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Reading Passage 1: Learning Lessons from the Past
Many past societies collapsed or vanished, leaving behind monumental ruins such as those that the poet Shelley imagined in his sonnet, Ozymandias. By collapse, I mean a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time. By those standards, most people would consider the following past societies to have been famous victims of full-fledged collapses rather than of just minor declines: the Anasazi and Cahokia within the boundaries of the modern US, the Maya cities in Central America, Moche and Tiwanaku societies in South America, Norse Greenland, Mycenean Greece and Minoan Crete in Europe, Great Zimbabwe in Africa, Angkor Wat and the Harappan Indus Valley cities in Asia, and Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean.
The monumental ruins left behind by those past societies hold a fascination for all of us. We marvel at them when as children we first learn of them through pictures. When we grow up, many of us plan vacations in order to experience them at first hand. We feel drawn to their often spectacular and haunting beauty, and also to the mysteries that they pose. The scales of the ruins testify to the former wealth and power of their builders. Yet these builders vanished, abandoning the great structures that they had created at such effort. How could a society that was once so mighty end up collapsing?
It has long been suspected that many of those mysterious abandonments were at least partly triggered by ecological problems: people inadvertently destroying the environmental resources on which their societies depended. This suspicion of unintended ecological suicide (ecocide) has been confirmed by discoveries made in recent decades by archaeologists, climatologists, historians, paleontologists, and palynologists (pollen scientists). The processes through which past societies have undermined themselves by damaging their environments fall into eight categories, whose relative importance differs from case to case: deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems, water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth, and increased impact of people.
Those past collapses tended to follow somewhat similar courses constituting variations on a theme. Writers find it tempting to draw analogies between the course of human societies and the course of individual human lives - to talk of a society’s birth, growth, peak, old age and eventual death. But that metaphor proves erroneous for many past societies: they declined rapidly after reaching peak numbers and power, and those rapid declines must have come as a surprise and shock to their citizens. Obviously, too, this trajectory is not one that all past societies followed unvaryingly to completion: different societies collapsed to different degrees and in somewhat different ways, while many societies did not collapse at all.
Today many people feel that environmental problems overshadow all the other threats to global civilisation. These environmental problems include the same eight that undermined past societies, plus four new ones: human-caused climate change, build up of toxic chemicals in the environment, energy shortages, and full human utilisation of the Earth’s photosynthetic capacity. But the seriousness of these current environmental problems is vigorously debated. Are the risks greatly exaggerated, or conversely are they underestimated? Will modern technology solve our problems, or is it creating new problems faster than it solves old ones? When we deplete one resource (e.g. wood, oil, or ocean fish), can we count on being able to substitute some new resource (e.g. plastics, wind and solar energy, or farmed fish)? Isn’t the rate of human population growth declining, such that we’re already on course for the world’s population to level off at some manageable number of people?
Questions like this illustrate why those famous collapses of past civilisations have taken on more meaning than just that of a romantic mystery. Perhaps there are some practical lessons that we could learn from all those past collapses. But there are also differences between the modern world and its problems, and those past societies and their problems. We shouldn't be so naive as to think that study of the past will yield simple solutions, directly transferable to our societies today. We differ from past societies in some respects that put us at lower risk than them; some of those respects often mentioned include our powerful technology (i.e. its beneficial effects), globalisation, modern medicine, and greater knowledge of past societies and of distant modern societies. We also differ from past societies in some respects that put us at greater risk than them: again, our potent technology (i.e., its unintended destructive effects), globalisation (such that now a problem in one part of the world affects all the rest), the dependence of millions of us on modern medicine for our survival, and our much larger human population. Perhaps we can still learn from the past, but only if we think carefully about its lessons.
- 1
When the writer describes the impact of monumental ruins today, he emphasises
- A. the income they generate from tourism.
- B. the area of land they occupy.
- C. their archaeological value.
- D. their romantic appeal.
- 2
Recent findings concerning vanished civilisations have
- A. overturned long-held beliefs.
- B. caused controversy amongst scientists.
- C. come from a variety of disciplines.
- D. identified one main cause of environmental damage.
- 3
What does the writer say about ways in which former societies collapsed?
- A. The pace of decline was usually similar.
- B. The likelihood of collapse would have been foreseeable.
- C. Deterioration invariably led to total collapse.
- D. Individual citizens could sometimes influence the course of events.
- 4
It is widely believed that environmental problems represent the main danger faced by the modern world.
- 5
The accumulation of poisonous substances is a relatively modern problem.
- 6
There is general agreement that the threats posed by environmental problems are very serious.
- 7
Some past societies resembled present-day societies more closely than others.
- 8
We should be careful when drawing comparisons between past and present.
- 9
Evidence of the greatness of some former civilisations
- A. is not necessarily valid.
- B. provides grounds for an optimistic outlook.
- C. exists in the form of physical structures.
- D. is potentially both positive and negative.
- E. will not provide direct solutions for present problems.
- F. is greater now than in the past.
- 10
The parallel between an individual's life and the life of a society
- 11
The number of environmental problems that societies face
- 12
The power of technology
- 13
A consideration of historical events and trends
- 14
What is the main argument of Reading Passage?
- A. There are differences as well as similarities between past and present societies.
- B. More should be done to preserve the physical remains of earlier civilisations.
- C. Some historical accounts of great civilisations are inaccurate.
- D. Modern societies are dependent on each other for their continuing survival.
Reading Passage 2: Monkeys and Forests
As an east wind blasts through a gap in the Cordillera de Tilaran, a rugged mountain range that splits northern Costa Rica in half, a female mantled howler monkey moves through the swaying trees of the forest canopy.
A. Ken Glander, a primatologist from Duke University, gazes into the canopy, tracking the female’s movements. Holding a dart gun, he waits with infinite patience for the right moment to shoot. With great care, Glander aims and fires. Hit in the rump, the monkey wobbles. This howler belongs to a population that has lived for decades at Hacienda La Pacifica, a working cattle ranch in Guanacaste province. Other native primates — white-faced capuchin monkeys and spider monkeys — once were common in this area, too, but vanished after the Pan-American Highway was built nearby in the 1950s. Most of the surrounding land was clear-cut for pasture.
B. Howlers persist at La Pacifica, Glander explains, because they are leaf-eaters. They eat fruit, when it’s available but, unlike capuchin and spider monkeys, do not depend on large areas of fruiting trees. “Howlers can survive anyplace you have half a dozen trees because their eating habits are so flexible,” he says. In forests, life is an arms race between trees and the myriad creatures that feed on leaves. Plants have evolved a variety of chemical defences, ranging from bad-tasting tannins, which bind with plant-produced nutrients, rendering them indigestible, to deadly poisons, such as alkaloids and cyanide.
C. All primates, including humans, have some ability to handle plant toxins. “We can detoxify a dangerous poison known as caffeine, which is deadly to a lot of animals,” Glander says. For leaf-eaters, long-term exposure to a specific plant toxin can increase their ability to defuse the poison and absorb the leaf nutrients. The leaves that grow in regenerating forests, like those at La Pacifica, are actually more howler friendly than those produced by the undisturbed, centuries-old trees that survive farther south, in the Amazon Basin. In younger forests, trees put most of their limited energy into growing wood, leaves and fruit, so they produce much lower levels of toxin than do well-established, old-growth trees.
D. The value of maturing forests to primates is a subject of study at Santa Rosa National Park, about 35 miles northwest of Hacienda La Pacifica. The park hosts populations not only of mantled howlers but also of white-faced capuchins and spider monkeys. Yet the forests there are young, most of them less than 50 years old. Capuchins were the first to begin using the reborn forests when the trees were as young as 14 years. Howlers, larger and heavier than capuchins, need somewhat older trees, with limbs that can support their greater body weight. A working ranch at Hacienda La Pacifica also explains their population boom in Santa Rosa. “Howlers are more resilient than capuchins and spider monkeys for several reasons,” Fedigan explains. “They can live within a small home range, as long as the trees have the right food for them. Spider monkeys, on the other hand, occupy a huge home range, so they can’t make it in fragmented habitat.”
E. Howlers also reproduce faster than do other monkey species in the area. Capuchins don’t bear their first young until about 7 years old, and spider monkeys do so even later, but howlers give birth for the first time at about 3.5 years of age. Also, while a female spider monkey will have a baby about once every four years, well-fed howlers can produce an infant every two years.
F. The leaves howlers eat hold plenty of water, so the monkeys can survive away from open streams and water holes. This ability gives them a real advantage over capuchin and spider monkeys, which have suffered during the long, ongoing drought in Guanacaste.
G. Growing human population pressures in Central and South America have led to the persistent destruction of forests. During the 1990s, about 1.1 million acres of Central American forest were felled yearly. Alejandro Estrada, an ecologist at Estacion de Biologia Los Tuxtlas in Veracruz, Mexico, has been exploring how monkeys survive in a landscape increasingly shaped by humans. He and his colleagues recently studied the ecology of a group of mantled howler monkeys that thrive in a habitat completely altered by humans: a cacao plantation in Tabasco, Mexico. Like many varieties of coffee, cacao plants need shade to grow, so 40 years ago the landowners planted fig, monkey pod and other tall trees to form a protective canopy over their crop. The howlers moved in about 25 years ago after nearby forests were cut. This strange habitat, a hodgepodge of cultivated native and exotic plants, seems to support about as many monkeys as would a same-sized patch of wild forest. The howlers eat the leaves and fruit of the shade trees, leaving the valuable cacao pods alone, so the farmers tolerate them.
H. Estrada believes the monkeys bring underappreciated benefits to such farms, dispersing the seeds of fig and other shade trees and fertilizing the soil with feces. He points out that howler monkeys live in shade coffee and cacao plantations in Nicaragua and Costa Rica as well as in Mexico. Spider monkeys also forage in such plantations, though they need nearby areas of forest to survive in the long term. He hopes that farmers will begin to see the advantages of associating with wild monkeys, which includes potential ecotourism projects.
“Conservation is usually viewed as a conflict between agricultural practices and the need to preserve nature,” Estrada says. “We’re moving away from that vision and beginning to consider ways in which agricultural activities may become a tool for the conservation of primates in human-modified landscapes.”
- 15
a reference of reduction in Forest inhabitant.
- 16
Only one species of monkey survived while other two species have vanished.
- 17
a reason for howler Monkey of choosing new leaves.
- 18
mention to Howler Monkey's nutrient and eating habits.
- 19
a reference of asking farmers' changing attitude toward wildlife.
- 20
the advantage for Howler Monkey's flexibility living in a segmented habitat.
- 21
Howler Monkey's benefit to the local region's agriculture
- A. Hacienda La Pacifica
- B. Santa Rosa National Park
- C. a cacao plantation in Tabasco, Mexico
- D. Estacion de Biologia Los Tuxtlas in Veracruz, Mexico
- E. Amazon Basin
- 22
Original home for all three native monkeys
- 23
A place where Capuchins monkey comes for a better habitat
- 24
Howlers in La Pacifica survive since they can feed themselves with leaf when ______ is not easily found.
- 25
Howlers have a better ability to alleviate the ______ (which old and young trees use to protect themselves).
- 26
When compared to that of spider monkeys and capuchin monkeys, the ______ rate of Howlers is relatively faster (round for just every 2 years).
- 27
The monkeys can survive away from open streams and water holes as the leaves howlers eat hold a high content of ______, which enables them to resist continuous ______ in Guanacaste.
- 28
...which enables them to resist continuous ______ in Guanacaste.
Reading Passage 3: Rebranding art museums: A study of the reopened National Gallery of Victoria
As anyone with even a passing interest in cultural institutions will know, art museums are adapting to keep up with changes in society. Do any of these newly developed spaces indicate a fundamental shift in the ways we engage with art at the beginning of the twenty-first century? The answer is a qualified Yes and also, it must be said, No. A clear sense of this can be gained by considering the 2003 redevelopment of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) in Melbourne, Australia's second largest city, in the light of the aspirations embodied in the original building that served as its home.
The first building was considered a thoroughly modern museum when it opened to the public in 1968. We should not forget that it was also bold, entrepreneurial and innovative in ways that have done great credit to the vision and foresight of the architect, Roy Grounds. For one thing, the 1968 building signalled a strong sense of engagement with Asian and Pacific cultures, both in its architecture and through the layout of its collections. Its entrance lobby was designed to facilitate the rapid and efficient circulation of visitors. It also contained a series of greatly expanded temporary exhibition galleries and a vast Great Hall, which represented an unprecedented emphasis on the ancillary roles of corporate functions and public performances in the contemporary museum.
This last feature might have seemed excessive to some, yet how wise it has proven over the years as museums have come to place increasing emphasis on corporate sponsorship, and on the need to generate additional funds via room hire. Furthermore, the Great Hall has for forty years provided an area for children to roam at large before being escorted through the much less spatially accommodating galleries themselves. As an unintimidating introduction to the lifelong rigours of visiting art museums, its impact on attendance cannot be underestimated.
At the same time, other aspects of the 1968 NGV have not withstood the test of time so well. Foremost among these are the huge expanse of the exterior's windowless wall and the surrounding moat, which creates a rather unwelcoming expression of the museum as a temple of culture set apart from the everyday world. Over time, this idea has been questioned, and has been superseded by the growing impetus towards the alternative model of the museum as a more open-ended and visitor-friendly forum that engages the public more actively.
With these considerations in mind, Mario Bellini's redeveloped NGV opened in 2003 and his design reflects what the new, improved, twenty-first century global museum feels it should be emphasising to its visitors. Here the institution's energies are focused, not so much on the technical subtleties of how to design the galleries themselves, as on presenting to the public a spectacular image of the museum itself as a welcoming yet efficient facilitator of social interaction, popular entertainment and public knowledge. All of this is certainly impressive, but where has the art gone? We are not allowed to see the exhibitions until we have completed the necessary inductions. We are greeted by a hugely expanded cloakroom screening off our vision to the right, followed by a large visitor information office leading to the ticket booths. Above us is the cafe and to our left we cannot escape the NGV shop set alongside the entrance.
And what of the redesigned galleries themselves? In fact, they represent a wonderfully elegant reframing of the permanent collections in ways that should offer first-time visitors and seasoned members alike many new avenues for engagement in the years to come. But herein lies the conundrum posed by the NGV renovation and by the global sweep of new museum projects more generally. The mainstay elements of a permanent collection can become all too easily lost in the increased prominence that these rebranding exercises tend to place on the more glamorously spectacular aspects of the institution itself. At its most extreme, this results in the construction of new buildings that supplant the artworks inside them to become the major attractions in their own right.
These challenges are most keenly felt in the area of the temporary exhibition. Entrance to the NGV permanent collection is now free, so the NGV needs something to keep the paying public coming back. The answer lies in the international 'blockbuster' exhibition. The Impressionists, for example, netted a total of 380,000 visitors, making it one of the most popular exhibitions in Australian history. There has also been, it needs to be said, a commendable attempt to leaven the international masterpieces with selected highlights from the permanent collection. Overall, though, the prevalence of these 'rental' blockbusters cannot but help introduce a certain 'off the rack' feeling to the institution's exhibition programme. More importantly perhaps, they clearly narrow the options for other worthy but less glamorous projects, and they take energy away from the curators' potential to do further work on and around the permanent collection.
Yet the show must go on, and shows can't exist without the public. Even the most adroit organisation, as the NGV assuredly is, needs to be able to juggle numerous, often conflicting priorities: the need to advance scholarship, on the one hand, versus the imperative of access on the other; the need to introduce audiences to new areas, versus the necessity of luring them in with instant brand recognition. Nobody said it was going to be easy, and the effect of too much innovation in museums can be unsettling.
- 29
What is the writer doing in the first paragraph?
- A. comparing the old NGV with the new NGV
- B. describing the role of art museums in Australian culture
- C. considering the influence of gallery design on art appreciation
- D. suggesting there has been little recent change in gallery design
- 30
The writer criticises the old NGV because
- A. the permanent collection was poorly displayed
- B. the building tended to make art seem remote
- C. Asian and Pacific art was neglected
- D. the foyer resembled a railway station
- 31
What does the writer notice about the new NGV?
- A. He thinks the ticket booths are well positioned
- B. He is upset that he is made to move so quickly
- C. He is frustrated because the art is obscured by the entrance
- D. He thinks the redevelopment fails to keep up with international trends
- 32
The writer argues that rental 'blockbuster' exhibitions
- A. should be cheaper
- B. are a financial necessity
- C. should be increased in number
- D. allow the museum to present an original view of art history
- 33
Roy Grounds's design failed to recognise the importance of functions and performances in museums.
- 34
Mario Bellini's new NGV rejects international museum design trends.
- 35
Mario Bellini's work on subsequent museum projects has been less successful than that on the NGV.
- 36
The NGV monitors the number of first-time visitors to permanent exhibitions.
- 37
Too much change may have negative impacts on museums.
- 38
If a large space is available in the museum,
- A. the museum programme will lose its individuality.
- B. the museum will lose credibility.
- C. the art loses its importance.
- D. it will have to balance opposing demands.
- E. this will encourage museum visitors in the future.
- F. it will have the capability of increasing revenue.
- G. the architect's reputation might suffer.
- 39
If children are allowed to move freely in parts of the gallery,
- 40
If too much emphasis is placed on the museum building itself,
- 41
If there is an over-reliance on 'blockbuster' exhibitions,
- 42
If the NGV wants to continue to be successful,
Phiếu trả lời
Điền đáp án khi làm bài — kiểm tra kết quả ngay lập tức và lưu cục bộ, mọi câu sai sẽ vào nhật ký lỗi cùng bài học khắc phục.
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Lưu trên thiết bị này — không cần tài khoản. Đăng nhập ở trang tiến trình nếu muốn đồng bộ sang nơi khác.
Hiện đáp án
Đáp án
1. C
2. D
3. A
4. YES
5. YES
6. NO
7. NOT GIVEN
8. YES
9. C
10. A
11. F
12. D
13. E
14. A
15. G
16. A
17. C
18. B
19. H
20. D
21. C
22. A
23. B
24. fruit / the fruit
25. plant toxin / toxin
26. reproduction / reproduce
27. water
28. drought
29. C
30. B
31. C
32. B
33. NO
34. NO
35. NOT GIVEN
36. NOT GIVEN
37. YES
38. F
39. E
40. C
41. A
42. D