TRƯỜNG ĐH SƯ PHẠM TP.

HCM ĐỂ THI KẾT THÚC HỌC PHẦN

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SECTION ONE: READING (50pts)

Passage 1: WILDFIRES
A. There are varying names for wildfires in different parts of the world, but the reality is much the same.
Wildfires are uncontrolled fires in wilderness areas, forest plantations, and national parks which destroy
everything in their path. Hundreds of acres of forests or native bush are lost; thousands of birds, reptiles,
mammals, and insects are burned to cinders. All too often, firefighters are overcome by smoke, flames,
and dehydration. Sometimes, such fires spread to settled areas, with the destruction of homes and
agricultural crops, and further losses of human lives. A wildfire is a tragedy for all concerned, and the
wildlife can take years to recover to the previous levels.
B. There are a multitude of possible causes of a wildfire. One of the most common natural causes is
lightning; for example, in Australia, it is the cause of 26% of all bushfires (as wildfires are known there).
The original meaning of wildfire was specifically a fire caused by lightning. Other natural causes
include volcanic eruptions and underground coal fires, although these occur less frequently. Heatwaves
and droughts also increase the risk of wildfires. A big problem is human carelessness, especially due to
discarded cigarette butts or campfires not properly extinguished by campers and hikers. Rubbish fires
allowed to burn out of control can be another cause. Deliberate causes of fires include slash-and-burn
agriculture in certain parts of the world. Humans also deliberately set off wildfires through arson; sadly,
this is a surprisingly common cause of wildfires.
C. Places that are vulnerable to wildfires have enough moisture for the growth of trees and other
vegetation, combined with long dry periods in summer or autumn. During the dry periods, there is a
build-up of vegetation which becomes highly flammable as it dries out. Certain species of trees, such as
the eucalypts, have a high oil content in their leaves which adds to the intensity of any fire. In such
wooded areas, the combination of drought and high winds leads to a very high risk of wildfire. With
strong winds fanning the flames, wildfires can move extremely fast - up to 60kms or so in a day,
consuming up to 1,000 acres per hour. The winds provide fresh oxygen, which enables the fire to keep
burning. In eucalypt forests, especially, the high temperatures can lead to explosions which spread
burning material far afield. If the canopy of a forest catches fire, this sets up a ‘crown fire’ which
spreads very rapidly and is difficult for firefighters to control as the canopy is so high.
D. The consequences of wildfires are not limited to the immediate damage and loss that occurs; the
secondary effects of wildfires are also significant. These include erosion, landslides, the introduction of
non-native species, and changes in water quality. All of these impact on the recovery of the wildlife that
is depleted by such fires, as well as the regeneration of vegetation. They may result in a greater risk of
flood damage once the rains begin.

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E. However, in some cases, a certain amount of burning contributes to the regeneration of wilderness areas
and is, therefore, a natural part of the ecosystem. Certain plants have evolved a variety of strategies to
survive fires, such as having fire-resistant seeds, which enable them to remove competition from other
species. The smoke and heat of a fire serves to pop open seed pods and stimulate their germination in
many cases. For some species, fire is actually an essential trigger for germination. However, the
increased fire frequency that is occurring in many areas due to human carelessness has a destructive
effect on native species, leading to their replacement by weeds which fail to offer a suitable habitat for
the wild creatures that used to live in that area. In this way, little by little, the nature of the wilderness
changes irreversibly.
F. The longer the gap between fires in any area, the more severe the fire that eventually results. For this
reason, in any area prone to fires, the fire service usually carries out a programme of ‘prescribed
burning'. This includes manual scrub clearance and controlled burning of strips (firebreaks) prevent
wildfires from spreading into developed areas. Another technique is 'back-burning', using low intensity
fires to clear undergrowth and prevent more severe, uncontrollable fires. While rural people usually
understand the need for such programmes, city people in the fringe zone between settled and wilderness
land often object as they consider that fires are destructive and pollute the atmosphere. They fail to
distinguish between prescribed burning early in the season for prevention and out-of-control fires that
threaten life and property late in the dry season.
G. There can be no doubt about the terror of a major wildfire or bushfire for those who are caught up in it,
whether trying to control it or attempting to flee for their lives. The destruction of vast areas of forests,
plus all the other plants and creatures that live within the ecosystem, is a terrible outcome. Where such
fires are due to natural causes, there is little point in laying blame. But all too often, it is a human action,
either careless or deliberate, that is responsible for this tragedy.

A. Choose a correct heading for paragraph B to F from the list of headings below.
1. Paragraph B List of headings:
2. Paragraph C i. The definitions
3. Paragraph D ii. Other consequences of wildfires
4. Paragraph E iii. Benefits of occasional wildfires
5. Paragraph F iv. Conclusion
v. Common causes of wildfires
vi. World-famous examples of wildfires
vii. How wildfires develop
viii. Fire prevention techniques
ix. How to fight a wildfire

B. Give answers with information from the text. DO NOT COPY THE WHOLE SENTENCES.
6. What is the word for a wildfire that is intentionally started by a person? arson
7. Which two factors increase the chance of a wildfire? drought and high winds
8. What is the term for a blazing canopy in a forest wildfire? a crown fire
9. Why are wildfires considered a part of the ecosystem? a certain amount of burning contributes to the regeneration of
wilderness areas
10. Why is there a disapproval of the fire service’s programmes?
While rural people usually
understand the need for such programmes, city
people in the fringe zone between settled and
wilderness
land often object as they consider that fires are
destructive and pollute the atmosphere.
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 Passage 2: DO YOU FEEL LUCKY?
Many years ago, I met a man who pronounced that he would 'die young'. He told me this as a bald fact, but on
further probing it emerged that his prognosis was based solely on 'a feeling'. The man was a catastrophic thinker
- someone for whom the worst-case scenario in any given situation would always seem the most likely outcome,
regardless of statistical likelihood. In making an unrealistic assessment about his future health circumstances,
'Richard' (who, incidentally, is still alive) is typical. However, where he is unusual is in presuming the worst.
Only a small proportion of people take this doom-laden approach. Most of us actually do the opposite.
Research has shown that more than 50 per cent of people believe they are less likely than others to be afflicted
with cancer, tooth decay or a motoring accident. Psychologists describe this phenomenon as 'unrealistic optimism'.
Indeed, studies that require people to assess their risk of negative situations, such as unwanted pregnancy, or to
rate skills such as driving ability, reveal that more than 70 per cent of them class their risk factors as low and their
positive attributes as high. Put bluntly, this means that average people think they are better and luckier than
average.
On the surface, this skew towards the glass-half-full approach to life can be a good thing – positive emotions
trigger the release of endorphins that relax the cardiovascular system, and also the release of cytokines, which
boost the immune system. Conversely, pessimistic thinking has been linked to the constriction of blood vessels,
the suppression of the immune system and a poorer outcome in serious illness.
However, recent findings from the Royal Society of Medicine may at last give pessimists something to smile
about. A paper by Australian psychologist Professor Ron Gold suggests unrealistic optimism may be causing
people to ignore advice on the prevention of alcoholism, smoking and obesity. It's a contentious area - no scientific
study has actually correlated the two - but many psychologists accept that there is a certain logic in the assumption
that risk-taking behaviour may be triggered by unrealistic optimism. 'If you believe you're less at risk of something
than the average person, then you're more likely to go ahead and do it,' says Professor Gold.
Catastrophic thinkers do not behave in this way. While most people distance themselves from negative news
reports about illness, for example, catastrophic thinkers identify closely - thinking: 'That's bound to happen to
me.' Clinical psychologist Linda Blair, of the University of Bath, believes that around 10 per cent of the population
thinks in this way. 'These are people who have negative underlying beliefs,' she says. 'Their propensity to presume
the worst may stem from an earlier traumatic experience or may simply be learnt from an anxious parent or other
care giver.'
Unfortunately, whereas unrealistic optimists can find comfort in their improbable but idealistic interpretation of
events, no psychologist has ever found any benefits in catastrophic thinking. However, the good news is that both
unrealistic and catastrophic thinking are learnt behaviours and, as such, can be 'unlearnt'. Usually, a therapist will
use cognitive behavioural therapy to get clients to use rational thought processes to examine how they can change
their patterns of behaviour.
Seeing as both unrealistic optimism and catastrophic thinking involve a slightly warped view of how things really
are, it is the therapist's job to put some realism into the situation. A catastrophic thinker who fears he will be
knocked down by a truck the moment he ventures into the street may, from the comfort of the therapy room, be
asked to imagine a disaster-free trip out; while the unrealistic optimist, who feels he is not at risk of an accident
despite regularly driving a motorbike at high speed, would be asked to imagine a scenario in which he was
responsible for a road crash. In short, in a bizarre twist of the norm, the optimist is being asked to consider the
worst-case scenario and the pessimist the best (or, at any rate, an event free of negative consequences).

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Dr Lynn Myers, health psychologist at University College London, says these methods work. She took a group
of smokers who were unrealistically optimistic about their risk of getting lung cancer and heart disease and asked
them to imagine that they had a smoking-related illness. They were asked to write down what happened in the
course of this illness - from its onset to its treatment. By the end of Myers's exercise, they had lost their unrealistic
optimism. Whether such findings will one day influence the way health promoters run their campaigns remains
to be seen.
A. Complete the sentences with correct endings
11. Catastrophic thinking j
12. Unrealistic optimists i
13. These two types of thinking g
14. The studies described in the article
15. The therapists
a. can be altered with changes in thinking
b. see no progress in using imagination
c. may predict what will happen in their lives.
d. are more likely to try risky actions
e. are of 50 percent in the surveyed answers
f. may change general medical thinking in the future
g. are innate behaviors
h. use real-life situations to neutralize the extreme
i. believe things are statistically likely
j. may be the result of past personal experience
k. proves the benefits of pessimism

B. Give answers using information from the text. DO NOT COPY THE WHOLE SENTENCES.
16. Who is Richard?
17. What is glass-half-full approach?
18. What is the contentious area in this situation?
19. How can the therapist help these extreme thinkers?
20. Will there be any changes in the future health campaigns? Why (not)?

C. Complete the sentences with NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text
21. It is likely for a catastrophic thinker to think of the _______ result when encountering any problems
while people whose optimistic ________ are classified high are called unrealistic optimists.
22. Their behaviour patterns can be changed using _________ therapy since these can be _________.

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 Passage 3: GOALKEEPERS FOR THE PLANET
A. In 2015 at the United Nations, world leaders adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals aimed at reducing
poverty, inequality, and other global problems by 2030. Such objectives have long been championed by
philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates. In 2017, the Gates Foundation launched Goalkeepers, an initiative to
spur action and track progress toward the UN goals. Its 2018 status report says there have been "mind-
blowing improvements in the human condition." The report also calls for more investment and innovation to
ensure this progress continues.
B. Susan Goldberg (SG), editor-in-chief of National Geographic Magazine, met with Bill and Melinda Gates
(BG and MG) for a joint interview on the report, which was released to the public on September 18, 2018.

C. SG: I've just read the Goalkeepers report. Why did you decide to start doing this?
MG: Because we think that the news isn't really out there - the news that the world has made this incredible
progress, this increase in lives saved, the reduction in poverty. The UN set these amazing goals for the future
to help us continue to reduce poverty, and we want to make sure that we hold people accountable for that
progress and really inspire the next generation of leaders who are going to take these tasks on.

D. SG: What are you seeing in different countries? Who's doing a great job?
BG: Even a very poor country can do a good job on health, can do a good job on agriculture, on education,
and that provides a lot of hope because you can copy what's being done there. Rwanda has been a big outlier
in the quality of health services. Ethiopia, on agriculture, is growing over 5 percent a year. In education,
Vietnam is one we talk about because they're so far ahead of where you'd expect given their wealth. But it's
when you get those three things together - health, education, agriculture - that eventually these countries can
become self-sufficient.
E. MG: One of the things that's also encouraging: Rwanda is a very small country [in population], Ethiopia is
the second largest on the continent of Africa - but they have learned the lessons of what has helped people
make progress from around the world. So they're looking at what happened in Asia in agriculture, how did
Brazil decrease the stunting rate [among malnourished children] so phenomenally across a very large country
with lots of poverty.

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F. SG: When you think about learning from one another, I was struck by the example from Vietnam,
where you've got 15-year-olds who are doing as well on international tests in school as people from the
United Kingdom or from the United States. What are the lessons from Vietnam that can translate
across other countries?
BG: It's a really new thing to try and get into the amount of learning. The agenda for poor countries up until
now has largely been to get the kids into school - and attendance rates have gone up a lot, for girls and boys.
The biggest missing piece still is how much knowledge they're gaining. A few countries, by training the
teachers the right way and bringing the right material into the classroom, have really achieved learning way
beyond what you might expect.
G. MG: When you look back at the UN goals that were initially set in 2000, one of the goals was to get kids into
school, and that has essentially been achieved, particularly at the primary level and quite a bit at the secondary
level. So it's neat to see a goal achieved, but now with this next set of goals, it's about how to get the depth of
learning and the education right.

H. SG: Thinking about Africa: How young it is, how many young people there are, is both a huge
challenge and a great opportunity. Can you talk a little bit about that?
BG: The African continent today is about a billion people out of the seven billion on Earth, and as this
century goes forward, over half the young people in the entire world will be there. With those people moving
into the job market, if the right investments are made - stability, education, health - Africa will have growth
and innovation, far more than lots of other places. If, on the other hand, we don't take care of the HIV crisis,
then you'll just have more people who will get infected. If you don't have the right conditions, then the young
people, particularly the men, can add to that instability. So Africa definitely hangs in the balance.

I. SG: Melinda, family planning has been one of the issues that you're most involved in. Can you talk to
me a little about that?
MG: Family planning is crucial anywhere, in any community around the world, because if a woman can
decide if and when to have a child, she's going to be healthier, and her child is going to be healthier. That's
one of the longest-standing pieces of global health research we have ... [If parents] can space the births of
those children, they can then feed them, they can educate them, the woman can work and contribute her
income to the family. It changes everything in the family dynamic, and it changes the community, and
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 ultimately you get these country-level effects where it's good for everybody.

J. SG: You've gone all over the world and seen the problems up close. If you could wave a magic wand
and fix just one thing, what would it be?
BG: The development of children. Today more than half the kids in Africa never fully develop physically or
mentally because of malnutrition, their diet, and the diseases they face. With research on the human gut
microbiome, we're gaining an understanding of stunting, why they don't grow. I'm super excited that by the
end of the decade we expect to have cheap interventions so those kids will fully develop. That means all the
investments you make in their education, wanting to benefit from their productivity, will work far better. So if
there was just one thing, it's the intervention to stop malnutrition.

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A. Choose the best answer for each question.
23. The GOALKEEPERS report was
A. mostly optimistic
B. somewhat pessimistic
C. extremely pessimistic
D. mostly inconclusive
24. In the third sentence of paragraph D, what does that refer to?
A. the fact that new generations of leaders are being inspired
B. the fact that even very poor countries are making progress
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 C. the fact that many countries are becoming totally self-sufficient
D. the fact that the UN set extremely difficult goals
25. Bill Gates indicates that there has been a significant improvement in all three areas of health,
agriculture, and education in
A. Rwanda
B. Ethiopia
C. Vietnam
D. None of these three countries
26. What does the Poverty infographic tell us about Sub-Saharan Africa?
A. Poverty is steadily rising.
B. Poverty is falling more slowly than in other regions.
C. Poverty has remained about the same as in the past.
D. Poverty is at about the same level as Southeast Asia.
27. The word phenomenally in paragraph E is closest in meaning to
A. Gradually
B. Effortlessly
C. Amazingly
D. Deliberately
28. According to Bill Gates, countries wanting to improve their educational system should focus on
A. getting more and more students into the classroom
B. expanding the size of schools and building more schools
C. training teachers and getting better classroom materials
D. preparing students to take international tests
29. Which goal in the list of sustainable development goals is Bill Gates most concerned with?
A. Goal 2
B. Goal 5
C. Goal 7
D. Goal 9
B. Choose the best answer for each question.
30. In paragraph A, what can we infer about the UN Sustainable Development Goals?
A. Member countries agreed to them.
B. The Gates Foundation wrote them.
C. They are not officially approved yet.
D. They only apply to developing countries.
31. In paragraph C, we can infer that Bill and Melinda Gates produced the Goalkeepers report
because
A. not enough progress was being made
B. a lot of people aren't aware of the UN's progress
C. the news media is not good at producing reports
D. the UN didn't want to do it
32. Based on information in paragraph E, which of these opinions do you think Melinda Gates would
likely agree with?
A. It's easier to make progress towards the sustainable goals if a country is large.
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 B. Most African countries should copy Brazil's model for reducing stunting.
C. Rwanda and Ethiopia are the best places to live in Africa.
D. Countries should consider adopting successful ideas from around the world.
33. According to the information in paragraph I, which of the following statements would Melinda
Gates most likely agree with?
A. The importance of family planning has only recently been fully understood.
B. There is no evidence that family planning has any effect upon a family's overall health.
C. It has been known for a long time that family planning is extremely important.
D. It's important that governments restrict the number of children families can have.

C. Read and decide whether the statement is T (true), F (false), or NG (not given)
34. The Goalkeepers report was produced by the UN.
35. The stunting rate among malnourished kids in Africa has decreased since 2000.
36. More than half of the world's young people are predicted to live in Africa.
37. East Asia and Southeast Asia have better reading and math proficiency than the world average.
38. Poverty in South Asia has increased since 2017.
39. Math proficiency in Central and South Asia is above the world average.
40. The UN's Sustainable Development Goals are listed in order of importance.

SECTION 2: WRITING (50pts)

Choose ONE topic and write around 300 words.

1. The most difficult decision you have made

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