ĐỀ CƯƠNG ÔN TẬP READING 2021

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Hello Happiness!
Ask 100 people what would make them happy, and a sizeable majority
would say “winning the lottery.” Yet, if they won a vast fortune, within a year
they would be back to their previous level of happiness. The fact is that
money has many uses, but more money does not mean more happiness.
Surveys carried out in recent years by leading psychologists and sociologists
all confirm that while individuals may increase their material wealth during
the course of their lifetime, this has no bearing on their well-being. And what
is true for individuals can be applied on a larger scale to the world
population. Statistically, wealthier nations do not achieve higher scores on
the happiness-ometer than developing or underdeveloped nations. Once
the basic criteria of adequate shelter and nutrition are satisfied, increased
wealth plays no significant role. So why the obsession with getting rich? The
answer, say, researchers, is simple. Call it jealousy, competitiveness, or just
keeping up with the Joneses, however, well we are doing, there is always
someone else who is doing better. Just as we acquire a new $25,000 car, our
neighbour parks his brand spanking new $40,000 set of wheels in his drive,
causing us much consternation, but fuelling us with new aspirations in the
process. And so the cycle continues. Money, or material wealth, maybe a
prime mover, but it is not the foundation of our well-being.

If money isn’t the key to happiness, then, what is? In all 44 countries
surveyed by a prominent research centre, family life provided the greatest
source of satisfaction. Married people live on average three years longer
and enjoy greater physical and psychological health than the unmarried
and, surprisingly, couples in a cohabitation relationship. Having a family
enhances well-being, and spending more time with one’s family helps even

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more. Social interaction among families, neighbourhoods, workplaces,
communities and religious groups correlates strongly with subjective well-
being. In fact, the degree of individuals’ social connections is the best
benchmark of their happiness.

Friendship is another major factor. Indeed, to return to the dollar-equals-

happiness equation, in one survey, having a friend converted into $50,000
worth of happiness, and confirms the well-known phenomenon that
loneliness can lead to depression. Work is another area central to well-
being, and certain features correlate highly with happiness. These include
autonomy over how, where, and at what pace work is done, trust between
employer and employee, fair treatment, and active participation in the
making of decisions. Occupationally, happiness tends to be more common
among professionals and managers, that is, people who are in control of
the work they do, rather than subservient to their bosses. Inequality implies
less control for those who are in a weaker position, although there are more
risks of losing their privileges for those in a stronger position.

Control of one’s life, in general, is also key. Happiness is clearly correlated

with the presence of favourable events such as promotion or marriage, and
the absence of troubles or bad luck such as accidents, being laid off or
conflicts. These events on their own signal the success or failure to reach
one’s goals, and therefore the control one has. On a national level, the more
that governments recognise individual preferences, the happier their
citizens will be. Choice, and citizens’ belief that they can affect the political
process, increase subjective well-being. Furthermore, evidence exists for an
association between unhappiness and poor health: people from

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underdeveloped countries are among the unhappiest in the world, and
their life expectancy has been falling steadily. People are more satisfied in
societies which minimally restrict their freedom of action, in other words,
where they are in control rather than being controlled. Happy people are
characterised by the belief that they are able to control their situation,
whereas unhappy people tend to believe that they are a victim of fate.
Happy people are also more psychologically resilient, assertive and open to
the experience.

But how good is the evidence for this alternative viewpoint then – that
happiness, and not financial status, contributes to good health, and long
life? A study of nuns, spanning seven decades, supports this theory.
Autobiographies written by the nuns in their early 1920s were scored for
positive and negative emotions. Nuns expressing the most positive
emotions lived on average ten years longer than those expressing the least
positive emotions. Happy people, it seems, are much less likely to fall ill and
die than unhappy people.

But what must we do to be happy? Experts cite the old maxim “be happy
with what you’ve got.” Look around you, they say, and identify the positive
factors in your life. Concentrating on the negative aspects of one’s life is a
no-no, and so is worrying. Worrying is a negative thinking habit that is nearly
always about something that lies in the future. It seems, apparently, from
our cave-dwelling days, when we had to think on a day-to-day basis about
how and where to find food and warmth, for example. But in the modern
world, worrying simply undermines our ability to enjoy life in the present.
More often than not, the things we worry about never come to pass anyway.

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Just as important is not to dwell on the past – past mistakes, bad
experiences, missed opportunities and so on.

What else can we do? Well, engage in a loving relationship with another
adult, and work hard to sustain it. Try to plan frequent interactions with your
family, friends and neighbours (in that order). Make sure you’re not working
so hard that you’ve no time left for personal relationships and leisure. If you
are, leave your job voluntarily to become self-employed, but don’t get
sacked – that’s more damaging to well-being than the loss of a spouse, and
its effects last longer. In your spare time, join a club, volunteer for
community service, or take up religion.
If none of the above works, then vote for a political party with the same
agenda as the King of Bhutan, who announced that his nation’s objective is
national happiness.

Questions 1-3: Which THREE of the following statements are

true, according to the text?
A Money can bring misery.
B Wealthier nations place more emphasis on happiness than poorer ones.
C Securing a place to live is a basic human need.
D The desire for social status is a global phenomenon.
E An unmarried couple living together are less likely to be happy than a
married couple.
F The less responsibility one has, the happier one is.
G Involvement in policymaking can increase well-being.
H Our prehistoric ancestors were happier than we are.

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Questions 4-7: Complete the summary using the list of words, A-I, below.

A episode B interaction C cooperation

D control E number F level
G course H conflict I limit

Money can buy you just about anything, but not, it seems happiness.
Whether on a personal or national 4……………………………, your bank balance
won’t make you happier. Once the basic criteria of a roof over your head
and food on the table have been met, money ceases to play a part. One of
the most important factors in achieving happiness is the extent of our
social 5…………………………… – our relationships with family, friends,
colleagues and so on. Equally important is the amount
of 6…………………………….. we have, either in our personal life, working life, or
even in our ability to influence the political 7…………………………. that our
country embarks on.
Questions 8-13: TRUE – FALSE – NOT GIVEN

8 People from underdeveloped nations try to attain the same

standard of living as those from developed nations.
9 Seeing what others have makes people want to have it too.
10 The larger the family is, the happier the parents will probably
be.
11 One’s attitude to life has no influence on one’s health.
12 Instinct can be a barrier to happiness.
13 Family and friends rank equally as sources of happiness.

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One Who Hopes

A
Language lovers, just like music lovers, enjoy a variety. For the latter,
there’s Mozart, The Rolling Stones and Beyonce. For the former,
there’s English, French, Swahili, Urdu… the list is endless. But what
about those poor overworked students who find learning difficult,
confusing languages a drudge? Wouldn’t it put a smile on their faces if
there were just one simple, the easy-to-learn tongue that would cut
their study time by years? Well, of course, it exists. It’s called
Esperanto, and it’s been around for more than 120 years. Esperanto is
the most widely spoken artificially constructed international language.
The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under
which L. L. Zamenhof first published his Unua Libro in 1887. The phrase
itself means ‘one who hopes’. Zamenhof’s goal was to create an easy
and flexible language as a universal second language to promote
peace and international understanding.
B
Zamenhof, after ten years of developing his brain-child from the late
1870s to the early 1880s, had the first Esperanto grammar published
in Warsaw in July 1887. The number of speakers grew rapidly over the
next few decades, at first primarily in the Russian Empire and Eastern
Europe, then in Western Europe and the Americas, China, and Japan.
In the early years, speakers of Esperanto kept in contact primarily
through correspondence and periodicals, but since 1905 world
congresses have been held on five continents every year except
during the two World Wars. Latest estimates for the numbers of

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Esperanto speakers are around 2 million. Put in percentage terms,
that’s about 0.03% of the world’s population – no staggering figure,
comparatively speaking. One reason is that Esperanto has no official
status in any country, but it is an optional subject on the curriculum of
several state education systems. It is widely estimated that it can be
learned in anywhere between a quarter to a twentieth of the time
required for other languages.
C
As a constructed language, Esperanto is not genealogically related to
any ethnic language. Whilst it is described as ‘a language lexically
predominantly Romanic’, the phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and
semantics are based on the western Indo-European languages. For
those of us who are not naturally predisposed to tucking languages
under our belts, it is an easy language to learn. It has 5 vowels and 23
consonants. It has one simple way of conjugating all of its verbs.
Words are often made from many other roots, making the number of
words which one must memorise much smaller. The language is
phonetic, and the rules of pronunciation are very simple so that
everyone knows how to pronounce a written word and vice-versa, and
word order follows a standard, logical pattern. Through prefixing and
suffixing, Esperanto makes it easy to identify words as nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs, direct objects and so on, by means of easy-to-spot
endings. All this makes for easy language learning. What’s more,
several research studies demonstrate that studying Esperanto before
another foreign language speeds up and improves the learning of the
other language. This is presumably because learning subsequent

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foreign languages is easier than learning one’s first, while the use of a
grammatically simple and culturally flexible language like Esperanto
softens the blow of learning one’s first foreign language. In one study,
a group of European high school students studied Esperanto for one
year, then French for three years, and ended up with a significantly
better command of French than a control group who had studied
French for all four years.
D
Needless to say, the language has its critics. Some point to the Eastern
European features of the language as being harsh and difficult to
pronounce and argue that Esperanto has an artificial feel to it, without
the flow of a natural tongue, and that by nature of its artificiality, it is
impossible to become emotionally involved with the language. Others
cite its lack of cultural history, indigenous literature – “no one has ever
written a novel straight into Esperanto” – together with its minimal
vocabulary and its inability to express all the necessary philosophical,
emotional and psychological concepts.
E
The champions of Esperanto – Esperantists – disagree. They claim that it is
a language in which a great body of world literature has appeared in
translation: in poetry, novels, literary journals, and, to rebut the
accusation that it is not a ‘real’ language, point out that it is frequently
used at international meetings which draw hundreds and thousands
of participants. Moreover, on an international scale, it is most useful –
and fair – for neutral communication. That means that communication
through Esperanto does not give advantages to the members of any

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particular people or culture, but provides an ethos of equality of
rights, tolerance and true internationalism.
F
Esperantists further claim that Esperanto has the potential – was it
universally taught for a year or two throughout the world – to
empower ordinary people to communicate effectively worldwide on a
scale that far exceeds that which is attainable today by only the most
linguistically brilliant among us. It offers the opportunity to improve
communication in business, diplomacy, scholarship and other fields
so that those who speak many different native languages will be able
to participate fluently in international conferences and chat
comfortably with each other after the formal presentations are made.
Nowadays that privilege is often restricted to native speakers of
English and those who have special talents and opportunities for
learning English as a foreign language.
G
What Esperanto does offer in concrete terms is the potential of saving
billions of dollars which are now being spent on translators and
interpreters, billions which would be freed up to serve the purposes of
governments and organisations that spend so much of their resources
to change words from one language into the words of others. Take,
for example, the enormously costly conferences, meetings and
documentation involved in the European Union parliamentary and
administrative procedures – all funded, essentially, by taxpayers. And
instead of the World Health Organisation, and all NGOs for that
matter, devoting enormous sums to provide interpreters and

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translations, they would be able to devote those huge amounts of
money to improve the health of stricken populations throughout the
world.

Questions 14-19:
Which paragraph A-G contains the following information?

i A non-exclusive language
ii Fewer languages, more results
14 Paragraph B
iii Language is personal
15 Paragraph C
iv What’s fashionable in language
16 Paragraph D
v From the written word to the spoken
17 Paragraph E
word
18 Paragraph F
vi A real language
19 Paragraph G
vii Harmony through language
viii The mechanics of a language
ix Lost in translation

20 What advantage is there to learning Esperanto as one’s first foreign

language?
A Its pronunciation rules follow those of most European
languages.
B There are no grammar rules to learn.

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C It can make the learning of other foreign languages less
complicated.
D Its verbs are not conjugated.

21 What do its critics say of Esperanto?

A It is only used in artificial situations.
B It requires emotional involvement.
C It cannot translate works of literature.
D It lacks the depth of expression.

22 How could Esperanto help on a global level?

A It would eliminate the need for conferences.
B More aid money would reach those who need it.
C The world population would be speaking only one language.
D More funds could be made available for learning foreign
languages.

Questions 23-26: TRUE – FALSE – NOT GIVEN

23 Supporters of Esperanto say it gives everyone an equal voice.

24 Esperanto is the only artificially-constructed language.
25 Esperanto can be learned as part of a self-study course.
26 Esperanto can be used equally in formal and casual situations.

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LONG-TERM FORECAST: HOT AND DRY

A
Melting land ice in the Arctic is set to cause a global rise in sea levels,
leading to disastrous effects for both man and wildlife. Many species
worldwide are threatened with extinction, and low-lying islands and
landmasses will disappear entirely. But the havoc wreaked by the effect of
greenhouse gases won’t be confined to just too much water, but the
absence of it, as well. In other words, desertification. A decrease in the
total amount of rainfall in arid and semi-arid areas could increase the total
area of drylands worldwide, and thus the total amount of land potentially
at risk from desertification.
B
Desertification is officially recognised as land degradation in arid, semi-
arid and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors including
climatic variations and human activities. This degradation of formerly
productive land is a complex process. It involves multiple causes, and it
proceeds at varying rates in different climates. Desertification may
intensify a general climatic trend, or initiate a change in local climate, both
leading towards greater aridity. The more arid conditions associated with
desertification accelerate the depletion of vegetation and soils. Land
degradation occurs all over the world, but it is only referred to as
desertification when it takes place in drylands. This is because these areas
are especially prone to more permanent damage as different areas of
degraded land spread and merge together to form desert-like conditions.
C
Global warming brought about by increasing greenhouse gas levels in the
atmosphere is expected to increase the variability of weather conditions

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and extreme events. Many dryland areas face increasingly low and erratic
rainfalls, coupled with soil erosion by wind and the drying-up of water
resources through increased regional temperatures. Deforestation can
also reduce rainfall in certain areas, increasing the threat of
desertification. It is not yet possible, despite sophisticated technology, to
identify with an acceptable degree of reliability those parts of the Earth
where desertification will occur. Existing drylands, which cover over 40% of
the total land area of the world, most significantly in Africa and Asia, will
probably be most at risk from climate change. These areas already
experience low rainfall, and any that falls is usually in the form of short,
erratic, high-intensity storms. In addition, such areas also suffer from land
degradation due to over-cultivation, overgrazing, deforestation and poor
irrigation practices.
D
It is a misconception that droughts cause desertification. Droughts are
common in arid and semi-arid lands. Well-managed lands can recover
from drought when the rains return. Continued land abuse during
droughts, however, increases land degradation. Nor does desertification
occur in linear, easily definable patterns. Deserts advance erratically,
forming patches on their borders. Areas far from natural deserts can
degrade quickly to barren soil, rock, or sand through poor land
management. The presence of a nearby desert has no direct relationship
to desertification. Unfortunately, an area undergoing desertification is
brought to public attention only after the process is well underway. Often
little or no data are available to indicate the previous state of the
ecosystem or the rate of degradation. Scientists still question whether

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desertification, as a process of global change, is permanent or how and
when it can be halted or reversed.
E
But desertification will not be limited to the drylands of Africa and Asia.
According to the environmental organisation Greenpeace, the
Mediterranean will suffer substantially, too. If current trends in emissions
of greenhouse gases continue, global temperatures are expected to rise
faster over the next century than over any time during the last 10,000
years. Significant uncertainties surround predictions of regional climate
changes, but it is likely that the Mediterranean region will also warm
significantly, increasing the frequency and severity of droughts across the
region. As the world warms, global sea levels will rise as oceans expand
and glaciers melt. Around much of the Mediterranean basin, sea levels
could rise by close to 1m by 2100. As a result, some low-lying coastal areas
would be lost through flooding or erosion, while rivers and coastal
aquifers would become saltier. The worst affected areas will be the Nile
Delta, Venice in Italy and Thessaloniki in Greece, two major cities where
local subsidence means that sea levels could rise by at least one-and-a-half
times as much as elsewhere.
F
The consequences of all this say Greenpeace, are far-reaching, and the
picture is a gloomy one. Livestock production would suffer due to a
deterioration in the quality of rangeland. Yields of grains and other crops
could decrease substantially across the Mediterranean region due to
increased frequency of drought. Crop production would be further
threatened by increases in competition for water and the prevalence of
pests and diseases and land loss through desertification and sea-level rise.

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The combination of heat and pollution would lead to an upsurge in
respiratory illness among urban populations, while extreme weather
events could increase death and injury rates. Water shortages and
damaged infrastructure would increase the risk of cholera and dysentery,
while higher temperatures would increase the incidence of infectious
diseases, such as malaria and dengue fever. Serious social disruption
could occur as millions are forced from their homelands as a result of
desertification, poor harvests and sea-level rise, while international
disputes over shared water resources could turn into conflict.
G
Future climate change could critically undermine efforts for sustainable
development in the Mediterranean region through its impacts on the
environment and social and economic well-being. While in many respects
climate change exacerbates existing problems instead of creating new
ones, the sheer magnitude of the potential problem means it cannot be
ignored. There is some scope for adaptation, but the fact that many
measures would be beneficial irrespective of climate change suggests that
radical changes in our policies and practices will be needed. It is also vital
that developed countries meet their obligations to assist adaptation in
developing countries through access to know-how and financial
assistance. Ultimately, however, the long-term sustainability of the
Mediterranean region requires keeping climate change within tolerable
bounds. Current understanding of safe limits points to the need for
prompt international agreement – and action – to make the drastic cuts in
emissions of greenhouse gases required to stabilize atmospheric
concentrations of these gases.

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Questions 27-32: Choose NO MORE THAN 3 WORDS from the

passage for each answer.

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Questions 33-36

33 Human intervention is a potential solution to a potential disaster.

34 The rate of climate change is set to accelerate dramatically.
35 There is seldom enough information available in some areas to
track how fast the effects of climate change have happened in the
past.
36 Desertification is attributable to a number of factors.

Questions 37-40:
Complete the summary with the list of words A-I below.

A irrigation B cooling C drylands

D cause E loss F abuse
G desertification H deserts I emission

Climate change may have catastrophic effects on the human and

animal world. As glaciers melt, sea levels will rise, causing extensive
flooding and land 37……………………………. Another consequence of
global warming is 38………………………….., which affects areas known
as 39………………………….. These areas are subject to irregular weather
patterns but also suffer from human intervention or neglect, such as
inadequate or inefficient 40………………………….. systems.

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Passage 1 Passage 2 Passage 3

1. C 14. v 27. varying rates
2. E 15. viii 28. intensify
3. G 16. iii 29. initiate
4. F 17. vi 30. aridity
5. B 18. i 31. vegetation
6. D 19. ii 32. soils
7. G 20. C 33. G
8. NOT GIVEN 21. D 34. E
9. TRUE 22. B 35. D
10. NOT GIVEN 23. YES 36. B
11. FALSE 24. NO 37. E
12. TRUE 25. NOT GIVEN 38. G
13. FALSE 26. YES 39. C
40. A

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