______________________MOCK TEST 1___________________

HƯỚNG DẪN PHẦN THI NGHE HIỂU

 Bài nghe gồm 4 phần, mỗi phần được nghe 2 lần, mỗi lần cách nhau 30 giây, mở đầu và kết thúc mỗi phần nghe có
tín hiệu.
 Mở đầu và kết thúc bài nghe có tín hiệu nhạc. Thí sinh có 3 phút để hoàn chỉnh bài trước tín hiệu nhạc kết thúc
bài nghe.
 Mọi hướng dẫn cho thí sinh (bằng tiếng Anh) đã có trong bài nghe.

I. LISTENING (50 POINTS)

Part 1: Listen to a podcast on how our perception of brands influences our decisions and decide whether the
following statements are TRUE (T), FALSE (F) or NOT GIVEN (NG). (10 pts)
1. Michael Platt expresses his research interest in the reasons why people love or hate some certain brands.
2. According to Michael, what people say about a brand can often resonate with what is happening in their brains.
3. The study showed that Apple customers’ brain empathy response for Apple news was exactly the same as the way
they would respond to a family member.
4. From their brain data, Samsung Galaxy users seemingly hate Apple because of its clearly defined market.
5. The majority does not know that their subconscious choice for brands is because those brands present some kind of
self-expressive value.
Your answers
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Part 2: Listen to a piece of news on the Covid_19 pandemic and answer the questions. Write NO MORE THAN
FOUR WORDS for each answer. (10 pts)
1. What are the new Pfizer and Moderna vaccines on Omicron called?
________________________________________________________________.
2. How are future coronavirus vaccines going to be developed?
________________________________________________________________.
3. What is another name of BA2?
________________________________________________________________.
4. What will BA2 probably do to the orignial immigrant strain?
________________________________________________________________.
5. What can hopefully protect us from Covid variants?
________________________________________________________________.
Part 3: You will hear a conversation among some men. Choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which fits best
according to what you hear. (10 pts)

1. What self-imposed agreement do the men agree upon?

A. To limit the aspirations they have for their children.
B. To project their own desires and goals onto their offspring.
C. Not to be so overbearing as to be a negative influence.
D. To avoid engaging with their children as older generations of parents did.
2. What opinion does one speaker express while reflecting on earlier years?
A. Parents should be prepared to deal with difficult children.
B. We will inevitably develop behavioural patterns similar to our own parents.
C. They should have been slightly more aware of future responsibilities that lay ahead.
D. Inward reflection is more problematic than viewing others.
3. What conclusions did the speaker incorrectly arrive at?
A. That every parent experiences a sense of helplessness in the early stages of raising a child.

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B. Children developing a certain routine that could be worked around.
C. That the transition to parenthood would have taken a more natural course.
D. His own instictive ability to rise to the challenge of being a parent.
4. What does one speaker express assurance over?
A. That there are a substantial number of parents who hold the same view.
B. In the long term, the sacrifice of one’s personal life will negatively affect children.
C. There are other parents who benefit from having more personal space.
D. Parents will constantly regret the loss of personal down time.
5. What concern is shown by one of the fathers speaking?
A. Personal stress resulting from a lack of individual leisure time.
B. The inability to maintain a social life leading to a more subdued family life.
C. The loss of external personal relationships will cause friction within the family unit.
D. A worry that one day they will be a source of embarrassment to their children.
Your answers
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Part 4: Listen to a piece of news and complete the summary by writing NO MORE THAN FOUR words and/or
a number in each gap. (20 pts)
The Earth is akin to a multi-layered onion. The first layer is the crust, where deep down lie man-made
constructions, such as an 1. ________________________called Elengubu. The natural feature of the crust involves
the residence of certain crocodile species and fossorials, including 2. ________________________. Nevertheless,
life can only be found at the depth of less than three kilometers. Attempts to drill holes into the crust led to the
establishment of the 3. ________________________ located in Russia, and there’s even rumour about
4. ________________________ screaming from the point.
The layer that lies at around 30 to 50 kilometres depth is called the mantle, where earthquakes can be formed by even
5. ________________________ of hot rocks. This layer is characterised by high pressure, making
6. ________________________, changing colours of crystals or rendering rocks
7. ________________________.
The next layer, the outer core, is vividly described in a sci-fi fiction where there are past animals and sunless
subterranean oceans marked by 8. ________________________ and currents of
9. ________________________.
There comes the final layer, which is described as a solid ball composed of 10. ________________________
metals as a result of intense pressure. This layer is known as the inner core.

II. LEXICO - GRAMMAR (20 POINTS)

Part 1. Choose the best option to complete each of the following sentences. (15 pts)
1. I suppose he could _________ have reached the summit on his own, but I doubt it.
A. conceivably B. credibly C. imaginatively D. believably
2. I was awfully tired. However, I made up my mind to _________myself to the tedious task once again.
A. involve B. absorb C. engross D. apply
3. She summed up Henry’s achievements in a few _________ phrases.
A. loquacious B. utilitarian C. felicitous D. ominous
4. 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
5. Several hundred people have signed the petition to put a _________to the nuclear test in the region.
A. stop B. finish C. break D. cease
6. In time-honoured _________, the chairman offered a toast to the shop-floor workers.

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 A. protocol B. way C. fashion D. procedure
7. Frank said his brand new Ferrari could do 250 kph and Tony, not to be _________, claimed his Porshe could drive
at 300 kph.
A. overriden B. outdone C. downgraded D. outspoken
8. There is a pressing need to make some rarefied subjects of research intelligible to those living beyond
the_________tower.
A. ivory B. silver C. diamond D. golden
9. We can’t apply the same theory to this situation – it is_______opposite to the one we encountered last month.
A. diabolically B. diagonally C. diametrically D. diachronically
10. The richer countries of the world should take _________ action to help the poorer countries.
A. physical B. manual C. exerted D. concerted
11. We can catch the vast majority of people, but hunting down every last tax dodger is _________impossible.
A. very B. highly C. virtually D. extremely
12. Capital injections occur in case a company or an organization suffers financial ______.
A. discomfort B. anxiety C. dejection D. distress
13. His happy-go-lucky attitude means that on the field he exhibits a _________ disregard for the rules
A. required B. glaring C. permissible D. flagrant
14.The room was _________ decorated in gold and silver; it was quite simply over the top.
A. tantalizingly B. ostentatiously C. tactfully D. benevolently
15. It had been assumed Phillip would take over the manager's post after the man retired. But, it never came to
_________ since he'd decided to change his place of work.
A. final B. pass C. occurrence D. being

Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Part 2: Write the correct form of word in each blank. (5 pts)

1. I just use a few basic and _______________ symbols, for the most part just crossing out errors and inserting the
correct version. (EXPLAIN)
2. There was _______________ applause following her performance. (THUNDER).
3. I’m a bit of a _______________, so I can spend all day agonising over which choice of two words to use.
(PERFECT)
4. You have been _______________ important to the success of this company. I don’t know what I would have done
without you. (MEASURE)
5. Actually, scientists say that cloned animals will not be exact replicas of their_______________. (GENE)
Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

III. READING (50 points)

Part 1. Fill in each blank with ONE word. (10 pts)
Concentration is good in exams, bad in orange juice. Concentration happens when you manage to focus on
one thing to the (1) ______ of all others, and concentrating on that one thing (2) ______ you to stop worrying about a
lot of other things. Sometimes, of course, your mind concentrates when you don’t want it to. Maybe you can’t get
something out of your head, such as a problem you have to (3) ______ up to, or an embarrassing situation you’ve been
in. That’s why collecting things as a hobby is popular; it (4) ______ your mind off other things. Indeed, some people
seem to prefer looking after and cataloguing their collections to actually doing anything with them, because this is
when the absorbing, single- minded concentration (5) _______.
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 The natural span for concentration is 45 minutes. That’s why half an hour for a television programme seems
too short whilst an hour seems too long. But many people's lives are (6) ______ of concentration. Modern culture is
served up in small, easily digestible (7) ______ that require only a short attention span although young people can
concentrate on computer games for days at a time. (8) ______ out the tongue can aid concentration. This is because
you can’t (9) ______ yourself with talking at the same time and other people won’t (10) ______ to interrupt your
thoughts, because you look like an idiot!

Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Part 2: Read the following passage and choose the best answer to each question. (10 pts)
Grammatical errors like bleeded and singed have long epitomized the innocence and freshness of children's
minds. The errors are acts of creation in which children lift a pattern from their brief experience and apply it with
impeccable logic to new words, unaware that the adult world treats them as arbitrary exceptions. In A Dark-Adapted
Eye, the novelist Barbara Vine introduces an unlikable child by remarking, "He would refer to 'adults' instead of
'grownups' and get all his past tenses right, never saying 'rided' for 'rode' or 'eated' for 'ate'."
Children's errors with irregular verbs also have been prominent in debates on the nature of language and mind.
The neurologist Eric Lenneberg pointed to the errors when he and linguist Noam Chomsky first argued that language
was innate. Psychology textbooks cite the errors to rhapsodize that children are lovers of cognitive tidiness and
simplicity; researchers who study learning in adults cite the errors as a paradigm case of the human habit of
overgeneralizing rules to exceptional cases.
Nothing is more important to the theory of words and rules than an explanation of how children acquire rules
and apply them—indeed overapply them—to words. The simplicity of these errors is deceptive. It is not easy to
explain why children start making them, and it's harder to explain why they stop.
Overgeneralization errors are a symptom of the open-ended productivity of language, which children
indulge in as soon as they begin to put words together. At around eighteen months, children start to utter two word
micro sentences like "See baby" and "More cereal." Some are simply telegraphic renditions of their parents' speech,
but many are original productions. "More outside!" says a tot who wants to play in the park. "Allgone sticky!" says
another after his mother has washed jam off his fingers. By two years of age, children produce longer and more
complicated sentences, and begin to supply grammatical morphemes such as -ing, -ed, -s and the auxiliaries.
Sometime between the end of the second year and the end of the third year, children begin to overgeneralize -ed to
irregular verbs.
Jennifer Ganger and I suspected that at least some of the timing of language development, including the past-
tense rule, is controlled by a maturational clock. Children may begin to acquire a rule at a certain age for the same
reason they grow hair or teeth at certain ages. If the clock is partly under the control of genes, then identical twins
should develop language in tighter synchrony than fraternal twins, who share only half their genes. We have enlisted
the help of hundreds of mothers of twins who send us daily lists of their children's new words and word combinations.
The checklists show that vocabulary growth, the first word combinations, and the rate of making past-tense errors are
all in tighter lockstep in identical twins than in fraternal twins. The results tell us that at least some of the mental
events that make a child say singed are hereditary. The very first past-tense error, though, is not. When one twin
makes an error like singed for the first time, an identical twin is no quicker to follow suit than a fraternal twin. These
gaps—an average of 34 days between the first past-tense errors made by two children with the same genes exposed to
the same speech—are a reminder of the importance of sheer chance in children's development.
Children's speech errors, which make such engaging anecdotes in poetry, novels, television features and Web
sites for parents, may help us untangle one of the thickest knots in science, nature and nurture. When a child says "It
bleeded" and "It singed," the fingerprints of learning are all over the sentence. Every bit of every word has been
learned, including the past tense suffix -ed. The very existence of the error comes from a process of learning that is
still incomplete: mastery of the irregular bled and sang.

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 But learning is impossible without innately organized circuitry to do the learning, and these errors give us
hints of how it works. Children are born to attend to minor differences in the pronunciation of words, such as walk and
walked. They seek a systematic basis for the difference in the meaning or form of the sentence, rather than dismissing
it as haphazard variation in speech styles. They dichotomize time into past and nonpast, and correlate half the timeline
with the evanescent word ending. They must have a built-in tendency to block the rule when a competing form (like
bled) is found in memory, because there is no way they could learn the blocking principle in the absence of usable
feedback from their parents. Their use of the rule (though perhaps not the moment when they first use it) is partly
guided by their genes.

1. The author suggests that the "unlikable" child in A Dark-Adapted Eye

A. spoke like most other children
B. never wanted to be introduced to other children
C. did not speak with childlike errors
D. was always making up new confusing words
2. The primary purpose of the second paragraph is to
A. indicate the extent of scholarly disagreement about the nature of children's speech errors
B. list the scholars who have influenced academic understanding of children's speech errors
C. endorse a particular explanation for children's speech errors
D. show that children's speech errors have received widespread scholarly attention
3. The word "overapply" in refers to the
A. misunderstanding scholars have of simple speech errors
B. faulty application of scholarly theories to children's speech
C. strict adherence of children to certain linguistic rules
D. misguided training that children often receive from parents
4. The phrase "open-ended productivity of language" refers to
A. the lack of rules governing language use
B. the vulnerability of language to errors
C. the creative quality inherent in language use
D. the variety of different existing languages
5. "More outside" and "Allgone sticky" are examples of
A. exceptional instances of children's language use
B. children's attempts to communicate by thinking rather than mimicking
C. speech used by parents to communicate with their children
D. sentences displaying children's use of grammatical morphemes
6. By "fingerprints of learning" the author primarily means
A. demonstration of sustained effort
B. indication of parental influence
C. results of faulty thinking
D. evidence of acquired information
7. In paragraph 6, the author suggests that children's speech errors
A. are overused as examples in literature and art
B. have important scientific implications
C. can be easily unlearned
D. indicate problems with linguistic rules
8. "Innately organized circuitry" in refers to
A. ways of teaching language that all parents use
B. rules children learn to apply to language use
C. differences in meaning suggested by complex sentences
D. children's natural ability to process distinctions in language use
9. Paragraph 7 describes
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A. the way children combine rules and memories during language development
B. the natural tendency children have to confuse linguistic rules
C. the forms of resistance children show to identifying new linguistic rules
D. the methods of learning that children use in the absence of parental feedback
10. Which of the following best characterizes the author's attitude in the passage toward children's errors in language
development?
A. scientific interest
B. personal fascination
C. scholarly indifference
D. general confusion
Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Part 3: For questions 1-13, read the following passage and do the tasks that follow. (13 pts)
Homeopathy
Overdosing on nothing
A
An international protest this week aims to demonstrate the truth about homoeopathy – that there/s literally nothing in
it, says Martin Robbins AT 10.23 am on 30 January, more than 300 activists in the UK, Canada, Australia and the US
will take part in a mass homoeopathic “overdose”. Skeptics will publicly swallow an entire bottle of homoeopathic
pills to demonstrate to the public that homoeopathic remedies, the product of a scientifically unfounded 18th-century
ritual, are simply sugar pills. Many of the sceptics will swallow 84 pills of Arsenicum album, a homoeopathic remedy
based on arsenic which is used to treat a range of symptoms, including food poisoning and insomnia. The aim of the
“10:23” campaign, led by the Merseyside Skeptics Society, based in Liverpool, UK, is to raise public awareness of
just exactly what homeopathy is, and to put pressure on the UK’s leading pharmacist, Boots, to remove the remedies
from sale. The campaign is called 10:23in honor of the Avogadro constant (approximately 6 x 1023, the number of
atoms or molecules in one mole of a substance), of which more later.
B
That such a protest is even necessary in 2010 is remarkable, but somehow the homeopathic industry has not only
survived into the 21st century, but prospered. In the UK alone more than £40 million is spent annually on
homoeopathic treatments, with £4 million of this being sucked from the National Health Service budget. Yet the basis
for homoeopathy defies the laws of physics, and high-quality clinical trials have never been able to demonstrate that it
works beyond the placebo effect.
C
The discipline is based on three “laws”; the law of similars, the law of infinitesimals and the law of succession. The
law of similars states that something which causes your symptoms will cure your symptoms, so that, for example, as
caffeine keeps you awake, it can also be a cure for insomnia. Of course, that makes little sense, since drinking
caffeine, well, keeps you awake. Next is the law of infinitesimals, which claims that diluting a substance makes it
more potent. Homoeopaths start by diluting one volume of their remedy -arsenic oxide, in the case of Arsenicum
album -in 99 volumes of distilled water or alcohol to create a “centesimal”. They then dilute one volume of the
centesimal in 99 volumes of water or alcohol, and so on, up to 30 times. Application of Avogadro’s constant tells you
that a dose of such a “30C” recipe is vanishingly unlikely to contain even a single molecule of the active ingredient.
The third pillar of homoeopathy is the law of succession. This states-and I’m not making this up -that by tapping the
liquid in a special way during the dilution process, a memory of the active ingredient is somehow imprinted on it. This
explains how water is able to carry a memory of arsenic oxide, but apparently not of the contents of your local sewer
network.
D

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The final preparation is generally dropped onto a sugar pill which the patient swallows. Homeopaths claim that the
application of these three laws results in a remedy that, even though it contains not a single molecule of the original
ingredient, somehow carries an “energy signature” of it that nobody can measure or detect. Unsurprisingly, when
tested under rigorous scientific conditions, in randomized, controlled and double-blind trials, homoeopathic remedies
have consistently been shown to be no better than a placebo. Of course, the placebo effect is quite powerful, but it’s a
bit like justifying building a car without any wheels on the basis that you can still enjoy the comfy leather seats and
play with the gear shift.
E
Even some retailers who sell the treatments have admitted there is no evidence that they work. In November, Paul
Bennett, the superintendent pharmacist at Boots, appeared before the UK parliament’s Commons Science and
Technology Committee’s “evidence check” on homoeopathy. He was questioned by Member of Parliament Phil
Willis, who asked: “Do they work beyond the placebo effect?””I have no evidence before me to suggest that they are
efficacious,” Bennett replied. He defended Boots’s decision to sell homoeopathic remedies on the grounds of
consumer choice. “A large number of our consumers actually do believe they are efficacious, but they are licensed
medicinal products and, therefore, we believe it is right to make them available,” he said.
F
You might agree. You might also argue that homoeopathy is harmless: if people want to part with their money for
sugar pills and nobody is breaking the law, why not let them? To some extent that’s true -there’s only so much
damage you can do with sugar pills short of feeding them to a diabetic or dropping a large crate of them on someone’s
head. However, we believe there is a risk in perpetuating the notion that homoeopathy is equivalent to modern
medicine. People may delay seeking appropriate treatment for themselves or their children.
G
We accept that we are unlikely to convince the true believers. Homoeopathy has many ways to sidestep awkward
questions, such as rejecting the validity of randomized controlled trials, or claiming that homoeopathic remedies only
work if you have symptoms of the malady they purport to cure. Our aim is to reach out to the general public with our
simple message: “There is nothing in it”. Boots and other retailers are perfectly entitled to continue selling
homoeopathic remedies if they so wish and consumers are perfectly entitled to keep on buying them. But hopefully the
10:23 campaign will ram home our message to the public. In the 21st century, with decades of progress behind us, it is
surreal that governments are prepared to spend millions of tax pounds on homoeopathy. There really is nothing in it.
Questions 1-7
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of heading below.
List of Headings
i The definition of three laws
ii Quoting three laws to against the homeopathy
iii There are many methods of avoiding answering ambiguous questions.
iv The purpose of illustrating the symptoms of homeopathy
v The constant booming of homeopathy
vi Some differences between homeopathy and placebo
vii Placebo is better than homeopathy
viii A example of further demonstrating the negative effect of homeopathy.
ix The purpose of staging a demonstration to against homeopathy

1 Paragraph A
2 Paragraph B
3 Paragraph C
4 Paragraph D
5 Paragraph E
6 Paragraph F
7 Paragraph G

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Questions 8-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading passage?
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN If the information is not given in the passage

8 Skeptics planning to hold a demonstration in the “10.23″campaign is against UK’s leading pharmacist, Boots.
9 National Health Service budget gained a small portion of homoeopathic industry
10 The example of Caffeine is to present that homoeopathy resists the laws of similars.
11 Paul Bennett claimed effectiveness of taking the homoeopathic medicine is proved.
12 The adoption of homoeopathy mainly contributes to the delay in seeking appropriate treatment for themselves or
their children.
13 The campaign has exerted pressure on Boots and other retailers.

Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
11. 12. 13.

Part 4: Read the text and the missing paragraphs (A-H). Choose from paragraphs A-H the one which fits each
gap (1-7). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use. (7 pts)
The artist gleefully tricks us with his digital creepers, disappearing oak trees and blossoming flowers made with AI.
The message? Nature will have its revenge

Something evil is blooming in a shady corner of Kew Gardens. Poisonous plants produce red fleshy flowers and
sinister insects pretend to be harmless petals – or are the petals posing as insects? Mat Collishaw has created a creepy
and beautiful, horrible and exquisite cabinet of botanical curiosities that puts the shock and sensation back into British
modern art.
1. __________

Where Hirst now paints inane floral scenes, Collishaw digs deep into the gardens of the mind to leave you thrilled and
moved. It starts gently enough with flowers swaying in the breeze beside a rippling pool. Collishaw has taken two
watercolours by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer and converted them into animated 3D lightboxes. Still
life becomes restlessly mobile life.
2. __________

Throughout this show, life on Earth is recreated with stunning exactitude while being uncannily absent. It’s a natural
history of our loss of nature. A panoramic film entitled Even to the End feels like a modelling of Earth’s history
created to inform the last humans on a spaceship light years away what their lost planet was like. It begins with
specimens in glass cases, green shoots like the ones Dürer drew. Then we drift across an ocean to reach an island
teeming with tangled roots and dense forest: every detail of this paradise is irresistible, like an Attenborough
documentary, but everything is unreal, a virtual nature fabricated by a computer. And it all goes wrong. Smoke
appears through the trees and we fly on, over a charred, lifeless wasteland. There’s nothing left.

3. __________

The unease increases in a new series of paintings he has developed using AI tools. You see lovely still lifes of pink,
yellow and red blooms that look like 17th-century Dutch paintings.

4. __________
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These deceptive blooms are shown along with Collishaw’s rancidly erotic, meaty sculptures of flowers that seem
infected with human depravity: ripe red stamens rising from stinking waste ground. Nature, it is implied, will have its
revenge, and evolution will produce life to rule the post-human Earth.

5. __________

They invade the sanctum of culture, as the paintings by Guercino and Guido Reni rot. By this time your senses are
overwhelmed by intense floral colour and decaying sweetness, your mind tickled and stunned by the rush of ideas, but
Collishaw has more marvels to unveil. The colossal pale spectre of an oak tree documents the Major Oak, a thousand-
year-old tree in Sherwood Forest that’s associated with Robin Hood. This work was created when Britain was voting
for Brexit and is called Albion. As you get closer and walk around the ghostly tree it vanishes: it was never really
there.

6. __________

He loves such visual magic and is at it again in the show’s final wonder, a spinning sculpture based on the 19th-
century proto-cinematic device the zoetrope, that makes hummingbirds appear to feed on nectar and tropical flowers
open in a ecstatic natural dance show. Ultimately all the sensory and scientific thrills leave you with a sense of loss.
7. __________

Paragraphs
A. It draws upon a natural phenomenon known as Pouyannian mimicry when a flower imitates an insect to attract
other insects, boosting the reproduction of the flower species. It combines “genetic algorithms with blockchain
technology to facilitate the hybridisation of mutable digital flowers”. From a distance, the works present flowers
and plants but on closer inspection, the buds are made from layers of insects.

B. On closer inspection the flowers are swarming with insects. Yet this is just one layer of the illusion. The flowers are
actually imitating insects to trick real insects into collecting their pollen in a phenomenon called Pouyannian mimicry.

C. It’s a fine political joke yet also a lyrical image of loss. Even the Major Oak must die one day, just as the Sycamore
Gap tree on Hadrian’s Wall was mysteriously chopped down in a senseless act of ecocide. Collishaw creates and
dismisses his phantom of a tree not with digital wizardry but a Victorian conjuring trick, the Pepper’s Ghost illusion.

D. This clever, complex meditation on all the ways we humans represent and imagine the natural world contrasts
brutally with Damien Hirst’s flower paintings, recently unveiled at Frieze art fair. It’s as if these two artists, who were
contemporaries at Goldsmiths in the 1980s, have made some devilish bargain: Hirst got the money and Collishaw the
brains, passion and integrity.

E. Collishaw has fabricated this nature. Like a digital god, he creates trees then decides to destroy them. It’s a potent
image of humanity’s tortured relationship with our planet – touched by all its wondrous life, yet drawn to the
apocalyptic horror of a charred world.

F. In the video Greenhouse, the apocalypse has happened: humanity has disappeared so suddenly that London’s
National Gallery has been left untouched with its art still on the red walls. Now nature has smashed its way through
the skylights and tendrils and creepers are everywhere.

G. Collishaw shows that in the age of AI and virtual reality we can make our own nature, giving movement to painted
flowers, inventing paradise islands. Yet none of it is alive. The more intricate his imitations of Earth’s plenitude, the
more he makes you feel the fragility of the much greater complexity out there, in Kew Gardens.

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H. This is a subtle introduction to a show that spectacularly examines our obsessive need to depict and collect nature.
Dürer was one of the first artists to scientifically record the natural world, bringing the same sharp eye to a blade of
grass that he did to a walrus. Collishaw revisits that pure act of observation in a digital age when we receive
everything at second hand. It is art, not nature, that is his material.

Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7.

Part 5: The passage below consists of five sections marked A-E. Read the passage and do the task that follows.
Write your answers (A-E) in the corresponding numbered boxes provided. (10 pts)
A. Most of us sit happily within our binary categorised genders. We push the boundaries a little bit. We like to think
we're being a bit alternative with our decisions in clothing, or even in attitude. It isn't difficult to find straight
househusbands taking an interest in the decor of the family home and to find misogynistic - boardrooms and on
factory floors alike across the globe today. We might be able to do more within our assigned gender, but we're still
very much pinned down by the borders of our gender - we're still only reacting against our Victorian predecessors -
we've yet to step into the future of our possible selves.

B. A difficult pill for us to swallow though is that we can't imagine ourselves without gender. Who are we without our
box labels of "man" and woman? As we ask ourselves this question, a beautiful songbird flies past our eyes and it
dawns on us that we don't exist without these categories. Or we cannot imagine - we are unintelligible to ourselves
without these demarcations. This is one of basic ideas of Judith Butler, a theorist on aspects of identity, but who made
her name in the domain with her research upon gender works from within a number of perspectives any cursory
attempt at an introduction to her and her ideas would be to do unto her a great injustice but for those who are
unfamiliar with her she argues that gender is performative. This term has, indeed, caused some of the many problems
and confusions with Butler's theory, but as a base from which to start, one who would like to understand should soon
dispose of the theatrical notion hanging around in your connotational mind and turn towards the field of linguistics.
More specifically towards a particular linguist and his work; J. L Austin's How To Do Things With Words.

C. J. L. Austin's work couldn't be further away from gender studies if it tried, but Judith Bulter made use of his famous
theory upon the performativity of certain types of speech or utterances. He argued that some utterances had no
reference outside of the sentence, so these utterances are performative. Austin refers to the utterances in naming
ceremonies and marriage ceremonies as instances of the performativity of language. It takes a while to get one's head
around this, but essentially Austin argues that in certain cases utterances do not describe nor state the "doing" of an
action, but rather the utterance itself is the action but rather the utterance itself performs the action. "I name this
ship..." would be an example of a performative utterance. Judith Butler arrives at Austin's work through a critique of it
by the French philosopher Jacque Derrida. Derrida takes issue with Austin's narrow.sage of his theory.

D. This is where Judith Butler picks up the thread. She argues that from the moment we are born, we are encased by
language. We don't speak back for a year or so, but the people around us are already dressing us up in the finery of the
language we will one day use to decorate ourselves - to create our identities with. But, further than this and more
explicitly as Butler develops in her later work Bodies That Matter, the moment we are born the sentence is uttered,
"it's a girl" or "it's a boy" - this is the basis of her argument of gender being performative. I suppose a good way to
imagine it is through Spiderman's web that he shoots from his wrists.

E. The web is language and language that is inescapable. The implications of this though, are very serious for Butler.
She often writes about children who are born with two sets of genitals or whose genitals are ambiguous. For these
people, Butler argues, the "gendering" is most cruel. These human beings aren't left as the beautiful products that they
are, but quite the opposite - they are mutilated as babies and find it very difficult to live sexually fulfilling lives as
adults.
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F. Although never explicitly stated in Judith Butler's work, what her work might lead on to is a lessening of the
gendering process. She would be incredibly sceptical about such an idea. She would suggest that this is impossible;
that we cannot think outside of the gendered categories. She believes that the only way to make life more bearable in
the gendering process is through subversion. One way she suggests is to overdo gender. She argues that the
hyperbolically feminine and the hyperbolically masculine draw attention to the edges of the categories whilst at the
same time undermining the categories by the very fact of their borders.

G. Some would suggest you see, that man and woman, male and female (Butler has a very interesting perspective
when it comes to the pop-science differentiation between "gender" and "sex" with the latter often being read as
"biological" and the former as "cultural") are related to the notion of "nature". The househusband who takes an interest
in the decor of the family home would probably complacently suggest that, in nature, women would usually do this
and men would do that, but because we live in a society that allows for the reverse, we can do otherwise. Butler would
have problems with this for a number of reasons including the unquestioning usage of the term "nature".

In which section are the following mentioned?

1. the worst problems of gender-assignment
2. the predicament to interpret some concepts
3. the componential analysis of a linguist's premise
4. the dissenting opinion towards a linguistic proposal
5. the misapprehension of a term in one’s work
6. the possible adaptation to promote a situation
7. sexism towards women by members of the same sex
8. the attitudes towards the division between gender and sex
9. the surrounding of human beings in language
10. that people today aren't that different from people of a different era

Your answers:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

IV. WRITING (60 points)

Part 1. Read the following extract and use your own words to summarize it. Your summary should be between
100-120 words long. (15 pts)
Since its release in 2016, the video-sharing platform TikTok has enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity. At first glance,
the particular services offered by TikTok seem to be similar to previously established social media platforms.
However, there is one key new element that sets TikTok apart from other outwardly similar social media platforms:
the prevalence of "the algorithm." TikTok unprecedentedly centers algorithmically driven feeds and algorithmically
driven experiences. TikTok is the only one to position its algorithm at the center of the social experience it engenders;
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the algorithm determines the type of video content the user is exposed to, and viewing this content makes up the
majority of the experience on the platform.

TikTok users occupy the precarious position of dually engaging with an external and internal entity; they engage with
versions of themselves, as mediated through the algorithm. While other social media platforms facilitate interaction
with other egos through a variety of methods (whether this be direct self-disclosure, the discussion of media, etc.), on
TikTok the user interacts most heavily with the personalized algorithm which repeatedly confronts them with various
aspects of their own personas. In addition to offering a new understanding of "the self," TikTok offers users a new
"type" of social media by refusing to subscribe to an established categorization scheme. It borrows elements from a
variety of pre-existing platforms, but ultimately eludes the form of sociality engendered by content communities,
blogs, and social networks in favor of presenting a very different vision of sociality based on repeated engagement
with the “algorithm.”

Indeed, factors such as increased algorithmization have already affected fundamental changes in the operation of
social media and the experiences of the users therein. While TikTok is an extreme example of the prominence of
algorithms in user experience, it is an example of trends that are quickly becoming visible in other digital spaces. For
example, users of Instagram report increased levels of engagement with and awareness of the algorithms that play a
role in finding relevant content for their home feeds, and also engage in behaviors that aim to "work with" the
algorithm to generate relevant content (such as commenting on posts to indicate to the algorithm that the content is
interesting). Such practices diminish the unambiguity of Instagram's identity as a "content community".
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Part 2. The two charts below outline the statistically most desirable countries in terms of quality of life and
reasons for migration in 2020. (15 pts)
Summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant. You
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Part 3. Write an essay of 350 words on the following topic. (30 pts)
The increasing availability of low-cost airlines now lets people travel around the world. Some feel this is a positive
development while others think it is negative overall.
Discuss both sides and give your own opinion.

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- THE END -

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