Yes/ No/ Not given

Bước 1: Đọc kỹ câu hỏi và gạch chân keywords

1.Marie Curie’s husband was a joint winner of both Marie’s Nobel Prizes.
2.Marie became interested in science when she was a child.
3.Marie was able to attend the Sorbonne because of her sister’s financial contribution.

Bước 2: Scanning/ Skimming đoạn văn để tìm những từ khóa vừa gạch

Marie Curie is probably the most famous woman scientist who has ever
lived. Born Maria Sklodowska in Poland in 1867, she is famous for her work
on radioactivity, and was twice a winner of the Nobel Prize. With her
husband Pierre Curie, and Henri Becquerel, she was awarded the 1903
Nobel Prize for Physics, and was then sole winner of the 1911 Nobel
Prize for Chemistry. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize.

Bước 3: Đọc kỹ để đối chiếu thông tin và đưa ra đáp án

Do the following statements reflect the opinions of the writer in the passage?
Write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

The increase in the number of such SRBS is associated with the rise of ‘conscious
consumers', who want to know exactly how products they buy have been produced.
What was the environmental impact? Were workers treated ethically? So the
arguments is sometimes put forward that SRBS are a response to new consumer
values. But equally, many SRBS that I have studied were established by
entrepreneurs who wanted to make a difference and have taken consumers along
with them. In reality, both sides of the relationship have contributed to the fresh
approach.

Consumers, of course, are not always members of the public. Recently I spoke to
Lucinda Mitchell, procurement officer for my local council here in London, who
told me that her organisation frequently purchases from SRBS because of shared
values. Local, state and national authorities have huge purchasing power for
both goods and services. And Mitchell's position is becoming commonplace
internationally as these bodies are increasingly prepared to work with SRBS,
provided they are competitive on price and quality.

1. Those who show care about the origin of the consumed goods have an
influence on the expansion of SRBS. YES
2. There is an agreement between common disputes and the research of the
author into SRBS. NO
3. The characteristic of common operating practices of SRBS convinces
Lucinda Mitchell to collaborate with them. YES
4. Political parties in different levels are in favor of SRBS as long as they are
prepared to compete with local and national organizations on price and
quality. NOT GIVEN
  Instinct /ˈɪn.stɪŋkt/ (n): Bản năng
 Prevailing /prɪˈveɪ.lɪŋ/ (adj): phổ biến
 Exaggerate /ɪɡˈzædʒ.ə.reɪt/ (v): phóng đại
 Infant /ˈɪn.fənt/ (n): trẻ sơ sinh(2m-1y)
 Persist /pɚˈsɪst/ (v): kiên trì
 Encounter /ɪnˈkaʊn.t̬ ɚ/ (v): bắt gặp
 Toddler /ˈtɑːd.lɚ/ (n): trẻ em (1-4 years)

How Babies Learn Language

A During the first year of a child’s life, parents and carers are concerned with its
physical development; during the second year, they watch the baby’s language
development very carefully. It is interesting just how easily children learn a
language. Children who are just three or four years old, who cannot yet tie their
shoelaces, are able to speak in full sentences without any specific language
training.

B The current view of child language development is that it is an instinct –

something as natural as eating or sleeping. According to experts in this area, this
language instinct is innate – something each of us is born with. But this prevailing
view has not always enjoyed widespread acceptance.

C In the middle of last century, experts of the time, including a renowned

professor at Harvard University in the United States, regarded child language
development as the process of learning through mere repetition. Language “habits”
developed as young children were rewarded for repeating language correctly and
ignored or punished when they used incorrect forms of language. Over time, a
child, according to this theory, would learn a language much like a dog might
learn to behave properly through training.

D Yet even though the modern view holds that language is instinctive, experts like
Assistant Professor Lise Eliot are convinced that the interaction a child has with
its parents and caregivers is crucial to its developments. The language of the
parents and caregivers act as models for the developing child. In fact, a baby’s day-
to-day experience is so important that the child will learn to speak in a manner very
similar to the model speakers it hears.

E Given that the models’ parents provide are so important, it is interesting to

consider the role of “baby talk” in the child’s language development. Baby talk is
the language produced by an adult speaker who is trying to exaggerate certain
aspects of the language to capture the attention of a young baby.

F Dr Roberta Golinkoff believes that babies benefit from baby talk. Experiments
show that immediately after birth babies respond more to infant-directed talk than
they do to adult-directed talk. When using baby talk, people exaggerate their
facial expressions, which helps the baby to begin to understand what is being
communicated.
She also notes that the exaggerated nature and repetition of baby talk helps infants
to learn the difference between sounds. Since babies have a great deal of
information to process, baby talk helps. Although there is concern that baby talk
may persist too long, Dr Golinkoff says that it stops being used as the child gets
older, that is, when the child is better able to communicate with the parents.

G Professor Jusczyk has made a particular study of babies’ ability to recognise

sounds and says they recognise the sound of their own names as early as four
and a half months. Babies know the meaning of Mummy and Daddy by about six
months, which is earlier than was previously believed. By about nine months,
babies begin recognizing frequent patterns in language. A baby will listen longer to
the sounds that occur frequently, so it is good to frequently call the infant by its
name.

H An experiment at Johns Hopkins University in the USA, in which researchers

went to the homes of 16 nine-month-olds, confirms this view. The researchers
arranged their visits for ten days out of a two week period. During each visit, the
researcher played an audio tape that included the same three stories. The stories
included odd words such as “python” or “hornbill”, words that were unlikely to be
encountered in the babies’ everyday experience.
After a couple of weeks during which nothing was done, the babies were brought
to the research lab, where they listened to two recorded lists of words. The first list
included words heard in the story. The second included similar words, but not the
exact ones that were used in the stories.

I Jusczyk found the babies listened longer to the words that had appeared in the
stories, which indicated that the babies had extracted individual words from the
story. When a control group of 16 nine-month-olds, who had not heard the stories,
listened to the two groups of words, they showed no preference for either list.

J This does not mean that the babies actually understand the meanings of the
words, just the sound patterns. It supports the idea that people are born to speak,
and have the capacity to learn language from the day they are born. This ability is
enhanced if they are involved in a conversation. And, significantly, Dr Eliot
reminds parents that babies and toddlers need to feel they are communicating.
Clearly, sitting in front of the television is not enough; the baby must be having an
interaction with another speaker.

Questions 35-40
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in the passage
“How babies learn language”?
In boxes 35-40 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

35 Children can learn their first language without being taught. YES
36 From the time of their birth, humans seem to have an ability to learn
languages. YES
37 According to experts in the 1950s and ’60s, language learning is very similar
to the training of animals. YES
38 Repetition in language learning is important, according to Dr Eliot. NG
39 Dr Golinkoff is concerned that “baby talk” is spoken too much by some
parents. NO
40 The first word a child learns to recognise is usually “Mummy” or “Daddy”.
NO
  monolingual (adj) /ˌmɒnəˈlɪŋɡwəl/: có khả năng sử dụng một ngôn ngữ
 bilingual (adj) /ˌbaɪˈlɪŋɡwəl/: có khả năng sử dụng hai ngôn ngữ
 multilingual (adj) /ˌmʌltiˈlɪŋɡwəl/: có khả năng sử dụng nhiều ngôn ngữ
 cognitive (adj) /ˈkɒɡnətɪv/: nhận thức
 neurological (adj) /ˌnjʊərəˈlɒdʒɪkl/: liên quan đến hệ thần kinh
 entire (adj) /ɪnˈtaɪə(r)/: tất cả
 sequential (adj) /sɪˈkwenʃl/: tuần tự
 regardless of (preposition) /rɪˈɡɑːdləs əv/: bất kể
 coactivation (noun) : hợp tác hoạt động
 persistent (adj) /pəˈsɪstənt/: kiên trì = consistent
 tip-of-the-tongue state (noun phrase): a state in which one cannot quite
recall a familiar word but can recall words of similar form and meaning
 excel at something (verb) /ɪkˈsel/: giỏi về cái gì

The Benefits of Being Bilingual

A
According to the latest figures, the majority of the world’s population is now
bilingual or multilingual, having grown up speaking two or more languages. In the
past, such children were considered to be at a disadvantage compared with their
monolingual peers. Over the past few decades, however, technological advances
have allowed researchers to look more deeply at how bilingualism interacts with
and changes the cognitive and neurological systems, thereby identifying several
clear benefits of being bilingual.

B
Research shows that when a bilingual person uses one language, the other is active
at the same time. When we hear a word, we don’t hear the entire word all at once:
the sounds arrive in sequential order. Long before the word is finished, the brain’s
language system begins to guess what that word might be. If you hear ‘can’, you
will likely activate words like ‘candy’ and ‘candle’ as well, at least during the
earlier stages of word recognition. For bilingual people, this activation is not
limited to a single language; auditory input activates corresponding words
regardless of the language to which they belong.

Some of the most compelling evidence for this phenomenon, called ‘language
coactivation’, comes from studying eye movements. A Russian-English bilingual
asked to ‘pick up a marker’ from a set of objects would look more at a stamp than
someone who doesn’t know Russian, because the Russian word for ‘stamp’, marka,
sounds like the English word he or she heard, ‘marker’. In cases like this, language
co-activation occurs because what the listener hears could map onto words in
either language.

C
Having to deal with this persistent linguistic competition can result in difficulties,
however. For instance, knowing more than one language can cause speakers
to name pictures more slowly, and can increase ‘tip-of-the-tongue states’, when
you can almost, but not quite, bring a word to mind. As a result, the constant
juggling of two languages creates a need to control how much a person accesses a
language at any given time. For this reason, bilingual people often perform better
on tasks that require conflict management. In the classic Stroop Task, people see a
word and are asked to name the colour of the word’s font. When the colour and the
word match (i., the word ‘red’ printed in red), people correctly name the colour
more quickly than when the colour and the word don’t match (i., the word ‘red’
printed in blue).

This occurs because the word itself (‘red’) and its font colour (blue) conflict. Bilingual
people often excel at tasks such as this, which tap into the ability to ignore
competing perceptual information and focus on the relevant aspects of the input.
Bilinguals are also better at switching between two tasks; for example, when
bilinguals have to switch from categorizing objects by colour (red or green) to
categorizing them by shape (circle or triangle), they do so more quickly than
monolingual people, reflecting better cognitive control when having to make rapid
changes of strategy.

D
It also seems that the neurological roots of the bilingual advantage extend to brain
areas more traditionally associated with sensory processing. When monolingual
and bilingual adolescents listen to simple speech sounds without any
intervening background noise, they show highly similar brain stem responses.
When researchers play the same sound to both groups in the presence of
background noise, however, the bilingual listeners’ neural response is considerably
larger, reflecting better encoding of the sound’s fundamental frequency, a feature
of sound closely related to pitch perception.

E
Such improvements in cognitive and sensory processing may help a bilingual
person to process information in the environment, and help explain why bilingual
adults acquire a third language better than monolingual adults master a second
language. This advantage may be rooted in the skill of focussing on information
about the new language while reducing interference from the languages they
already know.

F
Research also indicates that bilingual experience may help to keep the cognitive
mechanisms sharp by recruiting alternate brain networks to compensate for those
that become damaged during aging. Older bilinguals enjoy improved memory
relative to monolingual people, which can lead to real-world health benefits. In a
study of over 200 patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative brain disease,
bilingual patients reported showing initial symptoms of the disease an average of
five years later than monolingual patients.

In a follow-up study, researchers compared the brains of bilingual and monolingual

patients matched on the severity of Alzheimer’s symptoms. Surprisingly, the
bilinguals’ brains had more physical signs of disease than their monolingual
counterparts, even though their outward behaviour and abilities were the same. If
the brain is an engine, bilingualism may help it to go farther on the same amount of
fuel.

G
Furthermore, the benefits associated with bilingual experience seem to start very
early. In one study, researchers taught seven-month-old babies growing up in
monolingual or bilingual homes that when they heard a tinkling sound, a puppet
appeared on one side of a screen. Halfway through the study, the puppet began
appearing on the opposite side of the screen. In order to get a reward, the infants
had to adjust the rule they’d learned; only the bilingual babies were able to
successfully learn the new rule. This suggests that for very young children, as well
as for older people, navigating a multilingual environment imparts advantages that
transfer far beyond language.

Question 1-5 Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer
in Reading Passage?
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer

NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer

NOT GIVEN if is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
1. Attitudes towards bilingualism have changed in recent years. YES

2. Bilingual people are better than monolingual people at guessing correctly

what words are before they are finished. NOT GIVEN

3. Bilingual people consistently name images faster than monolingual people.

NO

4. Bilingual people’s brains process single sounds more efficiently than

monolingual people in all situations. NO

5. Fewer bilingual people than monolingual people suffer from brain disease in
old age. NOT GIVEN