A. There are a myriad of lifestyle issues affecting the youth of today.

Such is the pressure

heaped on many school-goers to achieve academic excellence by their parents that these
1_______ (real) expectations are causing children to become hopelessly depressed.
Indeed, some, in their 2_______ (despair) to escape and their sense of guilt at being
unable reach the levels of success demanded of them by their 3_______ (push) parents,
either rebel in what is 4_______ (amount) to a cry for help, or, worse still, engage in
5_______ (harm). It is no coincidence that suicide rates, expecially amongst young
males, have been rising steadily for some time now. These are tough times to be a teen.

Then there are those who get hooked on the internet; the 6 _______ (virtue) world
becomes their reality. For these teens, their social circle shrinks 7_______ (drama) until,
at last, their friendship sphere is limited solely to their online 8_______ (bud). Not alone
do they commonly suffer from sleep 9_______ (private) on account of their destructive
addiction to game play and net-surfing, their behaviour may become so 10 _______ (err)
and peculiar over time as to be considered 11_______ (social) . And while they sit at
their computer screens hidden away in splendid isolation from the real world, such is the
lack of exercise they get that their calorie intake far exceeds what is necessary for them to
maintain a stable weight. In essence, due to their sedentary lifestyle, their weight
12_______ (rocket) until such time as they become morbidly obese.

1. unrealistic : phi thực tế 2. desperation: sự tuyệt vọng 3. pushy: thúc ép

4. tantamount: tương đương với 5. self-harm: tự làm hại bản thân 6. virtual: ảo

7. dramatically 8. buddies: bạn 9. deprivation: sự tước đoạt

10. erractic: thất thường 11. antisocial : khó gần gũi 12. skyrockets: tăng mạnh

B. The standard of television programming produced in this country is in terminal

decline. The 1_______ (shed) has become a meaningless term confined in its 2_______
(apply) to 3_______ (go) days when adult content felt the full force of censorship and
was not allowed to appear on the box until after 9:00 p.m. Nowadays, however, it seems
anything goes any time. And, truth told, whatever anything is, it seldom 'goes' for much
longer than a half hour or so at any rate before it is interrupted by a commercial break.
And don't even get me started on those appalling 4_______ (inform) most of the
networks run right the way through the night, one after another, for up to thirty minutes at
a time. lt is truly painful. Terrestrial television is now, as far as I am concerned, a
laughing stock. All the quality has been bought up by the satellite networks, with their
big-money weight behind them, but even here 5_______ (pick) are slim. In protest at the
dire state of things, I have become a converted 6_______ (net). I look to the web now to
find good content. There, I can find just enough 7_______ (run) of quality programmes
to prevent myself from falling into utter despair and pining for the good old days of
8_______ (year).

1. watershed: bước ngoặt 2. applicability: tính có thể ứng dụng

3. bygone: đã qua 4. infomercials: quảng cáo 5. pickings: lợi lộc

6. netizen: dân mạng 7. re-run: sự phát lại 8. yesteryear: quá khứ, năm ngoái

C. In January 2001, the 1_______ (govern) Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its
latest report on climate change. Climate models worked out by giant super-computers had
become far more reliable since the previous report in 1995 and allowed them to
2_______ (praise) the earlier projections for global warming. Their conclusions were that
something very serious is happening and that it cannot be a natural process. The 1990s
was the hottest decade for 1,000 years and the Earth is warming faster than at any time in
the last 10,000 years. According to the report, human activities are 3_______
(equivocate) to blame for the temperature rise. The burning of fossil fuels releases carbon
dioxide and, due to deforestation, there are fewer trees to absorb this gas and recycle it
back into oxygen. Methane 4_______ (concentrate) have also gone up dramatically
because of increases in rice culture and 5_______ (cattle), both of which generate
methane from 6_______ (compose) vegetation. These greenhouses gases trap heat in the
Earth’s atmosphere and cause the temperature to rise. In the worst case, the resulting
melting of ice-caps and glaciers would cause sea levels to rise by up to 88 cm,
endangering the homes and 7_______ (lively) of tens of millions of people who live in
low-lying regions.

Unfortunately, there is far greater 8_______ (unanimous) among the world’s scientists
over the issue than among politicians. As long ago as 1990, the IPCC recommended a
60% reduction in carbon dioxide 9_______ (emit), as the basic level required to return
the planet’s climate to a healthy level. Governments globally failed to 10_______ (act)
these proposals. Now that the dangers have been reaffirmed by the latest report, it is high
time that governments took an active interest in exploring alternative, renewable energy
sources.

1. intergovernmental: nhiều chính phủ 2. reappraise: đánh giá lại 3.unequivocally: rõ

rệt, dứt khoát 4. concentrations: nồng độ

5. cattle(-)raising/ breeding: chăn nuôi gia súc 6. decomposing: phân hủy 7. livelihood:
sinh kế 8. unanimity : sự nhất trí
9. emissions: sự tỏa ra, khí thải 10. enact: ban hành

D. People intuitively recognize the importance of self-esteem to their psychological

health, so it isn't particularly remarkable that most of us try to protect and enhance it in
ourselves whenever possible. What is remarkable is that attention to self-esteem has
become a(n) 1_______ (commune) concern, at least for Americans, who see a favorable
opinion of oneself as the central psychological source from which all manner of positive
outcomes spring. The corollary, that low self-esteem lies at the root of individual and thus
2_______ (society) problems and 3_______ (function), has sustained an ambitious social
agenda for decades. Indeed, campaigns to raise people's sense of self-worth abound.
Consider what transpired in California in the late 1980s. Prodded by State Assemblyman
John Vasconcellos, Governor George Deukmejian set up a task force on self-esteem and
personal and social responsibility. Vasconcellos argued that raising self-esteem in young
people would reduce crime, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, school 4_______ (achieve) and
pollution. At one point, he even expressed the hope that these efforts would one day help
balance the state budget, a prospect predicated on the observation that people with high
5_______ (regard) earn more than others and thus pay more in taxes. Along with its other
activities, the task force assembled a team of scholars to survey the relevant literature.
The results appeared in a 1989 volume 6_______ (title) The Social Importance of Self-
Esteem, which stated that "many, if not most, of the major problems plaguing society
have roots in the low self-esteem of many of the people who make up society." In reality,
the report contained little to support that assertion.

1. communal : công cộng, chung 2. societal : thuộc xã hội 3. dysfunctions : sự

hoạt động khác thường 4. underachievement: sự làm kém, không tốt như mong đợi5.
self-regard : tự trọng 6. entitled: được đặt tên

E. An emerging discipline called neuroaesthetics is seeking to bring scientific 1_______

(objective) to the study of art, and has already given us a better understanding of many
2_______ (master). The blurred 3_______ (image) of Impressionist paintings seems to
stimulate the brain's amygdala, for instance. Since the amygdala plays a crucial role in
our feelings, that finding might explain why many people find these pieces so 4_______
(move).

Could the same approach also shed light on abstract twentieth-century pieces, from
Mondrian's geometrical blocks of colour, to Pollock's 5_______(seem) haphazard
arrangements of splashed paint on canvas? 6_______ (sceptical) believe that people
claim to like such works simply because they are famous. We certainly do have an
inclination to follow the crowd. When asked to make simple 7_______ (perceive)
decisions such as matching a shape to its rotated image, for example, people often choose
a definitively wrong answer if they see others doing the same. It is easy to imagine that
this 8_______ (mental) would have even more impact on a fuzzy concept like art
appreciation, where there is no right or wrong answer.

1. objectivity: tính khách quan 2. masterpieces: kiệt tác 3.imagery : hình tượng
4.moving: cảm động

5. seemingly: có vẻ 6. skeptics: những người hoài nghi 7.

perceptual : thuộc tri giác, cảm giác 8. mentality: tâm lí

F. Pop art was a(n) 1_______ (convention) art style in which 2_______ (common)
objects such as comic strips, soup cans and road signs were used as subject matter, and
were often incorporated into the work. The pop art movement was largely a British and
American cultural phenomenon of the late 1950s and ‘60s. Art critic Lawrence Alloway,
referring to the prosaic 3_______ (icon) of its painting and sculpture, named the
movement pop art. It represented an attempt to return to a more objective and 4_______
(universe) accepted form of art after the dominance in both the United States and Europe
of the highly personal abstract 5_______ (express). The art form was iconoclastic,
rejecting the 6_______ (supreme) of the ‘high art’ of the past and the 7_______ (pretend)
of other contemporary avant-garde art. Pop art became a cultural institution because of its
close reflection of a particular social situation and because its easily 8_______
(comprehend) images were immediately exploited by the mass media. Although the
critics of pop art describe it as sensational and non-aesthetic, its proponents saw it as an
art that was democratic and not 9_______ (discriminate), bringing together both
connoisseurs and untrained inexperienced viewers. Even though public reaction to pop art
was 10_______ (favour), it found critical acceptance as a form of art suited to the highly
technological, mass media-oriented society of western countries.

1. unconventional: trái với thường lệ 2. commonplace : tầm thường, quen thuộc

3. iconography: sự mô tả bằng hình tượng

4. universally: toàn cầu 5. expressionism : chủ nghĩa biểu hiện 6.

supremacy: uy quyền

7. pretentiousness: sự phô trương, khoe khoang 8. comprehensible: có thể hiểu

được 9. discriminatory: phân biệt đối xử

10. unfavourable: không có ích

G. The comedy Bringing Up Baby, on the other hand, presents practically non-stop
dialogue delivered at 1_______ (neck) speed. This use of dialogue 2_______ (score) not
only the dizzy quality of the character played by Katherine Hepburn, but also the
3_______ (absurd) of the film itself and thus its humor. The audience is bounced from
gag to gag and conversation to conversation; there is no time for audience reflection. The
audience is caught up in a(n) 4_______ (wind) of activity in simply managing to follow
the plot. This film presents pure 5______ (escape) - largely due to its frenetic dialogue.

1. breakneck: nguy hiểm 2. underscores: nhấn mạnh 3. absurdity: điều vô lí

4. whirlwind: cơn lốc 5. escapism: sự thoát li thực tế