Tiêu đề VSTEP-Reading test 3.docx ✅

Code 3 - Page 1 of READING PAPER 3 Time permitted: 60 minutes Number of questions: 40 _______________________________________________________________________ Directions:In this section you will read FOUR different passages. Each one is followed by 10 questions about it. For questions 1-40, you are to choose the best answer A, B, C or D, to each question. Then, on your answer sheet, find the number of the question and fill in the space that corresponds to the letter of the answer you have chosen. Answer all questions following a passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in that passage. You have 60 minutes to answer all the questions, including the time to transfer your answers to the answer sheet. PASSAGE 1 – Questions 1-10 Today Singapore is a world centre for trade, shipping and tourism, but two hundred years ago, Singapore was just a deserted island off the coast of Malaya with only a few fishermen living there. Stamford Raffles was an Englishman who helped to make Singapore. Raffles, the son of an English sea captain, was born in Jamaica in 1781. Because his parents were poor, he left school when he was 14 and started work in a trading company in London. The trading company was called the British East India Company. It was an important and powerful company that sent ships all over the world. As well as trading, the company officials sometimes became rulers of the countries they traded with. Raffles did his work well and soon began to get higher positions in the company. He was often sent to other countries and he became very interested in foreign places. He became the ruler of Java and in 1817 he wrote a book called History of Java. In 1819, Raffles went to rule the island of Singapore. At that time, Singapore was covered with forest and there were only a few poor fishermen living there. Some of them were pirates and when a ship came near the island, they went out to it in small boats. They attacked the ships, stole things from them and sometimes killed the sailors. The waters around Singapore were dangerous and ships were afraid to come near the island. When Raffles came, he made laws and stopped the pirates. He made some the people policemen and they made sure that the new laws were kept. Singapore became safe and people were no longer afraid. 7AMany people came to live in Singapore and ships were no longer afraid to visit there. The ships came to buy and sell things and the island began its history as a trading center for the world. 7B Now people could easily go from one place to another on the island. 7CBeside houses and roads, Raffles built schools and he brought in teachers from Britain to work in the schools. 7DThe lessons were taught in both English and Malay, and the teachers wrote school books to help their students. Many Europeans came to Singapore and started companies. In 1824, Raffles and his wife returned to England. He put all his books, plants and animals on the ship but before it reached England, a fire began on the ship and everything was lost. Despite this, Raffles started the London Zoo and was its first president. Raffles died at the age of 45 in 1826. 1. While young, Raffles worked in_____ A. Singapore. B. Malaysia. C. Indonesia. D. England. 2. Stamford Raffles began to work when he was young because A. he wanted to see the world.

Code 3 - Page 3 of D. To explain why Stamford Raffles left Singapore. PASSAGE 2 – Questions 11-20 No student of a foreign language needs to be told that grammar is complex.  By changing word sequences and by adding a range of auxiliary verbs and suffixes, we are able to communicate tiny variations in meaning.  We can turn a statement into a question, state whether an action has taken place or is soon to take place, and perform many other word tricks to convey subtle differences in meaning.  Nor is this complexity inherent to the English language.  All languages, even those of so-called 'primitive' tribes have clever grammatical components.  The Cherokee pronoun system, for example, can distinguish between 'you and I', 'several other people and I' and 'you, another person and I'.  In English, all these meanings are summed up in the one, crude pronoun 'we'.  Grammar is universal and plays a part in every language, no matter how widespread it is.  So the question which has baffled many linguists is - who created grammar? At first, it would appear that this question is impossible to answer.  To find out how grammar is created, someone needs to be present at the time of a language's creation, documenting its emergence.  Many historical linguists are able to trace modern complex languages back to earlier languages, but in order to answer the question of how complex languages are actually formed, the researcher needs to observe how languages are started from scratch.  Amazingly, however, this is possible. Some of the most recent languages evolved due to the Atlantic slave trade.  At that time, slaves from a number of different ethnicities were forced to work together under colonizer's rule.  Since they had no opportunity to learn each other's languages, they developed a make-shift language called a pidgin.  Pidgins are strings of words copied from the language of the landowner.  They have little in the way of grammar, and in many cases it is difficult for a listener to deduce when an event happened, and who did what to whom.  16A Speakers need to use circumlocution in order to make their meaning understood.  16BInterestingly, however, all it takes for a pidgin to become a complex language is for a group of children to be exposed to it at the time when they learn their mother tongue.  16C Slave children did not simply copy the strings of words uttered by their elders, they adapted their words to create a new, expressive language.  16D Complex grammar systems which emerge from pidgins are termed creoles, and they are invented by children. Some linguists believe that many of the world's most established languages were creoles at first.  The English past tense –ed ending may have evolved from the verb 'do'.  'It ended' may once have been 'It end-did'.  Therefore it would appear that even the most widespread languages were partly created by children.  Children appear to have innate grammatical machinery in their brains, which springs to life when they are first trying to make sense of the world around them.  Their minds can serve to create logical, complex structures, even when there is no grammar present for them to copy. 11. In paragraph 1, why does the writer include information about the Cherokee language? A. To show how simple, tradditional cultures can have complicated grammar structures. B. To show how English grammar differs from Cherokee grammar C. To prove that complex grammar structures were invented by the Cherokees. D. To demonstrate how difficult it is to learn the Cherokee language. 12. Which sentence is closest in meaning to the highlighted sentence? Grammar is universal and plays a part in every language, no matter how widespread it is.   A. All languages, whether they are spoken by a few people or a lot of people, contain grammar. B. Some languages include a lot of grammar, whereas other languages contain a little. C. Languages which contain a lot of grammar are more common than languages that contain a little. D. The grammar of all languages is the same, no matter where the languages evolved. 13. What can be inferred about the slaves’ pidgin language?