Part 3: You are going to read a newspaper article by a British student who worked at a summer camp in the US. Seven paragraphs have been removed from the article. Choose from the paragraphs A-H the one which fits each gap (124-130). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use. (7 points)
SUMMER CAMP: A SOAP OPERA
Every June, thousands of British students fly to the United States to spend their holidays working at summer camps. In return, they get a free return flight, full board, pocket money and the chance to travel. Lucy Graham joined a camp and spent eight weeks working with six to sixteen-year-olds.
I applied at the last minute and was so thrilled at the prospect of spending the holidays doing something more exciting than working in the local supermarket that I hastily accepted the only job left - in the camp laundry.
(124) ___ On arrival I was told by the camp director that I would be doing the washing for 200 children - on my own. Any romantic dreams I'd had quickly turned into nightmare reality. For the first week, the party sent out by the jobs agency - nine students, including me - became a full-time cleaning squad, getting the place ready for its grand opening.
(125) ___ The children's arrival also brought 50 American counsellors to look after them, and the opening of the laundry. At first, I had to work from 8.45 in the morning till 10.30 at night to get all my work done. Considering there was no hot water in the laundry and the machines were old, the washing came out remarkably well.
(126) ___ The kitchen workers, maintenance man and myself found that we were on the lowest level of the camp's class system. Our four British counsellor friends had a much better time. They got friendly with their American colleagues and were respected by the children. They were also given tips by parents after the holiday.
(127) ___ As for the camp itself, it had a large lake and excellent sporting facilities. But because organised activities for the children carried on into the evening, we usually didn't get the chance to use them. However, much more annoying were my room-mates, three 18-year-old girls who worked in the dining room.
(128) ___ On top of that, the camp food was poor, with child-size portions; fresh fruit and vegetables were rare. One catering worker even stood over the pineapple rings, checking that you took only one each.
(129) ___ However, I couldn't set off as soon as the children left because we had to stay on for a few days, cleaning and closing down the camp. My last duty was to load up the rubbish bags and take out any clothes the children had thrown away, in case their parents asked about them.
(130) ___ What's more, without the free ticket I got to the US - and the rail ticket from my parents - I would never have seen Niagara Falls, gone up the Empire State Building or had my picture taken with Mickey Mouse at Disney World.
A They had never been away from home before, and spent most of the night screaming with excitement. Sometimes, the only way to get any rest was to pretend to be ill and sleep in the medical centre.
B We weren't so lucky. We were never invited to join in the evening activities. When we did manage to get out of the camp, our evenings tended to consist of eating ice-cream at the local gas station.
C As a result, the standard of the camp you end up in is usually a question of luck. However, the agencies do hold meetings where you can ask representatives from camps about the facilities and the nature of the work you will be expected to do.
D We swept out the bedrooms and scrubbed the lavatories, gymnasium and kitchen. We polished the cooking equipment, put up the sports nets and carried any luggage sent on ahead to the bedrooms.
E On the whole it had been well worth it. Despite the washing, the camp's plus points had been a beautiful setting, meeting a great bunch of travelling companions and doing far more reading for my university course than I would have done at home.
F All these disadvantages meant that Saturdays, our days off, were highly valued. The places we visited then, such as New York City, gave me an appetite for travelling later on. If I hadn't done that, I would have regretted it - there is so much to see and do and I was keen to get on with it.
G But with so many clothes to wash and dry, some did get mixed up. I had six-year-olds marching up and telling me that their parents would be very angry if I didn't find their favourite sweater.
H I started to have my doubts while squashed between the swimming instructor and the sports teacher during the three-hour minibus ride to the camp, which was in a tiny town about 90 miles from New York City.
Your answer:
124. ……….…………… 125. …………………… 126. ……………………
127. ……………………. 128. …………………… 129. ……………………
130. …………………….
Part 4: Read the passage and fill in each gap with ONE suitable word. (10 points)
We have seen photographs of the whole earth taken from great distances in outer space. This is the first time, the (131) ………….. first time, in man's long history that such pictures have been possible. (132) ………….. many years most people have believed that the earth was ball-shaped. A few thought it was round and (133) ………….., like a coin. Now we know, beyond doubt, that those few were (134) …………. The photographs show a ball-shaped (135) …………., bright and beautiful. In colour photographs of the earth, the sky is as (136) …………. as coal. The (137) ………….. looks much bluer than it usually does to us. All our grey (138) ………….. are a perfect white in colour; because, of course, the (139) ………… is for ever shining on them. We are (140) ………….. to live on the beautiful earth.
Giúp mk làm bài này thôi!
1. One of the characteristics of the postal service before the 1840s was that
A. postmen were employed by various organisations.
B. letters were restricted to a certain length.
C. distance affected the price of postage.
D. the price of delivery kept going up.
2. Letter writers in the 1830s
A. were not responsible for the cost of delivery.
B. tried to fit more than one letter into an envelope.
C. could only send letters to people living in cities.
D. knew all letters were automatically read by postal staff.
3. What does the text say about Hill in the 1830s?
A. He was the first person to express concern about the postal system.
B. He considered it would be more efficient for mail to be delivered by rail.
C. He felt that postal service reform was necessary for commercial development.
D. His plan received support from all the important figures of the day.
It might not have looked very impressive, but the Penny Black, now 170 years old, was the first stamp to be created and it launched the modem postal system in Britain.
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.Before 1840 and the arrival of the Penny Black, you had to be rich and patient to use the Royal Mail. Delivery was charged according to the miles travelled and the number of sheets of paper used; a 2-page letter sent from Edinburgh to London, for example, would have cost 2 shillings, or more than £7 in today’s money. And when the top-hatted letter carrier came to deliver it, it was the recipient who had to pay for the postage. Letter writers employed various ruses to reduce the cost, doing everything possible to cram more words onto a page. Nobody bothered with heavy envelopes; instead, letters would be folded and sealed with wax. You then had to find a post office - there were no pillar boxes - and hope your addressee didn't live in one of the several rural areas which were not served by the system. If you were lucky, your letter would arrive (it could take days) without being read or censored.
The state of mail had been causing concern throughout the 1830s, but it was Rowland Hill, an inventor, teacher and social reformer from Kidderminster, who proposed a workable plan for change. Worried that a dysfunctional, costly service would stifle communication just as Britain was in the swing of its second industrial revolution, he believed reform would ease the distribution of ideas and stimulate trade and business, delivering the same promise as the new railways.
Hill’s proposal for the penny post, which meant any letter weighing less than half an ounce (14 grams) could be sent anywhere in Britain for about 30p in today’s money, was so radical that the Postmaster General, Lord Lichfield, said, 'Of all the wild and visionary schemes which I ever heard of, it is the most extravagant.’ Lord Lichfield spoke for an establishment not convinced of the need for poor people to post anything. But merchants and reformers backed Hill. Soon the government told him to make his scheme work. And that meant inventing a new type of currency.
Hill quickly settled on 'a bit of paper covered at the back with a glutinous wash which the user might, by applying a little moisture, attach to the back of a letter’. Stamps would be printed in sheets of 240 that could be cut using scissors or a knife. Perforations would not arrive until 1854. The idea stuck, and in August 1839 the Treasury launched a design competition open to ‘all artists, men of science and the public in general’. The new stamp would need to be resistant to forgery, and so it was a submission by one Mr Cheverton that Hill used as the basis for one of the most striking designs in history. Cheverton, who worked as a sculptor and an engineer, determined that a portrait of Queen Victoria, engraved for a commemorative coin when she was a 15-year-old princess, was detailed enough to make copying difficult, and recognisable enough to make fakes easy to spot. The words ‘Postage’ and ‘One Penny’ were added alongside flourishes and ornamental stars. Nobody thought to add the word ‘Britain’, as it was assumed that the stamps would solely be put to domestic use.
With the introduction of the new postal system, the Penny Black was an instant hit, and printers struggled to meet demand. By the end of 1840, more than 160 million letters had been sent - more than double the previous year. It created more work for the post office, whose reform continued with the introduction of red letter boxes, new branches and more frequent deliveries, even to the remotest address, but its lasting impact on society was more remarkable.
Hill and his supporters rightly predicted that cheaper post would improve the ‘diffusion of knowledge’. Suddenly, someone in Scotland could be reached by someone in London within a day or two. And as literacy improved, sections of society that had been disenfranchised found a voice.
Tristram Hunt, an historian, values the ‘flourishing of correspondence’ that followed the arrival of stamps. ‘While I was writing my biography of Friedrich Engels I could read the letters he and Marx sent between Manchester and London,’ he says. ‘They wrote to each other three times a day, pinging ideas back and forth so that you can almost follow a real-time correspondence.’
The penny post also changed the nature of the letter. Weight-saving tricks such as cross-writing began to die out, while the arrival of envelopes built confidence among correspondents that mail would not be stolen or read. And so people wrote more private things - politically or commercially sensitive information or love letters. ‘In the early days of the penny post, there was still concern about theft,’ Hunt says. ‘Engels would still send Marx money by ripping up five-pound notes and sending the pieces in different letters.’ But the probity of the postal system became a great thing and it came to be expected that your mail would not be tampered with.
For all its brilliance, the Penny Black was technically a failure. At first, post offices used red ink to cancel stamps so that they could not be used again. But the ink could be removed. When in 1842, it was determined that black ink would be more robust, the colour of the Penny Black became a sort of browny red, but Hill’s brainchild had made its mark.
1. One of the characteristics of the postal service before the 1840s was that
A. postmen were employed by various organisations.
B. letters were restricted to a certain length.
C. distance affected the price of postage.
D. the price of delivery kept going up.
2. Letter writers in the 1830s
A. were not responsible for the cost of delivery.
B. tried to fit more than one letter into an envelope.
C. could only send letters to people living in cities.
D. knew all letters were automatically read by postal staff.
3. What does the text say about Hill in the 1830s?
A. He was the first person to express concern about the postal system.
B. He considered it would be more efficient for mail to be delivered by rail.
C. He felt that postal service reform was necessary for commercial development.
D. His plan received support from all the important figures of the day.