Đề thi chọn học sinh giỏi cấp tỉnh THPT môn Tiếng Anh (Bảng A) năm 2015 - Sở GD & ĐT Quảng Ninh

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO
TỈNH QUẢNG NINH
KỲ THI CHỌN HỌC SINH GIỎI CẤP TỈNH THPT
NĂM 2015
 	Môn thi: Tiếng Anh (Bảng A)
 §Ò thi CHÍNH THỨC Ngày thi: 08/ 12/ 2015
Chữ ký của giám thị
Thời gian làm bài: 180 phút, không kể thời gian giao đề.
SBD:
(Đề thi này có 12 trang)
1:
Họ, tên thí sinh:
Số phách 
Ngày sinh:
chấm lần 1:
2:
Nơi sinh:
Học sinh trường:
Hội đồng coi thi:
Số phách
chấm phúc khảo:
Điểm bài thi:
Bằng số: ..
Bằng chữ:
.
Họ tên, chữ ký của hai người 
chấm thi:
1: ..
2: ...
Số phách 
Số phách
chấm phúc khảo:
Điểm bài thi chấm phúc khảo: 
Bằng số: ..
Bằng chữ:
..
Họ tên, chữ ký của hai người
 chấm phúc khảo:
1: ......
2: .....
Ghi chú: Thí sinh trả lời ngay vào bản đề thi này. Nếu viết sai phải gạch bỏ rồi viết lại.
I. LISTENING (6.0 points)
Activity 1: You will hear a man giving some advice on a school trip. For questions 1-5, choose the answer A, B, C or D which fits best according to what you hear. (1.0 point)
1. How long will the trip last?
A. One day	B. Two days
C. A week	D. Two weeks
2. Which of these clothes are not mentioned?
A. Sweater 	B. Jeans
C. Gloves 	D. Socks
3. Why are strong sensible shoes necessary?
A. For running 	B. For walking
C. For driving 	D. For climbing
4. What should you take if you want to go swimming?
A. A towel and a swimming costume 	B. A swimming costume
C. Two towels and a swimming costume 	D. A swimming costume, a towel and spare socks
5. What’s going to happen in the evening?
A. A disco and then a meal 	B. A walk and then a disco
C. Either a disco or a meal D. A meal and then a disco
Your answers:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Activity 2: You will hear an extract from a talk on a radio program about food and drink. For questions 1- 5, write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER for each answer. (2.0 points)
1. Which animal first provided humans with milk?
2. When were cows first milked?
.....3. What has been found in Egyptian tombs?
..
4. Before 1800, who was responsible for making cheese?
.....5. When were milking machines invented?
.....
Activity 3: You will hear part of a radio interview with a swimming instructor. For questions 1- 10, complete each of the sentences with NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER. (2.0 points)
Paul works at a hotel in the
 .
1 
He started his job in
.
2 
He particularly likes meeting
3 
there.
Paul isn’t interested in teaching
.
4 
According to Paul
5
of all adults can’t swim.
Paul’s students are afraid of going
.
6 
His students have to put their faces into a salad bowl and
7
 below the surface.
The first thing they do in the pool is to
8
in the water with their faces down.
Paul thinks it’s essential to be
9
in the water.
Most people learn to swim after about
.
10 
Activity 4: You will hear five different people giving advice about camping at a three-day rock music festival. Choose from the list (A – F) what each person is saying. Use each letter only once. There is one extra letter which you do NOT need to use. (1.0 point)
Don’t pack too many clothes.
Make friends with the people camping next to you.
Keep your money with you at all times.
Spend time planning the trip with your friends.
Leave anything valuable at home.
Remember where you put up your tent.
Speaker 1: _____________
Speaker 2: _____________
Speaker 3: _____________
Speaker 4: _____________
Speaker 5: _____________
II. LEXICO- GRAMMAR (2.0 points) 
Activity 1: Circle the letter A, B, C, or D next to the right option to complete the sentences below. (0.5 point)
1. Mary later became a/ an _______________ of some importance in the academic world. 
A. figure	B. adult	C. being	C. character
2. - I’m sorry to _______________, but did you happen to mention the name “Fiona”?
	A. cut you	B. butt in	C. intercede	D. jump
3. Were _______________ my dad, I would never have started playing tennis in the first place.
	A. it for	B. it hadn’t been for	C. it not for	D. it to be for	 
4. John: “I can’t stand this hot weather!”. Peter: “ No, _______________. Dreadful, isn’t it?”
	A. so can’t I	B. neither can I	C. so I can’t	D. nor I can	 
5. Thankfully we _______________ another ticket as Jean didn’t turn up.
	A. needn’t have got	C. needed not to get	
	B. hadn’t to get	D. didn’t need to get
Activity 2: Fill in the blank with ONE word only. The first one has been done as an example. (0.5 point)
Human and other life forms
Humans (0) ______ much in common with other life forms on Earth. (1) ______ the very first life forms appeared, all living things have been desperately struggling to survive the harsh and changing conditions of our planet. This has involved adapting to new situations and, in many cases, has led to either evolution or extinction. We are not alone in making use (2) ______ the world around us (birds use twigs to build nests, for example) or in being particularly skilful (spiders make intricate webs). Where we (3) ______ differ from other life forms, however, is in our ability to record, and learn from, our collective history. In this, it seems that we are unique. 
There is still much mankind does not know about the earliest humans, of course, but we are increasingly becoming a species with detail knowledge about our past. The more we learn, the better (4) ___ our chances of survival in the future. It must also be recognised, however, that we are also species on Earth which (5) ____ managed to create the means to destroy the planet we live on.
0. have
1. _______
2. _______
3. _______
4. _______
5. _______
Your answers:
Activity 3: Use the word given in capitals at the end of each line to form a new word that fits the gap in the same line. The first one has been done as an example. (0.5 point)
Being unable to read
It seems (0) unthinkable today not to provide children with a decent education. There is such an emphasis on academic achievements these days that it’s easy to forget what a problem (1) _______________ used to be. Being unable to read can be intensely embarrassing and can make someone feel like a complete (2) _______________. Someone who can’t read is often (3) _______________ afraid of certain situations. The problem can seem (4) _______________. However, given the right teacher, a lot of hard work and a (5) _______________ amount of time, anyone can learn. Being able to read can lead to an improved quality of life. 
THINK
LITERATE
FAIL
UNDERSTAND
SOLVE
REASON
Activity 4: Each sentence has four underlined words or phrases. Circle the letter of the underlined word or phrase that is NOT CORRECT. (0.5 point)
1. Manufacturers may use food additives for preserving, to color, to flavor, or to fortify foods.
 A 	B 	 C D 
2. Only with a two-thirds vote by both houses are the U.S. Congress able to override a presidential veto.
 	A 	 B 	 C 	D
3. The grizzly bear, which can grow up to eight feet tall, has been called a more dangerous animal of North America.	 A B 	 C D
4. He was not able to define the process by which the body had protected by the immunologic system.
 A 	 B C D 
5. Dislike sumac with red berries, sumac with white berries is poisonous.
 A	B C D
III. READING (6.0 points) 
Activity 1: For questions 1–6, read the text and decide whether the statements that follow are true or false. Write (T) for TRUE, (F) for FALSE. (1.2 points)
Some day people will certainly try to build settlements on the moon. The best place for houses in a moon town will be a cave or a tunnel. Underground houses will not be squashed by meteorites that constantly foil on the moon from outer space. This will be important on the moon, since daytime is so hot that food could be cooked in the rocks, and the nights get bitterly cold.
Pioneer moon homes may be made of airtight plastic that can be blown up like a balloon inside the cave. The reason for tins is that the moon has no air around it. The pioneers will have to take along from the earth the oxygen masks when they are away from home. But the balloon house itself will be filled with air. Perhaps the house will have beds, tables and chairs, built into it. These can be inflated, too. So people will sleep, eat and work on air! Moon-house building will be easy. The moon’s gravity is less than the earth’s. Everything weighs only one-sixth as much as it does on the earth.
1. It is impossible to build a moon house in a cave or a tunnel.
2. The temperature on the moon is stable during the day and night.
3. The people on the moon will have to wear oxygen masks when they leave their home.
4. There is no air on the moon.
5. If a stone weighs 18 tons on the earth, it weighs only three tons on the moon.
6. Houses can not be built on the moon because of the weak gravity.
Activity 2: For questions 1–10, read the following passage and decide which answer (A, B, C, or D) best fits each gap. Write your answers in corresponding numbered boxes. There is an example at the beginning (0). (1.0 point)
UNIVERSAL WET WEEKEND
The weather across much of the British Isles (0) ____ settled last week, with a good (1) _____ of sunshine. On Saturday, the lunchtime temperature at Bridlington in the northeast of England was 28.2oC, which compared favourably with Alicante in southern Spain at 29 oC. The rest of the world, however, was (2) ______ with some extreme conditions. A tropical storm, given the name Helen, hit Hong Kong on Saturday morning, though her presence had been felt in (3) ________ from noon on Friday, the showers and (4) _______ of rain became more and more frequent so that by midnight on Sunday, thirty-six hours later, there had been 333mm of rainfall, not far off the (5) ______ for the month of August, at 367mm. Even on Sunday there was a (6) _______ in Helen’s tail. The town centre of Shanwei, near Hong Kong, was flooded when 468mm of rain fell in the sixty hours leading up to midday on Sunday, (7) _______ twice the normal August rainfall. On the other (8) _______ of the globe, tropical storm Gabrielle moved across the Gulf of Mexico and overnight rain exceeded the usual rainfall for the (9) ________ month. Although most of Europe enjoyed sun, the high temperatures were sufficient to set off some (10) ________ showers. On Tuesday morning, a thunderstorm at Lyons in eastern France deposited 99mm of rain in just six hours.
0. A. kept 	B. remained 	C. lasted 	D. held
1. A. extent 	B. quantity 	C. deal 	D. proportion
2. A. coping	B. matching 	C. colliding 	D. queuing
3. A. light 	B. advance 	C. likelihood 	D. day
4. A. outbursts 	B. outbreaks 	C. outputs 	D. outlets
5. A. general 	B. standard 	C. medium 	D. average
6. A. sting 	B. prick 	C. stab 	D. poke
7. A. only 	B. fairly 	C. hardly 	D. nearly
8. A. section 	B. side 	C. face 	D. part
9. A. total 	B. sole 	C. single 	D. whole
10. A. huge 	B. weighty 	C. heavy 	D. strong
Your answers: 0. B
1. 
2. 
3. 
4. 
5. 
6. 
7. 
8. 
9. 
10. 
Activity 3: Read the text and choose the most suitable heading from the list A-G for each paragraph (1-6). There is one extra heading which you do NOT need to use. (1.8 points)
World interest in Esperanto
Easy to learn- and plenty to read!
Will it survive or disappear?
 D. Problems for a language with no home
 E. What is Esperanto trying to do?
 F. A school project
 G. One person’s idea
ESPERANTO
1
The language “Esperanto” is about 120 years old. It doesn’t come from any country. People call it a “planned” language, because someone created it- a Pole, Dr L.L. Zamenhof.
2
The word “Esperanto” means “someone who hopes”. The idea is for Esperanto to be a language for international communication. Everyone learns it as a foreign language, rather than learning a language from one particular country, like French or English.
3
Esperanto isn’t a difficult language. The rules are simple, and every word is easy to pronounce and to spell. There are Esperanto textbooks and dictionaries, as well as other books, and translations into Esperanto from other languages. There are 30,000 books in the British Esperanto library.
4
There are other “planned languages”, but Esperanto is the biggest. Many countries have their own Esperanto societies. There are over half a million Esperanto Internet sites, and you can even learn it by email! There are also some very famous Esperanto speakers - for example, six Nobel Prize winners.
5
Sadly, the fact that Esperanto doesn’t have its own country or culture also causes some problems. For example, no country uses Esperanto in schools, and no people learn it as their own language. Its speakers come from all over the world, but they also have their own languages.
6
Although Esperanto speakers care very much about its future, it’s not always easy to make other people speak it or teach it to their children. The future of Esperanto depends on new people learning it, but at the moment there are only around two million speakers of Esperanto in the world. But more than 700 million speakers of English!
Activity 4: For questions 1–10, read the passage and circle the best answer (A, B, C, or D) for the questions that follow. (2.0 points)
Long before they can actually speak, babies pay special attention to the speech they hear around them. Within the first month of their lives, babies' responses to the sound of the human voice will be different from their responses to other sorts of auditory stimuli. They will stop crying when they hear a person talking, but not if they hear a bell or the sound of a rattle. At first, the sounds that an infant notices might be only those words that receive the heaviest emphasis and that often occur at the ends of utterances. By the time they are six or seven weeks old, babies can detect the difference between syllables pronounced with rising and falling inflections. Very soon, these differences in adult stress and intonation can influence babies' emotional states and behavior. Long before they develop actual language comprehension, babies can sense when an adult is playful or angry, attempting to initiate or terminate new behavior, and so on, merely on the basis of cues such as the rate, volume, and melody of adult speech.
Adults make it as easy as they can for babies to pick up a language by exaggerating such cues. One researcher observed babies and their mothers in six diverse cultures and found that, in all six languages, the mothers used simplified syntax, short utterances and nonsense sounds, and transformed certain sounds into baby talk. Other investigators have noted that when mothers talk to babies who are only a few months old, they exaggerate the pitch, loudness, and intensity of their words. They also exaggerate their facial expressions, hold vowels longer, and emphasize certain words. 
More significant for language development than their response to general intonation is observation that tiny babies can make relatively fine distinctions between speech sounds. In other words, babies enter the world with the ability to make precisely those perceptual discriminations that are necessary if they are to acquire aural language.
Babies obviously derive pleasure from sound input, too: even as young as nine months they will listen to songs or stories, although the words themselves are beyond their understanding. For babies, language is a sensory-motor delight rather than the route to prosaic meaning that it is often for adults.
1. What does the passage mainly discuss? 
A. How babies differentiate between the sound of the human voice and other sounds. 
B. The differences between a baby's and an adult's ability to comprehend language. 
C. How babies perceive and respond to the human voice in their earliest stages of language development. 
D. The response of babies to sounds other than the human voice.
2. Why does the author mention a bell and a rattle in paragraph 1? 
A. To contrast the reactions of babies to human and nonhuman sounds. 
B. To give examples of sounds that will cause a baby to cry. 
C. To explain how babies distinguish between different nonhuman sounds. 
D. To give examples of typical toys that babies do not like.
3. Why does the author mention syllables pronounced with rising and falling inflections in paragraph 1? 
A. To demonstrate how difficult it is for babies to interpret emotions. 
B. To illustrate that a six-week-old baby can already distinguish some language differences.
C. To provide an example of ways adults speak to babies.
D. To give a reason for babies' difficulty in distinguishing one adult from another. 
4. The word "diverse" in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to 
A. surrounding 	B. divided	C. different 	D. stimulating 
5. The word "noted" in paragraph 2 is closest in meaning to 
A. theorized 	B. requested	C. disagreed 	D. observed 
6. The word "They" in paragraph 2 refers to 
A. mothers 	B. investigators	C. babies 	D. words 
7. The passage mentions all of the following as ways adults modify their speech when talking to babies EXCEPT 
A. giving all words equal emphasis 	B. speaking with shorter sentences 
C. speaking more loudly than normal 	D. using meaningless sounds 
8. Which of the following can be inferred about the findings described in paragraph 2? 
A. Babies who are exposed to more than one language can speak earlier than babies exposed to a single language. 
B. Mothers from different cultures speak to their babies in similar ways. 
C. Babies ignore facial expressions in comprehending aural language. 
D. The mothers observed by the researchers were consciously teaching their babies to speak. 
9. What point does the author make to illustrate that babies are born with the ability to acquire language? 
A. Babies begin to understand words in songs. 
B. Babies exaggerate their own sounds and expressions. 
C. Babies are more sensitive to sounds than are adults. 
D. Babies notice even minor differences between speech sounds. 
10. According to the author, why do babies listen to songs and stories, even though they can not understand them? 
A. They understand the rhythm.	B. They enjoy the sound. 
C. They can remember them easily.	D. They focus on the meaning of their parents' words.
IV. WRITING (6.0 points)
Activity 1: Read the following text and use your own words to summarize it (in less than 50 words). You MUST NOT copy or re-write the original. (1.0 point) 
Rarely do neighbours have the best of relationships for any length of time. Of course, some people become close friends, but only if there is a lot of give and take is this possible. So common are disputes between neighbours that there are many laws to cover arguments over noise, property and rubbish. Before things go too far for the relationship to be saved, there are a few simple things you can do. The first is to speak to your neighbour. You’d be amazed at how many arguments are avoided by such a simple step. Not only does it give you the chance to express your complaint, it also gives your neighbour the chance to explain and, perhaps, take action.
Secondly, check your rights. On no account should you do anything to damage your neighbours’ property, or their overhanging trees if that’s the problem, without knowing what your legal rights are. Not until you are sure you are acting within the law should you do anything. And remember – a little understanding can go a long way.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________