Đề thi thử vào lớp 10 môn Tiếng Anh (chuyên) trường THPT chuyên Amsterdam năm học 2016 - 2017

Mount Mulanje in Malawi is the highest mountain in (1. CENTRE) Africa, part of a range which comprises no fewer than twenty peaks over 2,500 meters. The range is readily (2. ACCESS) by road and a day’s drive allow a (3. LEISURE) circumnavigation. More energetic visitors, particularly walkers and climbers, are rewarded with an experience that is (4.FORGET).

Mulanje is a (5. BREATH) sight, visible for miles around. The giant slab of rock appears to protrude almost vertically from the plain. This impression is borne out by the existence of the longest sheer rock-face in Africa, demanding for even the most skilled (6. MOUNTAIN). The explanation for this dramatic geography lies in the rock: hard granite, very (7. RESIST) to erosion, which contrasts with the softer rocks of the plains.

Most visitors remain on the lower, gentler slopes, making use of forest huts for overnight accommodation. The trek up the foothills, along clearly defined paths, is not overly (8. CHALLENGE) but may take up to a week. As the climate cools gradually, almost (9. PERCEPTIBLE), with every few meters of altitude gained, so the full diversity of fauna and flora is revealed in all its (10. SPLENDID).

When you hear someone bubbling enthusiastically about an exotic species, you can safely bet the speaker isn’t an ecologist. This is a name for a resident of an established community that was deliberately or accidentally moved from its home range and became established elsewhere. Unlike most imports, which can’t take hold outside their home range, an exotic species permanently insinuates itself into a new community.

Sometimes the additions are harmless and even have beneficial effects. More often, they make native species endangered species, which by definition are extremely vulnerable to extinction. Of all species on the rare or endangered lists or that recently became extinct, close to 70 percent owe their precarious existence or demise to displacement by exotic species. Two examples are included here to illustrate the problem.

During the 1800s, British settlers in Australia just couldn’t bond with the koalas and kangaroos, so they started to import familiar animals from their homeland. In 1859, in what would be the start of a wholesale disaster, a northern Australian landowner imported and then released two dozen wild European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus). Good food and good sport hunting – that was the idea. An ideal rabbit habitat with no natural predators was the reality.

Six years later, the landowner had killed 20,000 rabbits and was besieged by 20,000 more. The rabbits displaced livestock, even kangaroos. Now Australia has 200 to 300 million hippityhopping through the southern half of the country. They overgraze perennial grasses in good times and strip bark from shrubs and trees during droughts. You know where they’ve been; they transform grasslands and shrub lands into eroded deserts. They have been shot and poisoned. Their warrens have been plowed under, fumigated, and dynamited. Even when all-out assaults reduced their population size by 70 percent, the rapidly reproducing imports made a comeback in less than a year. Did the construction of a 2,000-mile-long fence protect Western Australia? No. Rabbits made it to the other side before workers finished the fence.

In 1951, government works introduced a myxoma virus by way of mildly infected South American rabbits, its normal hosts. This virus causes myxomatosis. The disease has mild effects on South American rabbits that coevolved with the virus but nearly always had lethal effects on O. cuniculus. Biting insects, mainly mosquitoes and flenses against the novel virus, the European rabbits dies in droves. But, as you might expect, natural selection has since favored rapid growth of populations of O. cuniculus resistant to the virus.

In 1991, on an uninhabited island in Spencer Gulf, Australian researchers released a population of rabbits that they had injected with a calcivirus. The rabbits died quickly and relatively painlessly from blood clots in their lungs, hearts, and kidneys. In 1995, the test virus escaped from the island, possibly on insect vectors. It has been killing 80 to 95 percent of the adult rabbits in Australian regions. At this writing, researches are now questioning whether the calcivirus should be used on a widespread scale, whether it can jump boundaries and infect animals other than rabbits (such as humans), and what the long – term consequences will be.

no serious threats from herbivores, pathogens, or competitor plants. In temperate parts of Asia, it is a well – behaved legume with a well – developed root system. It seemed like a good idea to use it to control erosion on hills and highway embankments in the southeastern United States. (A) With nothing to stop it, though, kudzu’s shoots grew a third of a meter per day. Vines now blanket stream banks, trees, telephone poles, houses, and almost everything else in their path. Attempts to dig up or burn kudzu are futile. Grazing goats and herbicides help, but goats eat other plants, to, and herbicides contaminate water supplies. (B) Kudzu could reach the Great Lakes by the year 2040.

On the bright side, a Japanese firm is constructing a kudzu farm and processing plant in Alabama. The idea is to export the starch to Asia, where the demand currently exceeds the supply. (C) Also, kudzu may eventually help reduce logging operations. (D) At the Georgia Institute of Technology, researchers report that kudzu might become an alternative source for paper.

Society has changed in many ways since the introduction of computers, and people's lives at home and at the office have been (1) ________. Most people are working for fewer hours per week than they (2) ________ to, and manufacturers and advertising agencies are becoming much more interested in (3) ________ people spend this extra leisure time. One recent report stated that (4) ________ the number of hobbies had not increased; each hobby had become more specialized.

A second (5) ________ is that nowadays, many managers would rather spend time with their families than stay (6) ________ in the office every day. Home life seems to be just as important as working. Some companies now make managers (7) ________ their annual holidays even if they don't want to, because this leads to such an (8) ________ in their performance if they have some rest.

In spite of these changes, some people are working harder than ever before. The standard of exams is getting higher, and increased competition is (9) ________ it harder to get into university than it was 20 years ago. School children and students are now having to work so hard that in many cases they work (10) ________ hours than their parents.