Bộ đề tham khảo kỳ thi Trung học Phổ thông Quốc gia môn Tiếng Anh năm 2020

ĐỀ THAM KHẢO LUYỆN THI TNPT 2020 - 14

Thời gian: 60 phút

Mã Đề 544

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 01 to 08.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY It was true I read a lot, but by now I had graduated to adult reading. Dickens had my full attention, for surely in those novels he was telling the same story of travail and triumph. The additional benefit, apart from the eccentric characters with their eccentric names, was that many of these travails were undertaken by young men of peerless disposition. This was welcome proof that such life experiences were universal, and, more important, could be, and usually were, brought about while suffering an initial handicap - wicked step-parents, or an indigent family - which the hero (for David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby were undoubted heroes) could manage with little more than his own blamelessness to guide him. This struck me as entirely beautiful and convinced me that one must emulate their efforts, that one must never be discouraged by the unhelpfulness of others. Not that I had ever experienced such an obstacle at close quarters; what I took for wickedness was in fact worldliness, as my mother explained to me. The unapologetic presence of our visitors, their peculiar blend of restlessness and complacency, which was discordant, was essentially harmless, though it occasionally sought relief in imprecations, in disapproval of others, principally of my mother and myself. I saw - in Nancy's hoarse smoker's laugh, in Millicent's delicate hand smoothing her hair - a quality that was alien to our own lives, faintly undesirable. Sometimes my mother's eyes had a look of tiredness, and she was obliged to turn her head away for a brief moment, as suggestions for improvement, or rather self-improvement, came her way. These visits, which I now see were undertaken for more merciful reasons than mere curiosity, were in essence a form of female solidarity before that condition had been politicised. They were concerned for any woman, living on her own with only a child for company. At the same time, they were fearful that such ivory tower isolation might be catching. They wanted my mother to be reinstated in society for their sakes as much as her own. They genuinely pitied a woman who had no status, but they also translated this lack of status as failure in the world's terms. What distinguished my mother was a form of guilelessness which they had, regretfully, laid aside. This is what I saw: they had exchanged one position for another and may not have been entirely compensated. My mother was their crusade; they also usefully saw her as a pupil. When they rose to leave, the frowns disappeared from their faces, the concern evaporated, and their embraces were genuine. They were glad to get back to their own orbit, with its comprehensible distractions, glad to have done their social duty, even if the results were so sadly lacking. My mother, shaking cushions after their departure, would be more silent than usual, and I somehow knew I should not intrude on her thoughts. I reflected that Nancy and Millie were characters, no less and no more, and that any confrontation - but none had taken place nor would take place - would be unequal: my mother was bound to succeed, for she was untainted by the world's corruption and thus qualified for remission. I comforted myself that even David Copperfield had had moments of downheartedness. On the whole, I was happy. I liked my school, I liked my friends; I liked the shabby charm of my flat from which a light shone out in winter to guide me home. I liked our silent streets, the big windows of the houses in which artists had once lived. I liked its emanations of the nineteenth century. That we were somewhat on the margin of things did not disturb me, although the girls making their way by car from Kensington, complained of the distance, as if they had been obliged to cross a …