ĐỌC HIỂU – VSTEP READING TEST 1
Thời gian: 60 phút
Số câu hỏi: 40
Directions: In this section of the test, you will read FOUR different passages, each followed by 10 questions about it. For questions 1-40, you are to choose the best answer A, B, C, or D for each question. Then, on your answer sheet, find the number of the question and fill in the space that corresponds to the letter of the answer you have chosen. Answer all questions following a passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in that passage.
You have 60 minutes to answer all the questions, including the time to transfer your answers to the answer sheet.
PASSAGE 1 – Questions 1-10
It takes a long time to raise a family of owlets, so the great horned owl begins early in the year. In January and February, or as late as March in the North, the male calls to the female with a resonant hoot. The female is larger than the male. She sometimes reaches a body length of twenty-two to twenty-four inches, with a wingspread up to fifty inches. To impress her, the male does a strange courtship dance. He bobs. He bows. He ruffles his feathers and hops around with an important air. He flutters from limb to limb and makes flying sorties into the air. Sometimes he returns with an offering of food. They share the repast, after which she joins the dance, hopping and bobbing about as though keeping time to the beat of an inner drum.
Owls are poor home builders. They prefer to nest in a large hollow in a tree or even to occupy the deserted nest of a hawk or crow. These structures are large and rough, built of sticks and bark and lined with leaves and feathers. Sometimes owls nest on a rocky ledge, or even on the bare ground.
The mother lays two or three round, dull white eggs. Then she stoically settles herself on the nest and spreads her feather skirts about her to protect her precious charges from snow and cold. It is five weeks before the first downy white owlet pecks its way out of the shell. As the young birds feather out, they look like wise old men with their wide eyes and quizzical expressions. They clamor for food and keep the parents busy supplying mice, squirrels, rabbits, crayfish, and beetles. Later in the season baby crows are taken. Migrating songsters, waterfowl, and game birds all fall prey to the hungry family. It is nearly ten weeks before fledglings leave the nest to search for their own food. The parent birds weary of family life by November and drive the young owls away to establish hunting ranges of their own.
What is the topic of this passage?
- A. Raising a family of great horned owls
- B. Mating rituals of great horned owls
- C. Nest building of great horned owls
- D. Habits of young great horned owls
- A. an instrument
- B. a sound
- C. a movement
- D. an offering of food
- A. takes place on the ground
- B. is an active process
- C. happens in the fall
- D. involves the male alone
- A. are discriminate nest builders
- B. need big nests for their numerous eggs
- C. may inhabit a previously used nest
- D. build nests on tree limbs
- A. To initiate the courtship ritual
- B. To feed the young
- C. To sit on the nest
- D. To build the nest
- A. the eggs
- B. the nest
- C. the hawks and crows
- D. other nesting owls
- A. other small birds
- B. insects
- C. small mammals
- D. nuts and seeds
- A. the wise old men
- B. the adult birds
- C. the young birds
- D. the prey
- A. They are sorry to see their young leave home.
- B. They are lazy and careless about feeding the small owlets.
- C. They probably don't see their young after November.
- D. They don't eat while they are feeding their young.
- A. tire of
- B. become sad-about
- C. support
- D. are attracted to
PASSAGE 2 – Questions 11-20
In the early 1800s, to reach the jump-off point for the West, a family from the East of the United States could either buy steamboat passage to Missouri for themselves, their wagons, and their livestock or - as happened more often- simply pile everything into a wagon, hitch up a team, and begin their overland trek right in their front yard.
Along the macadamized roads and turnpikes east of the Missouri River, travel was comparatively fast, camping easy, and supplies plentiful. Then, in one river town or another, the neophyte emigrants would pause to lay in provisions. For outfitting purposes, the town of Independence had been preeminent ever since 1827, but the rising momentum of pioneer emigration had produced some rival jump-off points. Westport and Fort Leavenworth flourished a few miles upriver. St. Joseph had sprung up 55 miles to the northwest; in fact, emigrants who went to Missouri by riverboat could save four days on the trail by staying on the paddle-wheelers to St. Joe before striking overland.
At whatever jump-off point they chose, the emigrants studied guidebooks and directions, asked questions of others as green as themselves, and made their final decisions about outfitting. They had various, sometimes conflicting, options. For example, either pack animals or two-wheel carts or wagons could be used for the overland crossing. A family man usually chose the wagon. It was the costliest and slowest of the three, but it provided space and shelter for children and for a wife who likely was not pregnant. Everybody knew that a top-heavy covered wagon might blow over in a prairie wind or be overturned by mountain rocks, that it might mire in river mud or sink to its hubs in desert sand - but maybe if those things happened on this trip, they would happen to someone else. Anyway, most pioneers, with their farm background, were used to wagons.
What is the topic of this passage?
- A. Important river towns
- B. Getting started on the trip west
- C. The advantages of traveling by wagon
- D. Choosing a point of departure
- A. was faster than in the West
- B. was easier than in the West
- C. took place on good roads
- D. was usually by steamboat
- A. a bridge across a river
- B. a point of departure
- C. a gathering place
- D. a trading post
- A. Independence
- B. St. Joseph
- C. Westport
- D. Fort Leavenworth
- A. oldest
- B. superior
- C. most easily reached
- D. closest
- A. knew a lot about travel
- B. were well stocked with provisions when they left their homes
- C. left from the same place in Missouri
- D. preferred wagon travel to other types of travel
- A. eager
- B. courageous
- C. prosperous
- D. inexperienced
- A. a wagon
- B. a riverboat
- C. a pack animal
- D. a two-wheel cart
- A. hitting
- B. orienting
- C. departing
- D. marking
- A. speed at which it could travel
- B. its bulk
- C. its familiarity and size
- D. its cost
