Question

[Dương Minh]

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions.  

For many people who  live  in  cities, parks are an  important part of the  landscape. They provide a place  for  people  to  relax  and  play  sports,  as  well  as  a refuge  from  the often  harsh  environment of  a city. What people often overlook is that parks also provide considerable environmental benefits.

One benefit of parks is that plants absorb carbon dioxide—a key pollutant—and emit oxygen, which humans  need  to  breathe.  According  to one  study,  an  acre  of  trees  can  absorb  the  same  amount of carbon dioxide that a typical car emits in 11,000 miles of driving. Parks also make cities cooler. Scientists have long noted what is called the Urban Heat Island Effect: building  materials  such as  metal, concrete, and asphalt absorb much more of the sun’s heat and release it much more quickly than organic surfaces like trees and grass. Because city landscapes contain so much of these building materials, cities are usually warmer than surrounding rural areas. Parks and other green spaces help to mitigate the Urban Heat Island Effect.

Unfortunately, many cities cannot easily create more parks because most land is already being used for buildings, roads, parking lots, and other essential parts of the urban environment. However, cities could benefit  from  many of the positive effects of parks by encouraging citizens to create another type  of green space: rooftop gardens. While most people would not think of starting a garden on their roof, human beings have been planting gardens on rooftops for thousands of years. Some rooftop gardens are very complex and require complicated  engineering, but  others  are  simple  container  gardens  that  anyone  can  create  with  the investment of a few hundred dollars and a few hours of work.

Rooftop  gardens  provide many  of  the  same  benefits  as  other  urban  park  and  garden  spaces,  but without taking up the much-needed land. Like parks, rooftop gardens help to replace carbon dioxide in the air with nourishing oxygen. They also help to lessen the Urban Heat Island Effect, which can save people money.  In  the  summer,  rooftop  gardens  prevent  buildings  from  absorbing  heat  from  the  sun,  which  can significantly reduce cooling bills. In the winter, gardens help hold in the heat that materials like brick and concrete radiate so quickly, leading to savings on heating bills. Rooftop vegetable and herb gardens can also provide fresh food for city dwellers, saving them money and making their diets healthier. Rooftop gardens are not only something everyone can enjoy, they are also a smart environmental investment.

Based on its use in paragraph 2,  it  can be inferred that mitigate belongs to which of the following word groups? 

A. exacerbate, aggravate, intensify

B. obliterate, destroy, annihilate

C. allay, alleviate, reduce

D. absorb, intake, consume

Answer 1

[Nguyen Hoang Hai]

C

Mitigate: giảm nhẹ, làm dịu bớt

Vì vậy nó thuộc về nhóm allay, alleviate, reduce (những từ này đồng ý nghĩa là giảm bớt, làm dịu đi)

exacerbate, aggravate, intensify: làm cho trầm trọng tệ hại hơn

obliterate, destroy, annihilate: tàn phá, xoá sạch

absorb, intake, consume: ngấm vào, hấp thụ