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Practice Test 46
Practice Test 46
SECTION A: PHONETICS
1 A. executive B. execrable C. exhale D. exhibition
2. A. brood B. broomstick C. foolscap D. brooch
3. A. plague B. argue C. tongue D. dialogue
4. A. unique B. building C. stimulate D. limitless
5. A. island B. aisle C. conserve D. debris
II. Circle A, B, C, or D to indicate the word whose stress pattern is different from the others’ in the
same line.
1. A. admirable B. contravene C. conscientious D. analytic
2. A. delicacy B. prevalence C. inventory D. interrupt
3. A. complacent B. democrat C. jeopardy D. competence
4. A. painstakingly B. condolence C. communism D. obstinacy
5. A. meander B. arable C. subtlety D. phagocite
SECTION B. LEXICO-GRAMMAR
Part 1: Choose the answer that best completes each sentence. (20 pts)
1. I’ve heard that argument before and quite frankly it jusT doesn’t ...................!
A. face the music B. hit the roof C. carry weight D. hold water
2. Tim: “You are so lucky to begoing abroad for a whole semester!”
Janet: “ ..................... I’ll miss my friends and family.”
A. That is B. On account that C. All the same D. But despite
3. Unsalted butter is best for this recipe, but ............... that , margarine will do.
A. except B. failing C. for all of D. given
4. In spite of working their fingers to the ................, all the staff were made redundant.
A. nail B. edge C. flesh D. bone
5. Instead of defending traditional values, the church frequently seems _______ and irresolute.
A. far-fetched B. strong-willed C. weak-kneed D. long-awaited
6. The more expensive carpet is a good choice _______ it will last longer.
A. by means of B. due to C. in that D. in view of
7. She got a bit hot _______ the collar when a colleague started criticizing her work.
A. under B. on C. beyond D. from
8. Employees of the company are forbidden to ________ information about the secret formula.
A. betray B. divulge C. portray D. unveil
9. Jack _______and can usually let us know what the boss’s mood is.
A. turns a blind eye B. plays it by ear
C. keeps his ear to the ground D. is all ears
10.It sounds like you let people take advantage of you ________, you need to learn to be more
assertive.
A. Otherwise B. If only C. What if D. If so
11. It was a hot summer day and ice cream salesmen were doing a ________trade.
A. busy B. lucrative C. bustling D. roaring
12. My mother had to take private pupils in order to ___________ her salary as a teacher.
A. augment B. expand C. complete D. inflate
13. I found the last scene extremely ……… and particularly well-directed.
A. pathetic B. sympathetic C. pitiful D. moving
14. Lauren is often labelled easy-going as she tends to appear mild and relaxed rather than tense and
___________
A. sullen B. likeable C. humorous D. excitable
15. The two boys really …………… it off from the moment they met.
A. hit B. struck C. made D. put
16. I picked up these ___________from the travel agents today. They have a great offer on cruises to
Turkey for the end of April!
A. leaflets B. manifestoes C. brochures D. programmes
17. I had a strong ___________ that a disaster would occur, and it did.
A. premonition B. prediction C. forethought D. anticipation
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18. Because of the dominance of retail chain-stores, most shopping centers show the same bland _______
and no imagination.
A. similarity B. likeness C. equality D. uniformity
19. She wears the most _______ color combinations you could ever imagine.
A. hiding B. hideout C. hidebound D. hideous
20. It would help _______ me, if you could go to the Post Office for me.
A. totally B. absolutely C. enormously D. largely
Part 2. Give the correct form of the word in the brackets. (10 pts)
1. The building looks a bit _________ from the outside but it’s quite traditional inside. (FUTURE)
2. She was charged with being disorderly and ____________. (INTOXICANT)
3. The damage caused by the terrible storm two days ago was___________ by the government. The
real figures go up every minute. (ESTIMATE)
4. They exchanged ___________ for a few minutes before saying goodbye. (PLEASANT)
5. There is a decline in the __________ of cigarette smoking among young men. (PREVAIL)
6. Many teachers expressed serious __________ about the new tests. (GIVE)
7. The new policy only serves to __________ the inadequacy of help for the homeless. (ACCENT)
8. The unresponsive audience made the lecturer somewhat ________ .What a shame. (HEART)
9. They paid little attention to the _______ of the pieces. (FRAGMENT)
10. Chrissy tossed the junk mail in the bin and in doing so, she _______ made a joke of the lives of people
she would. (WIT)
Part 3. Complete each of the following sentences with a suitable preposition or particle (10 pts)
1. His fame is now _______ the wane.
2. If you want tickets to the game, you’ll have to be quick _______ the mark.
3. In matters pertaining ________ the soul, woman does not differ from man.
4. She played ________ the fact that I’d enjoyed studying Shakespeare at school and suggested
that I audition for a part.
5. It was a good offer, but he would need time to mull it ________ .
6. The Vietnamese national team has clocked _______ 8 gold medals in the Martial arts events.
7. If the school reins _______its expenditure on research and development, the quality, as a whole,
will be affected.
8. It’s generally agreed that the primary responsibility for the child’s education should
rest_______ the family.
9. During the violent storm, the little boats strained _______ their anchors at the mercy of the
breaking waves.
10. Students are demanding equal rights for men and women, and several newspapers have taken
_______ their cause.
SECTION C: III. READING
Part 1: Read the following passage and decide which answer (A, B, C, or D) best fits each gap. Write
your answers in corresponding numbered boxes. (15 pts)
The war on drugs in the United States is a (n) (1) ______ battle that has, as of recent times, reached
(2) ______ levels. In every city and state across the nation, law enforcement officials are working around
the (3) ______ to eradicate the illegal use, possession and (4) ______ of controlled substances at all levels
of society. The increasing devotion of resources and efforts to the battle has achieved mixed results.
A growing amount of money is being devoted to the (5) ______ of the war on drugs as time
progresses. At last count, 19. 2 billion dollars was being spent annually on the ongoing struggle, (6)
______ of pay for law enforcement officials, education, treatment and other uses. This staggering amount
translates into a stunning 609 dollars per second.
Results are being achieved. An arrest for drug-related offenses occurs every 20 seconds, and 648
people are put in prison every day on drug-related charges. These numbers illustrate the prevailing tactic
used by the U. S. government in the war against drug-going after the people supporting the industry. By
removing both the suppliers and purchasers of illegal drugs, it is hoped that the industry will collapse by
itself, through the (7) ______ of supply and demand.
Aside from directly arresting those individuals responsible for the selling and purchasing of illegal
drugs, the United States has also (8) ______ on a campaign to take away the tools by which the drugs are
used, primarily in the form of needles. To this end, there has been a recent federal ban on needle exchanges
intended to restrict access to the tools necessary for the use of some illegal drugs.
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This program has drawn harsh criticism, however, as it has resulted in the use reuse of unsanitary
needles, possibly contributing to the number of AIDS infections in drug users who would otherwise have
avoided infection by using (9) ______ needles that could have been provided, but for the federal ban.
According to a study conducted by the AIDS Prevention Studies Center of the University of California at
San Francisco, 4, 000 new infections of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, could be avoided per year if the
federal ban on needle exchanges was (10) ______. This translates into more than 10 new cases of HIV
avoided per day, a figure that causes one to pause and consider whether the war on drugs is being fought
in the best manner possible.
1. A. escalating B. decreasing C. downhill D. ceasing
2. A. comparable B. previous C. unprecedented D. achievable
3. A. watch B. clock C. time D. tide
4. A. contribution B. attribution C. distribution D. substitution
5. A. founding B. funding C. commerce D. trading
6. A. consisting B. being consisted C. was consisted D. were consisted
7. A. elimination B. illumination C. deterioration D. escalation
8. A. joined B. participated C. embarked D. engaged
9. A. saturated B. fertile C. sterile D. barren
10. A. lifted B. raised C. aroused D. risen
Part 2: Fill each blank with ONE suitable word. (15 pts)
In most art museums, the paintings on the wall just look flat, (1) ______ sometimes visitors come across
an image that appears to be three-dimensional. The artist has cleverly used colors, lines, and shading to
give the painting some depth, making it more (2) ______. The artistic technique of creating three-
dimensional images of something on a flat surface is called trompe l'oeil, a French phrase meaning tricking
the eye. Today, some artists are adapting the idea of tricking the eye to make things become invisible. A
new (3) ______ for this is camouflage art. In nature, there are major benefits to using camouflage to blend
(4) ______ with the surroundings. Becoming invisible, or at (5) ______ being harder to see on the ground
or in a tree allows insects and animals to hide from things that might eat them. It also allows them to get
close (6) ______ to surprise other insects or smaller animals that they want to catch and eat. Artists are
not hiding or preparing to attack. (7) ______, they are using the idea of camouflage to make urban spaces
look nicer or to make statements with their art. Sometimes they just do it (8) ______ fun. Artists can make
these things more interesting and in some cases make them (9) ______ visible. In many urban areas, large
buildings have been painted with amazing murals that trick our eyes. Thus, ordinary brick walls are
transformed into interesting (10) ______ of art. Temporary walls put up to keep people out of a
construction site can be painted like the finished building to camouflage the site.
Part 3: Read the text and do the following tasks. (15 pts)
THE ROBOTS ARE COMING - OR ARE THEY?
What is the current state of play in Artificial Intelligence?
A. Can robots advance so far that they become the ultimate threat to our existence? Some scientists say
no, and dismiss the very idea of Artificial Intelligence. The human brain, they argue, is the most
complicated system ever created, and any machine designed to reproduce human thought is bound to
fail. Physicist Roger Penrose of Oxford University and others believe that machines are physically
incapable of human thought. Colin McGinn of Rutgers University backs this up when he says that
Artificial Intelligence is like sheep trying to do complicated psychoanalysis. They just don't have the
conceptual equipment they need in their limited brains'.
B. Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is different from most technologies in that scientists still understand
very little about how intelligence works. Physicists have a good understanding of Newtonian
mechanics and the quantum theory of atoms and molecules, whereas the basic laws of intelligence
remain a mystery. But a sizeable number of mathematicians and computer scientists, who are
specialists in the area, are optimistic about the possibilities. To them it is only a matter of time before
a thinking machine walks out of the laboratory. Over the years, various problems have impeded all
efforts to create robots. To attack these difficulties, researchers tried to use the 'top-down approach',
using a computer in an attempt to program all the essential rules onto a single disc. By inserting this
into a machine, it would then become self-aware and attain human-like intelligence.
C. In the 1950s and 1960s great progress was made, but the shortcomings of these prototype robots soon
became clear. They were huge and took hours to navigate across a room. Meanwhile, a fruit fly, with
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a brain containing only a fraction of the computing power, can effortlessly navigate in three
dimensions. Our brains, like the fruit fly's, unconsciously recognise what we see by performing
countless calculations. This unconscious awareness of patterns is exactly what computers are
missing. The second problem is robots' lack of common sense. Humans know that water is wet and
that mothers are older than their daughters. But there is no mathematics that can express these truths.
Children learn the intuitive laws of biology and physics by interacting with the real world. Robots
know only what has been programmed into them.
D. Because of the limitations of the top-down approach to Artificial Intelligence, attempts have been
made to use a 'bottom-up' approach instead - that is, to try to imitate evolution and the way a baby
learns. Rodney Brooks was the director of MIT's Artificial Intelligence laboratory, famous for its
lumbering 'topdown' walking robots. He changed the course of research when he explored the
unorthodox idea of tiny 'insectoid' robots that learned to walk by bumping into things instead of
computing mathematically the precise position of their feet. Today many of the descendants of
Brooks' insectoid robots are on Mars gathering data for NASA (The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration), running across the dusty landscape of the planet. For all their successes in
mimicking the behaviour of insects, however, robots using neural networks have performed
miserably when their programmers have tried to duplicate in them the behaviour of higher organisms
such as mammals. MIT's Marvin Minsky summarises the problems of AI: 'The history of AI is sort
of funny because the first real accomplishments were beautiful things, like a machine that could do
well in a maths course. But then we started to try to make machines that could answer questions about
simple children's stories. There's no machine today that can do that.'
E. There are people who believe that eventually there will be a combination between the top-down and
bottom-up, which may provide the key to Artificial Intelligence. As adults, we blend the two
approaches. It has been suggested that our emotions represent the quality that most distinguishes us
as human, that it is impossible for machines ever to have emotions. Computer expert Hans Moravec
thinks that in the future robots will be programmed with emotions such as fear to protect themselves
so that they can signal to humans when their batteries are running low, for example. Emotions are
vital in decision-making. People who have suffered a certain kind of brain injury lose the ability to
experience emotions and become unable to make decisions. Without emotions to guide them, they
debate endlessly over their options. Moravec points out that as robots become more intelligent and
are able to make choices, they could likewise become paralysed with indecision. To aid them, robots
of the future might need to have emotions hardwired into their brains.
F. There is no universal consensus as to whether machines can be conscious, or even, in human terms,
what consciousness means. Minsky suggests the thinking process in our brain is not localised but
spread out, with different centres competing with one another at any given time. Consciousness may
then be viewed as a sequence of thoughts and images issuing from these different, smaller 'minds',
each one competing for our attention. Robots might eventually attain a 'silicon consciousness',
Robots, in fact, might one day embody an architecture for thinking and processing information that
is different from ours - but also indistinguishable. If that happens, the question of whether they really
'understand' becomes largely irrelevant. A robot that has perfect mastery of syntax, for all practical
purposes, understands what is being said.
Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter, A-F.
1. an insect that proves the superiority of natural intelligence over Artificial Intelligence
2. robots being able to benefit from their mistakes
3. many researchers not being put off believing that Artificial Intelligence will eventually be developed
4. the possibility of creating Artificial Intelligence being doubted by some academics
5. no generally accepted agreement of what our brains do
Complete the summary below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
When will we have a thinking machine?
Despite some advances, the early robots had certain (6) ______. They were given the information they
needed on a (7) ______. This was known as the 'top-down' approach and enabled them to do certain tasks
but they were unable to recognise (8) ______. Nor did they have any intuition or ability to make decisions
based on experience. Rodney Brooks tried a different (9) ______. Robots similar to those invented by
Brooks are to be found on (10) ______where they are collecting information.
Part 4. Read the following passage and choose the best answer A, B, C or D .
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There is one kind of pain for which nobody has yet found a cure—the pain that comes from the ending of
a relationship. The relationship could be a marriage, a love affair, or a deep friendship, in fact, any strong
emotional tie between two people. Such a relationship may come to an abrupt but premeditated end: or it
may simply fade away slowly as people and circumstances change. You may be the one to “break it off”
, with a short note or a brief phone call. Or you may be on the receiving end, like the soldier who dreads
getting a “Dear john” letter from a girlfriend who has got tired of waiting. But however it ended and
whoever decided to end it, the pain is equally hard to bear. It is a sort of death, and it requires the same
period of mourning, the same time for grief.
Although there is no cure for grief, we cannot help looking for one, to ease the pain and to make us forget
our tears. We seek refuge in other relationships, we keep ourselves busy with work, we try to immerse
ourselves in our hobbies. Perhaps we start to drink more than we should to “drown our sorrows,” or we
follow the conventional advice and join a club or society. But these things only relieve the symptoms of
the illness; they cannot cure it. Moreover, we are always in a hurry to get rid of our grief. It is as if we
were ashamed of it. We feel that we should be able to “pull ourselves together.” We try to convince
ourselves, as we bite on the pillow, that we are much too old to be crying. Some people bury their grief
deep inside themselves, so that nobody will guess what they are going through. Others seek relief by
pouring their hearts out to their friends, or to anyone else who can offer a sympathetic shoulder to cry on.
But after a while, even our friends start to show their impatience, and suggest with their reproachful
glances that it is about time we stopped crying. They, too, are in a hurry for the thing to be over.
It is not easy to explain why we adopt this attitude to emotional pain, when we would never expect anyone
to overcome physical pain simply by an effort of will power. Part of the answer must lie in the nature of
grief itself. When the love affair dies, you cannot believe that you will ever find another person to replace
the one who has gone so completely out of your life. Even after many, many months, when you think that
you have begun to learn to live without your lost love, something—a familiar place, a piece of music, a
whiff of perfume — will suddenly bring the bitter-sweet memories flooding back. You choke back the
tears and desperate, almost angry, feeling that you are no better now than the day the affair ended.
And yet, grief is like an illness that must run its course. Memories do fade eventually, a healing skin does
start to grow over the wound, the intervals between sudden glimpses of the love you have lost do get
longer. Bit by bit, life resumes its normal flow. Such is the complexity of human nature that we can even
start to feel guilty as these things start to happen, as if it were an insult to our lost love that we can begin
to forget at all.
The important thing to admit about grief, then, is that it will take its time. By trying to convince ourselves
that it ought to be over sooner, we create an additional tension which can only make things worse. People
who have gone through the agony of a broken relationship and there are few who have not -agree that
time is the "GREAT HEALER". How much time is needed will vary from person to person, but
psychiatrist have “a rule of thumb”: grief will last as long as the original relationship lasted .The sad thing
is that ,when the breakdown occurs ,we can only stumble forward over the stones beneath out feet. It is
dark ahead, and you will feel painfully many times before we begin to see the light as the end of the
tunnel.
1. Relationships often come to an end because……………
A. the feeling of the people was not very deep.
B. people do not realize the pain they can cause.
C. people do not always stay the same.
D. very few people really know how to love.
2. One way to get over the broken relationship is to …………
A. write a “Dear john” letter. B. form new relationships
C. make a brief phone call D. try to forget the other person.
3. If you seek advice on what to do about a broken relationship, you will probably be told to ………..
A. pull yourself together (use your will power) B. keep busy at work
C. find someone else D. join a club
4. Often we are ashamed when we cry because …………..
A. we think it is a childish thing to do.
B. we do not expect our unhappiness to last so long.
C. we are worried about what others will think of us
D. only children and babies cry.
5. You tell your friends about your unhappiness because…………
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A. you hope it will make you feel better
B. you want them to hear the story from you
C. you feel sure that they have had similar experiences
D. you want them to feel sorry for you
6. When your friends get tired of listening to you they will ………….
A. tell you to pull yourself together
B. try to avoid your company
C. show by their expressions that they have had enough
D. help you to get over your grief
7. We are upset by reminders of our lost love because they come so……………
A. rarely. B. rapidly. C. unexpectedly. D. occasionally.
8. Memories continue to upset you, and this makes you feel that…………
A. will never get over your grief B. have no will power
C. are utterly alone D. have made no progress at all
9. If we try to recover too quickly from grief we shall make ourselves………
A. nervous B. tense C. ill D. unpopular
10. Psychiatrists tell you that grief will last as long as the original relationship. This calculation is
……………..
A. the result of scientific research B. no more than a hopeful guess
C. generally true but with many exceptions D. based on a deep understanding of human
nature.
SECTION D: WRITING
1. We didn’t see a soul all day.
→ Not ……………………………………………………………….
2. Gerry has applied for the job of financial director.
→ Gerry has put ……………………………………………………………….
3. Our teacher used Sophia as an example of a good student.
→ Our teacher held ……………………………………………………………….
4. I’m not much interested in sports.
→ I don’t really go ……………………………………………………………….
5. Terry was rude but Anne got her revenge on him.
→ Anne paid ……………………………………………………………….
Part 2. Write a new sentence as similar as possible in meaning to the original sentence, using the
words given in capital letters. These words must not be altered in any way.
1. The houses that were very close to the blast were badly damaged. (immediate)
………………………………………………………………………………….
2. They were married last year. (man)
………………………………………………………………………………….
3. He admits he’s not one of the important members of the organization. (cog)
………………………………………………………………………………….
4. You’ve been deceived by them. (ride)
………………………………………………………………………………….
5. It didn’t take us long to finish doing the accounts. (short)
………………………………………………………………………………….