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ENGLISH TEST
Time allowed: 60 minutes
50 questions

PART 1
For questions 1-7, you must choose which of the paragraphs A-H on page 2, fit into the gaps in the
following newspaper article. There is one extra paragraph which does not fit in any of the gaps.
Indicate your answers on the separate answer sheet.

Beethoven’s Piano
In 1817 the English piano maker Thomas Broadwood met Beethoven in Vienna and
promised him the gift of a piano.
1

Beethoven kept it until his death in 1827, reputedly using it to write, among other things, the
Hammerklavier sonata. Then it passed to Liszt, who left it to the Hungarian National

Museum in Budapest. There it remained, a national treasure, seen but barely heard,
until it began a journey almost as momentous as the one all those years ago, back
through Europe to Britain.
2

Why is this piano so important? Well, it is an icon. It featured prominently in Beethoven’s

later years and the very abuse to which he subjected it, hammering at the notes to try
to hear them, records the terrible pathos of Beethoven’s deafness.
3

But bringing this Broadwood back to life is also a landmark in the modern history of performance,
recognising that old instruments offer unique insights into old music- and none more than pianos in
the time of Beethoven, when their technology was young and fast-developing and composers
responded immediately to the latest thing on the market. The novelty of the Broadwood was a
heavier action, which meant that whatever his hearing impairment, Beethoven could feel he was
making more sound than a Viennese piano could deliver.

English test – C2
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Trụ sở : Tầng 1 tòa Sunrise Building 2, KĐT Sài Đồng, Long Biên, Hà Nội
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For a player like Melvyn Tan, those limitations are critical because they demonstrate
how Beethoven’s writing pushed the piano to its physical extremities. It’s important
not to lose the limitations when a piano is restored.
5

David Winston, the restorer, has some sympathy with this view: “It’s true that every
time you restore you lose original information. So I have to ask myself: will this
work increase the piano’s lifespan, and is it reversible? And I document everything
so it’s clear to someone 50 years from now exactly what I’ve done.”
6

Winston’s work has lift the Viennese input alone but removed the rest. He has
replaced the strings, which weren’t original, the dampers and the hammer coverings.
Otherwise, he says, the piano was in decent structural condition. “It was chosen in
the first place to be robust, and it is.” However, the present tour has raised a
musicological question for Tan.
7

So either he didn’t write Hammerklavier on the Broadwood after all or he wrote it idealistically,
beyond the character and limitations of the instrument at hand.

A The Broadwood had in fact been regularly tampered with- from when it first arrived in
Vienna to more recent times when it was patched up by Hungarians without access to the
right materials.
B He could afford it- his was the most successful piano company in the world- and a model
was dispatched from London on 27 December, by sea through the Straits of Gibraltar to
Trieste and then by cart to Vienna, arriving the following June.
C This treatment did a lot of damage. By 1824 a friend observed that “there was no sound left
in the treble and broken strings were mixed up like thorns in a gale.”

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Trụ sở : Tầng 1 tòa Sunrise Building 2, KĐT Sài Đồng, Long Biên, Hà Nội
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D This is one of the reasons why the ethics of making such improvements to an old instrument
are contentious. Not everyone agreed that Beethoven’s Broadwood should be returned to
playing condition, still less taken on tour.
E He has found it difficult to programme the tour because- and this is slightly embarrassing-
few of the scores Beethoven supposedly wrote on the Broadwood are playable on it. The
keyboard is too short.
F George Bernard Shaw said that the most entirely creditable incident in English history was
the sending of £100 to Beethoven on his death-bed by the London Philharmonic Society.
But there was another.
G This time, though, the piano is working its passage, on a concert tour sponsored by
Broadwood’s (the firm still exists). Like all great stars (and this one is insured for £5m) it
travels with an entourage. There is the pianist Melvyn Tan who plays it, the piano doctor
David Winston who restored it, four attendants who transport it between venues by
unpublishable routes, and two security men who sleep with it.
H Although it was also harder work, it gave a better sense of control, and a more consistent,
more modern sound across its range. But, of course, it’s not a modern sound. It still has the
limitations of its time, including a slight twang, a noisy action and ineffectual dampers.

PART 2
Choose ONE phrase (A-J) from the list in the box below to complete each key point below.
The information in the completed sentences should be an accurate summary of points made by the
writer.
Write the appropriate letters (A-J) in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.
N.B. There are more phrases (A-J) than sentences so you will not use them all. You may use any
phrase more than once.

PERSONAL TIME MANAGEMENT

Since the early work of Halberg (1960), the existence of human “circadian rhythms” has been
well-known to biologists and psychologists. Circadian rhythms dictate that there are certain times
of the day when we are at our best both physically and psychologically. At its simplest, the
majority of us feel most alive and creative in the mornings, while come the evenings we are fit only
for collapsing with a good book or in front of the television. Others of us note that in the morning
we take a great deal of time to get going physically and mentally, but by the evening are full of
energy and bright ideas, while a very few of us feel most alert and vigorous in the late afternoon.
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Irrespective of our personal rhythms, most of us have a productive period between 10 a.m. and
noon, when the stomach, pancreas, spleen and heart all appear to be in their most active phases.
Conversely, the majority of us experience a low period in the hour or two after lunch (a time when
people in some societies sensibly take a rest), as most of our energy is devoted to the process of
digestion. The simple rules here are: don’t waste too much prime time having a coffee break
around 11 a.m. when you should be doing some of your best work, and don’t make the after-lunch
period even less productive by overloading your digestion. A short coffee or tea break is, in fact,
best taken on arrival at the office, when it helps us start the day in a positive mood, rather than mid-
morning when it interrupts the flow of our activities. Lunch is best taken early, when we are just
beginning to feel hungry, and we are likely to eat less than if we leave it until later. An early lunch
also means that we can get back into our productive stride earlier in the afternoon.
Changes in one’s attitude can also enhance personal time management. For example, the notion of
proaction is eminently preferable to reaction. To proact means to anticipate events and be in a
position to take appropriate action as soon as the right moment arrives. To react, on the other hand,
means to have little anticipation and do something only when events force you to do so. Proactors
tend to be the people who are always one step ahead of other people, who always seem to be in the
right place at the right time, and who are always better informed than anyone else. Many of us like
an easy life, and so we tend to be reactor. This means that we aren’t alert to the challenges and
opportunities coming our way, with the consequence that challenges bother us or opportunities pass
us by before we’re even properly aware they’re upon us. We can train ourselves in proaction by
regularly taking the time to sit down and appraise the likely immediate future, just as we sit down
and review the immediate past.
Psychologists recognise that we differ in the way in which we characteristically attribute
responsibility for the various things that happen to us in life. One of the ways in which we do this is
known as locus of control (Weiner, 1979), which refers to assigning responsibility. At its simplest,
some individuals have a predominantly external locus of control, attributing responsibility to
outside causes (for example, the faults of others or the help given by them), while with other
individuals the locus of control is dominantly internal, in which responsibility is attributed to
oneself (for example, one’s own ability or lack of them, hard work, etc.).
However, the picture usually is not as simple as this. Many people’s locus of control is more likely
to be specific to a particular situation, for example, internal in certain areas, such as their social
lives. Or, to take another example, they may attribute certain kinds of results to themselves, such as
their successes, and certain kinds of results to other people, such as their failures. Obviously the

English test – C2
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Trụ sở : Tầng 1 tòa Sunrise Building 2, KĐT Sài Đồng, Long Biên, Hà Nội
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Số:…………… Hà Nội, ngày…….tháng……..năm 2017

best kind of locus of control is one that is realistic and able to attribute every effect to its
appropriate course, and this is particularly important when it comes to time management. Certainly,
there are occasions when other people are more responsible for our time loss than we are, but for
most of us, and for most of the time, the blame must fall fairly and squarely upon ourselves.

Time management – key points

Answer
Example Our patterns of circadian rhythms ….. G

8. A proactive person …..

9. A reactive person …..
10. Analyzing circadian rhythms …..
11. The idea that the best time to work is in the morning …..
12. The notion of feeling alert in the late afternoon …..
13. Productivity appears to be enhanced …..

List of phrases

A … agrees with the circadian rhythms of most people.

B … makes us feel alive and creative.
C … conforms to the circadian rhythms of a minority of people.
D … if our energy is in a low phase.
E … is more able to take advantage of events when they happen.
F … enables one to gauge physical potential at particular times throughout the day.
G … can affect us physically and mentally.
H … when several specific internal organs are active.
J … when we eat lunch early.

PART 3
For questions 14-28, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each space. There is
an example at the beginning (0).
Write your word on the separate answer sheet.

Example: 0 with

English test – C2
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Số:…………… Hà Nội, ngày…….tháng……..năm 2017

I n t u i t i on
Sometimes you just know things about people the first time you see them- for example that you
want to be friends (0) …. them or that you don’t trust them. But perhaps this kind of intuition isn’t
as hard to explain (14) …. it may seem. For instance, everybody gives out body language signals
(15) …. the time. The (16) …. you hold your body, head and arms tells people about your mood. If
you hold your arms tightly at your sides (17) …. fold them across your chest, people will generally
feel that you (18) …. being defensive. Holding your head on one side shows interest in the (19) ….
person, while (20) …. relaxed, ‘open’ posture indicates that you are self-confident. All this affects
(21) …. we feel about someone.
Also, a stranger may (22) …. you of a previous meeting with someone. This may be because of
(23) …. as simple as the fact that he or she is physically similar (24) …. someone who treated you
well- or badly. But your reaction doesn’t (25) …. to be the result of the memory of a person you
previously met- your feelings about the stranger could (26) …. influenced by a smell in the air that
brings to mind a place (27) …. you were happy as a child. Since even a single word can bring back
a memory (28) …. as that, you may never realize it is happening.

PART 4
For questions 29-44, read the text below and look carefully at each line. Some of the lines are
correct, and some have a word which should not be there. If a line are correct, put a tick ( ) by
the number on the separate answer sheet. If a line has a word which should not be there, write
the word on the separate answer sheet. There are two examples at the beginning (0) and (00).
0 the
Example:
00 

THE INTERVIEW

0 Suzanne was very nervous about her interview. For at the least three
00 weeks before it she was worried about it. She really wanted the job but
29 she knew that a lot of other people wanted get it too. She had been told
30 when she phoned the number in the advert that there were a great many
31 applicants for it, so as she prepared herself. She made notes of what she

English test – C2
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32 might be asked and of what she wanted to ask. When the day it came, she
33 arrived half of an hour early. There were six other people waiting to be
34 interviewed. They all looked much more confident than did her. She began
35 to feel herself even more nervous. One by one the others were called.
36 Each of them came out and looking satisfied. Suzanne was the last one to
37 be called into the interview room. She had decided by then time that she
38 had no chance of getting the job, so she felt relaxed as she walked in; she
39 felt that she had nothing to lose. The three interviewers were all them very
40 serious and they didn’t seem to be interested in her. She forgot all the
41 answers she had yet prepared and said the first things that came into her
42 head. Afterwards she was sure she wouldn’t get the job, but two days
43 later she got a letter for telling her she had been chosen because she had
44 been the only one who had acted naturally.

PART 5
For questions 45-50, read the following text and then choose from the list A-J the best phrase to
fill each of the blanks. Write one letter (A-J) in the correct box on your answer sheet. Some of the
suggested answers do not fit at all. One answer has been given as an example (0).

Example: 0 J

CARD GAME RULES

Card playing has brought pleasure to millions of people for some six centuries and is
popular the world over, so it is no surprising to discover that thousands of games have
been invented. There is a widespread belief that all card games (0) … but the situation is
complex and this idea is best ignored. Widely played games (45) … in much the same
way. National and regional games may have official rules published by an organization
devoted to the game, but these (46) … in local and family play. Of course, it is essential
to establish a set of rules for club or tournament play, but these (47) … as the rules of the
club, not the rules of the game. In homes people play cards for enjoyment and (48) …
and drop rules to suit their tastes. It is because tastes (49) … and generation to generation
that card games evolve. Games that no longer evolve become extinct.

No book can do more than (50) …, or are said by other books to be played. Nor should it

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expect to. The only important thing is that everybody playing around the same table at
the same time should be following the same rules.

A played in its country of origin F never did lay down official rules
B should be regarded G vary from place to place
C will naturally introduce H describe how games are played
D have decided between alternative rules I are happily ignored
E tend to be played everywhere J have official rules

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