Practice

Sentence completion

Reading texts Questions Answer Vocabulary

However, more professional and better-informed Before 2008, non-executive

boards would have been particularly appropriate directors were at a
for banks where the executives had access to disadvantage because of their
information that part-time non-executive lack of ………………………..
directors lacked, leaving the latter unable to
comprehend or anticipate the 2008 crash.

One of the main criticisms of boards and their Boards tend to place too much
directors is that they do not focus sufficiently on emphasis on ………………………….
longer-term matters of strategy, sustainability considerations that are only of
and governance, but instead concentrate too short-term relevance.
much on short-term financial metrics

Compensation for chief executives has become a On certain matters, such as

combat zone where pitched battles between pay, the board may have to
investors, management and board members are accept the views of ……………………….
fought, often behind closed doors but
increasingly frequently in the full glare of press
attention. Many would argue that this is in the
interest of transparency and good governance
as shareholders use their muscle in the area of
pay to pressure boards to remove
underperforming chief executives.
Organisation is big business. Whether it is of our Numerous training sessions are
lives – all those inboxes and calendars – or how aimed at people who feel they
companies are structured, a multi-billion dollar are not ………………………. enough.
industry helps to meet this need.
We have more strategies for time management,
project management and self-organisation than
at any other time in human history. We are told
that we ought to organize our company, our
home life, our week, our day and even our sleep,
all as a means to becoming more productive.
Every week, countless seminars and workshops
take place around the world to tell a paying
public that they ought to structure their lives in
order to achieve this.
This rhetoric has also crept into the thinking of
business leaders and entrepreneurs, much to the
delight of self-proclaimed perfectionists with the
need to get everything right. The number of
business schools and graduates has massively
increased over the past 50 years, essentially
teaching people how to organise well.

Organisation is big business. Whether it is of our Being organised appeals to

lives – all those inboxes and calendars – or how people who regard themselves
companies are structured, a multi-billion dollar as ……………………………
industry helps to meet this need.
We have more strategies for time management,
project management and self-organisation than
at any other time in human history. We are told
that we ought to organize our company, our
home life, our week, our day and even our sleep,
all as a means to becoming more productive.
Every week, countless seminars and workshops
take place around the world to tell a paying
public that they ought to structure their lives in
order to achieve this.
This rhetoric has also crept into the thinking of
business leaders and entrepreneurs, much to the
delight of self-proclaimed perfectionists with the
need to get everything right. The number of
business schools and graduates has massively
increased over the past 50 years, essentially
teaching people how to organise well.

Ironically, however, the number of businesses Many people feel ………………………..

that fail has also steadily increased. Work-related with aspects of their work.
stress has increased. A large proportion of
workers from all demographics claim to be
dissatisfied with the way their work is structured
and the way they are managed.
This begs the question: what has gone wrong?
Why is it that on paper the drive for organisation
seems a sure shot for increasing productivity, but
in reality falls well short of what is expected?

Some plants mainly use day length as an Daffodils are likely to flower
indicator of the season. Other species, such as early in response to
daffodils, have considerable temperature …………………………….. weather.
sensitivity, and can flower months in advance
during a warm winter. In fact, the discovery of the
dual role of phytochromes provides the science
behind a well-known rhyme long used to predict
the coming season: oak before ash we’ll have a
splash, ash before oak we’re in for a soak.

Wigge explains: ‘Oak trees rely much more on If ash trees come into leaf
temperature, likely using phytochromes as before oak trees, the weather in
thermometers to dictate development, whereas …………………………….. will probably be
ash trees rely on measuring day length to wet.
determine their seasonal timing. A warmer
spring, and consequently a higher likeliness of a
hot summer, will result in oak leafing before ash.
A cold spring will see the opposite. As the British
know only too well, a colder summer is likely to
be a rain-soaked one.’

Palm oil is an edible oil derived from the fruit of One advantage of palm oil for
the African oil palm tree, and is currently the manufacturers is that it stays
most consumed vegetable oil in the world. It’s ..................................even when not
almost certainly in the soap we wash with in the refrigerated.
morning, the sandwich we have for lunch, and the
biscuits we snack on during the day. Why is palm
oil so attractive for manufacturers? Primarily
because its unique properties - such as
remaining solid at room temperature - make it
an ideal ingredient for long-term preservation,
allowing many packaged foods on supermarket
shelves to have ‘best before’ dates of months,
even years, into the future.

However, there are multiple reasons why The..............................................is the best

conservationists cite the rapid spread of oil palm known of the animals suffering
plantations as a major concern. There are habitat loss as a result of the
countless news stories of deforestation, habitat spread of oil palm plantations.
destruction and dwindling species populations, all
as a direct result of land clearing to establish oil
palm tree monoculture on an industrial scale,
particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Endangered species - most famously the
Sumatran orangutan, but also rhinos, elephants,
tigers, and numerous other fauna - have suffered
from the unstoppable spread of oil palm
plantations.

The industry is now regulated by a group called As one of its criteria for the
the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), certification of sustainable
consisting of palm growers, retailers, product palm oil, the RSPO insists that
manufacturers, and other interested parties. Over growers
the past decade or so, an agreement has check.........................................on a
gradually been reached regarding standards routine basis.
that producers of palm oil have to meet in order
for their product to be regarded as officially
‘sustainable’. The RSPO insists upon no virgin
forest clearing, transparency and regular
assessment of carbon stocks, among other
criteria. Only once these requirements are fully
satisfied is the oil allowed to be sold as certified
sustainable palm oil (CSPO). Recent figures show
that the RSPO now certifies around 12 million
tonnes of palm oil annually, equivalent to roughly
21 percent of the world’s total palm oil
production.

There is even hope that oil palm plantations Ellwood and his researchers are
might not need to be such sterile monocultures, looking into whether the bird’s
or ‘green deserts’, as Ellwood describes them. nest fern could
New research at Ellwood’s lab hints at one plant restore.......................................... in
which might make all the difference. The bird’s areas where oil palm trees are
nest fern (Asplenium nidus) grows on trees in an grown.
epiphytic fashion (meaning it’s dependent on the
tree only for support, not for nutrients), and is
native to many tropical regions, where as a
keystone species it performs a vital ecological
role. Ellwood believes that reintroducing the bird’s
nest fern into oil palm plantations could
potentially allow these areas to recover their
biodiversity, providing a home for all manner of
species, from fungi and bacteria, to invertebrates
such as insects, amphibians, reptiles and even
mammals.
 Diagram completion

Reading texts Questions Answer

Many ants are small and forage primarily in

the layer of leaves and other debris on the
ground. Collecting these species by hand can
be difficult. One of the most successful ways to
collect them is to gather the leaf litter in which
they are foraging and extract the ants from it.
This is most commonly done by placing leaf
litter on a screen over a large funnel, often
under some heat. As the leaf litter dries from
above, ants (and other animals) move
downward and eventually fall out the bottom
and are collected in alcohol placed below the
funnel. This method works especially well in
rain forests and marshy areas. A method of
improving the catch when using a funnel is to
sift the leaf litter through a coarse screen
before placing it above the funnel. This will
concentrate the litter and remove larger leaves
and twigs. It will also allow more litter to be
sampled when using a limited number of
funnels.
To address this, a variation on the original
escapement was invented in 1670, in England. It
was called the anchor escapement, which was
a lever-based device shaped like a ship’s
anchor. The motion of a pendulum rocks this
device so that it catches and then releases
each tooth of the escape wheel, in turn
allowing it to turn a precise amount. Unlike the
original form used in early pendulum clocks,
the anchor escapement permitted the
pendulum to travel in a very small arc.
Moreover, this invention allowed the use of a
long pendulum which could beat once a
second and thus led to the development of a
new floor standing case design, which became
known as the grandfather clock.
A marine turbine blade needs to be only
one-third of the size of a wind generator to
produce three times as much power. The
blades will be about 20 metres in diameter so
around 30 metres of water is required. Unlike
wind power, there are unlikely to be
environmental objections. Fish and other
creatures are thought unlikely to be at risk
from the relatively slow turning blades. Each
turbine will be mounted on a tower which will
connect to the national power supply grid via
underwater cables. The towers will stick out of
the water and be lit, to warn shipping, and also
be designed to be lifted out of the water for
maintenance and to clean seaweed from the
blades.
One technical difficulty is cavitation, where low
pressure behind a turning blade causes air
bubbles. These can cause vibration and
damage the blades of the turbines. Dr Bahaj
said: ‘We have to test a number of blade types
to avoid this happening or at least make sure it
does not damage the turbines or reduce
performance. Another slight concern is
submerged debris floating into the blades. So
far we do not know how much of a problem it
might be. We will have to make the turbines
robust because the sea is a hostile
environment, but all the signs that we can do it
are good.

Boats needing to be lifted up enter the canal

basin at the level of the Forth & Clyde Canal
and then enter the lower gondola of the Wheel.
Two hydraulic steel gates are raised, so as to
seal the gondola off from the water in the
canal basin. The water between the gates is
then pumped out. A hydraulic clamp, which
prevents the arms of the Wheel moving while
the gondola is docked, is removed, allowing the
Wheel to turn. In the central machine room an
array of ten hydraulic motors then begins to
rotate the central axle. The axle connects to
the outer arms of the Wheel, which begin to
rotate at a speed of 1/8 of a revolution per
minute. As the wheel rotates, the gondolas are
kept in the upright position by a simple gearing
system. Two eight-metre-wide cogs orbit a
fixed inner cog of the same width, connected
by two smaller cogs travelling in the opposite
direction to the outer cogs – so ensuring that
the gondolas always remain level. When the
gondola reaches the top, the boat passes
straight onto the aqueduct situated 24 metres
above the canal basin.

The remaining 11 metres of lift needed to reach

the Union Canal is achieved by means of a pair
of locks. The Wheel could not be constructed
to elevate boats over the full 35-metre
difference between the two canals, owing to
the presence of the historically important
Antonine Wall, which was built by the Romans
in the second century AD. Boats travel under
this wall via a tunnel, then through the locks,
and finally on to the Union Canal.

Table completion
In early ganzfeld experiments, the telepathy test involved identification of a picture chosen
from a random selection of four taken from a large image bank. The idea was that a
person acting as a ‘sender’ would attempt to beam the image over to the ‘receiver’
relaxing in the sealed room. Once the session was over, this person was asked to identify
which of the four images had been used. Random guessing would give a hit-rate of 25 per
cent; if telepathy is real, however, the hit-rate would be higher. In 1982, the results from the
first ganzfeld studies were analysed by one of its pioneers, the American
parapsychologist Charles Honorton. They pointed to typical hit-rates of better than 30
per cent – a small effect, but one which statistical tests suggested could not be put
down to chance.
The implication was that the ganzfeld method had revealed real evidence for telepathy. But
there was a crucial flaw in this argument – one routinely overlooked in more conventional
areas of science. Just because chance had been ruled out as an explanation did not
prove telepathy must exist; there were many other ways of getting positive results.
These ranged from ‘sensory leakage’ – where clues about the pictures accidentally
reach the receiver – to outright fraud. In response, the researchers issued a review of all
the ganzfeld studies done up to 1985 to show that 80 per cent had found statistically
significant evidence. However, they also agreed that there were still too many problems in
the experiments which could lead to positive results, and they drew up a list demanding new
standards for future research.

Questions Answers
 31. sender
32. image
33. receiver
34. sensory leakage
35. (outright) fraud

Multiple choice questions

Reading texts Questions Answer

Microbes, most of them bacteria, have populated this What point does the writer make about microbes
planet since long before animal life developed and in the first paragraph?
they will outlive [Link] to the naked eye, they are A. They adapt quickly to their environment.
ubiquitous. They inhabit the soil, air, rocks and water B. The risk they pose has been exaggerated.
and are present within every form of life, from C. They are more plentiful in animal life than plant
seaweed and coral to dogs and humans. And, as life.
Yong explains in his utterly absorbing and hugely D. They will continue to exist for longer than the
important book, we mess with them at our peril. human race.
Every species has its own colony of microbes, called In the second paragraph, the writer is impressed
a ‘microbiome’, and these microbes vary not only by the fact that…
between species but also between individuals and A. each species tends to have vastly different
within different parts of each individual. What is microbes.
amazing is that while the number of human cells in B. some parts of the body contain relatively few
the average person is about 30 trillion, the number microbes.
of microbial ones is higher — about 39 trillion. At C. the average individual has more microbial cells
best, Yong informs us, we are only 50 per cent than human ones.
human. Indeed, some scientists even suggest we D. scientists have limited understanding of how
should think of each species and its microbes as a microbial cells behave.
single unit, dubbed a ‘holobiont’.

Homework (Tạo bản sao từng file một các bạn nhé)
1. Sentence completion : LINK
2. Diagram completion : LINK
3. Table completion : LINK
4. MCQ: LINK