Huong dan thi reading b1 dai hoc da nang (quan trọng)

WHAT IS THE SKIMMING? Skimming is a fast reading technique. It involves selective reading of the most important parts of the text in order to:  Find out how the text is organized that is, the way it is divided into sections or paragraphs.  Get a general idea of what the text is about.  Decide if the text is interesting and whether you should read it in more detail.

Biên tập: Lê Thanh Tú Nhân và cộng sự Lưu hành nội bộ

SKIMMING (KỸ NĂNG ĐỌC LƯỚT)

WHAT IS THE SKIMMING?

Skimming is a fast reading technique It involves selective reading of the most

important parts of the text in order to:

 Find out how the text is organized- that is, the way it is divided into sections orparagraphs

 Get a general idea of what the text is about

 Decide if the text is interesting and whether you should read it in more detail

Skimming is done at a speed three to four times faster than normal reading People often skim when they have lots of material to read in a limited amount of time

Use skimming when you want to see if an article may be of interest in your research

Hints and tips for skimming the passage

 Read the title, subtitles and subheadings to find out what the text is about

 Look at the illustrations to give you further information about the topic

 When you are skimming a passage for a general understanding, don’t try to

understand every word Jump from paragraph to paragraph, finding the main

point in each paragraph before moving on to the next paragraph, like jumpingacross stepping stones in a river The main point of each paragraph is often,through certainly not always, the first sentence in each paragraph The sentencewith the main point is often called the topic sentence Taken together, the topicsentence of a passage should provide a reasonable summary of the passage

 When you are looking at sentence to understand the main points, try to find

the mainly words in the sentence, namely the subject, the verb and the object

of the main clause Try to ignore the other the other words, particularly therelative clauses and adverbial clauses

Examples:

 Whale oil, rendered from the blubber, was used originally for lamp fuel andlater as a principle ingredient of soap, margarine, paint oils and lubricants.

While skimming, it is enough to understand that: (this) oil was used for (something)

Or, say you are skimming this sentence:

 Tea plants are grown on tea plantations, called gardens or estates, in

areas that have a great amount of rainfall and rich loamy oil.

It is enough to understand that tea plants are grown on/in somewhere/somehow If you later find a question that relates to this sentence, youcan come back and read it more intensively

 When you have finished skimming to passage, skim the questions You need to know how many question there are and approximately What

the questions are about You can now practice skimming To

encourage you to skim as quickly as possible, there is a suggested timelimit

Task types using skimming skill are:

- Heading matching

- Getting the main idea

A HEADING MATCHING

Tactics for heading matching

 Reading all the headings and underline or highlight the key words

 Read the first paragraph of the passage, marking the topic sentence andrelated phrases and vocabulary

 Re-phrase the main idea of the paragraph in your mind

 Read the list of headings to see if there is a match between the key

WHAT IS A HEADING? A Heading covers the main

ideas of the paragraph

words and the headings and the words you have marked in the paragraph

 Choose the heading that best summarizes the main idea of the first

paragraph

 Go on to the next paragraph and repeat the process

 If you think two heading fit one paragraph, mark both of them and ruleone of these out later

Exercise 1: which of these three headings states the main idea in the

paragraph? Use the highlighted key words to help you decide

Time limit: 1 minute

a Population figures for China

b Assessing China’s farmland

c Global population and the future

The world’s population is forecast to reach 7.5 billion by 2020, and growing prosperity, especially in China, is fuelling a rising appetite for meat and

cereals Yet it is becoming harder to find new farmland, water is increasingly scare and crop-yield growth is slowing Already 167 million children are

malnourished Are hungry times ahead?

1 How did the highlighted words help you?

2 How do the verb tenses help you find the answer?

3 Can you explain why the other headings are attractive, but wrong?

Exercise 2: look at these three headings

A Britain’s modern motorway system

B Roman principles relevant today

C 6000km of Roman roads

As quickly ass possible decide which of the headings best matches the paragraph, taken from a reading passage, below

Time limit: 1 minute

Between 43AD and 81 AD Roman Britain acquired 6000km network of technically advanced, hard bearing and straight highways

linking towns of importance Today Britain’s motorway system is only half that length The basic Roman philosophy of building a road to cope with different types and volumes of vehicles and using local materials where possible still applies today

Exercise 3: look at the passage “difficulties commonly experiences by oversea

students” Three are six sections A-F Choose the most suitable heading for each section from the list of headings below Write the appropriate number (i-iv) in the lines

Note: there are more headings than sections so you will not use all of them Use may

use any of the heading more than one

Time limit: 5 minutes

ii Language and communication

iii Being different and apart

iv Cultural adjustment

v Study –related concern

vi Family support

vii Getting around

viii Living independently

Difficulties commonly experienced by oversea students

The problems experienced by oversea students are now generally well documented The issues that cause the greatest difficulty can be summarized as follows:

A………

This involves getting used to the new country and different way of life, customs, and values In addition, students also have to deal with the sense of loss ( missing family, friends, familiar food and places) These issues are usually referred to by the term

“cultural shock”

B………

Managing on a limited budget is a challenge for most, but it is especially so for people living in an unfamiliar environment Students may have to pay for education and living expenses, find a reasonable place to live and, in some cases, a part time job to supplement any scholarship or money from home

C………

Many students are not used to looking after themselves At home, parents and family usually assist them in coping with shopping, cooking, personal finances and general managing their affairs Oversea, all of these things must be done without the family’s support

D………

Even some of the students who have been educated in an English language school have problems communicating freely at university level Many students find reading and writing in English especially difficult Participating in classroom discussion and asking questions of staff often produce difficulties

E………

Differences in the style and traditions of learning between Western and Asian

countries frequently cause difficulty Many overseas students find it difficult to adapt

to Western notions of independent thinking and learning Students from some

countries may also have difficulty because they lack experience in using

well-equipped libraries and laboratories

F………

This refers both to experiences of racial intolerance and the relatively low level of contact that overseas students have with local people Students often report being uncomfortable about generalized discrimination in a later section of this book

Unit 2 SCANNING

What is the scanning?

Scanning is the method to use when you need to search a passage quickly to locate the specific information you need to answer each question

When you are scanning to locate some specific information (e.g names, places, dates, specific phrases), it is not necessary to read and understand every word in the passage When you look at some sentence, you need to understand only enough to answer the

question: is it what I am looking for or not? So you only need to understand the topic

of each sentence For example, you see this sentence:

Example

Like perfumes, cosmetics were originally used as an adjunct to religious ritual, the

ceremonial aspects gradually being lost as both men and women adorned themselves with cosmetics

 You locate the subject of the sentence ‘cosmetics’ and that is enough It

is not necessary to read all the details You know that this sentenceprobably does not contain the information you need, so you quicklymove on to the next sentence This is scanning

Hints and tips for better scanning

1 Don’t try to read every word Instead of let your eyes move quickly across thepage until you find what you are looking for

2 Use clues on the page, such as heading and titles , to help you

3 In a dictionary or phone book, use the header words to help you scan You canfind these on bold type at the top of each page

4 If you are reading for study, start by thinking up or writing down some

questions that you want to answer Doing this can focus your mind and helpyou find the facts or information that you need more easily

5 Many texts use A-Z order These include everyday materials such as the phonebook and indexes to books and catalogues

6 There are many ways to practice scanning skill Try looking up a favorite

recipe in the index of a cookbook, search for plumber in your local yellowpages, or scan web pages on the internet to find specific information

Exercise: which of these types of text would you scan? Which would you skim? Tick

the appropriate box:

1 A phone book

2 A newspaper article

you are interested in

3 The film review

page when looking

for a particular film

4 A letter from the

bank

5 A list of results for

an exam you’ve

taken

When scanning, guide your eyes across the page by using your first 3 fingers, or

your index finger alone, or even the tip of a pen or pencil This will prevent your

eyes from wandering about on the page You can increase your general reading speed too, by following your finger with your eyes across the page as you read Many

studies prove how much quicker people read when guiding their eyes across the page You might be surprised to discover how much faster you will be reading

D, MULTIPLE CHOICE

TACTICS FOR MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

 Underline or highlight the key words in the question and the four questions

 Quickly read the sentences that contain the main ideas in each paragraph of the passage

 Rule out any options in the questions that you think are definitely wrong

 Decide which option is correct

Exercise 1: The text below has been edited to highlight the areas that you might read

when skimming or scanning a text Read through it quickly and answer the following multiple-choice questions

Time limit: 3 minutes GOODNESS, GRACIOUS, GREAT BALL OF FIRE

In the first of a new series, Alan Watts tackles the science of thunder and lightning

A Despite our modern sophistication and advanced warning system, the

thunderstorm still provokes a primitive dread in most people It is not only our helplessness in the face of nature’s wrath that produces fear, but also the eerie listlessness that settles over animals, birds and people in the build-up to a storm Yet the kind of storm with a sultry calm before its arrival is just one of

many kinds of thunderstorm associated with a particular kind of weather

B The kinds of intense storms that develop on hot sultry days are a mass of

individual storm cells

“cell-theory” of storm ………… “multicell” ……… “supercell”

……… multicell ……… daughter-cells………

C Then in spring, when the sun is warming the earth but the air is still cool, great

towering cumulonimbus clouds often develop and these can become thundery

……… “air-mass” ……… thunderstorm France ……… English Channel………

D If you’ve lived in the coastal regions of southern Britain, then you’ll be acquainted with a special kind of storm that comes up from France a couple of times a year

……… Spanish plume storms sierras of Spain lightning’………

‘sheet-E Whatever the cause of a storm, there has to be lightning ……… pressure waves ……… electric charge ……… raindrops

……… Positively charged ……… slivers of ice………

F It is estimated that there are some 1,800 storms going on at any one time somewhere in the world – mainly in the tropics – and that the electric current induced by the lightning from these compensates for the more-or-less continuous drift of positive ions from the ionosphere to the earth, so balancing the atmosphere’s electric current

1 What is the article about?

A Fire

B Weather

C Science

2 Which of the following areas do you think the writer will discuss?

A Animals and their environment

B Modern danger warnings

C Types of storm

D What to do in bad weather

Exercise 2: Look at the letter below and the following questionnaire Complete the

questionnaire about Carlo using the information given in the letter Choose the one letter for each answer

Time limit: 4 minutes

Dear Sir,

I received a communication from you today asking me to complete a question to help determine the spending habits of the population I would willingly do this but you failed to enclose the aforementioned questionnaire In order to assist you, I will send you some details of my lifestyle, which you can use to fill in the questionnaire at your office on my behalf

Although I have been living in England since coming to study for my A levels, I spent

my early childhood in Australia I am not British as my father was born in Poland and

my mother in Italy and we all hold Australian passports

I studied for my first degree at Leeds University but am now doing postdoctoral

research in Electrical Engineering at the University of Easthampton As I am

presently not earning a regular salary, my expenditure is kept to a minimum I am not

a house owner and am currently living in the halls of residence at my university I pay

a subsidized rent, which is inclusive of all utilities, so I do not have to worry about gas, electricity or water bills I tend to eat mostly in the university canteen so I only go shopping in the local supermarkets about once a fortnight At the very least I spend ten pounds but I usually pay about twice that each time Designer clothes are not in

my budget nor do me frequently high street stores I prefer to wear used clothes,

mostly from charity shops If they are not perfect I manage to repair them myself My one real extravagance is electrical equipment I have a state of the art sound system and a wide screen flat panel television with DVD facilities, which I bought less than a

year ago and I am still paying for it every month on my credit card This is rather an expensive pastime as I really only use them about twice a week

Concerning transportation, since I live on campus, I walk to my office or the library but if I travel into town, I sometimes take the special university bus or more likely I cycle I did have a car when I began my doctorate but sold it when the cost of its upkeep became prohibitive

As for entertainment, I occasionally go to the theatre, I play football three times a week, I swim everyday and I go for dinner to a local restaurant once a month

If you should require information about my life, either contact me here at the

university or send me a questionnaire which I can personally complete in full

Yours faithfully,

Carlo Tulinski

SIMPSON SURVEY SERVICES

British lifestyle questionnaire

Please complete the questionnaire by circling the appropriate option or giving details

of your personal lifestyle

1 Where do you live?

A England B Northern Ireland C Scotland D Wales

2 Please state your nationality………

3 Please state your current professional status

A students B self-employed C private employee

D civil servant E unemployed

4 What is your level of education?

A basic compulsory education

B completion of secondary education

C first degree attained

D post graduation degree attained

5 Where do you live?

A own house/ flat B rented house/ flat

C student accommodation D rented room in private house

E commercial accommodation

6 How often do you shop for food?

A everyday B every week

C every two weeks D every month

7 What is your average supermarket bill?

A ten pounds B twenty pounds

C forty pounds D eighty pounds

8 What kind of clothes do you prefer?

A From chain stores

B From local markets

10 How do usually travel in cities?

A by car B by train C by bus

D by bicycle E on foot F by motorbike

11 What is your favorite leisure activity?

A watching TV B listening to music C eating out

D going to theatre E doing sport

Exercise 3: look at the questions below, scan the passage then choose the best answers

Time limit: 3 minutes

The first black literature in American was not written but was preserved in an oral tradition, in a rich body of folklore, songs and stories, many from African origins There are humorous tales, Biblical stories, animal stories, and stories of natural phenomena, of good and bad people and of the wise and foolish Many reflect how African Americans viewed themselves and their lives The lyrics of blues

spirituals, and work songs speak of suffering and hope, joy and pain, loved ones, and religious faith, and are an integral part of the early literature of black people in American

The earliest existing written black literature was Lucy Terry’s poem “Bars fight” written in 1746 Other eighteenth –century black poets include Jupiter Hammon and George Moses Horton The first African American to publish a book in

American was Phillis Wheatly Black poetry also flourished in the nineteenth –century, during which the writing of almost forty poets were printed, the most notable of whom was Paul Laurence Dunbar, the first black American to achieve national acclaim for his work Dunbar published eight volumes of poetry and eight novels can collections of stories

More than three dozen novels were written by blacks between 1853 and 1899, but autobiography dominated African-American literature in the nineteenth century, as

it had in the eighteenth In the twentieth century, however fiction has presided, with Charles W Chestnutt, American’s first black man of letters, successfully

bridging the two centuries He began publishing short fiction in the mid 1880s, wrote two books that appeared in 1899, and had three books published between

1900 and 1905 He was a pioneer of the “new literature” of early 1990s, which aimed to persuade readers of the worth and equality of African Americans

1 Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage as part of the oraltradition of African Americans?

A the pain an joy in life

B loved ones and animals

C Religion and nature

D Wise and foolish people

3 According to the passage, an important part of early African Americans

5 According to the passage, who was the first African American to receive

national recognition for his writing?

A Paul Dunbar

B George Horton

C Lucy Terry

D Phillis Wheatly

IV Reading the passage and choose the best answer to each question

Humanitarian Dorothea Dix was born in Hampden Maine, in 1802 At the age of 19, she established a school for girls, the Dix Mansion school, in Boston, but had to close

it in 1835 due to her poor health, she wrote and published the first of many books for children in 1824 In 1841, Dix accepted an invitation to teach classes at a prison in East Cambridge, Massachusetts She was deeply disturbed by the sight of mentally-ill persons thrown in the trail and treated like criminals For the next eighteen months, she torn Massachusetts institutions where other mental patients were confided and reported the shocking conditions she found to the state legislature When

improvements followed in Massachusetts, she turned her attention to the neighbouring state and to the West and South

Dix’s work was interrupted by the civil War, she served as superintendent of women hospital nurse for federal government

Dix saw special hospital for the mentally ill built in some fifteen states Although her plan to obtain public land for her cause failed, she arouses concern for the problem of mental illnesses all over the United State as well as in Canada and Europe

Dix’s success was due to her independent and thorough research, her gentle but

persistent manners, and her ability to secure the help of powerful and wealthy

A She taught classes there

B She was sent there by the state legislature

C She was convicted of a crime

D She was doing research for a book

3 Where was Dorothea Dix first able to bring about reforms in the treatment of the mentally ill?

A Canada

B Massachusetts

C The West and South

D Europe

4 Dorothea Dix was Not successful in her attempt to

A Become superintendent of nurse

B Publish books for children

C Arouse concern for mentally ill

D Obtain publish land

5 At what point of the passage does the author discuss specific reason for Dix’s success

What is reading for reference?

Successful reading means being able to see the relationship between different words, that is, being able to match information rather than understand isolated words Look at the following example

How do humans produce speech? First the brain issues a command to the lungs to initiate an airstream Before this stream can become speech, however, it must pass

through, or by, the larynx, pharynx, tongue, teeth, lips and nose _ all of which can modify the airstream in various ways

You might understand every word in the paragraph but you need to see the

relationship of the words to one another to be a successful reader You have to see what “it” and “all of which” relate to “It” relates to “the airstream” and “all of which” relates to “the larynx, pharynx, tongue, teeth, lips and nose”

The most typical example of matching information is matching reference, that is, how one word refers to other words If you cannot understand all the references, you

cannot understand the passage There are many types of referece

1 Pronouns: (he, she, it, they, himself, herself, this, that, these, what, who, where)

Many people wrote to complain They particularly objected to…

We received about twenty calls a day These range from requests for…

The hospital receives insufficient funding This is a major problem

He asked if I could lend him a torch Unfortunately, I didn’t have one

2 Auxiliary verbs: (e.g do/did, have/had, can/could, will/would)

We all tell white lies occasionally Life would be difficult if we didn’t

You need to pay the fee now If you can’t, please let us know

3 There, then, so, much…

At the beginning of the 19th century… Things were very different then

You may experience symptoms of nausea Such symptoms are not uncommon

4 Parallel expressions

Feelings of anger and betrayal strong emotions

5 Articles

A survey….( First reference) the survey … (later reference)

How can you find the references? Reference words are in many cases pronouns such as “it”, “them”, “they”, or “this” When the reference word is a pronoun, look for

a previous noun that might match the pronoun Make sure that they match in gender (male or female), number (singular and plural), and case (is the word a subject, an object or possessive?) replace the pronoun with this noun and check to see if the meaning is possible For example, in the sentences above, when ‘her’ is replaced with

‘Sandra” the sentence makes sense Therefore ‘ her’ refers to ‘Sandra’

Sandra’s closest friends are Amy and Lee They study with her at the

university

Sometimes to understand a reading passage we need to work out the link

between the ideas correctly This link is not always expressed by reference words but

by elliptical devices Let’s have a look at the following example

The main purpose of a resume is to convince an employer to grant you an interview There are two kinds

In this sentences, “two kinds” means “two kinds of resume”

Notes:

 When answering reference questions be aware that the noun closest to thereference word may not be always the correct answer

 Reference words may refer to a noun or a noun phrase made up of several

words

 Reference words may refer to the nouns in the following sentences

Examples of this type are indefinite pronouns like “something”,

“someone”….ect

Exercise 1: Read the following sentences and state what the underlined words refer to

1 Once in the café you must buy something, so you spend your last fifty centimes on

a glass of black coffee with a dead fly in it

2 You spend your last eighty centimes on half a liter of milk and you are boiling it

over the spirit lamp

3 The city’s busiest underground station- St Paul’s in Cheapside- unlocks its gates

To get there on time, the station foreman, John Milne, has to come in by bus from

Good Mayes in Essex

4 The tiny number of residents -7500, many of them caretakers, 4000 of them living

in the Barbican- is suddenly and dramatically increased

5 The city’s working day ends earlier than most of the rest of London That’s

reasonable, it starts earlier

6 Good husbandry – forest ecology, wisdom in planning, less greed and stupidity – could keep man and the delicate rain forest relationship in balance indefinitely

This is our last great store house…our last wonderland

7 Birthmarks, once almost untreatable, are a mass of blood vessels and, being red,

they absorb the laser beam strongly It seals them so that the mark becomes

conspicuous

8 Britain, though, is one of the leaders in the laser treatment of bleeding peptic

ulcers and this, combined with new medicines can mean ulcer treatment without

conventional surgery

9 When you think that you too might be asked to pay two sous extra, and would have to confess you could not, you bolt in panic What could you not do?