Upper-Intermediate Level

Name: _______________________________________

Class: _______________________________________

Score: _______________________________________

Assorted Test 3
I. LEXICO – GRAMMAR:

1. Choose the option (A, B, C or D) which best completes each sentence:

1. He bought luxury cars, jewels and he'd throw large extravagant parties at the drop of a __________.
A. droplet B. mud C. stick D. hat:ko trì hoãn
2. It's time you pulled your __________ up and got down to some serious work. Your exam's next week.
A. socks:cố gắng B. pants C. sleeves D. gloves
3. My sister and I may look alike, but in character we're as different as chalk and __________.
A. oil B. cheese:khác nhiều C. chicken D. chopper
4. She exaggerates everything, so take anything she says with a pinch of __________.
A. pepper B. sate C. seasoning D. salt:ko tin
5. Oh what's his name? It's ... it’s ….on the tip of my __________.
A. tongue B. mouth C. hand D. ear
6. The police in this country tend to turn a __________ to minor traffic chances
A. closed mouth B. mute nose C. blind eye D. deaf ear
7. The lights slowly __________ the curtain went up, and the audience went wild.
A dulled B darkened C diminished D dimmed
8. That wasn't an accident. It was arson. Someone intentionally __________ fire to that building.
A put B lit C caught D set
9. George and Milly were wonderful to me. They went out of their __________ to make me feel at home.
A. day B. way C. workD. hard
10. Don’t breathe a __________ of this to anyone, but I think they are going to give Thompson the sack.
A. word B. thingC. sentence D. verse
11. Well, those first games don’t __________. My hand control wasn't working properly.
A. mind B. take C. count D. hold
12. __________ flew at the meeting
A. flames B. flares C. smoke D. sparks
13. Obviously, Mr Philips was wrong and we'll deal with that in __________ course, but first I want to know how
this all started.
A. real B. right C. long D. due

Nguyen Van Thang

 Upper-Intermediate Level
14. This place is a __________. You'd better tidy it up before your landlady comes back.
A. fit B. board C. tip D. clumsiness
15. Violent crime has increased so dramatically in this neighbourhood that it has got to the __________ where
we are all afraid to go out at night.
A. point B. verge C. tip D. edge

2. In most lines below, there is one extra word that should not be there. As you read the text, decide what word it is and write it in the c

A sonata for two can aid your IQ

Listening to Mozart can significantly increase your intelligence,

according to the researchers in America. Unfortunately, the the

effect is temporary and only lasts about 15 minutes long. 1. About

Dr Frances Rauscher and two colleagues from the University of 2. Đúng

California were reported the findings in the journal Nature. They asked 3. were

36 college students to undergo standard of psychological tests 4. of

after listening to a tape of Mozart’s sonata for the two pianos in D major. 5. the

They found that the students did better after listening to this music 6.

than they did so after hearing a ten-minute tape of instructions 7.

designed to make them to relax, or ten minutes of silence. Although 8. help

the researchers could offer no explanation for the finding, but they 9. but

said that there had long been a belief that people who are interested 10. has

in music are tend to perform better at intellectually demanding tasks. 11.

They believe that the beneficial effect which depends on the complexity 12. which

of the music played and they intend to try the other compositions 13. the

and musical styles to prove the point. They also plan further tests 14.

to see if a listening for longer periods produces even greater effects. 15. a

3. Complete the text with the correct forms of the words in capitals:

Nguyen Van Thang

 Upper-Intermediate Level
Two million followers - really?

Some users of Twitter have thousands of followers. Clearly, they are fascinating people. But FASCINATE
some of their followers are pretty silent and (1) __________unresponsive______________;
RESPOND
in fact, they don't seem remotely interested in the (2)
______contribution__________________of the person they are following. And there's a CONTRIBUTE
reason for this: they are (3) __________________fabricated______, added to the person's
FABRICATE
account by companies that sell fake social media followers to anyone hoping to boost their
reputation. The number of followers a user has is often seen as an indicator of their social
influence or (4) _______popularity_________________. Therefore, people such as artists or
aspiring musicians might not find the idea (5) ___appealing_____________________.
POPULAR
Having thousands of followers could enhance their image as a (6)
_______________desirable_________commodity and even lead to offers of work. Although APPEAL
it's not (7) ______illegal__________________ to sell followers, and it can be lucrative,
DESIRE
somehow it feels (8) __________unethical______________and unsatisfying. If your followers
are fake, they don't care about you - and certainly don't read your comments. So what's the LEGAL
point of tweeting at all?
ETHIC

4. Fill in each blank with a suitable word to complete the text below:

Life in Spain

Spain is a vast and varied country, and its people have few things in common (1) ___ except______ for their
friendliness, sociability, and hospitality. Spaniards have a reputation for not letting work get in the way of
enjoyment, and for spending as (2) _____ much ____ time and energy as possible on their social lives. Their
frequent use of the word marlana - leave things (3) ________for_ tomorrow - is seen as being characteristic of
this tendency. While this may be a stereotypical view of Spanish life, it is true that many people organise their
working hours (4) ___so______ as to make the most of their free time. Spaniards are sociable (5) _to the
extent________ that they like nothing better than spending time with friends and relatives. Eating together is an
important part of social life, and large groups often (6) ____gather_____ up for dinner. Not (7)
____surprisingly_____ Spain is thought to have more restaurants per head of population than any (8)
___other______ European country.

II. READING

1. For questions 1 —8, read the text below and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap:

Changing countries

Nguyen Van Thang

 Upper-Intermediate Level
Leading a new life and hoping for a significant (1) _______ in their standard of living, foreign workers began
flocking into Western Europe during the 1950s. In Britain, some of the first immigrants arriving from the West
Indies and the Indian subcontinent were welcomed by brass bands, but the dream of a new life soon (2) _______
sour for many. Attracted by the promise to earn good money and learn new skills, the reality they found was
often one of low wages and, in many (3) _______, unemployment. There were times when the newcomers
encountered open hostility; in 1958, riots (4) _______ out in Notting Hill, west London, when gangs of white
youths began taunting immigrants. Yet despite the (5) _______ difficulties they encountered, many foreign
workers did manage to (6) _______ to their new conditions, settling in their new adopted country and prospering.
Their contribution had the effect not only of speeding up the (7) _______ of economic change in the post war
period, it also (8) _______ Western Europe into a multiracial society.

1 A switch B change C modification D variation

2 A turned B converted C switched D moved
3 A occasions B examples C ways D cases
4 A broke B carried C came D started
5 A several B high C numerous D heavy
6 A fit B adjust C match D suit
7 A growth B motion C pace D step
8 A transformed B transferred C modified D shifted

3. You are going to read a magazine article. For questions 1 —6, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you
think fits best according to the text:

The laws of freak chance

Sue Hamilton was working alone in her office when the fax machine broke down. Unable to fix it, she decided to
call her colleague Jason Pegler, who had set off home a little earlier. Finding his home number pinned up on a
notice board, she called him and began to explain the problem. But Jason quickly stopped her saying any more:
‘I'm not at home,' he explained. ‘I just happened to be walking past this phone box when it rang, and I answered
it!’ The number Sue found on the notice board was not Jason’s home number at all. It was his employee number
— which was the same as the number of the phone box he was walking past when she called. It was a bizarre
coincidence, one of those that fascinate and perplex us. From a chance meeting with a long-lost friend to weird
parallels between world events, coincidences hint at ‘spooky' laws in our universe.C1

Last year an amazing set of coincidences put Paula Dixon in the headlines — and saved her life. On a night from
Hong Kong to London, she began to feel ill. A call went out to any doctors on board the plane, and two —
Professor Angus Wallace and Dr Tom Wong — duly emerged. The presence of two doctors was fortunate but
not so unusual. However, Paula had a potentially fatal collapsed lung — Professor Wallace was not only an
expert in accident surgery but had just finished doing a course specifically dealing with precisely this type of

Nguyen Van Thang

 Upper-Intermediate Level
crisis. Dr Wong turned out to have with him the one textbook needed to help them carry out the surgery. They
saved Paula’s life and won world-wide acclaim.C2

But scientists claim coincidences are simply the result of people remembering a few ‘amazing’ confluences of
events, but conveniently forgetting all the times when nothing amazing happens. A classic example is the ‘small
world' effect, where two strangers at a party discover they have a friend in common.C3

People at parties tend to be from the same Social clash, level of education, income bracket and the same area.
So, the likelihood of meeting someone with whom you share a trait is higher than it might seem. Sociologists
have found that individuals typically have around 150 people whom they regard as ‘close’. Therefore each of us
typically has an entourage of around 23,000 ‘friends of a friend'. Say we have about five acquaintances for each
close friend, the number swells to 600,000. The chances of meeting someone on a train with whom you share an
acquaintance are therefore surprisingly high; for the UK population, it's around one in a 100. If you also include
socioeconomic factors that boost the numbers of people from particular backgrounds travelling by train to
particular destinations the chances rise even higher.

There is another effect at work behind some coincidences. They often seem surprising because we mix up two
different probabilities: one - the chances of something interesting happening, and two — the chances of
something interesting happening after it has been given many opportunities to occur.

For example, the chances of getting a ‘double six' in a single throw of two (lite is one in 36. But the probability of
getting at least one from 25 attempts is 50:50. The more you try, the better your chances — but it's easy to forget
the number of 'tries' involved in real—life coincidences; How many millions of people walk past phone boxes
each day, but never find a friend on the other end of the line if it happens to ring?

Although scientists have little time for everyday coincidences, they treat them seriously when they occur in
science. Apparent coincidences in nature have often led to major scientific breakthroughs. When the chemical
elements are arranged according to their atomic weight, for instance they seem to fall into groups with similar
properties. Coincidence? The Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev didn't think so - and in 1871 published his
‘Periodic Table’, now found on the walls of countless laboratories. It emerged that the ‘coincidence’ was the
result or a deep principle controlling the behaviour of electrons in atoms.C4

The famous discovery of the double helix of DNA also benefited from a coincidence. In the early 1950s, an
Austrian biochemist noted that the amounts of key chemicals in DNA — codenamed A, T, G and C — seemed to
follow a rule. If the amounts A and T were combinedC5, they always equaled the levels of G and C. Cambridge
scientists Crick and Watson thought this was a clue, and used it to find the structure of DNA. This ’coincidence’
won them a Nobel Prize and launched the whole field of modern genetics.

1. The first coincidence in the text is surprising because of the

A time that Jason left the office.
B fact that Jason wasn’t at home.

Nguyen Van Thang

 Upper-Intermediate Level
C number that Sue phoned.
D position of the phone box.
2. The second coincidence is surprising because
A both doctors were experts in the particular area.
B one of the doctors had written a textbook about this kind of problem.
C there were so many doctors on the flight.
D of the combination of fortunate factors.
3. Which attitude do scientists have towards the significance of ‘strange coincidences’ in everyday life?
A disbelief
B respect
C curiosity
D confusion
4. Mendeleev made his discovery because
A of his desire for fame.
B he took a seeming ‘coincidence’ seriously.
C of his obsession with organisation.
D no one else took the behaviour of electrons into account.
5. Crick and Watson won the Nobel Prize because they
A discovered a new chemical.
B noticed how DNA reacted under certain conditions.
C built on someone else’s discovery of a coincidence.
D learnt new things about certain chemicals.

III. WRITING:

1. For questions 1 - 6, complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence, using
the word given:

1. What would you have done differently in my position last year? SHOES
What would you have done differently if ___ you had been in my shoes ____________________________ last
year?
2. It's important to defend what you believe in when others express their doubts. STAND
You must _______stand up for what you believe in________________________ when others express
doubts about them.
3. The judge told the jury that they should remember how young Smith was when considering their verdict.
ACCOUNT
The judge told the jury ___that they should take Smith's age into account___________________ when
considering their verdict.
4. I imagine Paul missed the train he usually gets as he isn't home yet. USUAL

Nguyen Van Thang

 Upper-Intermediate Level
Paul can't __________have caught his usual train_____________________ or he'd be home by now.
5. What I do in my free time has got nothing to do with my boss, has it? BUSINESS
What I do in my free time ___________ is none of my boss's business,____________________, is it?

2. Write an essay of about 250 words about the benefits or drawbacks of studying abroad.

_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________
___________

The end

Nguyen Van Thang