John _____ this task yesterday morning, but I did it for him. He owes me a thank-you.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 33 to 37.

ENGLISH SPEELING

Why does English spelling have a reputation for being difficult? English was first written down when Christian monks came to England in Anglo-Saxon (33) ______. They used the 23 letters of Latin to write down the sounds of Anglo-Saxon speech as they heard it. However, English has a (34) _____ range of basic sounds (over 40) than Latin. The alphabet was too small, and so combinations of letters were needed to express the different sounds. Inevitably, there were inconsistencies in the way that letters were combined.

With the Norman invasion of England, the English language was put at risk. English survived, but the spelling of many English words changed to follow French (35) _____, and many French words were introduced into the language. The result was more irregularity.

When the printing press was invented in the fifteenth century, many early printers of English texts spoke other first languages. They made little effort to respect English spelling. Although one of the shortterm (36) _____ of printing was to produce a number of variant spellings, in the long term it created fixed spellings. People became used to seeing words spelt in the same way. Rules were drawn up, and dictionaries were put together which printers and writers could refer to. However, spoken English was not fixed and continued to change slowly - just as it still does now. Letters that were sounded in the Anglo- Saxon period, like the 'k' in 'knife', now became (37) _____. Also, the pronunciation of vowels then had little in common with how they sound now, but the way they are spelt hasn't changed. No wonder, then, that it is often difficult to see the link between sound and spelling.

Điền vào ô 37.

Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct word or phrase that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 33 to 37.

ENGLISH SPEELING

Why does English spelling have a reputation for being difficult? English was first written down when Christian monks came to England in Anglo-Saxon (33) ______. They used the 23 letters of Latin to write down the sounds of Anglo-Saxon speech as they heard it. However, English has a (34) _____ range of basic sounds (over 40) than Latin. The alphabet was too small, and so combinations of letters were needed to express the different sounds. Inevitably, there were inconsistencies in the way that letters were combined.

With the Norman invasion of England, the English language was put at risk. English survived, but the spelling of many English words changed to follow French (35) _____, and many French words were introduced into the language. The result was more irregularity.

When the printing press was invented in the fifteenth century, many early printers of English texts spoke other first languages. They made little effort to respect English spelling. Although one of the shortterm (36) _____ of printing was to produce a number of variant spellings, in the long term it created fixed spellings. People became used to seeing words spelt in the same way. Rules were drawn up, and dictionaries were put together which printers and writers could refer to. However, spoken English was not fixed and continued to change slowly - just as it still does now. Letters that were sounded in the Anglo- Saxon period, like the 'k' in 'knife', now became (37) _____. Also, the pronunciation of vowels then had little in common with how they sound now, but the way they are spelt hasn't changed. No wonder, then, that it is often difficult to see the link between sound and spelling.

Điền vào ô 33.

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the sentence that best combines each pair of sentences in the following questions.

I’d suggest that we avoid telling any scary stories with Janet around. She’s a bit unstable and could get hysterical.

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word whose underlined part differs from the other three in pronunciation in each of the following questions.

She went _____ a bad cold just before Christmas.

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word(s) CLOSEST in meaning to the underlined word(s) in each of the following questions.

We spent the entire day looking for a new apartment.

The man who was driving the truck would not admit that he had been at fault, and _____.

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word that differs from the other three in the position of primary stress in each of the following questions.

We couldn’t help laughing when he took _____ his teacher so well

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word that differs from the other three in the position of primary stress in each of the following questions.

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the word whose underlined part differs from the other three in pronunciation in each of the following questions.

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the underlined part that needs correction in each of the following questions.

Metal and glass containers can be recycled, and several states are currently contemplating mandatory recycling for either.

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 from 38 to 42.

HISTORY OF THE HELICOPTER

Although first flight generally attributed to a fixed-wing aircraft, the helicopter actually represents the first style of flight envisioned by humans. The ancient Chinese developed a toy that rose upward when spun rapidly. As early as the mid-sixteenth century, the great Italian inventor Leonardo da Vinci had drawn a prototype for the machine that we now know as the helicopter.

Early in the twentieth century, a great deal of experimentation and revision was taking place with regard to helicopter flight. The well-known phrase “two steps forward and one step back” provided an apt descriptor for early flight development. Uneven lift, known as dissymmetry, caused the early helicopters to flip over and confounded the inventors until the creation of the swash-plate; this allowed the rotor blade angles to be changed so that lift would be equal on each side of the shaft.

On November 13, 1907, the French pioneer Paul Cornu made history by lifting a twin-rotor helicopter into the air for a few seconds without ground assistance. Several models followed without significance until in 1924 when another French pioneer, Etienne Oehmichen, became the first to fly a helicopter for one kilometer. It was a historic flight of 7 minutes and 40 seconds. By 1936, solutions have been found to many of the problems with helicopter flight.

With the introduction of the German Focke-Wulf Fw 61, the first practical helicopter became a reality.

Why was “dissymmetry” important to the early pioneers of helicopter flight?

Mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the sentence that best combines each pair of sentences in the following questions.

We chose to find a place for the night. We found the bad weather very inconvenient.

Read the following passage on transport, and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the correct answer to each of the questions from 43 to 50.

“The economic history of the United States”, one scholar has written, “is the history of the rise and development of the capitalistic system”. The colonists of the eighteenth century pushed forward what those of the seventeenth century have begun: the expansion and elaboration of an economy born in the great age of capitalist expansion.

Our excellent natural resources paved the way for the development of abundant capital to increase our growth. Capital includes the tools – such as: machines, vehicles, and buildings – that makes the outputs of labor and resources more valuable. But it also includes the funds necessary to buy those tools. If a society had to consume everything it produced just to stay alive, nothing could be put aside to increase future productions. But if a farmer can grow more corn than his family needs to eat, he can use the surplus as seed to increase the next crop, or to feed workers who build tractors. This process of capital accumulation was aided in the American economy by our cultural heritage. Saving played an important role in the European tradition. It contributed to American’s motivation to put something aside today for the tools to buy tomorrow.

The great bulk of the accumulated wealth of America, as distinguished from what was consumed, was derived either directly or indirectly from trade. Though some manufacturing existed, its role in the accumulation of capital was negligible. A merchant class of opulent proportions was already visible in the seaboard cities, its wealth as the obvious consequence of shrewd and resourceful management of the carrying trade. Even the rich planters of tidewater Virginia and the rice coast of South Carolina finally depended for their genteel way of life upon the ships and merchants who sold their tobacco and rice in the markets of Europe. As colonial production rose and trade expanded, a business community emerged in the colonies, linking the provinces by lines of trade and identity of interest.

With what subject is this passage mainly concerned?