Nguyen Hue High School for Gifted Students - Gifted Student Training

PRACTICE TEST 3
Full name: _______________________

PART ONE: LEXICO - GRAMMAR

I. Choose A, B, C, or D that best completes each unfinished sentence.
1. Daisy says she didn’t want to be chosen, but it’s just sour _______; she did really.
A. grapes B. lemons C. raisins D. milk
2. Catherine Rhodes is considered to be one of the big _______ in the fashion industry,
A. rifles B. guns C. pistols D. weapons
3. In a situation like this, there are no _______ rules. You just have to use your own discretion.
A. clear and cut B. hard and fast C. up-and-coming D. out-and-out
4. For some peculiar _______, they didn’t tell us they were going away.
A. cause B. effect C. justification D. reason
5. Trying to find her way home through the woods in the dead of night, Sarah lost her _______ when the
clouds obscured the stars overhead.
A. bearings B. rag C. heart D. marbles
6. Employees who have a _______ are encouraged to discuss it with the management.
A. hindrance B. grievance C. disturbance D. precaution
7. It was _______ of you to mention the party – she hasn’t been invited.
A. affable B. false C. acute D. indiscreet
8. Because of an unfortunate _______, your order was not dispatched by the date requested.
A. hindrance B. oversight C. negligence D. transgression
9. The spoiled little brat has completely _______.
A. jumped on the bandwagon B. gone against the grain
C. made his parents’ blood boil D. wound his parents around his little finger
10. There is _______ of your being granted a gaming license in this town.
A. no possibility whatever B. no whatever possibility
C. not possibility whatever D. not whatever possibility
11. I don’t feel like buying a _______ in a poke, we’d better check the content.
A. pig B. cattle C. buffalo D. ox
12. Although she would have preferred to carry on working, my mum _______ her career in order to have
children.
A. devoted B. desirous C. scarified D. abolished
13. That my brother _______ boast about his achievements is absolutely annoying!
A. inexorably B. incessantly C. intricately D. intrepidly
14. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had the time and money to _______ off to France for a week?
A. swan B. worm C. wolf D. beaver
15. A trick in the mining industry is _______ to bring about a shortage of coal in the near future.
A. causing B. resulting C. threatening D. prospering

II. Fill in each of the blanks with the correct forms of phrasal verbs made from the list below. There
are two extra phrasal verbs which you do not need to use.
let up take out kick off get away come down tear out
size up collide with break up crack on hush up run up

1. It’s a good idea to breaking

_______uppeople before taking them into your confidence.
2. When the chairman ran off with his secretary, the Board tried to _______size up the matter.
3. Do you have trouble obtaining your copy of Teacher’s Weekly? Why not take _______
out a regular subscription
and be sure of receiving each edition as soon as it’s published?
4. The kids tore
_______
out of the house after they broke the window.
5. It was a mistake, so don’t _______
come downon him too hard, OK?
6. There is a major traffic jam because a tractor-trailer _______
collided witha car earlier.
kicked off the meeting with a summary of what had been discussed last time.
7. Ashley _______

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 Nguyen Hue High School for Gifted Students - Gifted Student Training

8. If the rain doesn’t _______

let up soon, we shall have to take a taxi.
9. Time was getting
_______away
and we were nowhere near finished.
10. We have _______
run up a huge bill at the grocer’s across the road.

III. Complete each sentence, using the correct form of the word in parentheses.
1. Eighty percent of people interviewed unequivocally
_______ declared that the use of endangered wild animals such as
elephants and tigers as a form of entertainment should be prohibited. (EQUIVOCAL)
2. The draft law was passed by 134 votes to 19, with 5 abstention
_______. (ABSTAIN)
3. Since much of a doctor's role involves interacting with others, they must have strong _______ skills and
be effective communicators. (PERSON)
4. When faced with a conflict, starting a sentence with 'I' rather than 'you' is a _______ way to express what
you want without criticizing the other person. (CONFRONTATIONAL)
5. He was awarded _______ damages over and above the amount of compensation he was due for loss of
profits as the judge felt the defendant needed to be taught a lesson. (PUNISH)
6. During that time, I always felt I was in competition with myself and that led to a lot of _______, a lot of
problems. (ILLUSION)
7. According to the government figures, the _______ of jobs in the next century will be in service-related
fields, such as health and business. (PONDER)
8. Though many parties regarded his behavior as a(n) _______, the public still had much faith in his ability
to become a leader. (ERR)
9. At the beginning of 19th century, Britain’s _______ was France. (ENEMY)
10. _______ conditions can be diagnosed from the early stage. (CANCER)

IV. Complete each sentence with the correct form of an idiom from the box. There are two extra ones
that you needn’t use.

hot under the collar blow your own trumpet change your tune ring a bell
brave the elements go for a song play it by ear pull your leg
let of steam on the dole pull out all the stops draw the line

1 Someone said he was a well-known actor but his name doesn't _______.
2 That acrobatic display was fantastic! They certainly _______.
3 Leila spent the whole meeting _______ instead of listening to other people's opinions! (= talking about her
own achievements)
4 Their old gymnastic equipment _______ on a well-known online auction site.
5 Phil insisted that he loathed any form of dance but after seeing the Cuban dancers performing live, he
quickly _______.
6 I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to say to Lisa about her performance but I'll _______ and see how she
reacts.
7. When I suggested he was mistaken he _______.
8. When work gets frustrating, I like to go bowling to _______.
9. I know there’s a slight drizzle, but if you can _______, then you may go play outside for a while.
10. Even though he was a graduate, he took a cleaning job rather than stay _______.

PART TWO: READING

Exercise 1: Read the text and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap. Use the clues to
help you.
Gambling was legalized in Nevada in 1931 to increase (1) _______ for the state. Today the casinos
are very important for the financial growth of Las Vegas. Bugsy Siegel, the gangster and casino owner, is
the (2) _______ we remember most. A Capone syndicate boss, Siegel came to Las Vegas in the late 1930s
and saw a potential gold mine in the book operations that casinos used to take bets on horse races in Florida,
New York, and California, Offering his syndicate's race-reporting Continental Wire Service to the bookies at
a lower price than any of the existing services, Siegel (3) _______ the market. Then, in 1942, having (4)
_______ the competition, Siegel abruptly raised the prices and demanded a profit share from each book.
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Without another source for race results, and frightened by Siegel's connections to Capone, the casinos (5)
_______.
With the profits, Siegel started his own casino. The ambitious Flamingo Hotel was finished in 1946.
(6) _______ on a strip of land along the Los Angeles Highway and designed to be an elegant resort rather
than a faux Western gambling hall, the Flamingo forever moved the focus of Las Vegas away from
downtown. It also (7) _______ the success of gambling as the town's major industry. Freed from the (8)
_______ of their Western heritage, European-style casinos and resorts (9) _______ in the years after 1946.
Siegel was shot in a gangland execution in 1947, but his (10) _______ lives on in the gaudy formalism of
casinos like Caesar's Palace and The Sands.
1. A. insurance B. taxes C. preoccupation D. revenue
2. A. developer B. politician C. trickster D. antagonist
3. A. pinched B. cornered C. managed D. spread
4. A. eliminated B. wasted C. killed D. encouraged
5. A. attacked B. profited C. capitulated D. obliged
6. A. Attached B. Situated C. Fixed D. Separated
7. A. promised B. generated C. ensured D. demanded
8. A. border B. conservativeness C. confines D. boredom
9. A. grew B. flowered C. crumbled D. flourished
10. A. legacy B. memory C. personality D. generosity

Exercise 2: Read the texts and decide which answer (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap. Use the clues to
help you.
Touchscreen teething problems
The (1) _______ of touchscreen typing didn't suit everyone initially. Some people who had grown
(2) _______ to using a conventional keyboard, missed the physical feedback on whether they had hit the
correct key or not. They found the touchscreen slow to use, whilst the text they produced was (3) _______
with errors, a situation that was (4) _______ if the text was produced on the (5) _______ using a
smartphone.
Researchers at Maryland University found that many of these errors resulted from (6) _______ in
each individual's typing style. For example, a user might be (7) _______ to hitting the bottom of a key rather
than the centre, increasing the likelihood that they would also hit the key below by mistake, (8) _______
producing so-called 'fat finger' errors. They also found that if typing and walking (9) _______, there was a
tendency for people to hit a different part of the key if the tap coincided with their foot striking the ground.
The data produced by the team eventually allowed designers to (10) _______ these very human
characteristics into account in the next generation of touchscreen keyboards.
1. A. advent B. onset C. input D. upshot
2. A. familiar B. accustomed C. comfortable D. proficient
3. A. strewn B. caked C. stashed D. clogged
4. A. amplified B. deteriorated C. exacerbated D. incensed
5. A. haste B. transit C. foot D. move
6. A. whims B. kinks C. glitches D. quirks
7. A. prone B. apt C. inclined D. liable
8. A. therein B. otherwise C. thereby D. likewise
9. A. simultaneously B. continuously C. comfortably D.
10. A. hold B. take C. put D. bring

Exercise 3: Fill in each blank with ONE suitable word.

Food production vs biodiversity
A life of poverty and famine is all too common a problem in Africa. For the foreseeable future, it (1)
_______ seem that agricultural development provides the only (2) _______ of alleviating the situation and
the prospect of agricultural expansion is certainly welcome. (3) _______, however, threats to sustainability
(4) _______ to be avoided. Any such development will need to be carefully managed. For example,
although Africa retains much of its biodiversity, agricultural expansion into sensitive areas (5) _______ well
aggravate declines that are already becoming apparent. Increased agricultural production is needed to feed
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the world's growing population but brings (6) _______ it the risk of knock-on effects, such as an increase in
greenhouse gas (7) _______. Every such increase brings us closer to an ecological crisis point and so (8)
_______ added pressure on the global life-support systems upon (9) _______ agriculture itself depends.
Such tensions are, of course, by (10) _______ means unique to Africa and new approaches to the problem
are clearly needed on a worldwide scale.

Exercise 4: Fill in each blank with ONE suitable word.

ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

Most animals manage, (1) _______ some extent, to communicate with members of the same species.
Honeybees, for example, can convey to one (2) _______ the direction, distance and quality of a source of
nectar. Certain monkeys have several distinct vocalisations including different alarm calls when they catch
(3) _______ of leopards, eagles and snakes.
Animal communication appears to be (4) _______ two basic kinds. On the one hand, the calls of
birds and non–human primates (5) _______ of a number of signals, (6) _______ of which has a purpose, (7)
_______ it be a danger call, food call or distress call. On the (8) _______ hand, bees have an unlimited
number of signals which show they are clearly (9) _______ of conveying any combination of distance,
direction and quality but which cannot communicate anything else. In both cases, the signal manifests (144)
_______ only when the appropriate stimulus is present. Contrast (10) _______ with human speech: we do
not necessarily begin talking about eagles the (11) _______ we see them; conversely, we can discuss eagles
even when there are (12) _______ of them about.
In recent decades, attempts have been made to teach human language to apes. These have met (13)
_______ extremely limited success. (14) _______ there may be some evidence that they can recognize large
numbers of words, there is very little evidence to suggest that apes are able to learn much, if (15) _______,
grammar.

PART THREE: WRITING

I. Complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence, using the words
given. Do not change the words given in brackets in anyway.
1. Would you mind if I brought a friend to your party? (OBJECTION)
Would ______________________________________ a friend to your party?
2. Did the cast dance any better in last night's performance? (IN)
Was ______________________________________ dancing in last night's performance?
3. Paul's mother finds it hard to accept that her kids are grown up. (TERMS)
Paul's mother has ______________________________________ that her kids are grown up.
4. He decided to stop attending the college and get a job. (DROP)
He decided ______________________________________ and get a job.
5. They believe that the club had to pay for Domingo about 3 million dollars. (VICINTITY)
The club ______________________________________ for Domingo

II. Read the following passage and use your own words to summarise it. Your summary should be
between 100 and 120 words.
Limiting Children's Media Diet
Parents not only refer their child's physical ailments to doctors but lately, the child's behavioral problems as
well. Riding on this trend, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has recommended that doctors,
during routine medical check-ups, inquire about children's use of the media. This will go a long way in
helping to identify patterns that can threaten the emotional and physical health of the child.
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Many times parents have received complaints from the school about their child's aggressive behavior. Often,
this has been referred to the family physician rather than the behavioral psychologist. Says a doctor at the
AAP, "You look at the history and then note that the child has not only been sitting in front of the TV for
hours watching violent shows but also playing aggressive computer games. At the least, this is something to
start with." Says another, "The child could be modeling violent behavior and the parents are unaware of it."

Another related problem is obesity. This problem troubles many parents. After talking to the child, the
doctor discovers that the child has similarly spent hours watching TV and video and not getting sufficient
exercise. "It's another way where media habits can affect health," says the doctor.

The AAP recommends that two hours of quality TV or video shows a day for older children is sufficient.
However, as far as toddlers below two are concerned, the AAP recommends that they should not be allowed
to watch any TV. Excessive and indiscriminate media viewing can lead to other side effects and these
include repeated aggression with peers or adults, poor grades, frequent nightmares, increased eating of
unhealthy foods; and later, smoking, drinking and drug use.

Critics on the other hand are quick to point out that adults should cultivate an overview of parenting rather
than attack one aspect: the media. At present, parents seem to be caught up with the material pursuits of life
to the extent that they are unable to find sufficient time for other priorities in life. These critics say that if
parents could only take stock of the situation and sort out their priorities, then there is a strong likelihood
that they would spend more time with their children, supervise them, and watch over their viewing habits.

It is an undeniable fact that much lies in the hands of parents. Although the media has a responsible role to
play, the hone plays an overall important role in providing the right foundations in life for a child.
(414 words)

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 THE END 