Ministerul Educaţiei Naționale

Centrul Naţional de Evaluare şi Examinare

Etapa județeană/sectoarelor municipiului București a olimpiadelor naționale școlare –

2019

Probă scrisă

Limba engleză

CLASA a XII-a - SECȚIUNEA A

 Toate subiectele sunt obligatorii.

 Nu se acordă puncte din oficiu.
 Timpul efectiv de lucru este de 3 ore.
SUBIECTUL A – USE OF ENGLISH (40 points)
I. Read the following text and put the verbs in brackets into the correct form. 10 points

No sooner (1) ________ (Mr. Pontellier/LEARN) of his wife's intention to abandon her home
and take up her residence elsewhere than he wrote her a letter of unqualified disapproval. She
(2) ________ (ALREADY/GIVE) reasons which he was unwilling to acknowledge as adequate.
He hoped she (3) ________ (NOT ACT) upon her rash impulse when having decided to leave;
he wished she (4) ________ (CONSIDER) first, foremost, and above all else, what people
would say. When he uttered this warning, he wasn’t even dreaming of scandal. It (5) ________
(NEVER ENTER) his mind to consider that thing in connection with his wife's name or his own,
(6) ________ (IT/NOT BE) for the reality of it all. At that point, he (7) ________ (SIMPLY
THINK) of his financial integrity. The Pontelliers might be rumoured (8) ________ (MEET) with
difficulties during the past few months, and, hence, they (9) ________ (FORCE) to conduct their
ménage on a humbler scale than before. It might do incalculable mischief to his business
prospects. But only on remembering Edna's whimsical turn of mind of late, and foreseeing that
she had immediately acted upon her impetuous determination, (10) ________ (HE/GRASP) the
situation with his usual promptness and handle it with his well-known business tact and
cleverness.

II. Use the word given in brackets to form a word that fits in each gap. 10 points
In many countries, success is like royalty: you must be born into it. In sharp contrast, here your
dreams are within your grasp. Why? This country has (1)__________ (TRADITION) invited
every citizen to exploit five basic American attributes that distinguish the U.S. from virtually
every other country in the world: our (2)___________(WILL) to give women the same
educational opportunities as men; our (3)___________(RIVAL) history of openness to
immigrants, who remain a(n) (4)__________(END) source of (5)__________(ECONOMY)
vitality; our easy (6)__________(ACCEDE) to higher education, as opposed to such nations as
Japan and Germany, where (7)_________(AGE) students must pass vigorous exams to (8)
_________(QUALIFICATION) for college; our tradition of upward (9)__________ (MOBILE)
which – more so than in the class-conscious societies of Europe and Asia – allows children to
escape the circumstances of their birth; and our uncommon acceptance of career change,
which lets people (10)__________ (INVENTION) themselves again and again until they unleash
their full potential.

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 Ministerul Educaţiei Naționale
Centrul Naţional de Evaluare şi Examinare

III. Choose the correct answer A, B, C or D. 10 points

1. My friend ____ a degree at university so I ____ him very often lately, unfortunately.
A. is doing/haven’t seen
B. does/don’t see
C. has been doing/didn’t see
D. is doing/didn’t see

2. It’s the first time we ____ this rock band singing. They have released three albums so
far. However, popularity counts ____ nothing ____ they ____ a music award!
A. hear /as /if/ won’t win
B. have been hearing/ for/unless/win
C. have heard/as/ if/don’t win
D. have heard/for/unless/win

3. I ____ up all day and my feet ____ me! I don’t feel ____ to going out tonight.
A. have stood/kill/like
B. stand/are killing/able
C. have been standing/are killing/up
D. stood/kill/tempted

4. You’re acting completely ____. Just calm down and ____ yourself together! Stop
splitting ____ and look at the ____ picture!
A. irrationally/pull/hairs/big
B. irrational/pull/woods/large
C. irrational/get/stones/large
D. irrationally/put/wits/big

5. We _____ to figure ____ how the ____ got in. What we have found out so far is that
they tampered ____ the lock of the front door.
A. try/up/burglers/at
B. are trying/out/burglars/with
C. are trying/up/burglars/at
D. try/out/burglers/with

6. It’s too ____ for me to ____ in. Only when ____ the net ____ how to fill in the
application form.
A. much information/get/will I search/I will understand
B. much data/put/I search/will I understand
C. many data/set/I search/I will understand
D. much information/take/I have searched/will I understand

7. Why ____ Jane’s forehead?

I ____ she’s got a temperature. I wouldn’t be worried if she ____ earlier when we had dinner.
A. do you feel/am thinking/ate
B. are you feeling/think/had eaten
C. have you felt/think/would have eaten
D. did you feel/was thinking/has eaten

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 Ministerul Educaţiei Naționale
Centrul Naţional de Evaluare şi Examinare

8. This time tomorrow I ____ my statistics exam. Statistics ____ very difficult, you know!
Unless you ____ hard, you can’t ____ it!
A. will sit/are/don’t study/take
B. will be sitting/is/have studied/pass
C. will be sitting/is/haven’t studied/manage
D. am sitting/are/study/pass
9. You look great in that dress!
I ____ buy it then. Not since I returned from Paris ______ to find my size! It is ____ colour!
A. am going to/I have been able/such a bright
B. will/I was able/such bright a
C. will/have I been able/so bright a
D. am to/am I able/so a bright
10. I have just bought a ____ table. I ____ my kitchen redecorated and I want to buy some
new furniture. What ____ luck to find it!
A. brown round fashionable wooden/have/a
B. fashionable brown round wooden/am having/-
C. round fashionable brown wooden/have/a
D. fashionable round brown wooden/am having/-
IV. Translate the following text into English. 10 points

O întrebă de ce râde, şi îi spuse că a înveselit-o privirea lui, cum nu-şi mai aducea aminte să fi
fost privită vreodată.
- Te uiţi la mine ca şi cum ai vrea să descoperi un secret.
- Da, vreau să descopăr un secret şi l-am descoperit, cred. E lucrul pentru care am venit aici, în
această vizită neobişnuită pe care şi dumneata ai acceptat-o. Te-am descoperit şi am să-ţi spun
cum eşti, parcă aş vedea lumea prin ochii dumitale.
(Alexandru Ivasiuc: Păsările)

SUBIECTUL B – INTEGRATED SKILLS (60 points)

Read the text below and do the tasks that follow.
Handwritten notebook entries, scrapbook pages, running lists in a computer file, hard drives full
of pictures — all are ways to record, remember and even tally your experiences. In the Sunday
Book Review essay ―My Life With Bob,‖ Pamela Paul describes her habit of writing the title of
every book she’s read since high school in a journal she calls Bob.
With no small amount of trepidation, I lay open here the first page of my diary - high-schoolish
stabs at intellectualism, fleeting girlish obsessions, deliberately obscure annotations and all.
After many failed adolescent attempts at keeping a journal, the summer after my junior year in
high school, I finally found a format I could adhere to: Never mind describing the back-and-lack-
of-forths of unrequited crushes and falling-outs with friends. I decided to list the books I read
instead.

And I’ve stuck with this Book of Books, or Bob, as I’ve come to call it, ever since. Were my
house to burst suddenly into flames, I would bypass the laptop and photo albums and even,
God forgive me, my children’s artwork in order to rescue Bob, the record of every book I’ve read
or didn’t finish reading since the summer of 1988.

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 Ministerul Educaţiei Naționale
Centrul Naţional de Evaluare şi Examinare

It’s also become an itinerary of where I’ve been and where I really was while I was there. During
my 20s, when I lived abroad and travelled frequently, I would annotate Bob with my location at
the time, recording the serendipity of reading a particular book in a particular place. I remember
how, lying in a dormitory in Mauriac, an unspectacular hamlet in central France where I was
staying on an American Field Service program, I read the subject of the first entry, inspired by
Baryshnikov’s performance in ―Metamorphosis‖ on Broadway: ―The Trial‖ (fittingly, an unfinished
work).

Location often dictated content. When I backpacked through western China in the early 1990s, I
picked up whatever discards I could get from passing travellers — Donna Tartt’s ―Secret
History‖; a middling Tom Sharpe satire; ―Ethan Frome.‖ I remember reading ―Moby-Dick‖ during
a lonely holiday on Ko Phi Phi, while most vacationers more reasonably nursed hangovers with
potboilers and romance. And reading ―A Distant Mirror‖ in northern France, where I could visit
the nearby Château de Coucy.

I admitted to Bob when I read self-help or reread old favorites or tossed aside ―Interview With a
Vampire‖ after one chapter, mystified by its raging popularity. Bob knew that I was perennially
behind on pop-cultural phenomena, that I read ―A Civil Action‖ and ―The Bonfire of the Vanities‖
years after the cocktail-party chatter faded. That I never finished ―Paradise Lost‖ for freshman
English. With 24 years of data, Bob reveals as much about my literary foibles, passing
curiosities and guilty pleasures as any other diary.

I. For each question decide which answer (A, B, C or D) fits best according to the text. 10 points

1. In her attempt at keeping a diary the author decided not to include in it

A. her strife to get along with her siblings.

B. the books she had to read for school.
C. the fights she had with her friends.
D. the serendipity of her love life.

2. We can infer from the text that Mauriac is

A. a rural area in France without too much appeal.

B. a very busy French market-town.
C. a French translator of British plays.
D. a boarding school serving the American Field Service program.

3. While travelling in China the author read

A. travel books.
B. books about the history of China.
C. books that other people had left behind.
D. English-Chinese dictionaries.

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 Ministerul Educaţiei Naționale
Centrul Naţional de Evaluare şi Examinare

4. What is the thing the author couldn’t understand about ―Interview With a Vampire‖?
A. its title
B. its characters
C. its plot
D. its popularity

5. What does Bob represent in the text above?

A. an epithet
B. an acronym
C. a metaphor
D. a pun

II. Some people keep track of things and places, and hold on to objects like ticket stubs
to concerts and plays. Write an opinion essay about archiving your life. (250-280 words)
50 points

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