Đề thi chọn đội tuyển dự thi Học sinh giỏi quốc gia THPT năm 2016 môn Tiếng Anh tỉnh Quảng Trị (Vòng I) BẢNG B không đáp án Mã A366873

SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO

LONG AN

(Đề thi gồm có 08 trang)

KỲ THI CHỌN HỌC SINH GIỎI LỚP 12 – VÒNG 1 Môn thi: TIẾNG ANH – BẢNG B Ngày thi: 07/10/2016 Thời gian: 180 phút (không kể thời gian phát đề)

LƯU Ý: THÍ SINH LÀM BÀI TRÊN PHIẾU TRẢ LỜI,

KHÔNG LÀM BÀI TRÊN ĐỀ THI NÀY. PART 1: LISTENING (20 points) You will hear people talking in five different situations. For questions 1-5, choose the best answer (A, B or C). You will hear each piece twice.

1. You are at a public celebration when you hear this announcement. Why does the speaker want the car moved? A. it is parked inconveniently. B. it is parked illegally. C. somebody has complained.

2. You have taken your camera to a shop where the assistant explains why it is not working. What does he tell you? A. the battery was too old. B. the battery was incorrectly fitted. C. the film was incorrectly fitted.

3. You switch on the radio to find a phone-in program in progress. What is the caller asking the expert about? A. gardening B. cheese making C. travel

4. You are in the lounge of an expensive hotel when you hear this exchange. . What does the woman want the man to do? A. not take a photograph B. stop smoking C. not bring his dog in the building

5. You are in the office of a major trading company when you hear this woman talking on the phone. What time does she arrange to meet Peter? A. 3:45 B. 4:15 C. 4:45

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ĐỀ CHÍNH THỨC

PART 2. READING (28 points) For questions 1-7, read the following passage and choose the correct answer (A, B, C or D).

MIND OVER MATTER? Harry Houdini, who died in 1927, was the entertainment phenomenon of the ragtime era. He could escape from chains and padlocks, from ropes and canvas sacks. They put him in a strait- jacket and hung him upside down from a skyscraper and he somehow untied himself. They tied him up in a locked packing case and sank him in Liverpool docks. Minutes later he surfaced smiling. They locked him in a zinc-lined Russian prison van and he emerged leaving the doors locked and the locks undamaged. They padlocked him in a milk churn full of water and he burst free. They put him in a coffin, screwed down the lid, and buried him and … well, no, he didn’t pop up like a mole, but when they dug him up more than half an hour later, he was still breathing.

Houdini would usually allow his equipment to be examined by the audience. The chains, locks and packing cases all seemed perfectly genuine, so it was tempting to conclude that he possessed superhuman powers. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes was the very paragon of analytical thinking but Conan Doyle believed that Houdini achieved his tricks through spiritualism. Indeed, he wrote to the escapologist imploring him to use his psychic powers more profitably for the common good instead of just prostituting his talent every night at the Alhambra. However, Houdini repeatedly denounced spiritualism and disclaimed any psychic element to his act.

The alternative explanation for his feats of escapism was that Houdini could do unnatural things with his body. It is widely held that he could dislocate his shoulders to escape from strait- jackets, and that he could somehow contract his wrists in order to escape from handcuffs. His ability to spend long periods in confined spaces is cited as evidence that he could put his body into suspended animation, as Indian fakirs are supposed to do.

This is all nonsense. If you ever find yourself in a strait-jacket, it’s difficult to imagine anything less helpful than a dislocated shoulder. Contracting your wrists is not only unhelpful but, frankly, impossible because the bones of your wrist are very tightly packed together and the whole structure is virtually incompressible. As for suspended animation, the trick of surviving burial and drowning relies on the fact that you can live for short periods on the air in a confined space. The air shifted by an average person in a day would occupy a cube just eight feet square. The build-up of …