
6. Chandler suggests that in one of Christie's books, the plot is _______
A. so complicated that only a genius could guess it.
B. so clever that only a genius could work it out.
C. so unconvincing that not even a fool could believe it.
D. so brilliant that nobody but a fool would fathom it.
7. According to the writer, detective stories _______
A. reflect modern society.
B. reaffirm the role of the police.
C. satisfy our desire for security.
D. prove that justice can be done.
8. The word ‘ploys’ is closest in meaning to _______?
A. trick B. style C. solution D. philosophy
9. The word ‘asterisks’ is closest in meaning to _______?
A. proofs B. marks C. points D. arguments
10. What does the word ‘his’ refer to?
A. Doyle’s B. Holmes’ C. Poe’s D. one character’s
Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Part 3. Read the passage and do the tasks that follow.

Questions 1 – 6. The reading passage has six sections, A - F. Choose the correct heading for each
section from the list of headings below.
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List of Headings
i. Tough words that have to be said
ii. Passion leads to great coffee
iii. Getting the message out
iv. Preparing young people for employment
v. Too much emotion
vi. A harder time ahead
vii. Back to school
viii. Results are not enough
ix. Preparing for change
1. Section A
2. Section B
3. Section C
4. Section D
5. Section E
6. Section F
Should we recalibrate what we think of as success?
'High Mistress' Clarissa Farr believes that a rounded education and realistic expectations
are as important as top exam grades for her pupils at St Paul's.
'There's far too much passion everywhere these days; we're drowning in it,' observes Clarissa Farr, the
head of the elite private St Paul's School for Girls in west London, with a note of dry humour.
She is referring, however, not to the age-old problem of broiling teenage hormones, but the modern
phenomenon of shamefully over-excitable adults.
A. 'We were interviewing various companies about designing a new prospectus, and they were all
declaring how passionate they were,' she elucidates. Cafes put signs up announcing their passion for
serving coffee or making sandwiches - and it's a reflection of how overhyped the world has become. Our
society has been in thrall to the max; maximum working, maximum earning, maximum reaction, and the
extreme language is a symptom of that. 'An important part of my role is to teach intelligent restraint, to
turn the temperature down and encourage my girls to take a step back and engage in thought rather than
simply adding their voices to the confusion.'
B. Of late, Miss Farr has been sharing her intelligent thoughts with us all. She has written to newspapers
to give her opinions on the character-building importance of extra-curricular challenges. She has made
headlines with the revelation that she was staging parenting classes at her school, which counts Rachel
Weisz, the actress; Alexandra Shulman, the editor-in-chief of Vogue; Jennifer Saunders, the comedian;
Stephanie Flanders, the BBC economics editor; and Carol Thatcher, the journalist among its alumnae -
the Old Paulinas.
C. Right now, Miss Farr, officially known-as the High Mistress, is calmly saying the unsayable; namely
that even young people who attend top-flight places of learning such as hers will struggle to find
employment. 'We need to prepare young people for the world as it is now, not as we would wish it to be,'
she says crisply. 'This generation I'm looking at now isn't going to be chasing super-salaries. A lot are
going to struggle to get employment - at present, the best-educated graduates are coming out of university
without jobs'. Cue gasps of anguish from pushy parents everywhere, but Miss Farr, 54, tall and
impeccably dressed, cuts an imposing figure who brooks no argument. She commands respect within the
school walls and far beyond; when she speaks, educationalists listen. Her school's liberal ethos -
embodied in the absence of uniform - is balanced by its mission to 'educate the prodigiously gifted.' Miss
Farr is unabashed by this elitist reputation, but believes that a rounded education instils more than a
rigorous work ethic.

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D. Today's teenagers will need more than just a series of top exam grades if they are to shine.
Resourcefulness, confidence and a flexible mindset will be just as - perhaps even more - important.
'We need to recalibrate what we think of as success. What will success look like in the future? Most
probably not a job for life, and that process of altering perspective begins at school.'
Recalibration doesn't come cheap; after shelling out fees of £18,000 a year, parents could be forgiven for
assuming that their daughters will be able to pick and choose their own career paths.
Given the current pressure on leading universities to admit more students from the state sector, Old
Paulinas might even find the odds are, for the first time in the school's 108-year history, stacked against
them. But Miss Farr refuses to complain at what is perceived by other independent head teachers as a
blatant unfairness.
E. 'When our girls go to interview for university places, they're given a tough time, and quite rightly so,
she says. 'They've had access to excellent teaching and have had the opportunity to hear extraordinary
speakers from a whole range of professions. This is a high-octane intellectual environment, and they
should have to work harder to prove themselves.' Miss Farr, who is married to John Goodbody, the sports
journalist, has two children: a 16-year-old daughter and a 14-year-old son, both of whom are at single sex
independent schools. As a parent, she can empathize with other parents' concerns. 'A school like this can
have a reputation for being detached and stand-offish,’ she says. 'But we see ourselves as working
alongside parents in bringing up their girls. What have been billed in the press as "parenting classes" are
more a sort of seminar, a forum where parents can meet and share experiences?'
F. Miss Farr has bluntly pointed out to high-flying professional parents who work long hours and often
travel abroad that they are ‘deceiving themselves if they think they can bring up children by iPhone’. It's
not necessarily the message today's hard-pressed parents want to hear, but it is, avers Miss Farr, the
message they need to hear. Subjects under discussion thus far have included the Internet, discipline and,
most recently, how to support girls through the stressful exam period. Needless to say, the high-achieving
girls of St Paul's won't turn a hair at the plan by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, to let universities
preside over the setting of significantly tougher A-levels. Some state schools, however, will find it a
tough readjustment. But Miss Farr - disingenuously, perhaps - claims that there is no gulf between the two
sectors. 'I don't see a divide; the independent sector is another component within a mosaic of provision
that includes faith schools, academies and the maintained sector, she says. 'In this school, we have a very
particular purpose: to look after the needs of very academically gifted girls. That's our contribution, and
through our bursary and outreach work, we are trying to be as accessible as we can to any girls who
would benefit. ' But education isn't just about the students; effective learning begins with good teaching, but
the pressures of the job mean that as in the state sector,’ the independent sector is facing something of a
leadership crisis. 'There are not enough people wanting to go into the top job; nobody wants to be the one
held responsible,' says Miss Farr. 'A generation of deputy heads needs to be encouraged to stand up and
become the point beyond which the buck can't be passed.' Much of the mistrust felt by those in school
management stems from the way education is invariably treated as a political football. 'I feel very strongly
that education needs to stand outside political motivations; one of the problems we face is that as every
new government comes to power, we are forced to swing between policies.'
'We need a slow-burn, evolutionary strategy that will serve us for the long haul. At the moment, there's a
lot of integrated thinking, which is encouraging, as it fosters a bespoke rather than a one-size-fits-all
approach to providing education.' At St Paul's School for Girls, where learning is tailored to the
proverbial crème de la crème, Miss Farr is in her element and keen to proselytize to those considering
education as a career.
'It's up to schools to rebalance people's thinking and reset the co-ordinates for a different kind of future.
Shaping young people's values is an important, exciting role.'
(adapted from www.telegraph.co.uk)

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Questions 7-10. Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
Write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

7. Miss Farr's ideas are only relevant for parents and pupils of St Paul's School.
8. Miss Farr has an unwelcome message about the future of her pupils.
9. Miss Farr abandoned school uniform as part of the school's philosophy.
10. Miss Farr believes business success can lead to poor parenting decisions.
Questions 11-13. Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
11. St Paul's School is ________
A. a school with special classes for emotional teenagers.
B. one of the best state schools in London.
C. facing financial problems which will require it to modify its policies.
D. under the direction of a woman with strong views.
12. The writer predicts that the reaction to Miss Farr's views on future employment prospects will be ____
A. heard by educationalists.
B. shocking to some parents.
C. useful to the young people at St Paul's.
D. seen by society as elitist.
13. There is a leadership crisis ________
A. because there are not enough deputy heads in schools.
B. as a result of a series of recent political changes.
C. in schools in both the independent sector and the state sector.
D. in management teams as they lack trust in government.
Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
11. 12. 13.
Part 4. You are going to read an extract from a newspaper article. Five paragraphs have been
removed from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A-G the one which fits each gap (1-7).
There are extra paragraphs which you do not need to use.
Why do catchy tunes stay on our minds?

Claire Wilson reveals why the brain finds it hard to forget irritating, popular songs.

Songs that go round and round in your head for days or even weeks on end, have commonly become
known as “earworms.” For no obvious reason, a tune just stays on your mind, and you cannot help
singing or humming it whether it’s a song you like or not. What is interesting about this experience is that
it clearly illustrates a part of our mind that is not under our control.
1
Oliver Sacks, a neurologist and author of the book Musicophilia, claims that earworms are an obvious
sign of “the overwhelming and at times, helpless, sensiti vity of our brains to music.” Music has something in
common with earworms; they are both typified by reiteration, and this may be why earworms are so difficult to
oust from our mind.
2

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Along with the repetition, music is unique compared to many of the other things we frequently encounter
in our daily lives, because it is so similar every time we hear it. Roads are tedious to our eyes, and often
all look the same, but each time you see the same road, you’ll see it from a different angle, aspect or in a
different light.
3
A further thing about earworms is that time and again they seem to have something appealing or untypical
about them. Usually they are simple and repetitive fragments of music, but those songs that eventually
become earworms have just a small trace of something that makes them “catchy.”
4
Earworms also seem to be a part of long-term memory and not just a temporary after image of sound. For
example, someone with an especially lasting earworm can activate it just by hearing someone mention the
name. They don’t actually have to hear the music before it’s back again going through their head.
5
One part of the slave system is the “mind’s eye,” which retains visual information, and another is the
“inner ear,” which we, for instance, employ to remember someone’s address or phone number. It is the latter
which appears to get weighed down with earworms.
6
Freud claimed that our minds are not one unity, and today’s cognitive neuroscience agrees, though it
varies on some of the specifics. The poi nt is that our awareness of ourselves is far from being the only thing
teeming in our minds. The mind is a place of which we do not have total control not complete knowledge.
7
One psychologist has proposed singing other songs that are quite similar to your earworm, using the
theory that an earworm continues to exist in your mind because of its idiosyncrasy and your inner ear. By
wiping out the individuality of the memory that is the earworm, either it will disappear or be replaced by
yet another earworm.

A. Earworms are musical memories that get set in a loop and play a specific verse or line, over and over
again and never get to the end of the song. A few people have said that if they sing the earworm to the
very end, it can help stop it playing in your head. However, others have reported this is absolutely no
help at all, and in fact might make it worse by more of the song rather than less being repeated
mentally.
B. Maybe that is the reason why they haunt our memory, and are so difficult to forget. If they were the
normal run of the mill song, they would be drummed out by all the other tunes that sound so similar to
each other and we’d have no grounds to mark them out as different.
C. Yet this is not the complete story. Aptly named “slave systems” have been pinpointed in our short-
term memory by human memory researchers; sections of the mind that ensnare sights and sounds,
keeping them to the forefront of our minds while we focus exclusively on them for a short time.
D. There is of course the infamous “don’t think of a white bear” predicament. As it implies, the idea is not
to think about a white bear, but just try it for yourself. You face the irony of attempting to block your
mind of all thoughts of a white bear whilst at the same time confirming you are not thinking of a white
bear – you are conjuring up an image of precisely the thing you are trying not to think of. So the only
solution is to do something else to circumvent both thinking of the white bear and not thinking of the
white bear. Something like the inner ear, really.
E. This inner ear would appear to have a preference for maintaining a couple of bars of music or a few
short phrases from a song on our mind, rather than going through our plans for the day or making a list
of things to remember. In other words, a part of the body that we do not usually have to even think
about and which should do what we want, has turned against us, turning our minds into a jukebox
playing only one record that we never requested.

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F. An earworm infects our inner ear, that essential component of our cognitive apparatus that helps us
remember and rehearse sounds. This is a part of ourselves over which we have no control, so just
telling it to “be quiet” is unlikely to work, and in fact could have the opposite effect and worsen the
situation. It is deemed a good idea by many scientists to use the inner ear for another activity –
something that will make the mind off the ear worm.
G. They fail to ask for permission to arrive and decline to depart when we tell them to. Earworms are
leeches, residing in a section of our mind that practices sounds. These sounds appear to be quite simple
and rhythmic, but not everyone is suffering from the same song at the same time.
H. Conversely, play a tune on your MP$ player and it sounds the same every single time. Memorizing
information is strongly influenced by repetition, therefore, perhaps the familiarity of a piece of music
etches deep-rooted channels in our mind, allowing earworms to flourish.

Part 5. You are going to read an article that contains information about underground railway
systems. For questions 1 – 10, choose from the cities (A – D).

The cities may be chosen more than once.

About which railway system is the following stated? Your answers:

Some passengers may not be allowed on certain parts of the train. 1. _______
The system was renovated to high aesthetic standards. 2. _______
Sometimes extra employees are needed to help people get into crowded trains. 3. _______
The underground is a great contrast to the rest of the city. 4. _______
It may require some effort to get to another line. 5. _______
Although trains are crowded, service is frequent. 6. _______
Passengers are shown where to board the trains. 7. _______
Its construction was a historical landmark in the city’s development. 8. _______
Train drivers’ wages used to be reduced if their trains were late. 9. _______
It depends on substantial government support to keep it open. 10. _______

A. Paris
Passengers carried per day: 4.5m
Cost of ticket: 1.70 euros flat fare
Length: 214 kilometers
Lines: 14
Stations: 300
In Paris, there are pleasures for those who use the Metro – many of them aesthetic. The gracefully
curvaceous Art Nouveau dragon-fly entrances are just the most prominent on a Metro system which
celebrated its centenary by spending millions of euros on refurbishing its stations and making them works
of art. On my way home, I pass Bonne Nouvelle station in the heart of Paris’s cinema district. There,
during the cinema festival this summer, special lighting effects dapple the platforms and films are
projected onto the advertising hoardings. More than anything the metro is efficient. ‘When I worked on
line 4,’ says a retired driver, ‘we had exactly 30 minutes and 15 seconds to complete the journey. If it
took any longer, they docked our pay.’ But there are drawbacks. Many Metro stations have too many
stairs, and changing lines at big interchanges can be tiresome

B. Moscow
Passengers carried per day: 6.6m
Cost of ticket: 28 rubles (0.70 euros)

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Length: 301 kilometers
Lines: 12
Stations: 182
The first tunneling for the Moscow Metropolitan started in 1932. Three years later, the trains started
running. They haven’t stopped since – every 90 seconds or two minutes during rush hour, every five
minutes the rest of the time, from 6 a.m. till 1 a.m. There may be a crush but there is seldom a wait. The
trains take you through a parade of marbled, stuccoed, spacious, spotless stations. For tourists it’s a major
draw: from Russian art deco to neoclassical, the Metro stations are not to be missed. In short, the Metro
was a central, perhaps the central, element in the building frenzy of the 1930s that changed the face of
Moscow forever.

C. Tokyo
Passengers carried per day: 8.7m
Cost of ticket: 160 – 300 yen (1.40 – 2.50 euros)
Length: 328 kilometres
Lines: 14
Stations: 282
Trains do not just arrive on time in Tokyo, they stop right on the platform mark so that passengers can
line up knowing exactly where the doors will open. Train driving is a prestigious job for life for which the
applicants must pass a rigorous screening of health checks, interviews and written exams before they can
don the usually meticulously turned out uniform, cap and white gloves. However, overcrowding means it
is far from a commuter paradise. At peak morning hours, some stations employ part-time platform staff to
cram in passengers. Carriages can be filled to 183% of capacity. The main reason for such cramped
conditions is that the Tokyo subway system has only 24 kilometres of track for every 1 million people,
compared to 58 on the London Underground. New lines are under construction, but at a cost of 575,000
euros per metre of rail, progress has been slow.

D. Mexico City
Passengers carried per day: 5m
Cost of ticket: 3 pesos (0.15 euros) flat fare
Length: 451 kilometres
Lines: 11
Stations: 175
Fast, relatively safe, and very cheap, Mexico City’s underground is an oasis of order and efficiency under
the chaos above. The Mexican capital’s underground system is the biggest in the continent and one of the
most subsidized networks in the world. Built in the 1960s, it boasts rubber-tyred carriages and connecting
walkways that recall the Paris Metro. An army of vendors wind their way through the cars selling
everything from briefcases to potato peelers. The first trains leave the terminuses at 5 a.m. and the last
after midnight as the masses move from the outskirts of the 20 million-strong megacity. Mexico City’s
Metro also attracts a sizeable contingent of passengers who are unwilling to spend hours in choking
traffic jams.
Without the Metro, the city would grind to a halt, but expansion is desperately needed to relieve the
crowding. At peak times, two carriages on each train may be reserved for women and children only.
There is a master plan to build new lines and extend existing ones, but financial constraints complicated
by the fact that the system runs through different jurisdictions mean progress is slow.

IV. WRITING (6 points)

Part 1. Summary
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Read the following text and use your own words to summarize it in about 120 words. You must not
copy the original words.
The child who is too aggressive is usually revealing two difficulties. Firstly, far from being too
confident, he is actually not confident enough of himself. Secondly, he has not learnt, or is afraid to trust,
the acceptable ways of getting what he wants and defending his rights.
Why the child lacks confidence may not be apparent. In a young child, a lack of confidence can be
readily understood. He has not yet had enough experience to know what he can do. An older child may be
bullying and aggressive because he is too strictly held down at home, or equally because he is too laxly
handled and has not been helped to self-control. Too much and too little parental authority often have
similar troubling effects on children of different temperaments.
The same may be said of the second difficulty the child reveals by his aggressive behavior. A
young child does not yet know that there are better ways than fighting. An older child may not have been
given much guidance, or through circumstances he may not have had much experience in getting along
with other children. When parents or other adults have not been on hand to teach and show children by
their example, or have been too protective of their children in the pre-school years, it may take both time
and experience for the children to learn to get along with others, once they are in school and on their own.
The child who is too aggressive needs his confidence build up in good and wholesome ways. His
boldness, his energy, his desire to lead and manage others can be directed into useful channels. At home
and in school, the aggressive child can be given more responsibility and more praise for his real
achievements.

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Part 2. Chart description

The pie graphs show greenhouse gas emissions worldwide in 2002 and the forecast for 2030. The
column chart shows carbon dioxide emissions around the world.
Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features and make comparisons where
relevant. Write at least 150 words.

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Part 3. Essay
Some people think that in the modern world human beings are more powerful, while others claim
that they have become more vulnerable.

Discuss both views. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own
knowledge or experience. Write at least 250 words.

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-The end-

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