NGUYEN LE HA GIANG – HANU - 📞085 389 6899

Exercise 1 Reading Section 3 Read the passage and answer Questions 1-14.
Why don't babies talk like adults?
Kids go from 'goo-goo' to talkative one step at a time
by Joshua Hartshorne
A recent e-trade advertisement shows a baby speaking directly to the camera: 'Look at this,' he
says, 'I'm a free man. I go anywhere I want now.' He describes his stock-buying activities, and then his
phone rings. This advertisement proves what comedians have known for years: few things are as funny as
a baby who talks like an adult. But it also raises an important question: Why don't young children express
themselves clearly like adults?
Many people assume children learn to talk by copying what they hear. In other words, they listen
to the words adults use and the situations in which they use them and imitate accordingly. Behaviourism,
the scientific approach that dominated American cognitive science for the first half of the 20th century,
made exactly this argument.
However, this 'copycat' theory can't explain why toddlers aren't as conversational as adults. After
all, you never hear literate adults express themselves in one-word sentences like 'bottle' or 'doggie'. In
fact, it's easy for scientists to show that a copycat theory of language acquisition can't explain children's
first words. What is hard for them to do is to explain these first words, and how they fit into the language
acquisition pattern.
Over the past half-century, scientists have settled on two reasonable possibilities. The first of these
is called the 'mental-developmental hypothesis'. It states that one-year-olds speak in baby talk because
their immature brains can't handle adult speech. Children don't learn to walk until their bodies are ready.
Likewise, they don't speak multi-word sentences or use word endings and function words ('Mummy
opened the boxes') before their brains are ready.
The second is called the 'stages-of-language hypothesis', which states that the stages of progress
in child speech are necessary stages in language development. A basketball player can't perfect his or her
jump shot before learning to (1) jump and (2) shoot. Similarly, children learn to multiply after they have
learned to add. This is the order in which children are taught - not the reverse. There's evidence, for
instance, that children don't usually begin speaking in two-word sentences until they've learned a certain
number of single words. In other words, until they've crossed that linguistic threshold, the word-
combination process doesn't get going.
The difference between these theories is this: under the mental-development hypothesis, language
learning should depend on the child's age and level of mental development when he or she starts learning
a language. Under the stages-of-language hypothesis, however, it shouldn't depend on such patterns, but
only on the completion of previous stages.
In 2007, researchers at Harvard University, who were studying the two theories, found a clever
way to test them. More than 20,000 internationally adopted children enter the US each year. Many of them
no longer hear their birth language after they arrive, and they must learn English more or less the same
way infants do - that is, by listening and by trial and error. International adoptees don't take classes or use
a dictionary when they are learning their new tongue and most of them don't have a well-developed first
language. All of these factors make them an ideal population in which to test these competing hypotheses
about how language is learned.
Neuroscientists Jesse Snedeker, Joy Geren and Carissa Shafto studied the language development
of 27 children adopted from China between the ages of two and five years. These children began learning
1
NGUYEN LE HA GIANG – HANU - 📞085 389 6899
English at an older age than US natives and had more mature brains with which to tackle the task. Even
so, just as with American-born infants, their first English sentences consisted of single words and were
largely bereft of function words, word endings and verbs. The adoptees then went through the same
stages as typical American- born children, albeit at a faster clip. The adoptees and native children started
combining words in sentences when their vocabulary reached the same sizes, further suggesting that what
matters is not how old you are or how mature your brain is, but the number of words you know.
This finding - that having more mature brains did not help the adoptees avoid the toddler-talk stage
- suggests that babies speak in babytalk not because they have baby brains, but because they have only
just started learning and need time to gain enough vocabulary to be able to expand their conversations.
Before long, the one-word stage will give way to the two-word stage and so on. Learning how to chat like
an adult is a gradual process.
But this potential answer also raises an even older and more difficult question. Adult immigrants
who learn a second language rarely achieve the same proficiency in a foreign language as the average
child raised as a native speaker. Researchers have long suspected there is a 'critical period' for language
development, after which it cannot proceed with full success to fluency. Yet we still do not understand
this critical period or know why it ends.
adapted from Scientific American: Mind Matters
Questions 1-4 Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the reading 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
1. People are extremely amused when they see a baby talk like an adult.
2. Behaviourists of the early 20th century argued that children learn to speak by copying adults.
3. Children have more conversations with adults than with other children.
4. Scientists have found it easy to work out why babies use one-word sentences.
Questions 5-9
Complete the summary using the list of words and phrases, A-H, below.
Two theories about babytalk
According to the writer, there are two main theories related to babytalk. One states that a young
child's brain needs 5 ………C……… to master language, in the same way that it does to master other abilities
such as 6 ……………… .
The second theory states that a child's 7 ……………… the key factor. According to this theory, some
key steps have to occur in a logical sequence before 8 ……………… occurs. Children's 9 ……………… develops in
the same way.
A. vocabulary level
B. physical movement
C. time
D. attention
E. mathematical knowledge
F. sentence formation
G. learning
H. teaching
2
NGUYEN LE HA GIANG – HANU - 📞085 389 6899
Questions 10-14
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
10. What is the writer's main purpose in the seventh paragraph?
A. to give reasons why adopted children were used in the study
B. to reject the view that adopted children need two languages
C. to argue that culture affects the way children learn a language
D. to justify a particular approach to language learning
11. Snedeker, Geren and Shafto based their study on children who
A. were finding it difficult to learn English.
B. had come from a number of language backgrounds.
C. were learning English at a later age than US children.
D. had taken English lessons in China.
12. What aspect of the adopted children's language development differed from that of US-born children?
A. their first words
B. the way they learnt English
C. the rate at which they acquired language
D. the point at which they started producing sentences
13. What did the Harvard finding show?
A. Not all toddlers use babytalk.
B. Language learning takes place in ordered steps.
C. Some children need more conversation than others.
D. Not all brains work in the same way.
14. When the writer says 'critical period', he means a period when
A. studies produce useful results.
B. adults need to be taught like children.
C. immigrants want to learn another language.
D. language learning takes place effectively.
Listening Section 3
Part 1
Listen to the first part of the recording and answer Questions 1-4. (Track 10)
Questions 1-4
Choose TWO correct letter, A-E.
Questions 1-2
Which TWO activities will students do as part of Amanda’s assignment?
A. analyse their own speech
B. record other students' speech
C. read something from a book
D. repeat part of a lecture
E. remember part of a lecture
Questions 3-4
Which TWO features must Amanda check when she chooses the extract?
A. the time it takes to read
B. the overall organisation
3
NGUYEN LE HA GIANG – HANU - 📞085 389 6899
C. the number of words
D. the number of sentences
E. the inclusion of key ideas
Part 2
Now listen to the second part of the recording and answer Questions 5-10. (Track 11)
Questions 5-8
Which comments do the speakers make about each lecture?
Choose FOUR answers from the box and write the correct letter, A-F, next to Questions 5-8.
Lectures
5. History of English ………………
6. Gestures and signs ………………
7. Intonation patterns ………………
8. Language and rhythm ………………
Comments
A. The content is repetitive.
B. It took a long time to write.
C. It was shorter than the others.
D. It was well structured.
E. The content is relevant.
F. The topic was popular.
Questions 9-10
Answer the questions below.
Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.
Which TWO pieces of equipment will the students use in the study?
9. ………………………………
10. ………………………………
Exercise 2
Reading Section 3
Read the article carefully and answer Questions 1-14.
STRICTLY ENGLISH
British newspaper columnist Simon Heffer talks about his new book, 'Strictly English: the Correct Way
to Write... and Why It Matters', aimed at native speakers
For the last couple of years I have sent a round-robin email to my colleagues at this newspaper
every few weeks pointing out to them mistakes that we make in our use of the English language. Happily,
these are reasonably rare. The emails have been circulated on the Internet- and are now available on the
paper's website- and one of them ended up in the inbox of a publisher at Random House about this time
last year. He asked me whether I would write a book not just on what constituted correct English, but also
why it matters. The former is relatively easy to do, once one has armed oneself with the Oxford English
Dictionary (OED) and some reputable grammar books by way of research materials. The latter, being a
matter for debate, is less straightforward.
I suppose my own interest in language started at school. Having studied French, Latin and Greek, I
saw clearly how those languages had exported words into our own. When I studied German later on, I
could see even more clearly why it was the sister tongue and what an enormous impact it had had on
4
NGUYEN LE HA GIANG – HANU - 📞085 389 6899
English. I saw that words had specific meanings and that, for the avoidance of doubt, it was best to use
them in the correct way. Most of all, I became fascinated by grammar, and especially by the logic that
drove it and that was common to all the other languages I knew. I did not intend in those days to earn a
living by writing; but I was keen to ensure that my use of English was, as far as possible, correct.
Studying English at university forced me to focus even more intently on what words actually meant:
why would a writer choose that noun rather than another and why that adjective- or, in George Orwell's
case, often no adjective at all. Was the ambiguity in a certain order of words deliberate or accidental? The
whole question of communication is rooted in such things. For the second part of my degree I specialised
in the history of the English language, studying how words had changed their meaning and how grammar
had evolved. Language had become not just a tool for me, but something of a hobby.
Can English, though, ever be fixed? Of course not: if you read a passage from Chaucer you will see
that the meaning of words and the framework of grammar has shifted over the centuries, and both will
continue to evolve. But we have had a standard dictionary now ever since the OED was completed in 1928,
and learned men, many of whom contributed to the OED, wrote grammars a century ago that settled a
pattern of language that was logical and free from the danger of ambiguity.
It is to these standards that I hope Strictly English is looking. Our language is to a great extent
settled and codified, and to a standard that people recognise and are comfortable with. All my book does
is describe and commend that standard, and help people towards a capable grasp of the English tongue.
We shall always need new words to describe new things; but we don't need the wrong word to describe
the right thing, when the right word exists. Also, English grammar shouldn't be a matter for debate. It has
a coherent and logical structure and we should stick to it.
Some groups of people-state officials, academics, lawyers, certain breeds of scientist-talk to each
other in a private language. Some official documents make little sense to lay people because they have to
be written in a language that combines avoidance of the politically incorrect with constant use of the
contemporary jargon of the profession. Some articles written by academics in particular are almost
incomprehensible to those outside their circle. This is not because the outsiders are stupid. It is because
the academics feel they have to write in a certain stilted, dense way in order to be taken seriously by their
peers.
Many officials seem to have lost the knack of communicating with people outside their closed world.
Some academics, however, are bilingual. If asked to write for a publication outside the circle - such as a
newspaper - they can rediscover the knack of writing reasonably plain English. They do not indulge
themselves in such a fashion when they write for learned journals. It is almost as though the purpose of
such writing is not to be clear: that the writer is recording research in order to prove to peers or superiors
that he has discovered something. It does not seem to bother such people that their style is considered
ugly and barbaric by anyone of discernment. It is repetitious, long-winded, abstract and abstruse. Those
who write in such a way probably will not easily be discouraged, unless what is considered acceptable
within their disciplines changes.
The ideal style is one comprehensible to any intelligent person. If you make a conscious decision to
communicate with a select group, so be it: but in trying to appeal to a large audience, or even a small one
that you wish to be sure will understand your meaning, writing of the sort mentioned above will not do.
This sort of writing used to be kept from the general public thanks to the need to find someone to publish
it. The advent of the Internet means that it is now much more widespread than it used to be; and the fact

5
NGUYEN LE HA GIANG – HANU - 📞085 389 6899
that it is now so common and so accessible means that this sort of writing is having a harmful effect on
the language and causing it to be corrupted.
Questions 1-4
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in the reading 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
1. The mistakes made by his colleagues are minor ones.
2. It is difficult to explain why using correct English is important.
3. English grammar has a different function from the grammar of other languages.
4. Word order may be as important as the choice of words used.
Questions 5-9
Complete the summary using the list of words and phrases, A-H, below.
Two theories about babytalk
According to the writer, the English language should not be considered something 5 ……………… ,
and this will always be the case. However, there have been accepted reference books for over a century
that were produced by 6 ……………… people, and these have established a system for the language that
enables people to express themselves in a completely clear way.
In his own book, the writer aims to describe and support the established rules of the language that
are in 7 ……………… use and that people are accustomed to. He also wants his book to be 8 ……………… as a
way of improving people’s ability at the language. He believes that there is no reason why someone’s use
of vocabulary should not be correct and that grammar should not be a 9 ……………… subject. In his view, a
system of grammar rules exists and people should always obey those rules.
A. simple
B. general
C. controversial
D. permanent
E. knowledgeable
F. compulsory
G. historic
H. useful
Questions 10-14
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
10. The writer says that some groups of people use a 'private language' because
A. they do not want outsiders to be able to understand them.
B. they want to show their superiority over other groups.
C. they want to impress other members of their group.
D. they do not want to use the same language as other groups.
11. According to the writer, some academics are capable of
A. making sense to people outside their group.
B. writing very clearly for learned journals.
C. changing the way they communicate within their own group.
6
NGUYEN LE HA GIANG – HANU - 📞085 389 6899
D. explaining other people's work to the general public.
12. When discussing the writing of academics about their research, the writer emphasises
A. his own lack of knowledge of the academic world.
B. his desire to understand what they describe.
C. his sympathy for some of the academics.
D. his dislike for the style used in their writing.
13. The writer says that the kind of language used by academics in journals
A. is becoming more widely understood by non-academics.
B. is attracting a lot of criticism from other academics.
C. will only change if they are forced to change it.
D. appeals only to highly intelligent people.
14. The writer's opinion of the Internet is that
A. it is making people more aware of the poor use of language.
B. it is encouraging standards of language use to fall.
C. it is enabling people to compare good and poor use of language.
D. it is making it harder for good writing to get published.
Listening Section 3
Listen and answer Questions 1-10. (Track 04)
Questions 1-4
Choose TWO correct letter, A-E.
Questions 1-2
Which TWO areas of work did Beth include in her dissertation?
A. retail
B. banking
C. call centres
D. tourism
E. translation
Questions 3-4
Which TWO aspects of the dissertation were impressive, according to the tutor?
A. summary of academic research
B. analysis of videos
C. observation of live interactions
D. interviews
E. analysis of data on the outcomes

7
NGUYEN LE HA GIANG – HANU - 📞085 389 6899

Questions 5-8
Which comments do the speakers make about each section of the dissertation?
Choose FOUR answers from the box and write the correct letter, A-F, next to Questions 5-8.
Sections of Dissertation
5. Dealing with Complaints
6. Collaborating with Colleagues
7. Interacting with Managers
8. Giving Instructions

A. There is not enough evidence.

Questions 9-10
Answer the question below.
Write NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.
Which TWO aspects of communication does Beth emphasise in her conclusion?
9. ………………………………
10. ………………………………